ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR: MY RESPONSE TO JOHN OLIVER

As presented by Alexandra Bruce on Forbidden Knowledge
ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR: MY RESPONSE TO JOHN OLIVER

The hideous Neo-Liberal propaganda-comedy of John Oliver, Stephen Colbert and Trevor Noah demonstrates the stranglehold that the Corporatist–Fascist agenda now has on pop culture. An example of this is shown here of John Oliver sniping at Robert F Kennedy Jr over his very valid concerns about the mercury-based preservative used in many vaccines, Thimerosal.

Kennedy recently appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show to rebut the savaging that he’d received by Oliver. Although otherwise healthy, Kennedy suffers from spasmodic dysphonia (aka laryngeal dystonia), a rare neurological disorder that causes involuntary spasms of the vocal cords, so I am transcribing their conversation here.

The segment opens with the abysmal John Oliver clip, followed by a clip of Kennedy giving a speech, in which he says, “For 33 years, I’ve been working to get mercury out of fish. Nobody as ever called me ‘anti-fish’ and because I want mercury out of vaccines, I should not be called ‘anti-vaccines.’”

Carlson, conservative pundit and father of four children then asks, “As someone whose bonafides as a Democrat and a Liberal are unimpeachable, and yet, they piled on you – why? Why is raising questions about the safety of vaccines a no-go zone on the Left?”

Kennedy responds, “It’s not consistent with the traditional Liberal posture of skepticism towards large corporate power and particularly the pharmaceutical industry and government agencies. The CDC has been characterized in at least 4 Federal studies as a cesspool of corruption because of its pervasive interactions – entanglements, I should say – with the vaccine industry…

“The CDC vaccine branch…is really a subsidiary of the vaccine industry. It sells $4.1 billion worth of vaccines a year. It spends about $4.6 billion, about half of its budget promoting vaccines and it only spends $20 million testing vaccines (!)…I’ve been meeting recently with the heads of various Federal agencies and one of the shocking things about vaccines is that there’s very little safety testing.

“If you have a normal drug, let’s say Vioxx or Viagra, if you want to bring that to market, typically, FDA requires you to do double-blind placebo studies, so you take 9,000 people, give them a pill and 9,000 people and give them a pill that’s identical except it’s sugar and you watch them, typically for 5 years and you see if there’s harm. But with vaccines, all of those requirements are waived.”

When Carlson asks Kennedy if he is getting paid for his advocacy, Kennedy responds, “I’m not. In fact, I’m getting unpaid for this! It’s been probably the worst career move I’ve ever made! But it’s deeply concerning to me. If you look at the vaccine schedule, [it] was expanded dramatically in 1989. In 1987, Congress passed a law giving blanket immunity from liability to vaccine manufacturers. So, suddenly, vaccines became pay dirt. It was a gold rush to put vaccines on the schedule.

“I got 3 vaccines when I was a kid and I was fully compliant. My children got 69 vaccines. Today, children get 74 vaccines. 74 shots of 16 vaccines. And nobody has ever tested what all of those vaccines do together. And in fact, many of the vaccines have not been tested, at all for the illnesses that are associated with them.”

Carlson then says, “I don’t know what the answer is but I know what the questions ought to be and you always have a place on this show to ask them,” to which Kennedy responds, “That is very kind and courageous of you because, as you know, most television hosts will not let you on to talk about this issue. On the evening news, typically 17 out of 24 advertisements are pharmaceutical advertisements and most hosts are frightened of that. So, I’m very grateful to you for your willingness [to have me on].”

Editor’s Comment: In a thoroughly confused society as America resulting from more than a century of corporatized mass communications, and the influence of plutocratic power on politics,  we have reached an age in which the criminality of the US government has opened the box to all manner of accusations. Many of these, proffered by radical critics, are absolutely spot on, especially if they relate to analyses of US society in terms of true democracy, equality, and the nature of its abominable system (capitalism) and its latest incarnation, global imperialism with a human rights face. That said, there are areas where the skeptical view may be in order, as we deal not so much with irrefutable facts (as the abject course of US foreign policy in Syria), but matters of scientific record. This is not the place to go into an in-depth examination of the claims and counterclaims of those who espouse and those who oppose vaccinations for children and others, nor, as some absolutists would have it, the complete ban of all vaccines. In our view this is a field that has to be assessed almost on a case by case basis, balancing opinion on a tightrope, as it were, as the pitfalls on each side are obvious. What cannot be refuted is the structural, political and economic defects of a governmental agency (FDA) overrun by corporate power in the form of Big Pharma and other interested players of ill repute, as noted by the anti-vaccine critics. Caveat emptor is therefore advised.—PG