Vaxxed
...and the attempted coverup continues...
Today on the Health and Wellness show, we connected the "don'ts" in recent health news, and talked about what you can do to keep your health, wellness, and sanity. Between governmental control on medicine, environmental pollution, vaccines, the state of food, and many other things, we have plenty of issues to battle to keep our heads on straight. However, it is possible to approach the seemingly insane world with rationality and personal responsibility for your own state of health. As always, Zoya joined us with a pet health segment about the absurdity of vegetarian diets for your pet dogs and cats. Tune in weekly on Fridays on the SOTT Radio Network!

Running Time: 01:53:52

Download: MP3


Here's the transcript of the show:

Jonathan: Welcome everybody to the Health and Wellness Show. Today is April 1st 2016 so April fools, we are not going to have a show!

Tiffany: Goodbye everybody!

Erica: Thanks for coming!

Doug: April fools!!!

Jonathan: Joining me today in our virtual studio here from all over the planet, and we are scattered over the planet today, Doug, Erica, Tiffany, Gaby and Elliot; hey everybody!

All: Hellos

Jonathan: Today's topic is connecting the don'ts and what you can do; we have a little pun there on connecting the dots. We settled on that title because when we were talking about what we were going to talk about today, it seemed like a lot of it was things that you don't want to do and it just seemed like a natural thing.

We have the don'ts that we are going to connect that are all over the place and we just wanted to go over some of the items in recent health news; talking about vaccines, GMOs, environmental issues and issues with medicine and the government and then we have some detox stuff that we will go over a little bit later.

I think since we had brought it up while we were talking here before the show, let's start off with a discussion about this recent development in Uganda which is pretty shocking. I guess it's not really surprising which is kind of sad in and of itself but Uganda has passed a new law this month targeting parents who refuse to vaccinate their children. This article that is on SOTT here says that anti-vaxxers could face up to 6 months in prison in the central African nation of Uganda after claims about the health minister and others; that a growing religious cult is preventing parents from having their children immunized.

What do you guys think about this, do you think that the people that have formed this group are in the right state of mind? I'm of two minds about it, I think that it's sad that a group needs to be formed to help people fight the vaccination craze but at the same time I'm not entirely sure that they are going about it in the right way. They certainly have raised the ire of the government which is going to cause problems for anybody. What do you guys think?

Tiffany: You definitely don't want to be living in Uganda right now. It's actually 6 years in prison, not 6 months. I think maybe they are using Uganda as a test case just to see how this whole anti-vaxxer, go to jail thing might play out once they start to implement it on a worldwide scale; I don't know but it's crazy.

Doug: Tiff, you were saying that you couldn't actually find very much information about this group.

Tiffany: Yeah, the 666 group. The only reference that I could find was what the Minister of Health of Uganda actually said. I don't see any web presence for them when I searched. I don't know if that's made up or there is actually a group called the 666 telling people not to vaccinate in Uganda.

Doug: It's kind of a bizarrely chosen name for their group.

Tiffany: Yeah, why would they pick that?

Doug: Yeah, it's very strange.

Gaby: What kind of self-respecting group will call themselves that?

Doug: I don't know.

Elliot: It all smells a little bit fishy. Perhaps what they have actually done is maybe there is no group called 666. Perhaps this is a ploy by the authorities to paint anyone who doesn't want to get a vaccine as part of this weird religious cult. With the name 666? I think that Uganda is traditionally a Christian country so it smells a little bit funny to be honest.

Tiffany: Yeah, like they are trying to scare people away. "Stay away from this group, they are a bunch of religious satanic nut-jobs!"

Doug: It's really similar to what you see happening in North America too where the "anti-vaxxers" are nut-jobs, they are people who get all their information from spurious internet articles and that it's not a very educated group so the idea that anybody who could possibly be against the idea of vaccination must be either in a religious cult or an idiot.

Tiffany: They are also going to deny kids being able to go to school because their immunisation cards aren't going to be up-to-date. In a lot of African nations where education is super, super important in order to pull yourself out of abject poverty; this is really going to be a big blow to people; not that I am an advocate of formalized education but you've got to take what you can get.

Erica: The article also said that parents were hiding their children in slums to prevent them from receiving the shots; that you would hide your kids away in a slum! Just the terminology that the minister used to describe; it's all that weird wording.

Tiffany: What does that even mean? I don't know much about Uganda but I assume that a lot of it is pretty impoverished and thereby a slum, so are you hiding your kids in your own house? Again, I don't know anything about the economic situation in Uganda but I think it's pretty bad.

Jonathan: It is strange. Elliot, I think you had a good point there, especially given the fact that we can't find any other information on this group. It's certainly at the very least a possibility that it could be a disinfo campaign; setting up a straw-man organisation that they can go after that is labelled as evil and demonised and called a cult and then of course anybody who is against vaccines in Uganda can now be claimed to be a part of this group.

Erica: The article said that there is an estimated 10,000 members as of 2014. Are those members just parents who are concerned?

Doug: Yeah. They get grouped into that membership even though they are not necessarily part of any kind of official organization.

Erica: It said that 3% of the country's children don't have the required vaccinations so again, it's such a low percentage, why all the media attention?

Tiffany: Is Uganda one of the countries where Bill Gates and his ilk are doing a lot of vaccine campaigns? I know that's the place where they wanted to test the GMO bananas so they have a lot of Western agencies in there already; so can you blame these people for being a little suspicious? All the campaigns in Africa that are killing people!

Elliot: Those guys are like guinea pigs. I swear, in Africa Western agencies and organizations and people like the Bill and Melinda foundation, blah, blah, blah, they treat the Africans like they are literally test subjects. They don't have to go through any sort of official procedures or anything like that. They basically just dump these chemicals throughout the whole of the nation; I guess they are just like guinea pigs.

Erica: They just wait to see what happens.

Tiffany: In India and a lot of other third world countries, they just go in and they don't get informed consent from the parents, they don't disclose everything and they bribe them with a little bit of money and treat their kids as guinea pigs.

Gaby: Exactly, in the third world they can do all that and then they can export all that "research" from the third world to the rest of the world.

Doug: It reminds me of that article you wrote Gaby, about the HPV vaccine trials in Costa Rica.

Gaby: It is exactly that. It was Costa Rica, it was also Argentina where they tested 15,000 vaccines and several doses. 18 children died and they were babies! They can get away with absolutely anything and then they can submit their "research" to the FDA and they will just approve it and there you go; the rest of the world will have the same treatment.

Doug: That's unbelievable.

Elliot: They just completely take advantage of the people's economic situation, their lack of education and their lack of ability to speak out against these types of things. They are completely taken advantage of.

Gaby: There is no informed consent, on the contrary, they are shown this "advanced" treatment and "we are here to help you"; you know how it goes.

Doug: It just goes to show how they have to do all this in the shadows right? They can't do it in a legit way. Why is that? It just gets me so frustrated that people don't look at this in the light that it requires. Anybody who has to conduct all this research in the shadows like this, it's because there's something fishy about it; this isn't legit. If it was legit they would be doing controlled trials in countries with complete transparency. If you connect the dots just a little bit, it should raise your suspicion.

Gaby: It is actually a good sign that there is so much dissent in Uganda, people cannot really be suspicious enough. What I found out in Costa Rica and Argentina was that people just went along with it. In this news item in Uganda there are a lot of people who are actually hiding away because they don't want to get vaccinated. It's actually a very good sign.

Erica: It's interesting, the BBC carried it too and as we were talking about, the fear mongering behind it. Then they go into the thing about California and then the whole fears to the link between vaccines and autism. It's like the information is so all over the place, it's hard to get a clear read on the agenda of why the article was even published. Then as Tiffany said, the fact that you can't find anything on the net about it; this is suspicious.

Jonathan: One of our chatters, Itellsya, says it sounds like the problems they were having in Brazil with the microcephaly issue, again poverty and powerlessness. I think that's a good point, wherever there is extreme poverty and an increase in powerlessness of the people then more shenanigans can go on.

Tiffany: Not that there are not shenanigans going on in more developed countries too. Shenanigans is what they do! Shenanigans R' Us!

Doug: It's all shenanigans.

