Conscious living and the economics of war and "terror"

In the two blogs I posted on 9 November 2005 I discussed the terms "conscious" and "conscious living". One of the main things I stressed was the near-impossibility of sustaining a conscious state even if we manage to achieve it, through healing ourselves. Amongst the many kinds of toxicity which make the maintenance of a conscious state so difficult are the messages that daily bombard us in the mass media, especially television. Irrespective of whatever small amounts of truth there may be hidden amongst the mass of half truths, inaccuracies and deliberate distortions to be found in the current "news" about the likelihood of a terror attack or an avian flu pandemic the result is clear. Fear, anxiety, doubt and mass hysteria. These emotions do not help us to remain conscious. There is one antidote to this poison. We need to understand and to be clear about the vast sums of money that are being made by those who claim to have our best interest at heart and who claim to offer us neutral, value-free information ("news").


In 2000, global arms sales amounted to USD$42.1 billion. By 2003 it had dropped to USD$28.5 billion. In 2004 the figure had risen to slightly under USD$37. The 2004 figure was driven by arms deals with so-called "developing" nations, such as India, Saudi Arabia and China (The New York Times, 30 August 2005). The US portion of sales was 33.5% (USD$12.4 billion). The previous year (2003) the corresponding US figure was USD$15.1. Russia was second (in 2004), signing contracts worth USD$6.1 billion, being 16.5% of the total value of contracts (up from the previous year - 2003 - USD$4.4 billion).

In case these figures seem frightening, they represent a tiny fraction of total military spending. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), a European think tank funded by the Swedish Government, announced in June of this year that in 2004 global military spending exceeded USD$1 trillion, being USD$1.035 trillion, an increase of 6% on 2003 (expenditure in 2003 was up 6% 0n 2002) (The Age, 8 June 2005). The 2004 expenditure was 6% lower in real terms than it was in 1987-88 which was the peak, according to SIPRI researcher, Elisabeth Skons. The US accounted for 47% of the total, the UK 5% and France also 5%.

It may be difficult to believe, but even these figures, horrendous as they are, understate the actual expenditure, as more and more services (like military training and the provision of logistics in combat zones) are being "outsourced" and not being classified as "military" expenses. According to SIPRI, such "outsourcing" has more than doubled in the past 15 years and is estimated to have amounted to USD$100 million during 2004 (SIPRI researcher, Caroline Holmqvist, cited in The Age, 8 June 2005). This figure (USD$100 million) appears to understate this kind of expenditure by a huge amount, however, as the Washington Post reported a month later that one single company, Halliburton, was paid USD$6.3 billion for such services during the first two years of the "occupation" of Iraq, including USD$3.98 billion between the beginning of May 2004 and the end of May 2005 (Washington Post, 6 July 2005). Even worse figures are reported in the Washington Post, however. Under a new deal which was made public only in July, two months after it took effect, Halliburton will receive USD$4.97 billion during the 12 month period ending in May 2006, to provide logistics support to US troops in Iraq (the services include a continuous supply of food, sanitation, laundry and "other logistical services"). This was revealed by army spokeswoman Linda K Theis (Washington Post, 6 july 2005).

In March 2003 President Bush said that combat in Iraq would cost USD$60 billion. As of March 2005, the cost for military operations alone had hit USD$135.3 billion, according to the Office of management and Budget. But the actual amount spent is far higher, as this figure does not include costs to fund the Coalition Provisional Authority, reconstruction projects or "intelligence operations" (Washington Post, 6 July 2005).

"Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg Brown and Root has received more money from the US involvement in Iraq than any other contractor", the Washington Post reported in July of this year. The US government is allowed to get away with this in spite of "criticism by administration foes who think Halliburton's high level connections .. most notably its former chief executive, Dick Cheney, who is now vice president .. may have given it undue influence in winning sole-source business" (Washington Post, 6 July 2005). Six weeks later the Washington Post and New york Times both reported that Bunnatine H Greenhouse, a "high level contracting official who has been a vocal critic of the Pentagon's decision to give Halliburton company a multibillion dollar no bid contract for work in Iraq", had been removed from her job as of Saturday 27 august 2005 (Washington post, 29 August 2005).

It is simply inconceivable that, with these sorts of sums at stake, we are going to be told anything other than what is in the interests of those with the power to colonize our consciouness.
Elsewhere I've written in similar terms about the pharmaceutical industry and its hold on government, doctors, scientists and institutes of scientific research such as universities (See, for example, www.consciouslivingseminars.com Journals for May and June 2004). In the August 2004 edition of the Conscious Living Seminars Journal, I wrote the following:
I first read about this (then soon-to-be-released) book (The truth about the drug companies, by Marcia Angell) in the New York Review of Books (Volume 5, Number 12, 15 July, 2004). In that article, written by Marcia Angell, she summarised the main points in the book, points that are not disputed, in spite of their implications. Americans spend $200 billion (AUD$380 billion) each year on prescription drugs, and this figure is increasing at the rate of 12% per year. [This figure – USD$200 billion – “does not include the large amounts spent for drugs administered in hospitals, nursing homes, or doctors’ offices (as is the case for many cancer drugs)”, because these are allocated to costs for these facilities in most analyses.] As a result, “year after year, for over two decades, this industry has been far and away the most profitable in the United States (The New York Review of Books, Volume 51, Number 12, 15 July, 2004). In 2003, for the first time, the pharmaceutical industry came in third, behind “mining, crude oil production” and “commercial banks”.
What this means for individual executives is breathtaking. In 2001, the former chairman and CEO of Bristol-Myers Squibb earned USD$74.9 million, not counting his USD$76.1 million worth of unexercised stock options. The summary of the book states: “Meanwhile, as profits soar, the companies brazenly use their wealth and power to push their agenda through Congress, the FDA and academic medical centres”. The pharmaceutical industry “has the largest lobby in Washington – and more lobbyists than there are elected representatives in Congress” (back cover). “Drug companies promote diseases to match their drugs. Millions of normal Americans have come to believe that they have dubious or exaggerated ailments like ‘generalised anxiety disorder’, ‘erectile dysfunction’, ‘PMDD’ and ‘GERD’”. Pharmaceutical corporations have “enormous influence over what doctors are taught about drugs and what they prescribe”. They “rig clinical trials to make their products look better than they are” (inside front cover).

