I never thought I would even care enough to ask this question, but...
Has Chuck Norris lost his damn mind?
On Jones' show yesterday, he actually said Obama is trying to pull a Chavez move on America, that he's working on "annulling" the 2012 elections so he can install himself as lifetime dictator. Gingrich said something similar a while ago (video here), complaining that Obama has signed too many Executive Orders (33). In his first year of office, G.W. Bush signed 54 Executive Orders. Didn't hear a peep from Gingrich about that.
What evidence is there for this move toward dictatorship? What steps has Obama taken to install himself as dictator? Jones complains that Obama wants to "socialize" or "nationalize" absolutely everything, but thus far nothing has been socialized nor federalized. The banks have not been nationalized. The proposed health care plan leaves health care firmly in the hands of private insurance companies.
It looks like the Federal Reserve is going to be audited. Surely a dictator wouldn't allow that to happen, right?
Norris also gave the opinion that if the U.S. ratifies the Copenhagen agreement, Congress should impeach Obama for even attempting to enforce it. It's just a scam designed by guys like George Soros to "bankrupt our economy here in the United States and then come in with international money and take away the dollar”. Seems like a pretty drastic plan just to replace the dollar, dude. And just exactly how does Soros benefit from "bankrupting the economy"?
“If the people don’t rise up, we’re going to have a revolution in our country."
Lovely. Chuck Norris leading the masses in an uprising that will preserve or restore....what, exactly? I mean, what golden age of American history are we harking back to here? Jones hasn't liked any American president since Jackson, only because Jackson hated bankers. Jones talks a lot about the spirit of 1776, but he also seems to think the founding fathers were just like the baddies of today - Freemasonic New World Order occultists with secret agendas.
What kind of country does Chuck Norris want? What kind of country does Alex Jones want?
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Thursday, December 10, 2009
A message to all liberal college students:
Alex Jones is not happy with you.
White Rastafarians can be a little annoying, I'll admit, but Alex Jones really, really hates them.
"You can go to any university and see the people with their Rasta fake hair, the wannabe white Rastafarians and their sandals and their patchouli, going, 'It's what we gotta do for the earth', and I just wanna knock their Nazi teeth in. Don't you understand the Nazis have fake Rasta hair, with limp wrists...they're walking around in coffeeshops actin' real cool, and I just wanna knock their teeth out...I WANNA CRUSH YOUR SKULL! Because I'm just a normal mammal...I'm a normal...[pause for thought] creature that when I see innocence being torn apart, my instinct as a warrior is to stand up and fight."
Jones seems to believe that all liberals endorse eugenics and enforced population reduction. During his February interview of Stanley Monteith, he declared that if you take a liberal - any liberal - aside and mention Madame Blavatsky or Margaret Sanger, the liberal will snarl, "That's right, you sonofabitch, and we're gonna get you too. We've gotta exterminate the blacks and the Mexicans."
He's right, of course. When the moon is full, liberals gather in Rothschild castles and dance naked around cauldrons full of gay porn and back issues of Mother Jones, bellowing "Gooble-gobble! Gooble-gobble!" until Al Gore calls for silence. Then they pray to a plaster bust of Margaret Sanger and pledge to exterminate all minorities by putting minute quantities of harsh chemicals into the same drinking water that they consume.
So I guess we could go ahead and add "campus hippies" to the list of New World Order baddies, along with bankers, "rockabilly art types", schizophrenics (AKA "demons"), herpetologists, law enforcement officers, and pretty much anyone with a college education. But my advice to Jones is to just be patient with the college kids.
"It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative, without changing a single idea." - Robert Anton Wilson
White Rastafarians can be a little annoying, I'll admit, but Alex Jones really, really hates them.
"You can go to any university and see the people with their Rasta fake hair, the wannabe white Rastafarians and their sandals and their patchouli, going, 'It's what we gotta do for the earth', and I just wanna knock their Nazi teeth in. Don't you understand the Nazis have fake Rasta hair, with limp wrists...they're walking around in coffeeshops actin' real cool, and I just wanna knock their teeth out...I WANNA CRUSH YOUR SKULL! Because I'm just a normal mammal...I'm a normal...[pause for thought] creature that when I see innocence being torn apart, my instinct as a warrior is to stand up and fight."
