Why Did the Wall Street Journal Bury the Merck Fraud Story?

via: Mercola
by: Dr. Mercola
July 23, 2012

It was big news when court documents were unsealed revealing a whistleblower lawsuit accusing drug giant Merck of fraud and lying about the true efficacy of its mumps vaccine. Just about every media, large and small, picked it up and the world was abuzz about the hundreds of millions of dollars the lawsuit claimed Merck had defrauded from the U.S. government.

The Wall Street Journal published the story in the form of a Dow Jones news release written by Jon Kamp on June  22, 2012, and links to the story began popping up on social media like Facebook.

Then, suddenly, the link to the story no longer worked, and if anyone clicked on the link in social media, it would show up “page not found.” Apparently the story had been pulled, and when search engines and Internet archives wouldn’t even show it, it looked as if it had never been published on the Journal’s site at all. It was erased nearly clean–except for a small stock-watcher’s website, 4Traders.com, which did a good job of erasing it from its main site but didn’t catch it in the cache.

The question is, why did the WSJ pull the story and try to erase as if it never existed when there were actual court documents for evidence?

Is it possible that an event that occurred on June 25¹—three days after the story broke—could have influenced the story being pulled? On that day, the Wall Street Journal’s “elite” network of CFOs from the world’s top corporations met at the WSJ². Merck is on that executive council³.

My team attempted to connect with the WSJ on this issue, but as of this time, we have not yet received an answer as to why this article was pulled.

 

Merck Accused of Falsifying Efficacy Studies and Lying about Effectiveness of Mumps Vaccine

 

Merck has actually been slapped with two class-action lawsuits over their mumps vaccine (which is part of the trivalent measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine). The first, which was initially filed in 2010, was unsealed late last month.

Two former Merck virologists, Stephen Krahling and Joan Wlochowski, claim they witnessed first-hand the improper testing and falsification of data that was done to hide the fact that the vaccine has significantly declined in effectiveness⁴.

By artificially inflating the efficacy, Merck was able to maintain its monopoly over the mumps vaccine market—and that is the main point of contention of the second class-action lawsuit, filed by Chatom Primary Care⁵.

According to Courthouse News Service⁶:

“Merck has known for a decade that its mumps vaccine is “far less effective” than it tells the government, and it falsified test results and sold millions of doses of “questionable efficacy,” flooding and monopolizing the market… Chatom says in its antitrust complaint that Merck falsely claims its mumps vaccine is 95 percent effective. That claim “deterred and excluded competing manufacturers,” who would enter the risky and expensive vaccine market only if they believed they could craft a better product…

Merck is the only manufacturer licensed by the FDA to sell the mumps vaccine in United States, and if it could not show that the vaccine was 95 percent effective, it risked losing its lucrative monopoly…

That’s why Merck found it critically important to keep claiming such a high efficacy rate, the complaint states. And, Chatom claims, that’s why Merck went to great lengths, including “manipulating its test procedures and falsifying the test results,” to prop up the bogus figure, though it knew that the attenuated virus from which it created the vaccine had been altered over the years during the manufacturing process, and that the quality of the vaccine had degraded as a result.”

 

How Merck Faked and Manipulated Vaccine Trials to Achieve Desired Results

 

According to these two lawsuits, Merck began a sham testing program in the late 1990’s to hide the declining efficacy of the vaccine. The objective of the fraudulent trials was to “report efficacy of 95 percent or higher regardless of the vaccine’s true efficacy.”

According to Krahling and Wlochowski’s complaint, they were threatened with jail were they to alert the FDA to the fraud being committed. The sham testing program was initially referred to as “Protocol 007,” the Chatom anti-trust claim states. Suzanne Humphries recently wrote an excellent summary for GreenMedInfo.com⁷, explaining in layman’s terms how the tests were manipulated⁸.

Here’s a brief extract. For more, please refer to the original source article:

“For the new testing method, the children’s blood was tested for its ability to neutralize the virus using the vaccine strain virus, instead of the wild type strain that is much more infective, and the one that your children would most likely catch… But still it was not 95% effective. In order to make the blood pass the test, antibodies from rabbits was added. The addition of rabbit antibody increased the efficacy to 100%. But that was not the end, because the test has to be done on pre-vaccine blood and post-vaccine blood.

Just the addition of rabbit antibody made the pre-vaccine blood go from 10% positive to 80% positive and that was such an obvious sign of foul play that yet another manipulation had to be made.

The desired end result is to have very low pre-vaccine antibody and 95% or more post-vaccine efficacy as measured by antibody neutralization. So, yet one more change in procedure was made: The pre-vaccine tests were all redone… According to the Merck scientists, they did this by fabricating the “plaque” counts on the pre-vaccine blood samples, counting plaques that were not there. What this allowed was a mathematical dilution of the pre-vaccine positive blood counts.”

This is a perfect example of how medical research can be manipulated to achieve desired results, and why it may be wise to question vaccine makers’ study results. Clearly, there needs to be a truly independent review in the mix… As reported by the Courthouse News Service⁹:

“Chatom claims that the falsification of test results occurred” with the knowledge, authority and approval of Merck’s senior management.”