Elliot: But the difference is that it's a little bit more well-cloaked in these countries whereas these types of individuals, these types of operations, they don't even bother to pretend to do anything good in these third world countries. It's almost like this arrogance, they have this arrogance that no one is even going to care, no one is even going to question it in these countries. They basically just do whatever they want whereas in the first world, they cloak it with all of this jargon.

Gaby: Scientific terms. But in the third world they just buy health ministers as the research that I uncovered in Costa Rica showed. They just buy them and that's it.

Tiffany: That leads to one of the articles about a scandal rocking Glaxo Smith Kline and how they are handing out bribes in China. They got fined $490 million for bribing hospitals, doctors and giving kick-backs through travel agencies and pharmaceutical industry associations so they can get more revenue for their drugs. So they earned more than $150 million over what they would usually get by doing bribes in China.

Erica: It's not just in China right? What did they say? Poland, Romania, the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and Iraq too.

Gaby: Just to name a few. We have to remember that GlaxoSmithKline holds the record for paying the highest criminal fine in US history; $3 billion dollars!

Doug: And the funny thing is that they are still at it so that $3 billion was obviously just a drop in the bucket for them.

Gaby: Somebody did a calculation and was it like "this is nothing; they still have gains".

Elliot: I think they factor these things into their budget. It's like, "Well yeah ok we'll make $20 billion from doing this but then we will only have to pay $3 billion", so you have to accept it a little bit.

Tiffany: That's the price of doing business, you have to spend money to make money. I've got a question about GlaxoSmithKline, how can you accidently dump 45 litres or 12 gallons of live polio into a river? How does that happen accidently?

Doug: Oops!

Erica: Because they want to sell vaccines!

Gaby: I was shocked to hear their explanation. They were saying that the region was already highly endemic of polio so there was low risk of contamination!!! That doesn't make any sense!!!!

Tiffany: Then they went ahead and re-vaccinated the workers at the plant so if the vaccine was so effective, why did they need to vaccinate them twice?

Doug: Ok, I don't understand this either. I think I may have even gone off on this before on this show but my understanding of vaccines is that you need that in order to prevent being affected because you get the vaccine, your body recognises this toxic element and it mounts a response against it so that if you get exposed in the future then your body is already prepared for it; that's the "theory" behind vaccination. So I don't understand why, when there is a risk of exposure, they would vaccinate? That doesn't make any sense!

If you have already been exposed, why vaccinate? It doesn't make any sense to me at all and I don't know if it makes any sense on any level but that's what they do! Their response to it is like "there's a possibility that you have been exposed, we better vaccinate you!" how does that make any sense?

Tiffany: It makes sense to them and that's all that matters.

Doug: I think it requires that the people be completely ignorant of what a vaccine actually is. It's not a medication that will get rid of the virus or whatever it is that they are vaccinating against, it's something that is supposed to activate your own immune system so that it can fight it off on its own. It doesn't make any sense at all; it just drives me nuts. "There's a risk of exposure so we better vaccinate more people." It doesn't make sense.

Erica: Like I said, maybe they intentionally did it and then everyone is so freaked out about it that they run out and get a polio vaccine; for money.

Doug: It requires ignorance though.

Jonathan: Yeah, and the details about this release are actually pretty vague. Looking at this other article about this actual "accident" it said "human error resulted in the polio virus entering the water supply in Rixensart city in Belgium at a plant manufacturing the polio vaccine. The contaminated water then flowed to a water treatment plant and from there into the Lasne and Dyle rivers." That's the first mention.

It says "the liquid was expelled, according to initial information provided by the firm GlaxoSmithKline, due to human error during the process of vaccine production. The water from the treatment plant in question is not discharged to the supply network for drinking water. Some media sources report that an employee made a mistake during a routine cleaning of a tank at the plant."

That's pretty much all the details that we have. Did they take a bunch of the live polio virus and just dump it into a drain? In which case then it went to a water treatment plant? Is that the accident? Are there not processes in place or was the guy drunk? I don't know.

Doug: Human error, someone takes this bottle with a skull and crossbones on it and just dumps it down the drain I guess.

Tiffany: The fact that they can get away with such a feeble explanation! How trained are we not to question any of these corporations deeply about what they do?

Jonathan: This harkens back for me to when we had that show about radiation and we were talking about back in the day before a lot of the regulations were in place for radioactive material. In military research plants they were dumping radioactive water into the drain and people in the facilities were being dosed by radioactive water that was in the pipes in the walls.

This is not necessarily a new phenomenon for large organizations, government or otherwise, that should be more responsible to be irresponsible.

Tiffany: Shouldn't that be part of their safety training; proper disposal? Like I said, was this guy drunk or what?

Jonathan: That's not necessarily some tainted yogurt or a few hundred gallons of pig sh*t from a farm flowing into a river, it's a live polio virus; it's a pretty serious deal; it's frustrating. Of course this will drift off into the whited out pages of history, nobody is going to remember this in like a week let alone a year or two.

Doug: What if the polio rates start going up in the surrounding areas? Is anybody going to remember to connect those dots?

Tiffany: Well they are not going to call it polio, they're going to call it flaccid paralysis; that's the new name for polio.

Doug: Or they will come up with another name at that point.

Tiffany: In a couple of years, start looking for acute flaccid paralysis cases in Belgium.

Jonathan: What's the other one? Forgive me for forgetting this, it starts with an H I think. There is a disease that was said that it could be polio with a different name. Hashimoto's, is that it?

Doug: No.

Gaby: There is Guillain-Barre.

Jonathan: That's what it was, Guillain-Barre.

Gaby: Which is more common now in the context of the Zika virus.

Jonathan: They are probably not going to have any fine or punishment for this and Gaby, you were right, I looked up the list of largest pharmaceutical settlements; GlaxoSmithKline is at the top; 2012 $3 billion settlement.

Next we have Pfizer with $2.3 billion, Johnson & Johnson - $2.2 billion, Abbott Labs - $ 1.5, Eli Lilly - $1.4 and it goes down from there; incredible numbers of money here.

Gaby: And it is nothing for them, nothing! It's amazing.

Doug: These companies are all still the top, they are all still the elite as far as corporations go in the world so it obviously does absolutely nothing to fine these companies. Did anyone even get fired over it?

Erica: They're the medical mafia.

Gaby: That's what I was going to say Erica, they are worse than the mafia.

Tiffany: Another don't, you don't want to be a consumer of products made by big pharmaceutical companies.

Erica: No GSK for you!

Gaby: By the way, GSK have the HPV vaccine. They are the ones who tested the 15,000 babies in Argentina and several died under the most corrupt scenarios like without informed consent to the parents, there were no records of what they were doing; pure criminal behaviour.

Erica: And the scientists in the process were given financial incentives. Not only are they doing criminal behaviour but they are getting financially rewarded for it; sounds like the mafia.

Doug: Totally.

Jonathan: Let's talk about another one of our articles, Doug, being in Canada, you had mentioned that you had some familiarity with the Stephan family. I'm not sure how to pronounce it.

Doug: I'm not sure how to pronounce it either.

Jonathan: I'll just say the Stephan family. It says here in this report out of Canada "the tragic death of one family's child is viewed by some as setting a precedent for the extremist pro-vaccine lobby. The Stephan family, leaders in the alternative health field in Canada face time in prison and the removal of their remaining children for simply refusing to vaccinate their child who later died in a hospital that failed to save him. The authorities want the court to rule that his death was preventable by a simple vaccine which is something that could never be proven scientifically.

Almost 4 years ago, the Stephan family experienced the tragic death of their son Ezekiel, just 18 months old at the time. Now, the Canadian government is prosecuting the parents, and the outcome of the trial could set a legal precedent that would have a devastating and chilling effect on parental rights.

The Public Health Agency of Canada, which is similar to the CDC in the U.S., has stated:
"Unlike some countries, immunization is not mandatory in Canada; it cannot be made mandatory because of the Canadian Constitution. Only three provinces have legislation or regulations under their health-protection acts to require proof of immunization for school entrance. ... It must be emphasized that, in these three provinces, exceptions are permitted for medical or religious grounds and reasons of conscience; legislation and regulations must not be interpreted to imply compulsory immunization."
It does sound like depending on how this trial turns out that compulsory immunization could be a result. Doug, what were you saying about this that you had heard?