In the April 2004 Journal, I wrote: A few “facts” might help. In 2002, the ten best-selling drugs in the world brought in more than USD$40 billion (AUD$56 billion) for the manufacturers. These included Zyprexa, an “anti-psychotic” drug made by Eli Lilly (USD$3.7 billion), GlaxoSmithKline’s Paxil (Aropax/Seroxat) (USD$3.2 billion) and Pfizer’s Zoloft (USD$2.7 billion). Pfizer’s return on revenue in 2002 was 28.4%; Eli Lilly’s 24.4%, compared with around 10% or less for other American companies, like General Electric (10.7%) or Exxon Mobil Corp (6.2%) (source: Time, 2 February, 2004/No 4). In 2002, Pfizer reported profits of USD$9.1 billion (AUD$13 billion) on a revenue of USD$32.4 billion (AUD$45 billion), earning a return on revenue of 28%, a rate more than twice that of General Electric (Time, 2 February, 2004, p47).
Time magazine reports that the pharmaceutical industry in the US “maintains more than 600 lobbyists – more than one for every member of Congress”. Pharmaceutical companies spent USD$435 million (AUD$609 million) between 1996 and 2003 in their efforts to influence American decision-makers. Time quotes Pete Stark, a Democrat from California: “These guys are awfully good. I only wish they were on the right side of the issues. They don’t care about curing people. They only care about profits. They are very effective” (Time, 2 February, 2004, p48).
Interestingly, the article in Time magazine from which the above is taken includes the following information: “Actually, pharmaceutical roulette is played every day in the US – with FDA-approved drugs. Each year an estimated 50,000 to 100,000 people die as a result of adverse reactions from FDA-sanctioned pharmaceutical drugs sold in America. In fact, mistakes in administering drugs, often in hospitals, are the fourth- or sixth-leading cause of death in the US, depending on how the cases are counted”. It also discussed a chemical called nefazodone, marketed by Bristol-Myers Squibb as an antidepressant called Serzone, one of the ones added by the FDA to the antidepressants for which it asked that a warning be issued. Throughout the 1990s Bristol-Myers marketed Serzone with ever-growing success. The company’s revenue for the 12 months to 30 September, 2003 was USD$19.9 billion (AUD$28 billion). In an earnings announcement in July, 1996 Bristol-Myers had declared that “sales of central-nervous-system drugs rose, particularly on the strength of STADOL NS, an antimigraine product and Serzone, an antidepressant treatment with a low incidence of side effects”. The following year, medical studies were released claiming “Serzone to be superior to Prozac in increasing sleep efficiency and providing better sleep quality for people suffering from depression”. Yet, “a few years later”, one of Serzone’s “rare but significant side effects” began to leak out, viz liver damage, sometimes requiring a transplant and in extreme cases resulting in death. In 2002 Bristol-Myers announced that it would stop selling the drug in Sweden and the Netherlands and eventually withdrew it from all of Europe and Canada. But not the US!! “The FDA’s only response in the US has been to require a black-box warning on the label, stating in part: ‘Cases of life-threatening hepatic failure have been reported in patients treated with Serzone’” (Time, 2 February, 2004, p46). The New York Times, a mere seven weeks after publication of this article in Time magazine, saw fit to report none of this! Actually, as Time points out, over “the past few years”, the FDA has banned more than half a dozen drugs that it had earlier approved “because the drugs turned out to have an unacceptable degree of fatal side effects” (p46).
How all these things can happen is easy to explain, though difficult to comprehend if one’s humanity is still functioning. The obscene profits mentioned above do not happen by themselves. Many public officials working in regulatory agencies such as the FDA and the CDC (Centres for Disease Control and Prevention) have links with the pharmaceutical industry. Directors of companies manufacturing drugs, medicines and vaccines, such as Eli Lilly and Johnson and Johnson, sit on the boards of newspapers like the New York Times and publishing companies like McGraw Hill. Something like 50% of the “scientific” articles to be found in medical journals are “ghost-written” by employees of the pharmaceutical companies and signed by so-called “scientists” who may not even have seen the raw data. A study reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) in January, 2003 found that one in four biomedical scientists were affiliated with corporations, while two-thirds of universities held equity in start-up companies which sponsored their research. Dr Justin Bekelman, of Yale University School of Medicine, wrote: “This comprehensive review of the literature confirms that financial relationships among industry, scientific investigators and academic institutions are pervasive”. The analysis of 37 scientific papers “found strong and consistent evidence that industry-sponsored research tends to draw conclusions that are supportive of industry”. Dr Bekelman and his colleagues also said that industry-sponsored research “tends to suppress negative studies and publish numerous reports of positive studies about the same drug” (www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s768867.htm).

I need to be careful to avoid overkill here. But it surely doesn't take much intelligence to draw conclusions about the "information" we receive from the very sources that stand to benefit from the effect such "information" has on us. If we are to become and then to remain conscious, the first step has to be either to get rid of the TV or to minimise our exposure to the venom it pours into our consciousness. And we need to make sure we view our prepackaged news the same way we view paid advertisements. Most important, we need to protect our children from the material beamed into our living rooms with a full and clear awareness of its power to harm their developing minds. We should view the poison on TV, in the newspapers and in other media the way we view other poisons, like those in the food we eat, the water we drink and the air we breathe.

