Dr. Shiv Chopra, PhD, must be fire-proof. As a vaccine and drug regulator for Health Canada for nearly forty years, he evaluated every red-hot topic in public health and tried to protect us from unsafe drugs, vaccines, and agricultural practices.  Over the years, he tried (sometimes successfully) to stop the Canadian government from allowing Canadians to be exposed to ineffective and harmful vaccines, genetically modified foods, pesticides, carcinogenic antibiotics and hormones used in food-producing animals, and agricultural practices that promote Mad Cow Disease. He even went public with his findings, supported by Canada’s public service union, which resulted in legal battles initiated against him by a government determined to shut him up. The courts, however, tended to find in favour of Dr. Chopra, and instead ordered the government to shape up.

This support by the courts, various tribunals, and Senate committee hearings of Dr. Chopra and his fellow scientists at Health Canada was highly unfavourable to corporate interests and, therefore, irksome to those prime ministers and ministers of health dependent upon corporate support. So Drs. Chopra, Margaret Haydon, and Gerard Lambert were fired from Health Canada in 2004 by then PM Paul Martin for “insubordination”. The reason provided was true, in a sense: they had steadfastly refused for more than three decades to subordinate themselves to corporate and government pressure to pass unsafe substances which were in direct contravention to Canada’s Foods and Drugs Act.

Dr. Chopra has now written a book on his decades of struggle to have the law recognized as being above political policy. His book, Corrupt to the Core, tells of what crimes our government knowingly committed against public health in order to serve corporate financial interests. The book has been three years in the making and is at the press now.

It is sobering to consider that most of the known toxins which made it onto the market and into our bodies did so despite the scientifically based objection of our Health Canada scientists. We now know that the presence in our environment and bodies of these carcinogens, endocrine disruptors, and neurotoxins was totally preventable, had our government obeyed the law. Every historical era has had its characteristic problems, and that of ours, since the advent of the Industrial Revolution, has been the pursuit of wealth through manufacturing and distributing known poisons. But the tide is turning. The verifiable science proving harm from pesticides, vaccines, and drugs is no longer just squeezing out from under the lid kept for so long on such information, but is turning into a veritable river that cannot be controlled.

CHOPRA REPORTS ON VACCINE DANGERS

Chopra points out that vaccination did successfully eradicate smallpox. The possibility of eradicating polio in the same way is open to scientific debate. However he also observes that all the other childhood diseases have been unsuccessfully fought with vaccination campaigns involving millions of children every year. Worst of all, these diseases are appearing with increasing frequency in the very populations that have been vaccinated for several generations. Clearly, something is wrong with these programs, the vaccines themselves, and he finds it alarming that “the list of vaccines being administered to young children has been enlarged to include many more viral and bacterial infections with little or no scientific rationale.”

Indeed, it is outright bizarre how the US Centre for Disease Control publishes data every year, without fail, showing that supposedly 36,000 people die annually of the ‘flu. This figure hasn’t changed in some two decades! Yet, available statistics show that usually less than a hundred people, almost always elderly and/or immune compromised, die annually of the ‘flu. Who is responsible for this nonsense and the scare-mongering associated with it? (By the way, current research, reported by the International Vitamin D Council, has shown that merely taking more vitamin D (about 2,000 IU daily) reduces the incidence of the flu by more than 70%.)

Currently, those vaccination programs whose scientific basis is so flawed as to border on the absurd involve vaccines against Hepatitis B, the bird flu (Tamiflu), and Gardasil which supposedly protects against the virus that promotes cervical cancer. Tamiflu has been discontinued in Japan because of so many deaths from sudden serious psychiatric disorders; formal warnings to that effect were issued in 2006 in the UK and in Canada. As for Hepatitis B, even according to the CDC guidelines and Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine, it is an exclusively adult disease, sexually transmitted by people with multiple partners or through chronic intravenous drug use or contaminated blood transfusions. Yet, it is routinely given to children without a shred of epidemiological evidence to support such practice; side effects are frequent and serious, so much so that Vietnam was the first country to suspend its use in May 2007.