Jones seems to believe that all liberals endorse eugenics and enforced population reduction. During his February interview of Stanley Monteith, he declared that if you take a liberal - any liberal - aside and mention Madame Blavatsky or Margaret Sanger, the liberal will snarl, "That's right, you sonofabitch, and we're gonna get you too. We've gotta exterminate the blacks and the Mexicans."
He's right, of course. When the moon is full, liberals gather in Rothschild castles and dance naked around cauldrons full of gay porn and back issues of Mother Jones, bellowing "Gooble-gobble! Gooble-gobble!" until Al Gore calls for silence. Then they pray to a plaster bust of Margaret Sanger and pledge to exterminate all minorities by putting minute quantities of harsh chemicals into the same drinking water that they consume.
So I guess we could go ahead and add "campus hippies" to the list of New World Order baddies, along with bankers, "rockabilly art types", schizophrenics (AKA "demons"), herpetologists, law enforcement officers, and pretty much anyone with a college education. But my advice to Jones is to just be patient with the college kids.
"It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative, without changing a single idea." - Robert Anton Wilson
Monday, December 7, 2009
How is the Great Swine Flu Plot of '09 coming along?
Over the summer, Jones laid out the steps that the elite scumlords will take to strike a death blow to the U.S. Constitution, kill most of us, and institute global government. I call this the Great Swine Flu Plot of '09, because Jones has said H1N1 and H1N1 vaccination is a central plank in the evil plan. Jones also said the initial stages of the plan would be instituted in the autumn. Now that it's December, let's take a look at how many of the steps in the plot have been carried out:
Step 1: In the fall of '09, Swine Flu hysteria will serve as a distraction while the government sneaks in more bank bailouts, carbon taxation, the Clean Water Restoration Act, and the passage of hate crime legislation. Then forced inoculation will be introduced.
Bank bailouts? Check. There have been several of those. But I wouldn't say that H1N1 distracted anyone from them.
The Clean Water Restoration Act? No. Languishing in the Senate.
Carbon taxation? No. Jones insists they will be levied immediately upon U.S. ratification of the Copenhagen treaty, so time will tell.
Hate crime legislation? Half a check. The Matthew Shepard Act was signed into law in October, It's mostly an update of 30-year-old legislation, so it's hardly anything to freak out over. It does not in any way limit hate speech. The Cyberbullying Act, which is more problematic because its wording isn't as tight as the Shepard Act, is languishing in the House.
Forced inoculation? No.
So we have a check and a half for the 4 items in Step 1. That's a 36% success rate. Slightly better than Sylvia Browne's track record, but still dismal.
Step 2: Forced inoculation will result in riots all over the U.S., because people are too smart to take the shots voluntarily. The vaccine will not protect against Swine Flu; in fact, it was probably an experimental vaccine that was used to start the outbreaks in the first place.
Still no forced inoculation yet, even though October poll results indicated 60% of adult Americans were not planning to be inoculated.
Step 3: The rioting will give "Obama's thugs" (NORTHCOM and civilian service orgs like Americorps) the perfect excuse to institute and maintain nationwide martial law. Everything will be federalized.
No martial law. If the bailouts count as "federalization" (and Jones, Glenn Beck et. al. would argue that they do), then that would be the only major example thus far.
Step 4: Under the direction of Obama's science czar, John Holdren, sterilizing agents will be placed in municipal water supplies.
No, but Jones now insists that 150 chemicals found in municipal water supplies are "known to sterilize mammals" and were placed there deliberately. (today's broadcast)
Step 5: Dissidents will be rounded up and placed in FEMA concentration camps. The Constitution will cease to exist, and the U.S. will basically become a wholly-owned subsidiary of the UN.
No.
Step 6: The real mass murder begins. 80-99% of the world's population will be eliminated via tainted vaccines, execution, forced abortions, and involuntary sterilization.
No. Again, time will tell. Considering Jones' batting average so far, I'm not holding my breath. I still haven't seen any sign of Obama's "Muslim/Black Identity/Nation of Islam terrorism and persecution of whites", which Jones predicted during his November '08 interview of Ron Paul.
Step 1: In the fall of '09, Swine Flu hysteria will serve as a distraction while the government sneaks in more bank bailouts, carbon taxation, the Clean Water Restoration Act, and the passage of hate crime legislation. Then forced inoculation will be introduced.
Bank bailouts? Check. There have been several of those. But I wouldn't say that H1N1 distracted anyone from them.
