We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Congressman Blasts CDC for Incestuous Relationship with Vaccine Makers

Click here to access article by Christof Lehmann from nsnbc. 

The revolving door between the government's watchdog agency on vaccinations, Center for Disease Control, and major pharmaceutical corporations is having a major impact on the public's trust of vaccinations. 

Lehmann also reports:
nsnbc noted a clear attempt to derail genuine dialog in comments to articles pertaining vaccine safety issues. Within a 12 months period from February 2013 to March 2014, nsnbc registered more than 30 different “commentators with different names, who together attempted to post more than 500 comments, posted from only two different IP addresses in Australia and the USA, with one of them leading directly to a pharma sponsored pro-vaccine website.

The core strategies used are ad hominem attacks, attempts to discredit, strawman attacks, and, remarkably, also outlandish anti-vaccine claims and attempt to distract the call for transparency by posing as an “obviously” irresponsible parent or by asking for medical advise so as to detract from debates about oversight, transparency and vaccine safety issues.