Doug: Actually, I was surprised at how little I had actually heard about it especially since [the husband in] this family, is the son of the guy who created a supplement company called True Hope. I'm familiar with the supplements because we sell them at the store that I work at and a lot of people get pretty good results. A lot of it is geared towards cognitive issues and autism and that sort of thing.

They were taken to court at one point for making claims about their supplements and they actually won and there are some people saying that this is a vengeance thing by trying the son for stuff; it's almost like revenge for the fact that they won their case. It's very interesting because, like you were saying Jonathan, the Public Health Agency of Canada has stated that immunization is not mandatory in Canada, nor can it be as long as the Canadian constitution is upheld.

This ends up being like a back door. Technically immunization is not mandatory but if anything happens to your kid who was not immunized then they can have charges put against them. It makes it so that those who are not immunized have a greater responsibility to seek medical help sooner than those who are immunized are required to seek out. The whole case is setting a very, very dangerous precedent. It will be interesting to see what happens there.

Gaby: I find it interesting that they are being charged with failing to provide the necessities of life which is a charge similar to manslaughter; they were not feeding their baby, they were neglectful. When you study the case, it is revealed that is was to the contrary, these were very deep, caring parents and it is actually the medical system that shows anomalies of failing when they finally decided to take their child to the hospital when their child was dangerously sick.

It is interesting that they are adding salt to the wound, not only are they giving parents and caring parents but they are going after them specifically for that and this is my impression.

Tiffany: It's not like they didn't take him to the hospital. When they did take him to the hospital, the ambulance that met them on the road, because they live so far away from the hospital, wasn't even fully equipped. It didn't even have an intubation tube so the baby was without oxygen for over eight minutes and then when they did an autopsy after the baby died, it wasn't even conclusive that he died from meningitis. It just doesn't make any sense and they say that the parents failed to provide the necessities of life. Basically what they are saying is that vaccines are necessities of life and if you don't provide those then you will be punished.

Elliot: What this might do for the parents who do choose not to vaccinate, even if the constitution remains the same and they are under no legal obligation to get their children vaccinated, what may end up happening is that if this case is publicized, they may be so fearful that if they don't get their child vaccinated and their child does get sick, even with something like chicken pox, anything like that, could be used against parents from this point onwards.

This may very well lead to a state where parents are so scared that they are going to be penalized for not getting their child vaccinated that they may just end up getting them vaccinated anyway. This is a really good avenue to try and force parents into vaccinating their children against their will.

Tiffany: Hey guys, we have a caller on the line. Caller? What's your name?

Harrison: Hi, this is Harrison calling in!

All: Hellos

Harrison: I had a question about this case, I hadn't read about it so I'm just getting the details here. So this 18-month old baby allegedly died of meningitis? Is that what they are saying?

Tiffany: Allegedly but the autopsy does not say that specifically.

Harrison: What are the causes of meningitis? Is there an anti-meningitis vaccine that everyone gets or what?

Tiffany: Yeah, there is one but it doesn't cover all of the strains of bacterial meningitis. I don't think there is one that is for viral meningitis; maybe I have that confused.

Doug: I thought that it was the other way round, that these is one.

Gaby: No, there is only a vaccine for bacterial meningitis; it is only one strain. If you have a viral meningitis there is really nothing you can do but just ride it out.

Harrison: So it's not even clear what kind of meningitis this kid had, not even clear if he died from it and yet now they are saying this kid should have been vaccinated and that's the reason he died, even though like you said, that's impossible to say. Even if the kid was vaccinated, it's still possible that he could have died from meningitis.

Ok well thanks for clearing that up, I just wanted that cleared up because it's just ridiculous.

Tiffany: They are obviously just going after these people to make an example for them; it's to scare everybody else into line.

Erica: They even want to take their other children away too if this goes through. They have five children now? So not only the manslaughter charge if they get charged but then the state will come in and take their other children? That's really frightening.

Tiffany: And the state does such a good job of raising children.

Erica: I think it's like Elliot was saying, it's that fear factor. If this is a precedent setting case then again parents are going to be super freaked out, even if they morally object to it, they will do it because they are afraid of losing their children.

Elliot: The really sad thing about this case is that the child wasn't actually displaying any of the signs of bacterial meningitis. He had cold symptoms, slight flu symptoms, aches and pains but he wasn't displaying any of the bacterial symptoms for meningitis. What they said was the symptoms could have been attributed to viral meningitis.

Funnily enough, according to the CDC, they say that you can't get any treatment for viral meningitis and most people just get better on their own. The parents were assuming that if it was meningitis, it would have been viral anyway and they were told by the CDC that the best thing to do is just to rest and stay at home and it should get better by itself.

The parents really weren't doing anything out of the ordinary. They were simply following the guidelines of the CDC and they are being penalized for this somehow. It's really depressing to see.

Jonathan: It's not like they just let him get sicker and sicker and one day were like "Oh gee well we should probably take him to the hospital". They treated him at home and they brought a nurse into their home to avoid bringing him into contact with other children as well. They were taking very reasonable measures and not only that but there is a part of this article about this case here that says "they learned later, after this tragic death happened, that while they were on the phone with 911, they had passed within a few hundred yards of a fully equipped ambulance with two local paramedics that were available for dispatch."

That team never got the call, instead it was 15 minutes later when they met up with a different ambulance who took Ezekiel to the hospital and that different ambulance was not fully equipped. So they had a fully equipped ambulance just a few hundred yards away from where they were that the dispatch did not contact.

Gaby: If I was them I would be very suspicious that I was being framed.

Doug: Yeah, it is very fishy.

Tiffany: The whole ambulance situation is grounds for a lawsuit if the parents were so inclined to have filed a lawsuit against them. Now that the parents are being sued, that kind of takes the focus off of the hospital.

Jonathan: I'm inclined to see conspiracy where most people don't but at the same time, this seems like a general failing of the health system which they then turned around after the fact and said that it's the parents fault because they didn't vaccinate for this thing which we don't even really know was the cause of the child's death. They are covering their ass after the fact essentially.

Gaby: It took eight months for them to read the autopsy report. Eight months! That's just unacceptable. It should have been within weeks at the most. The autopsy report is full of suggestions which are completely unscientific, suggestions like the kid was not vaccinated; how can you put that on an autopsy report? It's completely out of the point.

Jonathan: This is tragic and it certainly deserves attention but we have limited time so let's move on to some of our other articles on the vaccine topic. One I thought was pretty interesting was this journal editor who removed a negative study on Gardasil, he was a Merck insider.
On January 9th 2016, a study titled Behavioral Abnormalities in Young Female Mice following Administration of Aluminum Adjuvants and Human Papillomavirus Vaccine Gardasil was published by the journal Vaccine. The study which had gone through Vaccine's extensive peer review process consisted of dividing 76 female mice into four groups and testing the effects of injecting them with the vaccine. The study's findings were not good press for Merck's Gardasil.

The study was conducted by eight scientists at Tel Aviv University in Israel, however one month after it was published with revisions, the study was completely withdrawn from the international journal. The editor and chief who found this "seriously flawed methodology" just so happens to be an industry insider. I think this is interesting, while we are connecting the don'ts here today, it's just another example of the industry, the corporations that supply the industry, the industry itself and the reviewers and "regulatory agencies".

Of course Vaccine is a journal, it's not a regulatory agency but they have allegedly the responsibility of publishing objective scientific data about studies that they conduct and yet here we have insiders from companies that manufacture the products removing the negative studies from the public view.

Elliot: This particular doctor whose name is Dr. Gregory Poland is said to have conducted four studies with direct affiliation to Merck. One of those studies was a pro-human papillomavirus trial in 2005, another one was a two year, randomized control clinical trial, there was one in 2005 which was pro-Gardasil and then he has also acted as a safety monitor for two other clinical trials of the HPV vaccine and they were all funded by Merck research laboratories.

This guy is without a doubt acting on behalf of Merck. How can this guy even be editor in chief of an international journal? It's just insane.

Doug: The irony in the statement that the journal put forward, saying that "as an international peer review journal, we believe it is our duty to withdraw the article from further circulation and to notify the community of this issue". Just talking about their duty, like what they have a duty to do, it's obvious that their duty is to protect the pharmaceutical companies.

Gaby: How can he quote "unscrupulous methods"? That' precisely the thing that he is doing! He is basically a researcher for producing the vaccine, he doesn't have any say on this.