The Clean Water Restoration Act? No. Languishing in the Senate.
Carbon taxation? No. Jones insists they will be levied immediately upon U.S. ratification of the Copenhagen treaty, so time will tell.
Hate crime legislation? Half a check. The Matthew Shepard Act was signed into law in October, It's mostly an update of 30-year-old legislation, so it's hardly anything to freak out over. It does not in any way limit hate speech. The Cyberbullying Act, which is more problematic because its wording isn't as tight as the Shepard Act, is languishing in the House.
Forced inoculation? No.
So we have a check and a half for the 4 items in Step 1. That's a 36% success rate. Slightly better than Sylvia Browne's track record, but still dismal.
Step 2: Forced inoculation will result in riots all over the U.S., because people are too smart to take the shots voluntarily. The vaccine will not protect against Swine Flu; in fact, it was probably an experimental vaccine that was used to start the outbreaks in the first place.
Still no forced inoculation yet, even though October poll results indicated 60% of adult Americans were not planning to be inoculated.
Step 3: The rioting will give "Obama's thugs" (NORTHCOM and civilian service orgs like Americorps) the perfect excuse to institute and maintain nationwide martial law. Everything will be federalized.
No martial law. If the bailouts count as "federalization" (and Jones, Glenn Beck et. al. would argue that they do), then that would be the only major example thus far.
Step 4: Under the direction of Obama's science czar, John Holdren, sterilizing agents will be placed in municipal water supplies.
No, but Jones now insists that 150 chemicals found in municipal water supplies are "known to sterilize mammals" and were placed there deliberately. (today's broadcast)
Step 5: Dissidents will be rounded up and placed in FEMA concentration camps. The Constitution will cease to exist, and the U.S. will basically become a wholly-owned subsidiary of the UN.
No.
Step 6: The real mass murder begins. 80-99% of the world's population will be eliminated via tainted vaccines, execution, forced abortions, and involuntary sterilization.
No. Again, time will tell. Considering Jones' batting average so far, I'm not holding my breath. I still haven't seen any sign of Obama's "Muslim/Black Identity/Nation of Islam terrorism and persecution of whites", which Jones predicted during his November '08 interview of Ron Paul.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
The Blame Game: Mark David Chapman
Paul Joseph Watson, you're busted.
As you probably know, it is the contention of Alex Jones and many of his guests (as well as a vast array of conspiranoids) that most mass shootings are committed by mind-controlled Manchurian Candidates and/or people who are on SSRI antidepressants. Jones conveniently ignores the many mass shootings that occurred before SSRIs even existed, like this one.
So it's really no surprise that in this 2007 Infowars article about the Virginia Tech massacre, Paul Joseph Watson tries to pin the brunt of the blame on videogames and SSRIs. He points out that most spree killers are on SSRIs, and states that Mark David Chapman was on an SSRI medication at the time of his crime.
That's interesting. The very first SSRI on the market was zimelidine, and it was introduced in 1982. Chapman shot John Lennon in 1980.
Nice try.
As you probably know, it is the contention of Alex Jones and many of his guests (as well as a vast array of conspiranoids) that most mass shootings are committed by mind-controlled Manchurian Candidates and/or people who are on SSRI antidepressants. Jones conveniently ignores the many mass shootings that occurred before SSRIs even existed, like this one.
So it's really no surprise that in this 2007 Infowars article about the Virginia Tech massacre, Paul Joseph Watson tries to pin the brunt of the blame on videogames and SSRIs. He points out that most spree killers are on SSRIs, and states that Mark David Chapman was on an SSRI medication at the time of his crime.
That's interesting. The very first SSRI on the market was zimelidine, and it was introduced in 1982. Chapman shot John Lennon in 1980.
Nice try.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Environmentalism Kills Children! (And other nonsense)
Several weeks ago, Jones cited an article entitled "Carbon Calculator Teaches Kids When to Die", and said that some children have already committed suicide to avoid harming the environment.
There are a couple of big problems with this.
1. The calculator is actually a game-style computer program called Planet Slayer, and it doesn't tell kids anything about death. It just tells them if they have already used up their "lifetime share of the planet", based on how they answer a series of questions. If the child has used up his "share", he's told to answer the questions differently - not end his life. Sheesh. No game that I know of tells kids to off themselves, fer crying out loud. I've told you a million times not to exaggerate, Mr. Jones.
