194 Imrana Qadeer and P. M. Arathi, Universalising Healthcare in India: From Care to Coverage (Aakaar Books, 2019), 291
195 J. Puliyel, “GAVI and WHO: Demanding Accountability,” BMJ, 2010, doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.c4081
196 Jacob M. Puliyel, “AEFI and the pentavalent vaccine: looking for a composite picture,” Indian Journal of Medical Ethics vol. 10, no. 3 (Jul.–Sep., 2013): 142–146, ijme.in/pdfs/213ed142.pdf
197 Gouri Rao Passi, “News In Brief,” Indian Pediatrics (Dec. 2013), indianpediatrics.net/dec2013/dec-1165.htm
198 Ibid.
199 Ibid.
200 S. K. Mittal, “‘Sudden Deaths’ after Pentavalent vaccination: Is the vaccine really safe?,” BMJ (Jul. 23, 2010), bmj.com/rapid-response/2011/11/02/sudden-deaths-after-pentavalent-vaccination-vaccine-really-safe
201 Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety review of pentavalent vaccine safety concerns in four Asian countries (June 12, 2013), who.int/vaccine_safety/committee/topics/hpv/GACVSstatement_pentavalent_June2013.pdf
202 McGoey, 161
203 Amy Goodman, “Report: Gates Foundation Causing Harm with the Same Money It Uses to Do Good,” DEMOCRACY NOW!, 46:39 (Jan. 9, 2007), democracynow.org/2007/1/9/report_gates_foundation_causing_harm_with
204 Mathew J. Belvedere, ”Bill Gates: My ‘ best investment’ turned $10 billion into $200 billion worth of economic benefit,” CNBC (Jan. 23, 2019, 7:13 a.m.), cnbc.com/2019/01/23/bill-gates-turns-10-billion-into-200-billion-worth-of-economic-benefit.html
ChildrensHealthDefense.org/fauci-book
childrenshd.org/fauci-book
For updates, new citations and references, and new information about topics in this chapter:
CHAPTER 11
HYPING PHONY EPIDEMICS: “CRYING WOLF”
“Governments do like epidemics, just the same way as they like war, really. It’s a chance to impose their will on us and get us all scared so that we huddle together and do what we’re told.”
—Dr. Damien Downing, President, British Society of Ecological Medicine (Al Jazeera, 2009)
“Fear is a market. To instill fear in people also has advantages. Not only in terms of drug use. Anxiety-driven people are easier to rule.”
—Gerd Gogerenzer, Director Emeritus at the Max Planck Institute for Educational Research (Torsten Engelbrecht, Virus Mania, 2021)
In 1906, infectious disease caused a third of all annual deaths in the United States, and 800–1000 of every 100,000 Americans died of infectious disease. By 1976, fewer than fifty Americans per hundred thousand died of infectious diseases, and CDC and NIAID were under extreme pressure to justify their budgets. Hyping pandemics became an institutional strategy in both agencies. Pharmaceutical companies and international health agencies, banking and military contractors soon found purchase in the ecosystem, and random pandemics discovered their own self-perpetuating rationale. Dr. Fauci’s critics chide him for routinely exaggerating—and even concocting—global disease outbreaks to hype pandemic panic, elevate the biosecurity agenda, boost agency funding, promote profitable vaccines for his pharma partners, and magnify his own power. The historical record supports these charges.
1976 Swine Flu
As chief of the NIAID’s Clinical Physiology Section of the Laboratory of Clinical Investigation, Dr. Fauci was, in 1976, a frontline spectator during the NIH’s bogus swine flu pandemic. That year, a soldier at Fort Dix died of a lung ailment following a forced march. Army physicians sent some samples to CDC, which identified the malady as a swine flu. Dr. Fauci’s NIAID boss, Richard Krause (who Dr. Fauci would shortly replace), labored with his CDC counterpart, David Sencer, to spread terror of a catastrophic pandemic and initiate public demand for a vaccine. The NIAID chief convened in-house strategy sessions with Merck’s iconic vaccine developer Maurice Hilleman and other immunization industry nabobs.1 Congressional investigators subsequently landed the notes from those consultations, in which Dr. Hilleman candidly confesses that the resulting vaccine “had nothing to do with science and everything to do with politics.” In the August 2020 Rolling Stone, Gerald Posner, author of Pharma: Greed, Lies, and the Poisoning of America,2 recounted how Merck and other manufacturers utilized their secret meeting with the regulators to hatch a scheme that would guarantee industry profits while shielding Pharma from liability.3 This innovation—now a persistent feature of Big Pharma’s business model—turned out to be carte blanche for negligent and even criminal behavior.
Pharma and NIAID told Congress, the White House, and the public that the Fort Dix swine flu was the same strain responsible for the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, which, they warned, had killed 50 million people worldwide.4 They were lying; scientists at Fort Dix, the CDC, and HHS knew that H1N1 was an ordinary pig virus posing no risk for humans.5 Nevertheless, NIAID conducted a hard-sell campaign warning of one million deaths in the United States. Working with the pharmaceutical companies, NIAID, CDC, and Merck persuaded incoming president Gerald Ford to sign a bill appropriating $135 million for vaccine manufacturers to inoculate 140 million Americans against the pestilence.6
At the behest of federal regulators, Ford appeared on TV urging all Americans to get vaccinated. Ford’s obligatory references to the 1918 Spanish flu mass fatalities inspired some 50 million US citizens to hotfoot it to their local health center for injections of hastily concocted, shoddily tested, zero-liability vaccines that HHS and Merck conspired to rush to market. CDC director David Sencer set up a swine flu “war room” to bolster public fear amongst an enthused media.7 The government launched a full-scale promotional campaign, including terrifying TV commercials depicting remorseful patients who dodged their vaccination and suffered serious illness. A CDC press release claimed that popular TV star Mary Tyler Moore had taken the jab. Moore told 60 Minutes she had avoided the shot due to her concerns about side effects. She said that she and her doctor were very happy she didn’t get it.8