Gardasil is already an unfolding public health disaster: during the first year of its use more than 3,500 adverse events were reported. No vaccine in history can compare in this regard. Between June 2006 and May 2007, some 1,637 adverse events were filed with the FDA in the US, some involving death, spontaneous abortions, neurological injury and more.  One large study followed all individuals vaccinated with Gardasil in several California counties – almost 90% reported adverse reactions. It also increases the risk of developing Guillain-Barre Syndrome twelve fold. This 3-shot vaccine contains a whopping 675 micrograms of toxic aluminum used as a preservative and emulsifier. One of the scientists who developed Gardasil, Diane M. Harper, went public and warned that this vaccine was “not tested on young girls” before it was released for widespread use by them.

Possibly the worst vaccine is MMR which supposedly provides immunity against mumps, measles, chickenpox, and whooping cough. More than 4,900 U.S. families have so far filed lawsuits after their children became autistic within days of getting this shot. While the industry vehemently denied this causal link, citing many industry-sponsored medical research papers to support them, the first of these cases was won in court on November 9 last year, because the causal link to the child’s neurological damage from the vaccine was indisputable. (The most comprehensive analysis on the MMR-autism connection is found in Evidence of Harm by David Kirby for which he won the top award for investigative journalism in the UK in 2006 . It is essential reading for all parents wondering if they should agree to the MMR vaccine.)

Reaction to this court ruling was swift: the CDC backpedalled in March this year and “no longer expresses a preference” for combining all those vaccines into one (which increases the amount of neurotoxic preservatives). Predictably, the vaccine industry is pulling out all the stops to maintain profits and escape responsibility: the US Supreme Court heard arguments in February in the case of Warner-Lambert Co. v. Kent which may result in a ruling that consumers cannot sue pharmaceutical companies for any damages caused by drugs and vaccines.

All vaccines are potentially neurotoxic and may cause or promote brain damage (including Alzheimer’s), autism, or asthma. In spite of this, the US got their Comprehensive Child Immunization Act in 1993, which is not only federally funded, but provides for $100 payment to vaccine clinics for every child vaccinated. The vaccine business has been booming ever since.

The prestigious Cochrane Library Review, which studies the effectiveness of drugs and therapies, now insists it is time to do “some real research into vaccine effectiveness”, as reported by the BBC on Sept 25, 2007. Cochrane researcher T. Jefferson observed “vaccines are a business, like any other. The only difference is that governments are co-sponsors with industry … overestimation of the threat by the target diseases, suppression of data on adverse events, and exaggeration of effectiveness are frequent. In the case of population vaccination programs, both governments and industry have conflicts of interest. Beware!”

ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANCE

A second area of concern in Dr. Chopra’s career was the rapid development of antibiotic resistance, wholly avoidable and caused solely by the prophylactic use of antibiotics in food-producing animals and the reckless over-prescribing habits of doctors. Rarely bothering to check if the infection is in fact bacterial rather than viral (for which antibiotics are never indicated, resulting in weakened immunity), doctors generally prescribe some broad-spectrum variety, in-stead of the specifically correct one which requires testing the patient’s body fluids first.  

When even simple bacterial infections became resistant to all available antibiotics (especially tuberculosis, killer No 1 in the 19th century and now once again a leading cause of death), enormous efforts were expended by the World Health Organization, and the medical associations the world over, to teach doctors to be cautious in the use of these drugs. So the lion’s share of antibiotic production goes to their prophylactic use in food-producing animals, thereby creating an indispensable cash cow for their manufacturers.

Dr. Chopra and his colleagues warned against this abuse of antibiotics, and pointed out their carcinogenic properties when used over long periods of time. They also protested the saturating of our food supply with antibiotics which initiated the proliferation of drug resistant bacteria, resulting in the untreatable “hospital superbugs”.  

There are currently entire classes of antibiotics that should not be on the market; Dr. Chopra fought vigorously and unsuccessfully to keep Baytril and Revelor-H off the market. They were finally banned more than a decade after his warnings because of the undeniable harm they caused. Published in April 2006 were the results of the decision taken by Australia, some twenty years ago, to drastically restrict prophylactic antibiotic use in food producing animals, and the total prohibition of them in the whole of Europe. Those countries are almost totally free of hospital superbugs and the antibiotic resistance in dangerous bacteria stands at about 2%  - compared to 64% in North America.