2. People rarely - and I mean pretty much never - commit suicide because of science, excluding medical problems or troubling medical diagnoses. There have been suicides or threats of suicide over 2012, the Large Hadron Collider, the Hale-Bopp UFO, and other alarmist and misinformed stories that don't involve any real science. But suicide because of the environment? News to me. I can't find a single documented case of this. When kids kill themselves, depression and bullying and loss of a loved one seem to be the most common causes. "A computer game told me to kill myself" wouldn't make the list.
"Hitler was on the MI5 Payroll"
Jones declared this earlier in the week, apparently not realizing that Mussolini - not Hitler - was recently exposed as being on the MI5 payroll early in his career. Wrong country, wrong dictator.
There are a couple of big problems with this.
1. The calculator is actually a game-style computer program called Planet Slayer, and it doesn't tell kids anything about death. It just tells them if they have already used up their "lifetime share of the planet", based on how they answer a series of questions. If the child has used up his "share", he's told to answer the questions differently - not end his life. Sheesh. No game that I know of tells kids to off themselves, fer crying out loud. I've told you a million times not to exaggerate, Mr. Jones.
2. People rarely - and I mean pretty much never - commit suicide because of science, excluding medical problems or troubling medical diagnoses. There have been suicides or threats of suicide over 2012, the Large Hadron Collider, the Hale-Bopp UFO, and other alarmist and misinformed stories that don't involve any real science. But suicide because of the environment? News to me. I can't find a single documented case of this. When kids kill themselves, depression and bullying and loss of a loved one seem to be the most common causes. "A computer game told me to kill myself" wouldn't make the list.
"Hitler was on the MI5 Payroll"
Jones declared this earlier in the week, apparently not realizing that Mussolini - not Hitler - was recently exposed as being on the MI5 payroll early in his career. Wrong country, wrong dictator.
Satanic Panic is Alive and Well...
on The Alex Jones Show.
During his latest interview with David "Turd in the Punchbowl" Icke, Jones declared, "We know that Satanists sacrifice people. They get caught doing it all the time."
He said that France's Minister of Culture, Frederic Mitterand, bragged in a book that he "goes to slave camps and rapes little boys". Mitterand even refers to this practice as a "ritual".
This is pure bullshit. The book Jones refers to (though he clearly hasn't read it) is Mitterand's 2005 autobiographical novel, The Bad Life, in which he describes visiting young male prostitutes (young men, not children) in Thailand. No "slave camps". No "rape". No "little boys". However, Mitterand did push the envelope by describing his reaction to the sex trade in Bangkok thusly: "All these rituals of the market for youths, the slave market, excite me enormously".
Jones mentioned that in 1999, a woman escaped from captivity in a Rothschild castle weighing only about 98 pounds, yet the police did nothing. I can find no incident even vaguely matching this description. If you know what Jones was talking about, please give me a heads-up.
Icke stated, "Roman Polanski is a practicing Satanist." He said Sharon Tate's murder was directly connected to Satanism. He went on to explain one of his central conspiracy theories, that the elite routinely rape and sacrifice prepubescent children to obtain their energy (and blood, since they are blood-drinking, shapeshifting Reptiles from another dimension). All of this is, again, pure bullshit. The Manson Family did not practice Satanism. Charles Manson talked about the Devil, but he also talked about and likened himself to Christ on many occasions.
There are zero indications that Roman Polanski has anything to do with Satanism, either. Is he a perv? Yes. Is he kinda creepy? Yes. There's ample evidence of both of those things. But a Satanist? Don't think so. Pure speculation. Directing a horror movie does not a Satanist make.
Jones listed the cultures that have practiced ritual human sacrifice: Mesoamericans, Africans, Aztecs, Asians, Babylonians, Romans, Greeks, Middle Eastern tribes. He said that all had high priests who worshipped the same snake god and followed the same "secret mathematics religion", and all sacrificed healthy people of all ages and both sexes. Most tortured their victims. Most used hallucinogens (as does Icke himself, but Icke stayed mum at this point in the broadcast). Note, please, that Jones didn't mention Celtic or Nordic sacrifice.
Again, pure bullshit. There is no "secret mathematics religion", and the cultures mentioned had an array of gods (not just a single "snake god", though a few did incorporate snakes or serpents into their cosmology and/or mythology at one time or another - as does Christianity, which Jones favors, and the chemognostic New Age "shamanism" that Icke appreciates).
