Vaccine Vexations
“This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” proclaimed Joe Biden last September, in reference to COVID-19. Biden’s chief medical advisor, Dr. Anthony Fauci, now backs vaccine mandates for children and infants. For those of the generation following World War II, that should bring back memories.
The scourge of the time was paralytic poliomyelitis, better known as polio. Jonas Salk developed an effective polio vaccine but instead of applying for a patent, which could have brought him millions in revenue, Salk dedicated his vaccine to all mankind. In similar style, Albert Sabin licensed his oral vaccine to manufacturers at no cost. Things are much different now.
As Robert F. Kennedy Jr. notes in The Real Anthony Fauci, vaccines are big business and Dr. Fauci, head of National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, has become “a seamless appendage of Big Pharma.” As the book shows in considerable detail, Dr. Fauci has a record of prioritizing procedures, vaccines and drugs protected by patents and profitable for drug companies.
Anthony Fauci is a medical doctor with no advanced degrees in molecular biology or biochemistry. Dr. Fauci’s chief remedy for AIDS was AZT (azidothymidine), marketed as Zidovudine. This DNA chain terminator was rejected for cancer treatment because of cytotoxicity, lethality to cells. After swift FDA approval, Burroughs Wellcome stock went through the roof. At a price of $8,000 per patient per year AZT was the most expensive drug ever marketed.
There was no evidence that AZT would prevent or cure AIDS but Dr. Fauci proceeded with trials on foster children and pregnant women. As the vulnerable subjects discovered, the treatment could be worse than the disease.
Children are at low risk for COVID-19 but Dr. Fauci wants to vaccinate infants and toddlers. Fully vaccinated adults are now told they remain vulnerable to COVID. By contrast, the Salk and Sabin vaccines proved effective against polio, no longer a threat.
According to MarketWatch, in the first half of 2021, Pfizer and Moderna reported collective sales of $17.2 billion for their vaccines, and “that money should continue to grow.” So on the financial side, the COVID vaccines are a great success.
Readers can judge for themselves whether RFK Jr. makes the case on the government-medical complex. For further reading, see The Search for an AIDS Vaccine, by Dr. Fauci’s wife Christine Grady. She argues that the standards for drug and vaccine trials are the same, and that children and pregnant women are suitable “human subjects” for such trials.
Christine Grady now heads the National Institutes of Health office of bioethics. By all indications, whatever husband Dr. Fauci wants, she will tell him it’s the right thing to do.