While I do not advocate indiscriminately abstaining from all vaccines, I strongly encourage you to exercise a major dose of due diligence as vaccines can cause serious reactions that can have devastating consequences. I believe in informed consent and the freedom to choose. There can be little doubt anymore that drug companies are in it for the profits, and virtually no price seems too high for them when it comes to protecting their profit-making.

Continue Reading At: Mercola.com

Merck Accused of Lying about Vaccine Effectiveness

via: Mercola
by: Dr. Mercola
July 10, 2012

Things aren’t going so well lately in the litigation department for Merck, which stands accused of lying according to not just one, but two class-action lawsuits.

In the first case, two former Merck virologists accuse their former employer of overstating the effectiveness of the mumps vaccine in Merck’s combination MMR shot, which may have cost the US government hundreds of millions of dollars over the past decadeⁱ.

Merck’s mumps vaccine was originally licensed 45 years ago. Since the 1970s, it’s been part of the trivalent measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine, which is part of the recommended childhood vaccination schedule. The case, which was initially filed in 2010, was unsealed late last month. As reported by the Courthouse News Serviceⁱⁱ:

“… Stephen Krahling and Joan Wlochowski were Merck virologists who claim in their unsealed complaint that they “witnessed firsthand the improper testing and data falsification in which Merck engaged to artificially inflate the vaccine’s efficacy findings.”

… As the largest single purchaser of childhood vaccines (accounting for more than 50 percent of all vaccine purchases), the United States is by far the largest financial victim of Merck’s fraud,” according to the 2010 False Claims Act complaint.”

According to Nasdaq.comⁱⁱⁱ:

“Merck–which stressed that none of these allegations relate to the safety of its product–said the lawsuit is “completely without merit”, and that it plans to “vigorously defend itself.”

It’s quite interesting to note the chosen language in Merck’s rebuttal. It in no way addresses the issue of the vaccine’s effectiveness, which is the core issue of the lawsuit and the allegation by the two former Merck employees that the drug company purposefully used improper testing methods and falsified data to make the mumps vaccine appear highly effective when the opposite was true. Instead, Merck responds by saying that none of the lawsuit’s allegations relate to the safety of its products. Such evasive maneuvering certainly gives the appearance of an admission of guilt.

Second Lawsuit Filed

A mere week after the first case was unsealed, a federal antitrust class action lawsuit was filed by Chatom Primary Care. According to Courthouse News Service^iv:

“Merck has known for a decade that its mumps vaccine is “far less effective” than it tells the government, and it falsified test results and sold millions of doses of “questionable efficacy,” flooding and monopolizing the market, a primary caregiver claims in a federal antitrust class action.

… Chatom says in its antitrust complaint that Merck falsely claims its mumps vaccine is 95 percent effective. That claim “deterred and excluded competing manufacturers,” who would enter the risky and expensive vaccine market only if they believed they could craft a better product…

Merck is the only manufacturer licensed by the FDA to sell the mumps vaccine in United States, and if it could not show that the vaccine was 95 percent effective, it risked losing its lucrative monopoly… That’s why Merck found it critically important to keep claiming such a high efficacy rate, the complaint states. And, Chatom claims, that’s why Merck went to great lengths, including “manipulating its test procedures and falsifying the test results,” to prop up the bogus figure, though it knew that the attenuated virus from which it created the vaccine had been altered over the years during the manufacturing process, and that the quality of the vaccine had degraded as a result.”

According to these two lawsuits, Merck began a sham testing program in the late 1990’s to hide the declining efficacy of the vaccine. The objective of the fraudulent trials was to “report efficacy of 95 percent or higher regardless of the vaccine’s true efficacy.” This program was initially referred to as “Protocol 007,” the Chatom claim states, and instead of testing the vaccine’s efficacy against a wild mumps virus, as is the norm, Merck used its own attenuated strain of the virus—the identical strain with which the children were being vaccinated!

That’s as brilliant as it is devious, and a perfect example of how medical research can be manipulated to achieve desired results. Suzanne Humphries recently wrote an excellent summary for GreenMedInfo.com, explaining in layman’s terms how the tests were manipulated (see Sources). The two virologists bringing the lawsuit against Merck claim they witnessed firsthand this deception and were asked to directly participate in it.

As reported by the Courthouse News Service^v:

“That “subverted” the purpose of the testing regime, “which was to measure the vaccine’s ability to provide protection against a disease-causing mumps virus that a child would actually face in real life. The end result of this deviation … was that Merck’s test overstated the vaccine’s effectiveness,” Chatom claims.

Merck also added animal antibodies to blood samples to achieve more favorable test results, though it knew that the human immune system would never produce such antibodies, and that the antibodies created a laboratory testing scenario that “did not in any way correspond to, correlate with, or represent real life … virus neutralization in vaccinated people,” according to the complaint.

Chatom claims that the falsification of test results occurred “with the knowledge, authority and approval of Merck’s senior management.”

