For The Right To Criticize Vaccines

The tide is turning, and a more nuanced discussion around vaccines is now being had by some of the most renowned scientists & medical experts in the field.

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Below is a an article written by Dr. Bernard Massie, retired, Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at the Université de Montréal, Managing Director at National Research Council Canada. It was originally published in French on November 26, 2024 in Libre Média but remains relevant today. For more information on Dr. Massie, you can access this PDF obtained from the Canadian Covid Care Alliance.

I am sure many of our readers are interested in what Dr. Massie had to say.

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Is criticism of vaccines taboo? While the establishment labels their detractors “vaccine skeptics” or “antivaxers”, voices like RFK Jr defend the right to question without being ostracized. Science is all about debate.

According to many media commentators, true experts in ScienceTM, vaccine hesitancy is equivalent to the posture that earns you the label of “cuckoo” or “antivax” shamelessly attributed to Robert Kennedy Junior (RFK Jr) and all the scientists in his Children's Health Defense (CHD) organization.

Mirroring the watered-down label of “climate skeptic” attributed to scientists who criticize climate alarmism, critics of vaccination are also referred to as “vaccine skeptics.”

RFK Jr and his organization are denigrated by the scientific and institutional establishment, as evidenced by an editorial published last August in the prestigious journal Science. It states that RFK Jr. fully deserves his anti-vax label, as do all those who join him in questioning vaccines.

As if questioning were inherently unscientific, and his detractors had the orthodoxy of ScienceTM on their side like dogma!

Blind Trust

The premise of this widely-held opinion is the belief that public health institutions are competent and honest, and that they are immune to any influence from marketing or biopharmaceutical firms. Are they really?

Should we blindly trust public health and pharmaceutical companies?

How can we ignore the immunity from prosecution for vaccine-related injuriesthatthese companies have enjoyed in the U.S. since 1986?

Far from being systematically opposed to vaccination, RFK Jr simply proposes that all vaccines be subject to the same criteria for demonstrating safety and efficacy as all other pharmaceutical products, following a transparent and independent analysis of the dossiers.

And those that fail to meet these rigorous standards will be withdrawn from the market to ensure public protection.

Should we blindly trust the health authorities, who themselves rely on pharmaceutical companies without exercising elementary caution, neglecting to demand verifications that they then regret not having requested in the first place?

This approach may work if trust is earned, but what happens when doubt arises? Wouldn't it then be wiser to check diligently rather than fight doubt as a scientistic heresy?

As if we had to be for or against vaccination, without questioning. And yet, as Didier Raoult proclaims, “we have the right to be intelligent!” For my part, having devoted part of my career in biotechnology to the development of various vaccines, I'd like to assert, in the manner of Coluche: I'm neither for nor against vaccination. Quite the contrary!

Vaccination if Necessary

So, it was with a heavy heart that I was forced to question the whole history of vaccination, after the COVID-19 vaccination debacle.

I remain dumbfounded that public health authorities, despite the unprecedented toxicity - particularly of mRNA-modified vaccines encapsulated in lipid nanoparticles - stubbornly resist withdrawing these products from the market.

This obstinacy perpetuates the damage to individual and collective health that these products inflict without any obvious benefit. At the same time, it increases the profits of pharmaceutical companies and temporarily preserves the credibility of the players involved in these gene vaccines.

The damage to people's health is matched only by the damage to trust in public health authorities, politicians and pharmaceutical companies. And it's such a shame!

At the same time, I understand that my former colleagues, who are hard at work on vaccine technologies with colossal subsidies and the best intentions in the world, are not necessarily inclined to question the foundations of this veritable goose that lays the golden eggs.

I only hope that I would have had the lucidity and integrity to question these practices if I were still active in this field, like some of my new colleagues, who have paid and are still paying a high price for daring to speak out.

Vaccine hesitancy is not a crime

Vaccination was initially conceived on the basis of observations, some of which date back to the time of the Athenian plague, according to which a person who has survived a disease appears to be resistant to it, although he or she may retain more or less serious after-effects.

From the very first attempts to propose vaccination as a means of preventing infection, there was resistance from both the general public and the medical profession. Resistance was even fiercer when attempts were made to mandate vaccination.

The question of vaccination, which has been highly polarized from the outset, and which is the subject of passionate debate in scientific and medical circles as well as among the general public, is far from easy to settle. And the Manicheanism that would reduce the debate to a question of good and evil is reminiscent of the religious wars, when everyone claimed to be on the right side of orthodoxy and faith.

It should be pointed out that, at the time, neither the germ theory nor the immune system were known, and their discovery even followed the first attempts at vaccination. This shows just how shaky the scientific and medical foundations of vaccination were from the outset.

Since then, knowledge of the immune system has progressed considerably, as demonstrated by the impressive number of scientific publications. But do we know enough to develop the right vaccines?

