EDITORS NOTE: The Western Standard Editorial Board encourages open debate by its columnists. The column below reflects the views of its author, however the WS Editorial Board takes no position on vaccines.

Statistics Canada recently released a survey designed to gauge the likely response of Canadians to a COVID-19 vaccine when (or if) one becomes available.

The results showed that only 57.5 percent of those surveyed said they were “very likely” to get the vaccine. The remaining respondents said they were either somewhat likely, somewhat unlikely, or very unlikely to get the vaccine, while 9.4 percent of individuals responded that they “didn’t know.”

A reasonable headline for an article reporting on this information would have been: “As many as 42.5 percent of Canadians have some doubts about getting COVID-19 vaccine.”

However, the National Post chose to use the headline: “One in ten Canadians would refuse COVID vaccine.” Published on August 26, the article dealt briefly with the survey, then concluded by saying that Dr. Theresa Tam (the Chief Public Health Officer of Canada) says “authorities need more information about those who are worried about or opposed to a vaccine to ensure they have the proper information about how vaccines are approved.”

As someone who would have responded “very unlikely”, I’d be happy to provide that info.

For starters, Dr. Tam, my name is Karen, and I would not only like to speak to the so-called management, I’d like to fire you.

In the five years since I retired from my law career, I’ve found time to read nine books dealing with vaccines—including two written by Dr. Paul Offit, one of the most vocal proponents of vaccines in the U.S. I gave Dr. Offit a fair chance to persuade me, but his research and arguments didn’t hold a candle against the opposition.

I’m two years younger than Dr. Offit. In my youth I believed (as he still seems to) that vaccines are safe and effective. Maybe the difference between our perspectives is that Dr. Offit holds several vaccine patents, while I hold none. There is no financial incentive tugging at me to continue believing that everything is hunky-dory.

I began having doubts in the 1990s when reports came out that the flu vaccine was a dismal failure, year after year. I never got a flu shot myself. Why bother, since I rarely got the flu? The vaccine seemed to be hit-or-miss at best, with effectiveness rates as low as 40 percent in some years.

But then the news emerged that those who did get the flu vaccine seemed to be at greater risk for other respiratory viral infections. That cemented my decision. Why get vaccinated for one minor illness if it would increase your chances of getting others? But the study piqued my curiosity: what was it about vaccines that would make people sicker, rather than healthier?

I learned that the flu vaccine contained a preservative called thimerosal. As a former contact lens wearer, I recalled that many years ago, contact lens storage solution had contained thimerosal. When the manufacturers eventually took it out, they considered it important enough to splash across the package, “Now thimerosal-free!”

So I wondered: if thimerosal is bad enough that you shouldn’t get any in your eyes, is it okay to shoot it into your veins? The answer is no.

Thimerosal contains mercury, which is extremely toxic to humans. The best amount to have in your body is zero. Vaccine apologists like Dr. Offit argue that opponents are confusing ethyl mercury (which supposedly leaves the body quickly because it isn’t found in blood tests after a short time) and methyl mercury which accumulates in the body. But in his book Thimerosal—Let the Science Speak, author Robert F. Kennedy Jr. explains that the reason ethyl mercury becomes undetectable in the blood after a short time is that it accumulates even more quickly than methyl mercury in the organs—especially in important places like the brain. As of February, 2020 there have been 22 studies that confirm this problem.

Considering the worldwide explosion of brain disorders such as Alzheimer’s and autism over the past few decades, you’d have to be a reckless ignoramus to recommend that people continue to inject themselves annually with mercury. Why do you do that, Dr. Tam?

Next, what about everyone’s favourite vaccine legend: how vaccines saved the world from polio? Well, I’ve read up on that too—in Dissolving Illusions by Dr. Suzanne Humphries, MD, a US board-certified nephrologist (kidney specialist). She started out, like most Americans, believing in the safety and efficacy of vaccines—until she began observing the some worrisome symptoms among patients who had recently been vaccinated.

Humphries’ book provides credible evidence (data drawn from public records in the UK and the US) that it was neither the Salk nor the Sabin vaccine that saved the world from polio. Rather, it was improvements in public sanitation in the first half of the twentieth century. Global populations began gaining access to clean drinking water. Newly installed sewage systems meant that residents of densely populated cities no longer lived amidst their own waste. Knowledge about safe food handling practices and handwashing grew and disseminated.