Continue Reading At: Mercola.com

Scientists Sue Merck: Allege Fraud for MMR Vaccine

via: GreenMedInfo
by: Suzanne Humphries
July 4, 2012

Vaccinationists tell us we don’t understand science. Well maybe they are right. “Science” in the world of vaccines could mean, throwing out results that don’t fit the desired outcome, throwing out the evidence before the FDA comes to inspect, offering bonuses to scientists to deliver the necessary results …I was the head technician in a biochemistry lab for two years prior to medical school, yet I never saw science carried out like that. Maybe Temple University was just a bit behind the times in its evolution of “science.”

This is the story of the MMR vaccine and two Merck scientists who filed a lawsuit in 2010 over Merck’s efforts to allegedly “defraud the United States through Merck’s ongoing scheme to sell the government a mumps vaccine that is mislabeled, misbranded, adulterated and falsely certified as having an efficacy rate that is significantly higher than it actually is.” Merck allegedly did this from 2000 onwards in order to maintain its exclusive license to sell the MMR vaccine and keep its monopoly of the US market.

Folks, if you haven’t already heard this elsewhere, this is HUGE news. HERE is Hilary Butler’s excellent account of the ordeal as well as both the 2010 and 2012 official legal complaints.

In the complaint, the scientists outline in great detail exactly how Merck manipulated the efficacy results in order to be able to say they had a 95% effective vaccine so that they could meet the fairytale goal of vaccine-induced “herd immunity by 2010.” Well, it turns out that the vaccine could not meet the goal that CDC projected to eradicate mumps by 2010, BECAUSE the vaccine, in its current state cannot reliably confer immunity, and is in fact a dilute version of what it once was when Maurice Hilleman invented it using the virus of his five year old daughter. The same viral mumps strain has been in use in every mumps or MMR vaccine Merck has made since 1967.

In order to mass-produce live but non-infective vaccine virus, the “wild” virus from 1967 has had to be “passaged” through different cells or animals over and over and over. In that passaging, mutations take place that render the virus non-infective or “attenuated” but also, those many years of passaging the same original viral strain has lowered the antigenicity, or the antibody-stimulatingcapacity of the virus.

When testing was performed to show the efficacy (neutralizing antibody provoking potential) of the forty-year-old virus strain, for use in the newer combination mumps vaccines, Merck’s scientists could not produce a 95% efficacy rate.

Merck got the old virus to pass its new tests by doing three things. First they tested efficacy on the vaccine strain virus and not the wild virus as had previously been done. The testing is done by vaccinating children and testing the ability of their blood to neutralize the virus before and after the vaccine. There should be a marked difference between the two tests.

For the new testing method, the children’s blood was tested for its ability to neutralize the virus, using the vaccine strain virus, instead of the wild type strain that is much more infective, and the one that your children would most likely catch. By using a weaker virus, the old vaccine strain virus allowed the neutralization to occur much more easily. But still it was not 95% effective.

In order to make the blood pass the test, antibodies from rabbits was added. The addition of rabbit antibody increased the efficacy to 100%. But that was not the end, because the test has to be done on pre-vaccine blood and post-vaccine blood. Just the addition of rabbit antibody made the pre-vaccine blood go from 10% positive to 80% positive and that was such an obvious sign of foul play that yet another manipulation had to be made. The desired end result is to have very low pre-vaccine antibody and 95% or more post-vaccine efficacy as measured by antibody neutralization.

So…yet one more change in procedure was made: The pre-vaccine tests were all redone. None of the post vaccine tests and none of the pre-vaccine negatives were redone, just the pre-vaccine positives. According to the Merck scientists, they did this by fabricating the “plaque” counts on the pre-vaccine blood samples, counting plaques that were not there. What this allowed was a mathematical dilution of the pre-vaccine positive blood counts.

While this alleged fraudulent activity was occurring in Merck’s labs, two courageous scientists voiced their objection. They claim to have been told that if they called the FDA they would be jailed. They were also reminded of the very large bonuses that were on the way after the vaccines were certified.

If what these scientists claim is true, the net result of Merck’s questionable activity was epidemics and outbreaks. It is known that the mumps component of all MMR vaccines from the mid 1990’s has had a very low efficacy, estimated at 69% (Harling 05). The outbreaks started in UK and Europe in 1998. USA’s outbreaks began in 2006.

These mumps outbreaks have already been proven NOT to be the result of failure to vaccinate, but vaccination failure… and now it looks to all be a result of Merck’s cooked books, used in order to maintain a commercial monopoly to generate increased revenue from increasing numbers of boosters.

Dr. Suzanne Humphries is a conventionally educated medical doctor who has taken the walk into, around, and out of the allopathic paradigm. She fully and successfully participated in the conventional system for 19 years, witnessing first-hand how that approach fails patients and creates new disease time and again. Prior to medical school, she earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from Rutgers University.

Dr. Humphries is on the board of directors of the International Medical Council on Vaccination. She lives in Maine, USA. 

Visit her website is drsuzanne.net

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Source: GreenMedInfo.com