Jones went on to say that Tony Blair likes to be possessed by the spirit of "white light", and that homosexual orgies take place during Skull & Bones initiation ceremonies. As Blair is now Catholic, I don't know why his alleged ecstatic states would have anything to do with Satanism. And though there is reportedly some True Confession aspect to Skull & Bones inititation ceremonies, no one has revealed gay orgies (or any kind of orgies, for that matter).
During his latest interview with David "Turd in the Punchbowl" Icke, Jones declared, "We know that Satanists sacrifice people. They get caught doing it all the time."
He said that France's Minister of Culture, Frederic Mitterand, bragged in a book that he "goes to slave camps and rapes little boys". Mitterand even refers to this practice as a "ritual".
This is pure bullshit. The book Jones refers to (though he clearly hasn't read it) is Mitterand's 2005 autobiographical novel, The Bad Life, in which he describes visiting young male prostitutes (young men, not children) in Thailand. No "slave camps". No "rape". No "little boys". However, Mitterand did push the envelope by describing his reaction to the sex trade in Bangkok thusly: "All these rituals of the market for youths, the slave market, excite me enormously".
Jones mentioned that in 1999, a woman escaped from captivity in a Rothschild castle weighing only about 98 pounds, yet the police did nothing. I can find no incident even vaguely matching this description. If you know what Jones was talking about, please give me a heads-up.
Icke stated, "Roman Polanski is a practicing Satanist." He said Sharon Tate's murder was directly connected to Satanism. He went on to explain one of his central conspiracy theories, that the elite routinely rape and sacrifice prepubescent children to obtain their energy (and blood, since they are blood-drinking, shapeshifting Reptiles from another dimension). All of this is, again, pure bullshit. The Manson Family did not practice Satanism. Charles Manson talked about the Devil, but he also talked about and likened himself to Christ on many occasions.
There are zero indications that Roman Polanski has anything to do with Satanism, either. Is he a perv? Yes. Is he kinda creepy? Yes. There's ample evidence of both of those things. But a Satanist? Don't think so. Pure speculation. Directing a horror movie does not a Satanist make.
Jones listed the cultures that have practiced ritual human sacrifice: Mesoamericans, Africans, Aztecs, Asians, Babylonians, Romans, Greeks, Middle Eastern tribes. He said that all had high priests who worshipped the same snake god and followed the same "secret mathematics religion", and all sacrificed healthy people of all ages and both sexes. Most tortured their victims. Most used hallucinogens (as does Icke himself, but Icke stayed mum at this point in the broadcast). Note, please, that Jones didn't mention Celtic or Nordic sacrifice.
Again, pure bullshit. There is no "secret mathematics religion", and the cultures mentioned had an array of gods (not just a single "snake god", though a few did incorporate snakes or serpents into their cosmology and/or mythology at one time or another - as does Christianity, which Jones favors, and the chemognostic New Age "shamanism" that Icke appreciates).
Jones went on to say that Tony Blair likes to be possessed by the spirit of "white light", and that homosexual orgies take place during Skull & Bones initiation ceremonies. As Blair is now Catholic, I don't know why his alleged ecstatic states would have anything to do with Satanism. And though there is reportedly some True Confession aspect to Skull & Bones inititation ceremonies, no one has revealed gay orgies (or any kind of orgies, for that matter).
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Much Ado About Squalene
In July, Dr. Mercola's* article on squalene in the H1N1 vaccines was posted at Prison Planet. Since then, info from this article has found its way into many of the fear-mongering articles on the H1N1 vaccine, and of course into online comments (including a few left on this very blog by the Arbiter of All Online Knowledge, Anonymous). I'm not referring, here, to reasoned and informed articles about the real risks associated with flu vaccines. I'm referring to ridiculous alerts churned out by naturopaths and paranoids, usually written in ALL CAPS. Sadly, these kinds of paranoia-pandering articles on H1N1 vaccine are a lot easier to find than science-based articles on the subject.