Above all, are we putting this knowledge to good use, as shown by the deficiencies of vaccines against respiratory infections such as influenza and colds, or COVID-19?

Of course, research is in full swing, raising hopes of developing better vaccines for viral respiratory infections, but we're not there yet, and until then, reasonable doubt is more than justified.

Natural immunity vs. vaccination

In fact, no vaccine available is more effective than natural immunity, while vaccine strategies only try to emulate, as best they can, the protection conferred by natural immunity.

This is very difficult to do when our knowledge of the protection conferred by natural immunity is still, alas, so incomplete.

Studies show that protection conferred by natural immunity is more robust and longer-lasting. This knowledge is well-founded, despite the propaganda of national and international public health bodies who tried to suppress it during the COVID-19 health crisis.

Instead of presenting vaccine hesitancy as a public health risk, wouldn't it be better to combat the denigration of natural immunity, without which no vaccine can work?

Not to mention the many simple and inexpensive strategies for fortifying natural immunity, such as adequate levels of vitamin D, which is one of the major hormones responsible for the proper functioning of the immune system.

The people most vulnerable to infection are those whose immune system is weakened and functioning below its normal capacity. How can vaccination with current strategies remedy this problem?

Vaccination exploits the immune system, not fortifies it; it is therefore dependent on a robust immune system. This is why people are vaccinated before undergoing immunosuppressive treatments for organ transplants.

Among the factors most neglected in vaccination strategies are local mucosal immunity and innate immunity, one of the most important determinants of which is the composition of the microbiota as a regulator of immunity.

The vast majority of vaccines available do not effectively stimulate either mucosal or innate immunity. What's more, in the adaptive immunity segment, cellular immunity is neglected, focusing mainly on humoral immunity, i.e., antibodies.

However, cellular immunity with T lymphocytes and NK killer cells is essential for effectively combating intracellular pathogens such as viruses.

Promises hard to keep

In theory, vaccination is a very attractive approach, because we're trying to protect people from the deleterious effects of a possible infection, with an inoculation that would be far less deleterious than the infection itself. Since we're inoculating healthy people, we'd all like it to work, with a minimum of risk.

But in practice, it's very difficult to simulate natural infection correctly, except with attenuated viruses such as the Sabin polio vaccine, which means that the vast majority of vaccines fail to stimulate natural immunity as effectively as natural infection.

But this approach is not without risks, as we have seen with the resurgence of vaccine-derived polio in several countries where mass vaccination with the Sabin vaccine has taken place. Using deep sequencing methods, we quickly demonstrated that these polios were induced by recombination of the vaccine strain with enteroviruses from the intestine, reconstituting a pathogenic virus.

What's more, demonstrating that the benefits and risks associated with vaccines are still preferable to natural infection, which has been declared more dangerous, is an enormous challenge.

Except perhaps for very serious infections such as Ebola, which can kill over 50% of people within a few days. This is clearly a situation where prophylactic intervention with monoclonal antibodies and a gene vaccine can save lives.

Among the indirect measures of vaccine efficacy, it is often claimed that the introduction of vaccines in the 20th century dramatically reduced infant mortality from many infections such as measles, polio, diphtheria, whooping cough and the proud scarlet fever.

In fact, the incidence of all these infections fell by over 90%...before vaccination was introduced. And what about scarlet fever, for which no vaccine exists, but whose decline has followed the same trend?

The terrain plays a decisive role in fighting infection

It is most likely the improvement in general health through hygiene and good nutrition, the terrain, that is largely responsible for the dramatic reduction in health problems arising from infectious diseases. No doubt with the help of antibiotics too.

Which is not to say that vaccination hasn't hypothetically played a minor role. But it's very difficult to assess. And despite the propensity of public health organizations and vaccine manufacturers to overstate the importance of vaccination, several credible epidemiological studies dispute this narrative.

Wouldn't it be more prudent, then, to invoke the precautionary principle rather than impose vaccination when the benefit/risk ratio is unknown, or even questionable?

Insofar as establishing a favorable benefit/risk ratio for vaccination is very difficult, without this reliable information, we're dealing with belief, not science. Except that this belief is well-established, to the great benefit of the pharmaceutical industry!

And without a credible analysis of the risk/benefit ratio, from an ethical point of view, we can't confidently say that people can consent to free and informed vaccination.

With the MAHA movement and RFK Jr on the horizon, are we finally going to have debates that will shed more light on the scientific foundations of vaccine hesitancy, beyond belief and propaganda?

Is the public ready to calmly examine the data and anxiety-provoking questions surrounding vaccination, or will they instead seek refuge in comfort and indifference, swaddled in their reassuring but often dangerous beliefs, out of fear, laziness or learned helplessness?

At a time when our health is at stake, it's high time we stopped to stop gilding the lily!