Doug: It's just so ironic, it's like rubbing salt in the wound, not only are we going to withdraw this but we are going to say that it's our duty because it's such a flawed study and it might give the wrong impression. It boils the blood.

Gaby: We are being targeted from all single points, the family in Canada, the properly done research is being withdrawn by the very corporations producing the vaccine and another example that happened here in Spain is that a child died from diphtheria. It's one of those strange diseases that don't happen anymore and the child was not vaccinated so you can imagine the scandal.

They didn't go after the family; they went after the doctors because if you don't want to vaccinate here in Spain you don't have to. They are going against the doctors and saying that all doctors who are anti-vaccine risk their subscription to the medical college; they could be removed. We are being targeted from all single possible grounds.

Doug: They have all different kinds of ways that they can put their agenda forward, it's so nefarious, especially when you connect that with the effects that you are seeing from getting these vaccinations. It's like all these children have a target painted on them and these people are relentless in pursuing hitting that target.

Especially going back to the whole Uganda thing, what was it, 3% that was unvaccinated? That is a miniscule amount of the population but they won't let it go! They are pursuing it with such ferocity; it's unbelievable.

Gaby: They are using it to hide their own corruption and unethical behavior. For example, here in Spain there is treatment for diphtheria, there is a treatment and it was not available; not in Spain, not in one single country in Europe; it was expired. The treatment was even searched on the World Health Organization; they didn't have it either! Russia offered it too late, it was like "We have it!" It was too late by then.

It's the same thing with the Canadian family, the thing about the ambulance not even having oxygen or intubation methods. It's completely unacceptable for even a third world health system and yet it's the first world.

Elliot: And the way that they are trying to target those individuals who aren't vaccinated. For instance, the World Health Organization are actually starting to employ marketing strategies that have been used by popular companies like Coca Cola and PepsiCo. and McDonald's. There was an article posted on SOTT and it's called World Health Organization wants to Market Vaccines like Sodas and Burgers.

It starts off talking about how in August 2015, the World Health Organization issued a press release titled Vaccine Hesitancy, A Growing Challenge for Immunization Programs. They have coined this term "vaccine hesitancy" and it's to describe the state of mind of someone who is unsure about whether they want to get a vaccine or not. The way that they define it is that they say "concerns about vaccine safety can be linked to vaccine hesitancy but safety concerns are only one of many factors that drive hesitancy. Vaccine hesitancy can be caused by other factors such as negative beliefs based on myths, e.g. that vaccination of women leads to infertility, misinformation, mistrust in healthcare professionals or the healthcare system and the role of influential leaders, costs, geographic barriers and concerns about vaccine safety.

They are saying that people who are hesitant to have vaccines, their beliefs are based on myths which simply isn't true. Vaccines have been linked to all sorts and they are basically stating that completely. What they are doing is coming up with these corporate strategies to market vaccines in new and interesting ways to try and influence as many people as they can.

Gaby: It's absurd, whatever respect I held is gone with this. How can they expect us to take them seriously when they are going to use Coca Cola/McDonald's marketing tools?

Tiffany: How can they make vaccination sexy? They want to sex it up and put beautiful women getting themselves vaccinated. Women in bikinis.

Doug: The other thing is how they emphasize in the document that it isn't about facts, it's about perception so you need to play on emotion more than the actual facts because the facts are irrelevant; it's more like a lifestyle issue. Are you somebody who gets vaccinated; a new hip, urban individual who likes vaccinations or are you some backward, religious retard who gets all their information from nefarious sources on the internet. I expect to see these kinds of ads before movies, sandwiched between the Coca Cola and the McDonald's ads.

Erica: They had a column in that article talking about how the World Health Organization Working Group recommended that this fact free, emotional laden, Coca Cola sell marketing strategy be urged on the international pro-vaccination lobbies. Then he goes on to say "aided by this 'keep it simple, stupid' strategy who is hopeful that the marketing wizardry that works for the food and beverage giants will help the pro-vaccination overcome the public's reluctance to vaccinate." It is this straight, corporate prostituting.

Doug: You know what it reminds me of actually? I see these ads on the subway all the time that are for the birth control pill and they are solely marketing it as if some hip, young, independent women would obviously choose to be on this birth control pill. Every time I see it, I want to put a sticker on there saying birth control pills mess with your hormones and put you through all kinds of terrible problems so you might want to consider it while you are evaluating how your lifestyle fits in with this kind of medication.

Tiffany: So not only are they waging war against our bodies, it's like there is an information war going on. They have to change the way people think. If you have to do all that, like we were talking about before, you have to engage in all this subterfuge to get people to buy into your product then that tells a lot!

Gaby: Maybe now would be a good time to hear that trailer for the Vaxxed documentary that was actually being aired today for the first time to the public.

Vaxxed trailer clip:
Brian Hooker PhD: My phone rings and it's Dr. William Thompson

Dr. William Thompson: You and I don't know each other very well. You have a son with autism and I have great shame now.

Del Bigtree: There is a whistle blower from the CDC who is going to come out and say that the CDC have committed fraud on the MMR study and that they knew that vaccines were actually causing autism.

Mom 1: My oldest son Ian was walking and running, after the vaccine he was no longer able to do that.

Mom 2: So I call the clinic and I said "I think my child has had an adverse reaction to those shots!"

Mom 3: And then came the head banging, the constant banging against anything that he could find.

Dr. William Thompson: Right now I'm sitting in a very pretty position in terms of providing you a lot of information.

Andrew Wakefield, MB, BS: This first thing that Thompson did was to plot a graph. Now if there is no link between early MMR and autism, those two lines should track together and they do track together until they get to 15 months, then they separate and they continue to separate thereafter. They sliced and diced the data in an effort to get rid of that effect.

Man 1: The relative risk of receiving an autism diagnosis was astronomical.

Andrew Wakefield, MB, BS: Wow, the CDC had known all along that there was this MMR/autism risk.

Dr. Coleen Boyle: In the CDC's judgement, the best public policy is to continue vaccinations unchanged.

Rep. Dan Burton: You who run our health agencies in this country, you have an obligation to make sure that these studies are complete and thorough so that we have all the facts.

Dr. William Thompson: Oh my God! I cannot believe we did what we did! But we did.

Del Bigtree: Omission of crucial data, destruction of documents, misleading the Congress, grievous harm to innocent children.

Jim Sears MD: Everything I have been telling my patients for the last 10 years has been based on a lie and a cover-up.

Rep. Bill Posey: Parents should be able to count on federal agencies to tell them the truth.

Doreen Granpeesheh PhD, BCBA: In 1978 the prevalence of autism was about 1 in 15,000 children.

Stephanie Seneff PhD: If we assume that things are going to continue as they have, we can predict that by 2032, 80% of the boys born will end up on the autism spectrum; half the children, 80% of the boys.

Doreen Granpeesheh PhD, BCBA: That's a vast number of children who are being diagnosed with autism every day.

Stephanie Seneff PhD: This is going to be a complete catastrophe if we just let it happen.
Jonathan: Now that's the documentary Vaxxed, that's the one that was recently pulled from the Tribeca film festival?

Erica: Yes.

Tiffany: Somebody got to Robert De Niro; first he was all for supporting it; he wanted to open up the dialogue. One of his six kids has autism so he wanted to show it at the Tribeca Film Festival and he met with some people and they said something that convinced him to pull the documentary. Now it's being shown in New York City at the Angelica theatre; I think from today until next week so it can still be seen; so good.

Doug: It actually had the opposite effect that I imagine the people who had him pull it were hoping for because it is generating tons of [interest]; the whole thing is going viral. Apparently that screening sold out in minutes and it's drawing a lot of attention to the documentary; why don't they want us to see this? They probably would have been better just ignoring it

Gaby: It backfired.

Doug: Definitely, and I would say all of the conspiracies are going crazy now because of what was said. He seemed rather passionate about it; meaning Robert De Niro who is one of the organizers of the Tribeca film festival. He was even planning on introducing it and giving a speech beforehand and then all of a sudden he backs out. Of course that is going to light up the internet with all kinds of conspiracy theories and conspiracy facts for that matter. It really had a profound effect.