Squalene is a naturally-occurring oil already present in the human body. It's squalene that leaves fingerprints behind when you touch a surface. It's also found in olive oil. According to Dr. Mercola, however, injecting squalene into the human body (as opposed to digesting it) is hazardous. He contends that injected squalene causes the immune system to attack all squalene in the body, compromising the nervous system. To date, I have not found any scientific research that supports this. If you know of any, by all means let me know. The results from a 2000 study, published in The American Journal of Pathology, indicated that when rats were injected with squalene, they experienced "chronic, immune -mediated joint specific inflammation" (arthritis).
The second-biggest problem with using this study to support anti-adjuvant criticism (the biggest problem can be found at the bottom of this post) is that rodent pathogenesis does not necessarily have any relationship to human pathogenesis. Though we share a lot of DNA, rats are not human and humans are not rats (well, most of the time, anyway). When it comes to adverse reactions to human vaccination, epidemiological studies are of far more value than lab studies involving animals.
This issue has cropped up in anti-vaccine fearmongering before. In 2003, Dr. Mady Hornig seemed to confirm parents' worst fears when he announced that rats suffering autoimmune disorders, when injected with thimerosal (a vaccine preservative containing mercury), displayed autism-like symptoms.
This was a deeply flawed study on several counts (for one thing, autistic humans don't necessarily have autoimmune disorders, so selecting only rats with these disorders was a strange choice indeed). But the biggest problem, again, is that rodent pathogenesis may have no relationship to human pathogenesis.
Other concerns:
Dr. Mercola, Generation Rescue, and other vaccine opponents state that squalene in vaccine adjuvants may have caused Gulf War Syndrome. Trace amounts of squalene were reportedly found in the anthrax vaccine, though this probably resulted from lab contamination rather than vaccine contamination.
Even if there was squalene in the vaccine for some reason, there is no evidence supporting a link between squalene and any of the symptoms reported by Gulf War I vets. The anthrax vaccine is frequently mentioned as a possible culprit, but the anthrax vaccine uses aluminum hydroxide, not squalene, as an adjuvant.
The Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses has concluded that Gulf War Syndrome exists and was probably caused not by vaccines, but by pyridostigmine bromide and perhaps pesticides.
This shrill and grammar-challenged essay claims that H1N1 vaccine contains a million times more squalene than the anthrax vaccine (which doesn't contain any).
Austrian journalist Jane Burgermeister contends that "clinical studies published by Baxter’s own scientific team that patented the H1N1 vaccine demonstrate that such adjuvants are, at best, useless." Though numerous studies have shown that they are effective, others (like this Baxter-funded study of the whole-cell Avian Flu vaccine, published last year in The New England Journal of Medicine) have shown that adjuvants did not enhance antibody response. So at this point, the bulk of the evidence is in favour of adjuvants.
This piece by activist Deborah Dupre claims the adjuvant developed by Dr. Jules Freund in the '50s (usually called Freund's complete adjuvant) contains squalene and was found by Freund himself to cause "terrible, incurable conditions" in test animals, including allergic aspermatogenesis, allergic encephalomyelitis, allergic neuritis, and other autoimmune disorders. But Freund's complete adjuvant is not approved for human use. It is found only in veterinary vaccines.
In other words: Freund's complete adjuvant has nothing to do with the H1N1 vaccine. At all.
More importantly: No human vaccine used in the U.S. contains squalene or any other form of oil-based adjuvant. Period. Squalene adjuvants are present in a small number of European vaccines, but the only adjuvant approved by the FDA is aluminum salts, which have been in use in U.S. vaccines since the 1930s.
Adjuvants will not be present in any of the H1N1 vaccine distributed in the U.S.
From the CDC's FAQ page on H1N1 vaccine: "According to current federal plans, only unadjuvanted vaccines will be used in the United States during the 2009 flu season. This includes all of the 2009 H1N1 and seasonal influenza vaccines that will be available for children and adults in both the injectable and nasal spray formulations... There is no plan at this time to recommend a 2009 H1N1 influenza vaccine with an adjuvant."
There's really nothing more to say about this.
*Though a trained and licensed MD, Mercola has become a Master of Woo. Serious woo. He advises fans never to eat grains. At all. Ever. He believes that microwave ovens actually change the chemical structure of food, rendering it "unrecognizable" to the human body. He teaches that bras cause breast cancer and should be avoided as much as possible, which sounds a wee bit self-serving to me (and is not supported by any medical evidence).