Vaccination and the eradication of disease: Smallpox (III)

Before continuing the story of smallpox - and the myth that its eradication was due to vaccination - I'd like to post this small item I just received from the National Vaccine Information Centre (http://www.nvic.org):

CONGRESS SET TO BAIL OUT BIG PHARMA IN SECRET
Washington, D.C. – A behind-the-scenes plan is reportedly taking shape in Congress to attach language to an unspecified conference report giving drug companies blanket immunity from liability for vaccine injuries and deaths.The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), a watchdog consumer advocacy group critical of provisions in "The Biodefense and Pandemic Vaccine and Drug Development Act of 2005" (S. 1873) sponsored by Senator Richard Burr (R-NC) and a similar bill in the House (H.R. 3970), calls the reported plan "an end-run by Pharma’s friends in Congress to take away the civil rights of the American people.
"In the past few weeks, public criticism about the proposed bail-out of drug companies has been mounting as Americans are being told that a pandemic bird flu is coming and drug companies are asking Congress to bar citizen access to the civil justice system when they are harmed by vaccines. Because the bird flu virus has not mutated into a form that is transmissable from human to human, questions have been raised as to whether irrational fear about bird flu is being generated in an attempt to stampede Congress into passing liability protections the pharmaceutical industry has been seeking for 40 years.
Pointing out that there are twice as many drug companies marketing vaccines in the U.S. today as there were in 1982 when NVIC was founded, NVIC President Barbara Loe Fisher said, "It is a big lie that drug companies have been driven out of business by lawsuits in the past two decades. The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 protected drug companies and doctors from almost all lawsuits. There are only a handful of vaccine injury lawsuits pending in civil courts but Pharma is on the brink of conning Congress into destroying Americans' Seventh Amendment Constitutional right to seek redress in a civil court in front of a jury of their peers".
(http://www.909shot.com). [For an expose of the avian flu hysteria, see Tim O'Shea's website:
http://thedoctorwithin.com/index_fr.php?page=articles/avian.php ]

Now back to the story of smallpox (continued from 11 and 15 November 2005). The first point made by Alfred Russel Wallace in his 1898 book [ http://www.whale.to/vaccine/wallace/book.html ] is that what Jenner had done a century earlier (in 1796) was bad science. His so-called experiments were based on folklore and he carried out no controlled experiments to test what should have been regarded as no more than a scientific hypothesis (What they were in reality were myths about the immunity conferred on milkmaids by previous exposure to cow pox). Vaccination was introduced before any controll experiments were performed. See also Tim O'Shea, "The sanctity of human blood: Vaccination is not immunization", Pages 14-31; http://www.thedoctorwithin.com ; See also the following: http://www.whale.to/v/hadwen.html

The second point made by Wallace is that dozens of qualified medical practitioners presented evidence to the Royal Commission on Vaccinations (during the late-1880s and early-1890s) documenting the fact that hundreds of individuals, known personally to these doctors, contracted smallpox after being vaccinated, during the early 19th century (in England). In addition, many of their patients came down with other illnesses and permanent injuries and/or died either from smallpox or from a variety of what we today would call "adverse reactions", after being vaccinated against smallpox. These doctors, who had vaccinated their patients because they had accepted and supported Jenner's theory, concluded, on the basis of their own, personal experiences with their own patients, that vaccination did not offer protection against smallpox AND that vaccination itself could cause disease, permanenet injury and death to an unacceptably high proportion of people. These physicians had all believed in vaccination until they tried it themselves. And their testimony is reported in the Parliamentary papers and is available to anyone who wishes to read them.

Amongst other things, Wallace highlights the following facts (for England and Wales), as reported in the Royal Commission Reports (some of the figures cited had been previously presented by Wallace himself, in an 1885 pamphlet, from a variety of government reports - see
http://www.wku.edu/~smithch/wallace/S374-509.htm ):

Between 1760 and 1800, that is, prior to the introduction of vaccination, the death rate from smallpox fluctuated but, overall, there was "a well-marked steady decline", with a decrease of 1000 deaths per million. This decline continued to 1820, after which the decline slowed until 1834, being so slight as to be "hardly noticeable". This had occurred during a period (1820-1834) when more and more people were being vaccinated. In 1838, forty years after vaccination had been introduced and strongly encouraged, there was a smallpox epidemic. After this there was a very slow decrease in the number of deaths per million due to smallpox to 1885, except for the largest smallpox epidemic on record in 1871-2 (almost 20 years after it was made compulsory in 1853).

Between the introduction of compulsory vaccination in 1853 and 1884, there was almost no decline in the smallpox death rate in the English population. By this time, in excess of 90% of the population were vaccinated and this was true at the time of the epidemic of 1871-2, when 97.5% of the population was vaccinated. This 1871-2 epidemic was responsible for the largest number of deaths on record.

During the period from 1886 to 1896, a period of greatly falling numbers of vaccinations, there was a clear decline in the smallpox death rate. The decline was continuous and rapid, at a time when less and less people were being vaccinated.

Wallace also showed that, by and large, other contagious diseases, like measles, whooping cough and diphtheria, showed a similar pattern of decline in deaths, even though there was, during the 19th century, no vaccination against these diseases. Indeed, some diseases, such as the plague, had disappeared by the time Wallace was writing - and had been absent for two centuries - again without vaccination. Yellow Fever and typhus also disappeared without vaccination, Wallace pointed out. Wallace stated that it had been improvements in sanitation that had been responsible for the disappearance of these diseases and the decline in the morbidity and mortality of others. He did not mention the case of puerperal fever (also known as childbed fever) which was eliminated by the simple expedient of getting doctors to wash their hands before delivering babies! Yet, during the 1821-22 epidemic, childbed fever had killed one in six women admitted to Viennese hospitals in labour. Even in "normal" times, when there was no "epidemic" as commonly defined, 9.9% (1,989) of women admitted to the Viennese maternity clinic between 1841 and 1846 (out of a total of 20,042) who were attended to by medical students (rather than midwives) died giving birth (The death rate of women attended by midwives was 3.3%!). "Giving birth on the streets of Vienna was safer than within the walls of the city's most prestigious medical centre" (Richard Horton, "The fool of Pest", The New York Review of Books, Volume 51, Number 3, 26 February 2004; www.nybooks.com/articles/16914). No vaccination; just plain old washing handz (It is therefore remarkable that, according to a recent study, only 32% of doctors wash their hands in hospitals in between treating patients (See www.pubmed.org ). This is difficult to square with doctors' self-righteous denunciations of mothers who question the wisdom of vaccinating their infants!) . Ignac Semmelweis (1818-1865), the doctor responsible for this innovation, was vilified by the medical and scientific establishment and " died in Vienna broken and alone, abandoned by his family and his colleagues in a Viennese lunatic asylum" (ibid). He revealed, wrote Richard Horton, editor of the prestigious medical journal, The Lancet, "how professional eminence and authority could breed crass stupidity and bitter jealousy" (ibid). It may be difficult to believe, but it took several decades for the 19th century medical establishment, which was so enthusiastic about compulsory vaccination, to accept Semmelweis's "innovation" (hand-washing).

