From 1996

Critique of Govt Funded Epidemiology-Harris Coulter

http://www.healthy.net/asp/templates/article.asp?PageType=Article&ID=610

Critique of Government-Funded Epidemiology

© Harris L. Coulter, Ph.D.

Since I have been occasionally criticized for
adopting, as it were, too acerbic a tone in my
contributions on vaccination questions, I will
try to demonstrate why those of us who have opted
to contest the position of the
medical-industrial-governmental complex on this
issue at times feel overcome with rage at the
abominably poor quality of the pro-vaccination
epidemiologic research which is foisted on the
public in the hope and expectation that no one
will ever take the trouble to check it out and criticize it.
One feels rage as well at the complicity of the
"peer reviewed" journals which print these awful
productions. It is abundantly clear, if further
proof were needed, that "peer review" means
simply preventing criticism of certain commercial
interests and blocking the emergence of competing viewpoints.

Finally, one feels rage and exasperation at the
total inability of journalists -- who are reputed
to be professional sceptics -- to see through,
and expose, this duplicity. They fearlessly
cross-question generals and members of the
cabinet, even the President himself, but are
struck dumb by the self-promoting assertions of
some character in a white coat ("Say Joe, how do you spell 'breakthrough'"?).

Let us not forget that it is small and
defenceless babies who are being turned into
mincemeat by these commercial products known as vaccines.

Once upon a time, long ago in the 1940s and
1950s, physicians who were interested in vaccine
reactions actually (would you believe it?) went
into hospitals, and even to people's homes, to
examine babies who were thought to have suffered
some sort of adverse reaction. They went so far
as to speak with the parents and to ask their
opinion. This was called by one British pioneer "shoe-leather epidemiology."

Today our epidemiologists have progressed way
beyond those primitive techniques. Rarely do they
actually observe a sick baby. Rarely do they
actually discuss a case with the parents. Oh no!
That would be accepting "anecdotal evidence" -- a
cardinal sin. That would be mistaking the
well-known "background incidence" of SIDS or
epilepsy or asthma or diabetes, or you name it,
for a vaccine reaction. Never mind that no
research exists on any such "background
incidence" in an unvaccinated U.S. population.
Our epidemiologists are not fazed by this. They
just keep repeating the mantra until everyone is
convinced that a "background incidence" must have
been demonstrated somehow, somewhere, by someone.

Fortified by these unproven assumptions and
methodological limitations, epidemiologists
funded by government agencies and the
medical-industrial complex fill the pages of
medical journals with trash epidemiology -- the
articles discussed below are prime examples --
which, in a sort of scientific apotheosis of
Gresham's Law, drives good research out of
circulation or prevents it from being published.

 

by Harris Coulter