These improvements also brought about dramatic declines in diseases such as diphtheria, whooping cough and measles. Most people don’t realize that the mortality rate for all of these diseases had declined almost to zero before any vaccines were developed for them. Some diseases such as scarlet fever and typhoid fever declined dramatically in lockstep with the rest, despite the fact that there was never a vaccine for them.

In fact, there is good evidence that the paralytic polio epidemic of the 1940s and 1950s was actually caused by the extreme toxicity of a combination of commonly used agricultural pesticides, including DDT, lead and arsenic. Polio had been known since the 1800s but was a mild illness then. Most victims recovered quickly and never suffered paralysis. Polio only began paralysing people permanently during the 20th century, reaching its heights as pesticide use soared. The eventual decline in paralysis cases corresponds closely to the declining use of these toxic pesticides.

Furthermore, the medical conditions necessary for a diagnosis of “polio” changed abruptly in 1958, shortly after the introduction of the polio vaccine. Many diseases that had previously been diagnosed as polio suddenly got their own separate label. And as author Brett Wilcox points out in his book Jabbed: How the Vaccine Industry, Medical Establishment, and Government Stick It to You and Your Family, the classical definition of polio as “a disease with residual paralysis which resolves within 60 days” was changed to “a disease with residual paralysis which persists for more than 60 days.” Since the vast majority of cases did resolve within 60 days, the change of definition was just like waving a magic wand over a huge percentage of polio cases and making them vanish. Poof! Nothing had changed except the labelling, but vaccines got the credit.

Dr. Tam, I learned something else in my reading, from a book called The Virus and the Vaccine, by Debbie Bookchin and Jim Schumacher—something that disturbs me very much. The oral polio vaccine of the 1950s—that innocent-looking pink liquid given to me at my elementary school—was widely contaminated with something called SV40. SV stands for simian virus. The vaccine was grown on the kidneys of monkeys imported from Africa, and it turned out they had numerous (at least 40) viruses that found their way into the polio vaccine.

According to this scientific study on SV40 published in 1999, “there may be an increased incidence of certain cancers among the 98 million persons exposed to contaminated polio vaccine in the U.S. Further investigations are clearly justified.” Have the further investigations been done, Dr. Tam? Are you looking into them now? Or are you still maintaining that vaccines are perfectly safe and we shouldn’t worry?

Finally, I learned from a book called The Vaccine Court: The Dark Truth of America’s Vaccine Injury Compensation Program by Wayne Rohde that vaccine manufacturers were so heavily besieged by lawsuits for the harm their products caused in the 1980s that they threatened the US government that they’d stop making them entirely unless they were granted immunity from liability. Congress keeled over obediently and passed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA) of 1986, absolving manufacturers of responsibility for vaccine injuries. The most recent data available from the US government (they seem to have stopped publishing the totals after 2018) shows that $4.4 billion has been paid out to vaccine-injured individuals. Experts say that barely scratches the surface of the harm done, since most Americans don’t even know they can make a claim, and many physicians (thanks to the influence of Dr. Tam and her ilk) don’t even recognize vaccine injuries when patients present with them.

Do you think cars would be safer if injured drivers and passengers were prevented from suing manufacturers for defects? Of course not. No product is safe if all liability for defects or harm is removed. This 2017 peer-reviewed study published in the Review of Industrial Organization compared the adverse vaccine reactions before and after the NCVIA was passed. It should be no surprise that the author found “that vaccines that were licensed after legislation that preempted most product liability lawsuits are associated with a significantly higher incidence of adverse events than were vaccines that were licensed under a previous regime that permitted consumers to sue.”

Do you understand me sufficiently yet, Dr. Tam? I could go on, but you probably get the gist of my objections by now. Vaccines are not safe, and their efficacy is highly questionable.

Dr. Tam, there are many other things individuals can do to ensure that their immune systems meet and defeat coronaviruses successfully, without vaccines. I’d be delighted to tell you about some of them in another article—but I have the sneaking suspicion you might not want to read it.

Karen Selick is a columnist for the Western Standard and a retired lawyer who now works as a freelance writer, editor, and video maker.