The clearest evidence for the total ineffectiveness of vaccination, Wallace pointed out, came from the example of towns like Leicester, which rejected vaccination after the 1871 epidemic and, by the time Wallace wrote (1898), virtually noone was being vaccinated (Leicester did, however, take sanitation seriously, correctly regarding improvements in hygiene and sanitation as the key to health).

During the 1871-2 epidemic, when both Birmingham and Leicester were well-vaccinated, both towns had 35 deaths from smallpox per 10,000 population (Leicester had 327 cases of smallpox per 10,000 population; Birmingham 213). In 1894, by which time Leicester had been rejecting vaccination for over 20 years and Birmingham had thirty times the vaccination rate of Leicester, the figures had changed dramatically. Between 1891 and 1894, Birmingham had 63 cases of smallpox per 10,000 population; Leicester had less than a third of that number (19). Birmingham had five deaths from smallpox per 10,000 population, Leicester, 1.1 (or less than a quarter of Birmingham's death rate).

Both the 1885 pamphlet and the 1898 book present data such as the above - and many, many more (for example from Prussia and Bavaria: from the British army and navy; and from Ireland and Scotland) - to point to "the damning evidence of the absolute inutility of the most thorough vaccination possible". Wallace wrote in 1898: "It is all what Americans call 'bluff' " [I can't resist the temptation of giving one more set of figures, from Wallace's 1885 pamphlet. Dr Keller, the head physician of the Imperial Austrian Railways, gave the following figures for a population of 60,000 employees, officals and their families, for the years 1872-1873: There were approximately 2,000 cases of smallpox, with 18% of these dying from the disease. Amongst children (who had come down with smallpox) in the first year of life, 60% of the vaccinated and 45% of the unvaccinated died; amongst children in the second year of life (who had smallpox), 54% of the vaccinated and 38% of the unvaccinated died; amongst those over the age of two (who had smallpox), 13.76% of the vaccinated and 13.15 of the unvaccinated died. These figures - if they show anything - show that vaccination makes no difference to adults but that it is actually associated with a significant increase in the death rate amongst babies and infants under the age of two].

Neil Z Miller, in his book, "Vaccines; Are they really safe and effective?" (1992; Revised edition 2002), quotes some of the above but continues the story into the 20th century. During the 10-year period, 1882-1891, when 82% of the population of England and Wales was vaccinated, there were an average 933 deaths per annum from smallpox. During the 10-year period from 1892-1901, 67.9% were vaccinated and there were an average 437 deaths each year. By the 1912-1921 period, the percent vaccinated had fallen to 42.3 and the average number of deaths to twelve per annum. During 1932-1941, only 39% of the population were vaccinated and deaths from smallpox averaged one a year. Miller, too, presents numerous statistics to demonstrate, not only the total ineffectiveness of vaccination against smallpox, but its tendency to cause serious harm, including death. Amongst other things, Miller quotes an official from Highgate Hospital who said that, during the 1871 epidemic, of the 950 cases of smallpox, 870 (or 91.5%) had been vaccinated.

There is much, much more than the above, which is but a tiny sample of what is available to anyone who cares to read about it. Similar figures can be cited for each of the diseases against which we currently vaccinate babies and infants (including measles, whooping cough and diphtheria). In addition, the so-called "adverse effets" - unwanted illnesses, permanent injury and death - continue to multiply. There is also at least the QUESTION of why cancer has increased to such tragic proportions that more than a third of the population (of both Australia and the USA) can expect to get some form of cancer during their lifetime. According to the World Health Organization, seven million people die fom cancer every year. Twenty million people suffer from cancer worldwide and this figure is expected to increase to 30 million over the next 20 years. Ten million new cases are reported every year; this is expected to increase to 15 million new cases annually by 2020 (World Health Organization web site - Cancer : http://www.who.int/dietphysicalactivity/publications/facts/cancer/en/). Many doctors and scientists, including Wallace himself, considered, in the late 19th century, before they were silenced, that it was mass vaccinations that were responsible for the observed increase in the incidence of cancer at that time. In his 1885 pamphlet, Wallace cited figures showing a 77% increase in the death rate from cancer between 1854 and 1882. Today, we avoid such unpleasant questions (I'm not suggesting that there may not be many other environmental causes for the cancer epidemic we are currently experiencing. I'm simply noting the absence of any serious research to examine the question of a possible link between vaccinations and cancer).

I leave it to the reader to make up her own mind, preferably after checking the figures provided above. At the end of the day, however, we would do better to trust our own inner wisdom, our "inner physician", before we trust any external authority in matters that concern our health and wellbeing. Of course, if you have the time, you should certainly check these things out for yourself. There is no shortage of material out there (See the following amazing list of publications, many of which can be viewed online: http://www.whale.to/vaccines/smallpox14.html )But when all is said and done your best guide to avoiding illness and disease and experiencing genuine health and wellbeing is your own inner knowing, so long as you can shut out the noise (emanating from the mass media and the various experts) which is constantly attempting to cripple this innate faculty. That is what "becoming conscious" entails. That is what we mean by "conscious living".

Vaccination and the eradication of disease: Smallpox (II)

This post is a continuation of the one dated 11 November 2005. Before I continue, however, I am listing several books (and some links to other websites) which examine the more general issue of vaccinations. I acquired most of the books in early 2004.