Erica: I found it interesting that he met with Florida congressman Bill Posey who has been involved with this whole Thompson/CDC release of information. He let him know that the film was right on target, that says a lot for a congressman to actually admit that.

Tiffany: I wonder, what did they say to him? "Robert De Niro your career is going to be over."

Doug: I'm sure they played on all that; your career will be over; you will be smeared. For anybody who is in the public eye like a movie star is, your reputation is everything right? All they have to do is threaten that and I'm sure you can get compliance on anything.

Jonathan: I don't even think they would have to be as intense as pharmaceutical executives going in there and saying "We are going to tank the Tribeca Film Festival if you show this." That may have happened but it probably didn't, it was like you said, probably more like "Look at what happened to Jenny McCarthy and look at what happened to all these people. You are going to be labelled a nut and it's just going to be downhill from here."

Gaby: There is also an audio of an interview with a producer of Vaxxed; his name is Del Bigtree. I'm sure a lot of people are going to watch it; it's going to be a big turning point in this vaccine debate. I think we are going to see some very concrete changes. I don't know if we have eight minutes to hear the interview and the debate? We have the audio.

Narrator: The documentary Vaxxed: From Cover-up to Catastrophe is slated to begin an international discussion around vaccine safety and spotlight the high level corruption within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, however that's not all the film has accomplished in the short time in the spotlight. The events occurring during the run up to the release of this film have been nothing short of historical. Vaxxed was an official selection for Tribeca's 2016 Film Festival, set to be personally introduced by festival co-founder Robert De Niro.

Weeks before the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival kick-off, De Niro released a public statement saying that he believes "It's critical that all the issues surrounding the causes of autism be openly discussed and examined", furthermore he stated "I am only providing the opportunity for a conversation around the issue." During the next 48 hours after De Niro's statements, a dangerously polarized mainstream media in the United States was spotlighted and exposed for all to see. The public endured what can only be called a coordinated attack of widely accusatory and inaccurate news stories, attacking De Niro, the Tribeca Film Festival and the documentary film producers Dr. Andrew Wakefield and Del Bigtree.
What was alarming, is that not one journalist or media outlet churning out the prejudiced content had ever viewed the unreleased film. During the 48-hour onslaught of one-sided journalism, Vaxxed producer Del Bigtree was interviewed for a special report by ABC News. Bigtree immediately released his entire uncut version of the ABC interview in which he made the following concise, incredible statements:
Del Bigtree: I looked at the data that the CDC whistleblowers provided to Andy and Brian and it is the most compelling evidence of fraud I have ever seen in my life, and I realized in that moment, that I was looking at probably the biggest story of my lifetime. The world lost one of the greatest scientific minds of our times when Andy Wakefield was taken from us.

This was a man who was doing studies that were going to lead to healthier vaccines and better ways to take care of the health of our children. That unfortunately was going to cost a lot of money for the vaccine industry and they cared a lot more about their industry and their money than they did about the health of children. There's fraud taking place, I don't know where that ends and I would really like a lot more reporters to start getting on this story and getting to the bottom of it. It used to be when something like this happened, in the media we would all jump on it.

When a CDC whistleblower, a top scientist from the CDC comes forward and says "hey, we are committing fraud in here!" I would have expected every news agency in the world to jump in there and investigate that story. I am amazed that this film is the only ones that are looking at it. I've covered this as thoroughly as any story I've ever done as a medical journalist in my life and the really sad thing is the amount of doctors that I've spoken to that say to me "Del, I know that vaccines are causing autism but I won't say it on camera because the pharmaceutical industry will destroy my career just like they did to Andy Wakefield."

For major news outlets to be telling people "don't go see this movie" I mean what's next? Are we going to have papers tell us "go out and burn books"? This is about freedom of expression; these are about thoughts; we have a real whistleblower at the CDC! I would like these critics to do their job and look into that story; we need help here! There is a major cover-up going on and it's affecting millions of children!

Narrator: Bigtree's 10-minute interview was then sliced and diced by ABC News into one short misleading soundbite used by the network to frame a one-sided hit-piece attacking the film which not one of the reporters had access to at the time.

Del Bigtree: This film is just the truth as we have found it.

Narrator: The contrasts were frightening and once again showed a dangerously controlled and tightly regulated media with an agenda. Moments before the slanted ABC News piece aired, De Niro released a second statement withdrawing the film from Tribeca. The alternative media went to work and immediately pieced together the bigger picture involving the Sloan Foundation and pharmaceutical company ties. With De Niro's statements officially withdrawing the documentary from Tribeca, the threat to the first amendment, artistic expression and creative freedom of expression within the film industry was now very real.

In an attempt to refocus the public narrative on the safety of vaccines, the mainstream media called on longtime ally and former NBC CEO Robert Wright. After stepping down from NBC, Wright co-founded Autism Speaks after his grandson was diagnosed with autism. The mainstream media, desperate to add legitimacy to its anti-vaccine statements, dispel any link vaccines have to autism and discredit Andrew Wakefield, the creator of the documentary didn't turn out as planned.

Matt Lauer: Please help me with this controversy that has come up again in the last couple of days about autism and childhood vaccines. There is a film out now, one of the people behind it is Dr. Andrew Wakefield who has been widely discredited by scientific studies but it has people asking the question, again, do childhood vaccines cause autism? As a man who has spent so much in the effort to educate people, what is the definitive answer?

Robert Wright: There is no definitive answer but we have not been able to determine that autism was caused by vaccines, however there are lots of issues having to do with the vaccine safety program that I got into very deeply with no agenda. There was $100 million a year that the vaccine court pays out to people with damages from vaccines; not specifically autism but a lot of them. There is always going to be an issue with vaccines because all vaccines are the same and all people receiving them are different.

Narrator: It appeared Matt Lauer didn't do his research on his guest. Robert Wright's daughter Katie had worked to recover her child with the help of doctor Andrew Wakefield after a long line of willful neglect and vaccine injury that led to her child's autism at the hands of a medically ignorant healthcare taking immunization orders from the CDC's official schedule.

Katie Wright: He is so much better thank goodness because of the treatment, because of Dr. Wakefield and Dr. Creasman but I only wish that he could have gotten the help he needed at 2 rather than... We didn't meet Dr. Wakefield and Dr. Creasman until he was almost 5 and that was 3 years of hell.

Narrator: Days later, the official press conference for the film occurred and it became clear that the film now symbolized a bigger picture. The mainstream media had painted itself into a corner and was forced to sit and watch as grassroots reporting using real time social media took control and broke the real story. The hype generated by the week's events had made the film go viral online, any attempts to censor it only made matters worse.

With the public hungry for a front row seat, tickets were gobbled up eagerly and showings began to rapidly book around the country. The silence of the CDC and complete absence of government oversight into the agency's corruption has been historically negligent. The burning question in everyone's mind right now is, what information don't they want us to see in this film?

Del Bigtree: This has been censored in the United States of America, it is now the first amendment that is under attack. It's moved from a vaccine issue, to a civil rights issue, to a first amendment issue. Americans who made the agnostic or even antagonistic of the notion that vaccines cause autism, need to be very, very concerned. And so for the media here, the only thing I have to say is that whatever is said about me, it doesn't matter because whatever has happened to me doesn't matter one bit.

What happens to these children and to the children of America and the world is what counts; I am irrelevant so bring it.
Jonathan: It seems like another example of the unholy trinity of media, big money corporations and government. They may not have defined meetings when they get together and rub their hands with glee and say that they are going to do evil things but it happens because profit is in play; control is in play; psychological control. It's very easy to control the minds of the mass population through the media, so when something like this comes out, that is even slightly educational and objective, of course from their point of view it needs to be shot down immediately.

Doug: I think that the point they are making in that video clip is very poignant and it really does reveal the media for what they are; just a bullhorn for whatever is the specific interest of the corporations. The smear campaign took no time for all these headlines to come out.
I remember I saw one, I don't remember where it was but it said "Robert De Niro is doing a great impersonation of a vaccine nut-job"; or something like that; it was immediate. You don't see anything in the mainstream press that actually gives the other side of the story.

Jonathan: I thought it was strange because I noticed that one day when I was perusing Facebook and other sources online as this stream of media comes through that there was one article that said Robert De Niro to Show Controversial Anti-Vaccine Documentary at Tribeca. I thought oh cool, that will be interesting. Then it was literally the next day that it said Vaccine Documentary Pulled from Tribeca; it was one day that that took place.