THE VALUE OF RESISTANCE

Winston Churchill used to say: “Never, never, never give up.” Within the stubborn resistance to lies, and the determination to make lazy or corrupt authority face reality, there lies an energy that eventually transforms the system. Truth is a living force.

Dr. Chopra and his fellow scientists tackled vaccines, many drugs, antibiotic resistance as well as genetic engineering, the use of rendered slaughterhouse waste, pesticides, and sewage-based sludge for fertilizer. They examined the science, considered the potential consequences, spoke the truth as best as they knew how, and did not shut up when told to do so. As public guardians they acted in the spirit of Gandhi who taught that  “in order to fight injustice, one has to make it visible.”

Chopra has survived to tell the tale and is now ready to raise more hell – hopefully with your support. Come and hear him speak at Total Health and learn how you can join his quest to get our government and ourselves off drugs.

Shiv Chopra will participate in a panel discussion and give keynote presentations at the Total Health Show Saturday April 19 and Sunday, April 20. He will be speaking on:

1. Infectious Disease and Vaccines (Saturday)
2. Global Safety and Security of Food (Sunday)

Dr. Chopra will be available between lectures at his booth #305.
For more info, go to www.totalhealthshow.com.

Sources and Resources:
For a more comprehensive list of sources go to the Vitality website.

• S. Cave, MD. What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Children’s Vaccinations, Warner, 2001
• S. Chopra, Corrupt to the Core: Memoirs of a Health Canada Whistleblower, Kos, April 2008
• R. Fitzgerald, The Hundred-Year Lie: How Food and Medicine are Destroying Your Health, Dutton, 2007
• D. Kirby. Evidence of Harm: Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic, St. Martin’s Press, 2005
• Jeffrey M. Smith, Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods, Yes! Books, 2008
• W. Wagner & R. Steinzor eds. Rescuing Science from Politics, Cambridge, 2006

For verifiable information on scientific research about vaccines:
Dr. Sherri Tenpenny’s writings, videos, and bibliographies www.Dr.Tenpenny.com
For vaccine ingredients and known toxicities according to different manufacturers tested www.van.org.uk and www.vaclib.org and www.informedchoice.info/
For vaccines used in Canada and the exemption forms in PDF format plus relevant legal information on all vaccination situations: babies, adults, emergencies, epidemics etc. got to www.vran.org or call 250-355-2525 or e-mail eddawest@netidea.com.  Also available in the back pages of the annually updated Compendium of Pharmaceuticals and Specialties kept in every doctor’s office and in every pharmacy.

For all Vitamin D-related information go to International Vitamin D Council via Google
For antibiotic resistance: Scientific American, January 2007 issue has an editorial and an article providing a full overview of the problem. Also: N.K. Peters et al. Journal of Infectious Diseases, March 12, 2008 issue; Clinical Infectious Diseases, May 15, 2006. A special issue of International Medical Veritas Association, February 2008 available via Google. The Journal of Biological Chemistry, vol. 283 (10) p. 6402 ff.
Details on the US Supreme Court in the pending case of Warner-Lambert Co. v. Kent are available on NaturalNews.com, February 26, 2008.
On MMR, Tamiflu and Gardasil vaccines:
New York Times, March 8, 2008; www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0503; www.ageofautism.com; www.ahrp.org These websites also provide the information on Tamiflu and detailed articles on this vaccine are in the March 14, 2008, issue of the newsletter available through veracare@ahrp.org. The Gardasil material comes from www.lifesite.net Sept. 20, 2007; www.NewsWithViews.com March 16, 2007; New England Journal of Medicine vol 356, issue 19, 1991; the product insert for Gardasil provided by Merck; the aluminum details were posted on www.youtube.com October 6, 2007; on safety issues of Gardasil also see FDA transcript from 2001: www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/ac/cber01.htm#Vaccines and www.NVIC.org; on Tamiflu side effects see http://drdoyle.tripod.com and The Medical Post, December 19, 2006; re flu vaccine see http://www.lungusa.org/atf/cf and Nexus Magazine vol 13/issue 2, February-March 2006 available through www.nexusmagazine.com; the quotations from the researchers at the Cochrane Library review and the National Institutes of Health findings of 2005 are in Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients, December 2006.
On the vaccine industry generally:
www.nvic.org and www.surveyusa.come.php/who