Stephanie Cave (with Deborah Mitchell) (2001). What your doctor may not tell you about children’s vaccinations (New York: Warner Books, 2001)

Neil Z Miller (1992/2003) Vaccines: Are they really safe and effective? (Revised edition, Santa Fe, New Mexico: New Atlantean Press, 2003; originally published in 1992)

Neil Z Miller (2003). Vaccines, autism and childhood disorders: Critical data that could save your child’s life ( Santa Fe, New Mexico: New Atlantean Press, 2003) (Thinktwice Global Vaccine Institute: http://www.thinktwice.com/)

Aviva Jill Romm (2001). Vaccinations: A thoughtful parent’s guide (Rochester, Vermont: Healing Arts Press, 2001)

Jamie Murphy (1993). What every parent should know about childhood immunization (Boston: Earth Healing Products, 1993, Ninth Printing, 2002)

Harris L Coulter (1990). Vaccination, social violence and criminality: The medical assault on the American brain (Berkeley, California: North Atlantic Books, 1990)

Harris L Coulter and Barbara Loe Fisher (n d). A shot in the dark: Why the “P” in the “DPT” vaccination may be hazardous to your child’s health (Garden City, New York: Avery, n d). (This book was originally published, by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich in New York, under the title DPT: A shot in the dark, in 1985. Although this revised edition was supposedly published in 1991, it must have been subsequently updated, as there are references, on Pages 185 and 215, to 1997). See also the website of the National Vaccine Information Centre (NVIC), founded by the second author, at: http://www.909shot.com/)

Nancy Appleton (2002). Rethinking Pasteur’s germ theory: How to maintain your optimal health (Berkeley, California: Frog Limited, 2002)

Viera Scheibner (1993), Vaccinations (Blackheath, Blue Mountains, New Soth Wales: Self published,1993)

Australian Vaccination Network (1998) Vaccination roulette (Bangalow, New South Wales, 1998) See also http://www.avn.org.au

Tim O'Shea (1999), The sanctity of human blood: vaccination is not immunization (Seventh edition, 2003, North Woods, California: http://www.thedoctorwithin.com )

Lynne McTaggart (2000) The vaccination bible (London: What Doctors Don't Tell You, 2000)

Greg Beattie (1997/2002) Vaccination: A parent's dilemma (Harrow, Middlesex: The Informed parent, Second edition, 2002; http://www.informedparent.co.uk )

Peter Baratosy (2004) Vaccination: It's your informed choice (Adelaide, South Australia: Self-published, 2004)

Harriet Griffey (2000) Immunization (Shaftsbury: Element Books, 2000)

Greg Wilson (2000) Vaccination and behavioural disorders (Lismore, New South Wales: Tuntable Creek Publishing, 2000)

Leon Chaitow (1987/1998) Vaccination and immunization: Dangers, delusions and alternatives (What every parent should know) (Frome, Somerset, UK: Revised edition, 1998)

Randall Neustaedter (1972/1996/2002) The vaccine guide: Risks and benefits for children and adults (Revised edition, Berkeley, California: North Atlantic Books, 2002)

Maureen Hickman (2000) Vaccination: The right choice? (Australian edition, Self-published, 2000)

Isaac Golden (1989/2005) Vaccination and homoeoprophylaxis? A review of risks and alternatives (Sixth edition, (Daylesford, Victoria, Australia: Self-published; http://users.netconnect.com.au/~i_golden )

Gordon Ada and David Isaacs ((2000) Vaccination: The facts, the fears, the future (Sydney, New South Wales: Allen and Unwin, 2000)

It should be pointed out that only the last is unashamedly in favour of routine, mass vaccination.
The others range from supportive, with qualifications (eg, the first one listed), to unashamedly anti-vaccination (eg, the one by Tim O'Shea).

Some other useful web sites are the following:

http://www.mercola.com; http://www.vaccinationnews.com; http://www.nyvic.org/nyvic http://www.vaccinescience.org; http://www.vaccination.inoz.com; www.safeminds.org

(To be continued - soon)

Vaccination and the eradication of disease: Smallpox

I don't plan to spend a lot of time on specific critiques of modern medicine but the subject just won't go away. The issue of vaccinations resurfaced for me a few weeks ago because my daughter, who had our grandchildren vaccinated for all but the Hep B vaccine recommended to be given soon after birth, but who had chosen not to go ahead with the MMR vaccine at 12-15 months, was again thinking of vaccinating them (with the MMR vaccine) since she thought they would now be strong enough to withstand the potential (and horryfying) side effects. In discussing it with a couple of people who strongly oppose SOME vaccines, such as the infamous MMR vaccine (on the grounds of their potential devestating side effects, including autism), I was staggered to find that both people in question (people who are almost as critical of modern medicine as I am) support the general concept of vaccinating babies and young chidren on identical grounds, namely that, without mass vaccination, there would be widespread disease, as there once had been and that many people would die as a result. Both people cited (what I regard as) the myth that it was mass vaccinations that were responsible for the eradication of contagious diseases. Both cited the example of smallpox. I wrote an article about this issue in the February 2004 Journal (http://www.consciouslivingseminars.com; see also, March 2004) and don't want to go over old ground. However, the history of smallpox and its alleged eradication through vaccination is worth summarising because it is an example of why it is so difficult for any of us to become or to remain conscious (see the last two posts on what I mean by the word "conscious"). The history we were all taught at school - in my case beginning 50 years ago - and which is still taught in books like Roy Porter's 1997 book, is a myth (Roy Porter, "The greatest benefit to mankind: A medical history of humanity from antiquity to the present". London: HarperCollins Publishers, 1997). What really happened?