Erica: There was even a media thing that said he was doing a disservice by wanting to present this information.

Gaby: They accused Dr. Andy Wakefield of crimes against humanity! It's just so absurd. That is what you guys are doing with this massive conflict of interest.

Tiffany: This is like a battle in a larger war; the whole vaccine war. I think eventually the pro-vaccine people and the pharmaceutical companies see that people are moving in the other direction and they're just pulling out all the stops, they're doing everything they can to get people back into the fold. I think eventually it's going to blow up and they're just going to have to vaccinate people by force; that's what I think it's going to come down to.

Maybe not physically but like what they are doing with the Stephan family in Canada, what they are doing in Uganda, it's going to come to that all over the world.

Erica: It's like priming.

Tiffany: Then the mask is going to be completely off and people are going to see but I think it might have to come to that.

Jonathan: I want to say it's a joke but it's not funny, it's infuriating. Maybe my impulse to laugh is like some morbid "whistling past the graveyard" kind of thing; the mask is pretty much off. I don't want to get off topic too much but the American Pediatric Society had said that they didn't want breastfeeding to be called natural because that would incline people to favor natural treatments over pharmaceutical treatments.

Erica: I read that article and it's not even about breastfeeding, it's all pro-vaccine. Sorry to interrupt you, I'm just so irritated by that. Grrrr!

Jonathan: We can't call something which is clearly and objectively a natural process, a natural process. We can't call it natural because then you might start to think that natural is good. That is infuriating!

Gaby: We cannot be called human beings because we are really guinea pigs.

Jonathan: So the mask is well and truly off but the media does such a good job and people are so inclined to just take what they are spoon-fed by and large. I don't want to be mean and critical towards people's thinking processes but it's hard not to be when you see that so many people are so easily taken in by this. Fortunately, there are still a lot of people who see these things and realize that they are ridiculous. Tiffany, I think what you said is true, that it speaks to a larger struggle which is coming to a head now.

We see these large corporations which are worth billions of dollars, I mean more money than you could ever spend in five lifetimes; enough money to end homelessness, enough money to end world hunger, enough money to do so many things. We could take all of this money that is being used for profit, control and domination and basically fix a lot of it; it's not going to fix everything in one day but it could fix a lot of problems and yet at the same time it's being used to hurt people.

Executives and people at the top of these corporations are driving Lamborghinis and they own 10 houses. I don't know their minds; I don't know if they are psychopaths or not but the evidence speaks to the fact that they don't care; they don't give a s**t about the people or about the actual health of the population.

Doug: I think they remain willfully ignorant; that's what it often comes down to for me, especially given the thing about marketing the vaccines the same way you do burgers and soda. When you read that, it's like these people seem to actually think that they are doing the right thing and they are trying to come up with a solution to these misguided people who seem to think that their agenda is evil in some way. I think that if you go high enough to the top you probably do see some psychopathy there for sure and some people who are really evil; objectively evil.

I think that the people who aren't able to look at things objectively and can't really think for themselves and I don't want to say that, like you said Jonathan, I don't want to denigrate these people necessarily but they are just so indoctrinated that they think that they are actually doing the right thing. These people are just misguided and they need to be brought back on track.

Tiffany: I think that when you go up the levels, the people who set the policies and who run the health departments, it doesn't even become about vaccines in the long run, it becomes like a question of power and "How dare these people defy us? How dare they think for themselves and not listen to what we tell them to do?" It's not really even about the vaccines, they are psychopaths a lot of them but they just cannot bear that people would not do what they tell them to do.

Erica: I agree with Tiffany, I think, and we have said this on the show before, the fact that anti-vaxxers are such a minimal percentage just speaks to a larger agenda. 3%, 5%, 7%, that's nothing! We have watched this happen through working on SOTT for years, we have watched it just explode into this huge issue. For such a small amount of people that are against it, well now it's just blowing up. I agree with Tiffany, I think the mandatory whatever-it-is, even if it's not vaccines, if it's drugs, if it's pesticides, if it's chemicals, whatever it is, it is complete inundation on all levels.

Gaby: They are not respecting our right not to associate with that.

Tiffany: No one can escape. The farmer doesn't want 3% of his cattle wandering off somewhere, he's got to keep them all penned together; they cannot get away.

Erica: Do we have any good news?

Gaby: We do, yes.

Erica: Do we have good news? Can we talk about something different?

Elliot: Wait there. Before we get to something different.

Erica: No! No!

Elliot: There is just one thing. It might make the listeners have a bit of a laugh actually; it's quite funny but it's quite depressing at the same time and I would just like to mention it just before we get onto the good stuff; if that's ok with you guys?

Doug: Go ahead.

Elliot: Apparently, according to the Associated Press in California, California plans to delay state required warnings on metal cans lined with the chemical BPA arguing that two specific warnings could scare stores and shoppers in poor neighborhoods away from some of the only fruits and vegetables available; canned ones.

Basically what is happening is, in California there was going to be this new legislation saying that they should label the canned food as to whether it contained BPA or not. What California has said is that they are not going to label this canned food mainly for the reason that it would scare people away from buying the canned food. What they are going to do instead is they are going to put a warning sign at the front of the store saying that some of the cans have BPA; but they are not actually going to tell you which ones. I don't understand the logic behind that, I just thought that was really quite insane.

Gaby: I understand that they have one year now to come up with a way to put a warning label that is not so scary; they have one year.

Erica: It's all scary!

Jonathan: That seems scarier to me, that's like saying you are going to go into this house and there is a monster in one of the closets but we are not going to tell you which one.

Gaby: Maybe in one year we will tell you which one!

Jonathan: That's almost more unsettling, I would rather see a big skull and crossbones on the one can so I can avoid it.

Tiffany: That's like the GMO labelling; a bunch of companies are jumping on the bandwagon like Mars, the candy bar maker, Kellogg's, Conagra Foods, General Mills and Campbell's; they all said that they are going to try and comply with Vermont's law to label GMOs on their foods.

There is still a federal law which I think got shot down at first so it's coming back up to be re-considered. So all these companies said that they are going to now start labelling their foods ahead of that but the federal law might be passed and it might forbid companies from labelling GMOs on their food so what's the story behind that? Are they doing it just to win people over to their products? Like "We really care about you, we are going to label". Meanwhile all of these companies still claim that GMO foods are safe.

Jonathan: I think we are going to see a simultaneous uptick in the pro-GMO marketing if they are actually going to be forced to label their products. There is no way they are going to let that go without battling it in some form of media.

Doug: Even the press releases from these companies that are agreeing to label. I think that the whole thing there is that they just don't want to lose that market of Vermont. They would rather comply on that level; I'm sure they crunched the numbers and said "We won't take too much of a hit on that". I think they have obviously crunched the numbers on it and they even say in their press releases that "We don't believe that GMO foods are harmful but we will label them".

Tiffany: Was that quasi good news? GMOs are still here and they are not going anywhere.

Erica: It lures consumers into complacency; if you just inundate them with so much information they just can't deal with it and say "Forget it, I'm not even going to worry about it".

Tiffany: A lot of ordinary people are just not going to care.

Doug: That's what I was going to say, the question is, when you've got your average Joe in the grocery store and they are looking at the products and they say this one contains GMOs, what are they faced with there? Do I want to eat my favorite breakfast cereal or do I want to give it up because it says it has GMOs in it? I think the vast majority of people are just going to be like "Meh! You have got to die of something!"

Tiffany: That is the mindset that people have. The don't want to give up non-GMO foods that contribute to their diabetes and they have a physical ailment. A lot of people, they feel fine, they just walk around, they are not suffering obviously from any kind of sickness; a lot of people just don't care.

Doug: Even if they are though! There was that recent death of a rapper Phife who was a member of A Tribe Called Quest who just died of diabetes. Apparently the guy was a sugar fanatic and he just couldn't give it up. He'd be saying things like "I know this is bad for me but I just need it" and I think that mentality is pretty prevalent. It's like, I know this is bad for me but I am unwilling to give it up.

Tiffany: That is true.

Doug: Even if you are at the end stage of some terrible disease it's like "Well got to die of something". There is some kind of cognitive dissonance there that people just won't go there. They won't be like "I can help myself by not doing this". They don't even want to address that issue.

