July 13, 2019
To: Jennifer McGuire, Editor in Chief of CBC News
jennifer.mcguire@cbc.ca
Re: Response to Dr. Cadesky’s Opinion – July 11, 2019
Dear Ms. McGuire
The CBC does a grave disservice to the CBC and the Province of British Columbia with its publication of Dr. Eric Cadesky’s very personal attack on Robert Kennedy Jr. (The Surrey Board of Trade shouldn’t help anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. build his brand. July 11, 2019). Rather than bring shame to RFK Jr., Dr. Cadesky shames himself, his medical profession, the University of British Columbia, and the Canadian Broadcast Corporation.
Robert Kennedy was invited to speak at the Surrey Board of Trade’s Environmental Awards event because of his long and distinguished career as an environmental lawyer, activist, and defender of our right to live in a clean, healthy and toxic-free environment. His accomplishments in bringing notorious environmental offenders to justice has brought him world recognition and admiration. We ought to be proud to host this courageous environmental warrior who has made our world a healthier and safer place.
Instead, Dr. Cadesky attempts to publicly shame Kennedy for his work addressing the toxic polluting of our internal environment through the use of GMOs, the use of glyphosate in our food supply, lead and mercury in our drinking water, and by bringing awareness to the toxic ingredients contained in our vaccines.
Kennedy is a Valuable Advocate
Kennedy, through his work as Chairman of Children’s Health Defence, serves as a valuable advocate for children who are injured and killed by the reckless use of products, including medical products. Dr. Cadesky attacks Kennedy for this life saving work, making the claim that “Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been spreading lies about the safety and effectiveness of vaccinations for years.”
It is Dr. Cadesky and his profession that has been spreading “lies about the safety and effectiveness of vaccinations for years”. Dr. Cadesky is either unaware or intentionally chooses to misinform the public about the lack of robust safety testing of vaccines. Vaccines are classified as ‘biologics’ and exempted from the strict and extensive safety testing required for all other pharmaceutical products.
The result is that no childhood vaccine product licensed for use in Canada has been tested for safety using the standards required of all other pharmaceutical products. In other words, long-term, double blind, placebo-controlled studies are not conducted prior to licensing. Instead, the medical industry uses the monitoring of adverse events following vaccination as the primary method to evaluate safety.
This means that our children are injected with products where safety is determined by the amount of injury or death reported after vaccination. This method of evaluating vaccine safety is grossly inadequate given that medical professionals like Dr. Cadesky are neither trained to diagnose vaccine injury, nor are they legally required to report vaccine injury. As a consequence, less than 1% of vaccine injuries are reported.
Vaccines are not benign medical products. Vaccination is an invasive medical procedure that delivers complex biochemical drugs by injection.
The Safety of Vaccines Has Not Been Established
The fact is that we don’t know the safety of the current childhood vaccination program because the science has not been done to the level that would support the conclusion that vaccines are safe. This is not my opinion, but rather the finding of the prestigious Institutes of Medicine which found that the safety of the current childhood vaccine schedule has never been proven in large, long-term clinical trials. [1] They state:
“Few studies have attempted more global assessment of entire sequence of immunizations or variations in the overall immunization schedule and categories of health outcomes, and none has squarely examined the issue of health outcomes and stakeholder concerns in quite the way that the committee was asked to do its statement of task. None has compared entirely unimmunized populations with those fully immunized for the health outcomes of concern to stakeholders.”
In 2011, the Institutes of Medicine reviewed 155 health conditions associated with the Varicella, Tetanus, Hepatitis B & MMR vaccines. In only 5 cases did the scientific evidence reject causation. In 134 cases the IOM deemed there were too few scientifically sound studies published in the medical literature to determine whether more than 100 serious brain and immune system problems are or are not caused by the vaccines, including multiple sclerosis, arthritis, lupus, stroke, SIDS, autism and asthma.
Vaccines have not been tested for the ability to cause cancer (carcinogenicity); the ability to damage an organism (toxicity); the ability to damage genetic information within a cell (genotoxicity); the ability to change the genetic information of an organism (mutagenicity); the ability to impair fertility; and for long-term adverse reactions. Product information inserts provided by the manufacturer make this clear.
The Medical Profession Fails to Address Vaccine Injury
Dr. Cadesky blames Robert Kennedy and the growing number of research scientists and members of the medical profession who dare to question the claims of vaccine safety and effectiveness for the increased hesitancy and decreasing immunization rates. Dr. Cadesky needs to examine his own responsibility and that of his profession for the increased hesitancy, decreased vaccination rates, and the over-hyped claims of the “return of deadly diseases”. Statements as “vaccines are safe and effective”, with no conditions or qualifiers, is dishonest, deceptive and undermines our trust in his profession. As the parent of a vaccine injured child, it is my contention that Dr. Cadesky’s and his profession’s unwillingness to acknowledge and responsibly address vaccine injury is the true cause of increased hesitancy and decreased vaccination rates.
A Public Debate
If Dr. Cadesky is confident in his claims of vaccine safety, effectiveness and necessity, I suggest Dr. Cadesky take the opportunity to invite Mr. Kennedy to a public debate while he is in British Columbia. Dr. Cadesky ought to act as a professional and bring his knowledge, evidence and professional ethics to the table and engage Mr. Kennedy in a responsible, respectful and professional manner. This unwarranted and unsupported diatribe is cowardly and brings disrespect to himself, his profession, this Province, and to the CBC who saw fit to publish it.
It is also unfortunate that the CBC continues to permit the use of the term “anti-vaccine” even though they have been made aware that this word is dishonest, disrespectful, and does a disservice to deepening our understanding of vaccine hesitancy.
Sincerely,
Ted Kuntz, parent of a vaccine injured child
cc.
Dr. Eric Cadesky
https://twitter.com/drcadesky
Jack Nagler, CBC Ombudsperson
Stefanie Stark, Executive Director Children’s Health Defense
Vaccine Choice Canada
Printable PDF here.