Porter himself, whose close association with the Wellcome Institute (where he was professor for the social history of medicine) is relevant to the kind of "history" he has written , began with the stuff we were all taught: "The one eighteenth-century improvement in practical medicine which decisively saved lives was the introduction first of inoculation and then of vaccination against smallpox" [(Page 274). See also "Obituary", in Guardian Weekly, 14-20 March, 2002; Porter, who had been born 31 December 1946, died on 4 March 2002]. The smallpox, Porter tells us - that "speckled monster" - had become virulent throughout Europe, "responsible in bad years for perhaps a tenth of all deaths", apparently killing both Queen Mary of England and Louis XV of France (whose date of ascension to the French throne he manages to get wrong). There had already long been an "awareness of the immunizing properties of an attack", Porter writes and, during the 18th century, more and more people began the practice of "inoculation", a procedure he does not describe precisely and which he uses interchangeably with "variolation", again without defining precisely what the word meant. As he tells it, however, it seems to have involved inducing a mild dose of smallpox by deliberately infecting people with it "so as to confer lifelong protection without pock-marking" (Page275). Hundreds of thousands of people are said to have been inoculated in England alone and the practice apparently soon spread to France, where the "philosophes" were attracted to it, as well as to Prussia, Russia and Austria (Porter, 1997:276). However, in spite of such famous royals as Catherine the Great being inoculated, the practice was slow to catch on, Porter writes, because of a "mixture of medical, moral and religious misgivings (there was some resistance from Calvinists in Scotland, who feared that inoculations interfered with Divine Providence)".

Into this scene stepped Edward Jenner(1749-1823). "Jenner learned that among the countryfolk in his native Gloucestershire it was known that cowpox, a cattle disease occasionally contracted by humans, particularly dairymaids, conferred immunity against smallpox"(Page 276). The beauty of it all was that, in humans, cowpox was benign. So, on 14 May 1796, he inoculated eight-year-old James Phipps with some matter taken from the cowpox pustule of a dairymaid, Sarah Nelmes. The boy developed a slight fever from which he soon recovered. Six weeks later, Jenner inoculated him with smallpox virus. The inoculation "did not take", writes Porter, clearly demonstrating to both Jenner's and Porter's minds, that Jenner's "surmise" had been correct (viz that the boy was immune to smallpox). In 1798 Jenner published his account in "An inquiry into the causes and effects of the variolae vaccinae, or cow-pox" (republished in 1996, by Prometheus Books, under the title "Vaccination against smallpox", Pages 11-40). It proved immensely popular, with a second and then a third edition coming out by 1801. An American edition came out in 1802 and German, French, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese and Latin translations followed in 1803. By 1799, 5000 individuals had been vaccinated in England (where it eventually became compulsory in 1853). Vaccination against smallpox became mandatory in Bavaria in 1807 and Denmark in 1810. Other states, provinces and countries soon followed suit. Prussia made vaccination against smallpox compulsory in 1834. In virtually all books on the subject, including Porter's, the practice of mass vaccination is credited with the eventual disappearance of smallpox, more than a century and a half later.

This view has so thoroughly been taught to us, in schools, universities and government health publications, as well as by the mass media and other forms of mass advertising, that it comes as a shock - but to many as simply unbelievable - to find that there were massive smallpox epidemics and hundreds of thousands of deaths amongst vaccinated populations throughout the 19th century and that, as a result, throughout the 19th and early 20th century there were many in the scientific (especially the medical) community who opposed vaccination vigorously, publicly and politically (eg through Parliament). One of the best-known (at the time, that is, since he has been conveniently erased from our consciousness since his death in 1913) was Alfred Russel Wallace, contemporary of Charles Darwin, who put forward the theory of evolution through natural selection made famous by Darwin at the same time as Darwin (their papers on the subject were read at the same time in the Royal Society in 1858, the year before Darwin's "The origin of species" was published). Wallace was a virulent anti vaccinationist and in 1885 published a thirty-eight page pamphlet addressed to Members of Parliament and entitled "Forty-five years of registration statistics, proving vaccination to be both useless and dangerous". When the Royal Commission Report into vaccination came out, after some six years, Wallace mercilessly criticised it in an 1898 book called "Vaccination a delusion, its penal enforcement a crime, proved by the official evidence in the Reports of the Royal Commission". [See the entire book at: (http://www.whale.to/vaccine/wallace/book.html)]. [See also Eleanor Mcbean's book: http://www.whale.to/a/mcbean6.html]

Being the sort of meticulous researcher and scientist he was, Wallace did what nobody else was prepared to do - he went through ALL the figures on births, deaths, vaccination rates, disease morbidity and mortality and other demographics published by various government agencies, hospitals and registries, as well as the entire Report of the Royal Commision and, more important, the transcript of the evidence on which the Report was based. Then, rather than accepting the conclusions the Commission came to, Wallace drew the conclusions that the figures actually logically led to. Wallace's analysis is an amazing document, as one would expect from a scientist of his standing. It is surely no accident that this work is practically unknown and that, while Darwin's name is known to everyone, Wallace has become virtually unknown.

I can not possibly do justice either to the 1885 pamphlet or the 1898 book, so I will just pick out the most important findings and conclusions (readers are urged to read this invaluable document for themselves, especially those who believe that vaccination against smallpox was in any way responsible for its eradication). [To be continued]

Reclaiming our humanity

Before you read this post you might like to have a look at this article from Medical Veritas:
http://www.nccn.net/~wwithin/manteenscene1.doc

I concluded the previous post by saying that "conscious living", in the sense I am using it, is an ideal state, not really attainable in the modern world or, if temporarily attained, not sustainable. My wife pointed out that some clarification is in order. Being "conscious", or "aware", or "awake" in the sense I described is not an ideal in the sense that perfection is an ideal. In this latter sense, Plato (as well as others since) drew a distinction between the real and the ideal; objects and qualities in the real, that is, the actual three-dimensional world in which we live, are but imperfect replicas of those existing in a different realm altogether, one that some call the spirit world. For Plato (and Socrates), as for some Eastern traditions, only this latter realm is genuinely Real, that is, timeless, eternal, indestructible, beyond space and time (compare the concepts of Brahma and Atman in Indian traditions). The everyday world, what we mistakenly call "the real world", is the world of maya, the world of illusion. I must confess that there is something in this I find appealing - as well as appalling!!! - but, be that as it may, it is not what I meant when I said that being conscious was an ideal state in the modern world.