Tiffany: I think for the people who really have it together diet wise, it's not really going to affect them that much but people who eat that food anyway, it's not going to make a difference I don't think.

Doug: No. How many people who are concerned about their health are eating Mars bars? "Oh, Mars bars have GMO ingredients!" Anybody who is already reaching for the Mars bar is going to be completely unaffected by that.

Jonathan: I was just going to bring more bad news and thunder claps.

Erica: No! No!

Tiffany: No Jonathan, now it's good news-ish.

Gaby: I was wondering if Zoya had some good news?

Jonathan: Yeah, we are at a good time to do that so let's go to Zoya's pet health segment for today and we will come back after this.

Zoya: Hello and welcome to the pet health segment of the Health and Wellness Show, my name is Zoya and today I would like to share with you a very interesting and insightful talk by Dr. Karen Becker about the danger of feeding your pets, like cats and dogs, with a vegetarian diet. Dr. Becker also clarifies various misconceptions regarding nutrition, digestive abilities of our furry family members and more.

It's important to know that a vegetarian diet holds many dangers for biped animals as well; meaning us. Just search previous SOTT radio shows for an interesting discussion on this topic. But now, let's talk about our beloved pets, here is Dr. Karen Becker.

Karen Becker: Hi, I'm Dr. Karen Becker and today I want to talk to you about the dangerous practice that seems to be growing in popularity. It's feeding dogs and cats a vegan or vegetarian diet. Now, I'm a vegetarian and many of my clients and pet loving friends and associates also don't eat meat or any other animal products and many people make the switch after learning about the realities of factory farming, especially the inhumane treatment of food animals, so I certainly understand and appreciate the personal decision many people make to adopt a vegan or vegetarian lifestyle.

If you are going to eat meat, I also really appreciate the fact that you can recognize the difference between factory farmed animals and the happy, healthy life of a free range animal that is able to move their body outside, have access to sunlight and have a really happy life prior to death, so if you do eat meat hopefully you are eating happy, healthy animals that had a good life prior to death; that would be my next best choice.
What I will never understand though is why many vegans and vegetarians think it's OK to force their personal viewpoints and their personal dietary choices on to their dog or cat. Humans, homo sapiens, are omnivores, meaning our bodies can digest plant material and animal tissues both. Dogs and cats are carnivores which means that they are meat eaters and they don't digest plant material very efficiently at all. Dogs are scavenging carnivores and kitties are obligate carnivores and nature designed the bodies of carnivores to thrive on nutrients provided by animal flesh and organ meat.

Cats are obligate carnivores which means they must eat meat to sustain life and as scavenging carnivores, dogs can survive on plant material but they will never thrive on plant material alone. Nature has provided meat eaters the evolutionary design to consume that to be able to thrive and really not only unlock a healing potential but to provide all the raw materials for their bodies to function optimally.

And surviving means just that, they can get by, by consuming some plant material or an abundance of plant material, or in this situation, all plant material but they will never helpfully live a long lifespan as they should and they will have medical and degenerative conditions along the way. To thrive means to grow rigorously or to flourish which doesn't happen when you feed carnivores as vegetarians or vice versa. If you make a vegetarian animal, let's say a rabbit, into a carnivore, it's interesting because some species, you are able to nutritionally abuse them more, some animals are incredibly delicate. Let's take humming birds for instance, if you were to force a humming bird to eat anything other than nectar, within 24 hours that animal just dies. It's very apparent; you can't do that.

Dogs and cats are super resilient, they are really strong animals so you actually can nutritionally abuse them and they don't die instantaneously. Their bodies degenerate over time but because they can withstand nutritional abuse, it doesn't make it OK to do it in my opinion. Unfortunately, many people assume that since dogs aren't strict carnivores like cats are, they can easily transition their dog to a vegetarian or even a vegan diet. In fact, I often hear dogs referred to as omnivores which simply isn't correct.

Dogs taxonomic classification is canis lupus, they are in the same family as their cousins, the grey wolves. Just because a dog manages to stay alive on plant based foods or plant based diets, doesn't make him an omnivore. What research does show is that if dogs are fed a grain based diet for decades, over time they do develop the adaptations for processing starch in their diet. This is called an evolutionary adaptation and thank goodness actually that these adaptations do occur, if animals didn't adapt to their environment or inappropriate food sources or diets that they are forced to eat, they would actually just die; they would go extinct. The good news is dogs can up regulate their amylase production which is the digestive enzyme necessary to process starch. If you feed a dog a starch based diet for several generations, they are going to produce more amylase but that doesn't make it species correct or biologically appropriate to do so.

Your dog or cat has the teeth, jaws, digestion and the palate of a carnivore and animal's teeth are specifically adapted for the food that they were born to eat. Your pet's teeth are designed to rip, tear and shear flesh off of bone. The molars are very pointed; they are not flat so human molars, humans are omnivores, have large flat molars because they are designed to grind up plant matter; the same with other vegetarian species. If you look at all vegetarian species like cows, they have incredible, whole sets of big, wide, flat molars really used to masticate plant matter.

Think for a moment about black bears which are also omnivores, they actually have both sharp pointed teeth in the front of their mouth for ripping and tearing flesh but they also have large, flat, wide molars in the back of their mouth for consuming plant based material. Your dog or cat do not have any flat molars because nature didn't design for them to consume an abundance of grains or eat a plant based diet exclusively.

Your pet also has powerful jaw and neck muscles that aid in the pulling down and consuming of prey. The jaws are able to be opened very, very wide and accommodate whole chunks of meat and bone and your dog's and cat's mouths only move one way like a hinged jaw. This action, lateral mandibular swing, if you as a species are able to do that, you were designed to consume, probably, either a vegetarian diet or an omnivorous diet but dogs and cats, being carnivores, don't have the side to side motion necessary to grind grasses and grains. In contrast, omnivores and herbivores have jaws that have this lateral mandibular swing or side to side motion necessary for grinding plant materials, seeds and grains.

Then there is your carnivorous pet's stomach which is very acidic, it's very short and it's really designed to get food in and out because dogs and cats consume fresh whole prey but certainly not clean meat. Dogs don't remove the GI tracts and they don't remove the dirty parts and they don't remove the faeces out of the colon. When your kitty consumes a whole mouse, they eat the whole mouse and it's certainly not clean so they are meant to move meat organ and bone through the GI tract very quickly.

Plant matter and vegetables need more time to break down in the GI tract which requires a different and more complex digestive design than your dog or cat's body processes. This is also why vegetarian animals tend to masticate or chew their food over and over and over. Ruminants chew their cud to facilitate improved digestion which means they chew their food and then they eructate, bring it up and then they chew it some more.
That term "wolf it down" came from canis lupus where wolves and dogs were meant to just tear chunks of meat up and get it into their bellies as fast as possible. Dogs and cats are not amazing masticators or chewers; no carnivores really are, they actually rip the food off, they get it into manageable pieces and then down it goes. That's why whole veggies or grains and seeds tend to come out in your dog's faeces just as they went in because there is not a whole lot of digestion of those particular food items.

Your pet's stomach isn't equipped to break down seeds or nuts very efficiently unless they are ground up. They simply travel through the GI tract intact and then pass out at the end undigested so you can see it coming out. Dogs and cats also don't make the necessary enzymes in their saliva to break down the carbs or starches that they could be eating. Omnivores and herbivores make those enzymes but not carnivores because very little to no salivary enzymes exist to process carbs and starches and because your pet carnivore does not produce cellulase to break down the tough fibrous plant cell walls. Your pet's pancreas which is designed to produce an abundance of lipase and proteases to process fats and proteins has to work overtime to manufacture enough amylase to process any grains or starch that could be found in the diet.

Over time the extra strain on the pancreas can compromise its ability to function properly. Sure all wild dogs and many wild cats have absolutely been documented to consume a little grass, wolves and coyotes have been documented to actually eat an abundance of berries or plant based material that is seasonally available, and especially if they are starving and because the intake of fibrous material is kind of up and down and because usually it's less than 20% of their diet, the pancreas can easily keep up with this minimal intake, no problem.