Squalene is a naturally-occurring oil already present in the human body. It's squalene that leaves fingerprints behind when you touch a surface. It's also found in olive oil. According to Dr. Mercola, however, injecting squalene into the human body (as opposed to digesting it) is hazardous. He contends that injected squalene causes the immune system to attack all squalene in the body, compromising the nervous system. To date, I have not found any scientific research that supports this. If you know of any, by all means let me know. The results from a 2000 study, published in The American Journal of Pathology, indicated that when rats were injected with squalene, they experienced "chronic, immune -mediated joint specific inflammation" (arthritis).
The second-biggest problem with using this study to support anti-adjuvant criticism (the biggest problem can be found at the bottom of this post) is that rodent pathogenesis does not necessarily have any relationship to human pathogenesis. Though we share a lot of DNA, rats are not human and humans are not rats (well, most of the time, anyway). When it comes to adverse reactions to human vaccination, epidemiological studies are of far more value than lab studies involving animals.
This issue has cropped up in anti-vaccine fearmongering before. In 2003, Dr. Mady Hornig seemed to confirm parents' worst fears when he announced that rats suffering autoimmune disorders, when injected with thimerosal (a vaccine preservative containing mercury), displayed autism-like symptoms.
This was a deeply flawed study on several counts (for one thing, autistic humans don't necessarily have autoimmune disorders, so selecting only rats with these disorders was a strange choice indeed). But the biggest problem, again, is that rodent pathogenesis may have no relationship to human pathogenesis.
Other concerns:
Dr. Mercola, Generation Rescue, and other vaccine opponents state that squalene in vaccine adjuvants may have caused Gulf War Syndrome. Trace amounts of squalene were reportedly found in the anthrax vaccine, though this probably resulted from lab contamination rather than vaccine contamination.
Even if there was squalene in the vaccine for some reason, there is no evidence supporting a link between squalene and any of the symptoms reported by Gulf War I vets. The anthrax vaccine is frequently mentioned as a possible culprit, but the anthrax vaccine uses aluminum hydroxide, not squalene, as an adjuvant.
The Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses has concluded that Gulf War Syndrome exists and was probably caused not by vaccines, but by pyridostigmine bromide and perhaps pesticides.
This shrill and grammar-challenged essay claims that H1N1 vaccine contains a million times more squalene than the anthrax vaccine (which doesn't contain any).
Austrian journalist Jane Burgermeister contends that "clinical studies published by Baxter’s own scientific team that patented the H1N1 vaccine demonstrate that such adjuvants are, at best, useless." Though numerous studies have shown that they are effective, others (like this Baxter-funded study of the whole-cell Avian Flu vaccine, published last year in The New England Journal of Medicine) have shown that adjuvants did not enhance antibody response. So at this point, the bulk of the evidence is in favour of adjuvants.
This piece by activist Deborah Dupre claims the adjuvant developed by Dr. Jules Freund in the '50s (usually called Freund's complete adjuvant) contains squalene and was found by Freund himself to cause "terrible, incurable conditions" in test animals, including allergic aspermatogenesis, allergic encephalomyelitis, allergic neuritis, and other autoimmune disorders. But Freund's complete adjuvant is not approved for human use. It is found only in veterinary vaccines.
In other words: Freund's complete adjuvant has nothing to do with the H1N1 vaccine. At all.
More importantly: No human vaccine used in the U.S. contains squalene or any other form of oil-based adjuvant. Period. Squalene adjuvants are present in a small number of European vaccines, but the only adjuvant approved by the FDA is aluminum salts, which have been in use in U.S. vaccines since the 1930s.
Adjuvants will not be present in any of the H1N1 vaccine distributed in the U.S.
From the CDC's FAQ page on H1N1 vaccine: "According to current federal plans, only unadjuvanted vaccines will be used in the United States during the 2009 flu season. This includes all of the 2009 H1N1 and seasonal influenza vaccines that will be available for children and adults in both the injectable and nasal spray formulations... There is no plan at this time to recommend a 2009 H1N1 influenza vaccine with an adjuvant."
There's really nothing more to say about this.
*Though a trained and licensed MD, Mercola has become a Master of Woo. Serious woo. He advises fans never to eat grains. At all. Ever. He believes that microwave ovens actually change the chemical structure of food, rendering it "unrecognizable" to the human body. He teaches that bras cause breast cancer and should be avoided as much as possible, which sounds a wee bit self-serving to me (and is not supported by any medical evidence).
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