Living in a state of awareness, awake or conscious, connected to our "self", far from being an "ideal state" in the sense of being perfect and unachievable, is the normal, natural state of being human. It is the state in which our own ancestors lived for well over 99.5% of our existence on the planet. It is also the state in which numerous (indigenous or native) peoples lived until they were colonised in the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th centuries and in which several others STILL lived in the twentieth century (eg http://www.tasaday.com) . Being conscious, as used here, is our essential nature. Compassion for other human beings, as well as for all sentient beings (Rousseau's "pitie"), peacefulness, cooperation and a general tendency toward sharing and living in harmony, far from being the unrealistic (and unrealisable) dreams, illusions and wishful thinking of starry-eyed idealists, are, in fact, normal, everyday, natural human qualities we have simply disconnected from during this brief period of our history (the last 10,000 years, that is, less than half a percent of our existence). In other words, it is our very humanity we appear to have lost. Our humanity has gradually been eroded, corrupted and almost destroyed. So much so that we hardly recognise it as human. We disparagingly refer to "the myth of the noble savage" and laugh sarcastically at those who, we claim, subscribe to this myth (See, as one example, Steven A LeBlanc's "Constant battles: The myth of the peaceful noble savage", 2003).

My own personal experiences with Aboriginal people over a 17-year period, my experiences with my two daughters in the first few years of their lives, my experiences at Yinbilliko School, a small alternative, parent cooperative school which my children attended for eight years (in the 1970s) and my recent experiences with my twin grandchildren, who turned three in September, leave me in no doubt whatsoever that our humanity is still there, underneath what we call "normal" human charecteristics, fresh and vital and powerful, crying out for self expression, if only we provide a minimum of nourishment. My experiences with several "personal growth" organisations over the past twenty years are more mixed, but even these have served more to confirm than to disconfirm my sense of the strength of our underlying humanity. What they have also highlighted, however, is the utter unsustainability of human qualities in the modern world. This, of course, is the real point. Given the structure of the modern global economy and everything this entails, given that we live in cities, eat poisoned food, drink polluted water and breathe toxic air, given the even more toxic "information" we imbibe daily, given the corporations we work for and which govern all aspects of our lives and have colonised our very consciousness even if we don't work for them, given the nature of "childcare" centres, preschools and schools, of hospitals and even the government agencies which are meant to protect us, given that the intended (and, at times, unintended) purpose of all of the above is to erode our humanity and to keep us powerless and confused, weak, dependent and unhealthy (so that we NEED the drugs and other harmful products that enrich those who produce them), how then can we reclaim our humanity or, in the language with which I began, become conscious? This is a question to which I will return regularly in future. The short answer, however, is that there are some things we can actually do, on a daily basis, to regain at least some of our humanity, to become a little more conscious every day (To be continued).

What is "conscious living"?

I decided to write while I'm still feeling motivated. After all, I can't predict how long it'll last! There is no easy way to explain what I mean either by the word "conscious" or the phrase "conscious living". A definition is easy but unhelpful. The word "conscious" obviously means something like "aware" or "self-aware". It is clearly related to words like "know", so that, to do something "consciously" is to do it "knowingly". As I wrote above, I don't regard this way of proceeding as vey helpful. It is more useful to "point" to examples of, say, "conscious children", or "conscious relationships" or "conscious parenting" and I attempted to do something along these lines in our August 2003 Journal (http://consciouslivingseminars.com). But in order to make my meaning clear I should perhaps point out that I have noticed over the years that virtually noone uses the word "conscious" or the phrase "conscious living" in precisely the sense in which I do.

The problem is, as always, that the normal, everyday reality that we live in, is so ABnormal, so crazy, so out of touch with everything human, that simple words - including words like "conscious" "intimate" or ("intimacy") or even such common words like "love", "truth" or "justice" - are no longer simple, because, we no longer use words to communicate (that is, to connect, to share information, meanings and experiences), but to dominate, to controll and to exploit oneanother. It begins long before we have acquired language, within the family setting; it is continued by the unconscionable conduct of the multi-billion dollar advertising aimed at children watching TV and, indeed, continues throughout our lives (preschool, school, the mass media, our employers, government propaganda, "science", advertising, what passes for politics...pretty well everywhere really). The result of this deliberately (as well as the unintentionally) dishonest use of words is an inability to be precise or to think clearly. In the modern world muddled thinking is the norm.