Dogs and cats did not evolve to eat 100% carbohydrate based diet so feeding them this way would be very biologically stressful. Your pet also doesn't produce the strains of gut bacteria necessary to break down cellulose and starch within the plant matter. This means your carnivores ability to use plant matter as an amazing energy source is limited.

Most dogs and cats don't care for the taste of vegetarian pet foods which makes sense because that's because they are carnivores. The reason dogs and cats are willing to eat a primarily grain based commercial pet food or a vegan commercial pet food is because they're mostly well-seasoned with flavor enhancers after processing. So after the kibble is produced, it is sprayed with a palatability enhancer or a top coat to trick the pets into eating them.

There are also meat and poultry flavor digests that can be sprayed on that are made of animal by-products which means even though it could be a vegan pet food within the product, what's sprayed on the top is oftentimes not necessarily vegan. Ironically, adding one of those digests to the top of the food doesn't make that food any more nutritious as well so it just tricks the animal into eating a non-biologically appropriate food. Even though the dogs can be duped into eating it, they are still not being nourished in a way that is going to be sustainable to their long term overall wellbeing.

Hi, this is Dr. Karen Becker and this is part two of why dogs and cats should not be fed vegan or vegetarian diets. Dogs require 22 essential amino acids to handle all of their metabolic and energy needs but their bodies only produce 12 of the 22, the other 10 must come from the food that they eat. Because the canine digestive tract is short and simple, it doesn't produce the enormous amounts of amino acids that herbivores do which is why your dog must obtain pre-formed amino acids directly from his or her diet.

The protein you feed your dog should be a wide spectrum of amino acids to be able to meet this need. The protein sources with wide spectrum amino acid profiles include beef, bison, chicken, eggs, fish, lamb, rabbit, turkey, goat, venison and elk. Protein is a crucial component of every cell of your dog's and cat's bodies, essential amino acids from high quality animal protein build healthy cells, healthy organs, muscles as well as provide enzyme and hormone requirements.

The fat in your dog's diet provides energy, it's critical for the absorption of certain vitamins and it also provides essential fatty acids. Fatty acids from animal sources are important for healing, normal cell membrane synthesis, reproduction and healthy skin and coat. Unlike humans, dogs and cats lack the enzymes necessary to convert vegetable sources other than omega 3 essential fatty acids like ALA into adequate amounts of DHA and EPA.

So, dogs and cats on a vegetarian diet are DHA and EPA deficient which leads to a host of inflammatory and other degenerative issues later on. I strongly believe that the sources of the fat and protein for pet carnivores should come from ethically raised, whole food sources. In the case of vegetarian and vegan diets, the amino acids, vitamins and minerals must be supplemented and come from synthetic or lab created sources which in my opinion is not ideal because it's not whole foods.

The quality of protein you feed your dog and cat is also very important and we know that the high quality flesh meats are easier for your pet to digest, absorb and use properly. I strongly advise people to avoid non-meat sources of protein for carnivores including soy and corn as not only are they not species appropriate but they are also usually genetically modified and can have pesticide issues involved with the production of those particular food items.

As I mentioned earlier, cats are obligate carnivores, obligate means "by necessity" or "by biological appropriateness" they have to eat meat to survive. The protein in animal tissue has a complete amino acid profile, plant proteins do not contain all of the amino acids critical for the health of obligate carnivores as kitties have zero capacity to turn plant proteins into the missing pieces need for a complete amino acid profile.

One of the amino acids missing in plants is taurine which is found in animal muscle meat and in particular heart and liver tissues. Taurine deficiency causes serious health problems in kitties including cardiovascular disease and blindness. Neither cats nor dogs make vitamin D in their skin from sunlight so it needs to come from their diet. The vitamin D needs to be vitamin D3 which comes from animal sources, not vitamin D2 which comes from plant based sources. Dogs can use D2 to some extent but cats cannot at all; they have to get D3 in their diet.

The risks of feeding dogs and cats a vegetarian or vegan diet include inadequate total protein intake and balance of certain amino acids such as taurine and L-carnitine or essential fatty acids, in particular arachidonic acid for cats. The deficiency in vitamins and minerals such as the B vitamins, calcium, phosphorous and iron will also occur as those nutrients are obtained ideally or only through meat and other animal products that are absorbable for cats and dogs.

If allowed to continue long enough, these nutrient deficiencies can lead to serious and sometimes irreversible medical conditions. Occasionally veterinarians will prescribe a vegan diet for a temporary allergy elimination dietary trial and although this is never my approach, for a month or two this is not going to cause overall damage to an adult animal. If your vet is suspicious of a protein sensitivity, I suggest you consider competing Dr. Dodds Nutriskin saliva test to highlight what foods your pet should avoid or what foods you could wean them onto that would be more acceptable.
Other than attempting to identify food allergies, the vast majority of conventional and holistic veterinarians do not advocate or support feeding carnivores as vegetarians. I made this video because passionate vegetarians or vegans often times feel otherwise, they really want their carnivorous animal to become a vegan or vegetarian. I regularly get calls from potential new clients that hear I am a vegetarian veterinarian and believe that I will be supportive of their desire to transition their carnivores onto a vegetarian diet and yes, they are sad to find out that I am not supportive of this.

Most importantly, many veterinarians, including myself, have met many clients that say "Well I have been feeding my dog as a vegan for 2 years and she appears to be doing great" only to see them several years later for preventable degenerative diseases including type 2 diabetes from too many carbohydrates, heart failure from lack of amino acids and really substantial musculoskeletal problems from trace mineral nutritional deficiencies. Most pet owners who force their carnivorous companion animals to eat meat free diets are placing their personal beliefs in a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle ahead of their pet's physiological requirement for a meat based diet.

My vegan friend, Megan, didn't like it when I used the term "forced" with her so I told her by default she could offer her dog two options and this is the most humane way to do it. A fresh species appropriate, ethically raised, meat based diet or a fresh vegan based diet and then see which one her dog ate. She said "I don't like the fact that you are saying the term "force", so my suggestion would be to do a buffet and offer your dog a species appropriate meat based diet and a species appropriate vegan diet and then let your dog decide; obviously you know what dogs will pick.
So here are my concluding comments which in my opinion is a little bit of common sense, if your personal eating habits or philosophy are so strong that everyone in your family must abide by them then I am going to encourage you to pick a species to care for whose God given dietary requirements are very similar and line up with yours. Pushing a personal nutritional philosophy on another species that doesn't have the same biological requirements isn't ethical.

On the flip side, if you are a gung-ho carnivore or you are really into the paleo diet and that is your personal choice, that's wonderful but then forcing a paleo lifestyle onto a pet rabbit who is a vegan by nature, to do the Atkins thing, well it's not fair to the rabbit. You don't get a pet snake and be angry that it's not eating salad. If you can't bear the thought of feeding meat to a meat eating animal, then please choose to care for a vegetarian pet whose nutritional needs align with your personal eating habits; done!

Gaby: That makes sense!

Doug: Yeah, it's almost shocking that that kind of thing needs to be laid out.

Elliot: You would assume it's just common sense.

Jonathan: Thank you Zoya, that was very good and very well spoken by Dr. Becker. I agree with Doug; it does seem kind of sad that it needs to be laid out but apparently it does for some people.

Tiffany: That's how attached people are to their silly beliefs I guess.

[Break in connection, content lost]

Gaby: We are having connection problems.

Tiffany: Don't let your lard get over 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

Doug: Re-cap.

Jonathan: That's the summary.

Doug: I wonder if we are having these problems if we should maybe wrap it up and maybe share this next time.

Jonathan: Sure, that sounds good to me. Everybody can look up deep frying this week and they can deep-fry some bacon and then we will loop back around to that next week.

Doug: That's your homework.

Gaby: I like my homework!

Tiffany: Bacon!

Jonathan: Ok, just wrapping up, let's say thanks to our chatters for participating today and to everybody for listening. Thanks to the crew there for staying on top of the connection issues and actually bringing us back so we could wrap it up. Screw you to the cyber attackers who took us down!

Doug: The evil GSK.

Jonathan: We will be back next week, make sure to check out radio.sott.net for the other two shows, The Truth Perspective which will be on tomorrow and Behind The Headlines which will be on Sunday and if you visit radio.sott.net the accurate times will be posted there no matter what your time zone so do check that out. So thanks again everybody and we will see you next Friday.

All: Goodbyes