My own use of the phrase "conscious living" (and the word "conscious") is based on my understanding of human nature and the way it has been corrupted (See, for example, the "Philosophy" page of http://www.consciouslivingseminars.com ). My understanding is essentially that outlined by Rousseau in his second discourse (1755), though I obviously don't mean to imply that I agree with it in detail ("Discourse on the origins of inequality"; Volume 3 of "The collected writings of Rousseau", edited by Roger D Masters and Christopher Kelly, 1992). I obviously can not do justice, in a short piece, either to Rousseau's theory (which has been misrepresented, because misunderstood, by most writers) or to my own. What I can say in a few sentences amounts to this; Human beings have been on the planet, as human beings, for at least two (and possibly as long as seven) million years. The process that began 10,000 years ago (the so-called "Neolithic revolution", the gradual transformation resulting in the phenomena of "civilization" and urbanisation and, finally the twin phenomena of capitalism and industrialisation), represents merely the last half a percent of human history (it is revealing that we do not call the first 99.5% "history" at all, choosing, instead, the nonsensical word "prehistory"). What we choose to call "normal", therefore, the so-called "real world" or "reality" of so many commentators, is actually (statistically) abnormal, representing a tiny percent of our sojourn on the planet. Even a little over 200 years ago, it wasn't even the norm for many indigenous peoples, such as Australian Aborigines. What is "normal" and, if you like, "natural", is life in small extended family groups, people living in harmony with each other and with nature, exploiting neither oneanother or their environment (note the inappropriate use of phrases like "exploiting resources" used by ignorant anthropologists, archaeologists and historians). In cultures like that there is no stratification, that is, no division into classes, no rich or poor, powerful or powerless and no war (I am of course aware of the appalling junk science that misuses the evidence to come to a different conclusion - more of that another time) . In such cultures there is no need for "repression", "denial", "splitting", "dissociation", or disconnection (either from oneself or from others) because these protective strategies ("defence mechanisms") are only needed when pain or discomfort are intolerable. In such cultures, birth is a natural process, without hospitals, doctors, drugs or surgery. There is therefore no need for the baby to disconnect from unbearable pain. When pain is unavoidable, healthy self expression (namely, crying) is allowed and encouraged while EVERYTHING is done to comfort the crying baby. There is no painful vaccination or circumcision, no medication, no separation between mother and baby (See Jean Liedloff's "The continuum concept"). Aboriginal mothers practise "attachment parenting" without ever having heard of such a thing simply because it is coded into our species (as is the case with other primates and, indeed other mammals). Extended breastfeeding (three to five years) is the norm. Babies sleep with their parents and are carried on the parents' (especially the mothers') bodies. The mother is not isolated but is supported by a network of relatives - husband, parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts, cousins, nephews and nieces - as well as others to whom she is unrelated. The result of all this are conscious babies and infants, conscious children, conscious parenting, conscious adults and conscious families - "conscious" because each human being experiences a connection with both self and other, without "repression" or "dissociation". People are connected to their life force, their passion, as well as to their inner wisdom, inner knowing and intuition. I believe, strongly, that they are also connected to that aspect of themselves for which "divine" is the best term. Such people actually know what is good for them without the need for external authorities such as the expert pronouncements of academics and other professionals in fields such as "science" and modern medicine (which does not mean that they receive no guidance from their elders).

Living in such a state is what I call "conscious living". It is obviously impossible for anyone living in the modern world to attain such a state or, if attained, to maintain it. Rather it is an ideal state to which we can aspire, a state which can also be called "total health". While we cannot be totally "conscious" in this sense, we can certainly grow and develop, so that we become a little more conscious each day (In my next post I intend to expand on what I mean, when I call this state an "ideal" - obviously I do not mean this literally).

Conflicts of interest

The pharmaceutical industry spent USD $22 billion on marketing to physicians in 2003, up from USD $12.1 billion in 1999, according to data from Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), this month's Time magazine reports. The industry will have spent almost $3 billion in 2005 solely on meetings and events for physicians, according to Verispan, a health-care market-research firm in Pennsylvania (Time magazine, 6 November, 2005). That sounds like a lot of money! Would drug companies spend that sort of money unless they had reason to believe that the money would influence doctors to prescribe their medicines? It's a silly question, not intended to be taken seriously. In spending this money is it reasonable to suppose that what is uppermost in the minds of drug company executives is concern for our health and wellbeing? Another silly question. Do we think about these things when we go to the doctor and trust the advice they give us or the medication they prescribe? This, too, ought to be a silly question. Unfortunately it isn't. Most of us still trust the medical profession the way young children trust their parents, with devestating consequences for our health.

Let's look at another area where conflicts of interest are rife. Unless you have taken the healthy step of getting rid of your TV and refuse to read newspapers, you couldn't very well have avoided the fear campaign being whipped up by irresponsible public health officials worldwide regarding the imminent danger of an influenza pandemic that could kill millions of people. Perhaps these fears will one day prove to be based on real information. But is that what is really going on here? The Asia Times reported on 4 November, that Donald Rumsfeld was chairman of the board of the biotech company Gilead Sciences between 1997 and 2001 and currently holds a stake in the company valued between USD$5 million and USD$25 million. Gilead developed and patented Tamiflu in 1996 and then gave the marketing rights to Roche. The Asia Times reports that the global rush to buy Tamiflu (as a result of the fear campaign) has sent Gilead's share price from USD$35 to USD$47 "amounting to a windfall of at least $1 million for Rumsfeld". Gilead will continue to collect 10% royalties from Roche's sales of Tamiflu. We thus have the situation that the very officals who are whipping up a flu panic stand to make very substantial profits from it. And this story can be multiplied a thousandfold (see several of my journal articles for 2004 and 2005 on http://www.consciouslivingseminars.com ; for a very different point of view on the avian flu, see http://thedoctorwithin.com/index_fr.php?page=articles/avian.php ).

What is one to do in the face of the utter unreliability of what passes for information in the mass media, in schools and other "educational" institutions, in the scientific journals, in the booklets provided by government agencies and in doctors' offices? First, we need to educate ourselves. Amongst other things this means reading books written by people without ties to the pharmaceutical industry (eg Dr Robert S Mendelsohn, "Confessions of a medical heretic" and "How to raise a healthy child...in spite of your doctor"). Second - and more importantly - we need to develop within ourselves and then practise the principles of conscious living. In my next post I'll attempt to explain what I mean by "conscious living"

Welcome

Welcome to the "Conscious Living" site. I only recently discovered blogs and plan to use it as an adjunct to my website at http://www.consciouslivingseminars.com . For longer articles on health, healing, the abuses of the medical profession and the pharmaceutical industry, or for those on relationships, "child rearing" (for want of a better word), "mental disorders" (the term that seems to have replaced "mental illness"), psychotherapy (yet another inappropriate word), as well as articles on vaccinations and the relationship between science, industry and government, please visit my website.

I will make this post a short one, just to be able to say (to myself) that I've started the process. I hope to post blogs daily but I'm aware I may not be as good as my word. My intention is twofold - but perhaps this is true for others as well - namely, just to "get it off my chest", as there are a great many things in the modern world that trouble me deeply and, secondly, to communicate with anybody that finds what I have to say relevant in some way. I also intend to publicise news that the mainstream media neglect. Happy reading. Andrew Reiner

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http://www.consciouslivingseminars.com

Today

My first post!!!