by David Reavill
In 1955, I was in first grade and waiting to receive my polio vaccine. I was surprised. I stood in the longest line I’d ever seen, waiting for “the shot.” I didn’t know much about Polio, but it had my parents on edge.
A week before, the School Principal sent home a letter explaining to my mother and father that, unless they objected, students at Wayside School would get the “shot.” Only one boy in my class objected. He would sit out the ordeal in the Principal’s office. The rest of us would roll up our sleeves and get the needle.
I remember it as a solemn affair. No talking was allowed. There were a couple of sniffles as the students got the injection, but most of the kids were as quiet as “Church mice.”
Polio was a disease that plagued the country for years. A generation before, in the 1930s, President Franklin Roosevelt used a wheelchair after suffering from Polio. For my parents, Polio was one of their most significant fears. Roosevelt, like us kids, was an avid swimmer, and at the time, we thought there was a connection between swimming and Polio. Naturally, parents welcomed this new Salk Vaccine as protection from this dreaded disease. That’s why nearly every student in my school received the Vax.
Unfortunately, that sense of safety disappeared a few months later when specific doses of the Salk Vaccine had an issue. These labs produced the Salk vaccine using actual, but now dead, animal poliovirus. It’s called the “dead virus” method. The problem was that not all of the viruses used had been dead.
Six labs produced the Polio Vaccine under what were supposed to be clinically safe procedures. Regrettably, that was not true for Berkley, California-based Cutter Labs. Cutter was responsible for sending their vaccine to the mid-west.
After rumors surfaced of unsafe conditions in Cutter Labs, government inspectors discovered that their Vaccines contained live polio virus, viruses that wouldn’t prevent Polio. Instead, they would infect people with Polio. Many in the mid-west did get the disease. Although most cases were mild, the impact was substantial. Dr. Howard Markel, writing in the New Yorker, estimates that up to 70,000 received a mild case of Polio, with 200 permanently paralyzed and ten dead.
In 1955 the Salk Vaccines used real-world Polio viruses to produce a Vaccine using traditional methods. Today another pandemic is sweeping the nation, and another “Vaccine” is being used to halt its deadly spread. But this new type of vaccine is as different from the traditional Vax as night and day.
Today’s modern Covid Vaccine doesn’t use viruses to generate the vaccine. This new Covid-19 “Vaccine” is, in fact, a gene therapy. Instead of viruses, it utilizes messenger RNA to encourage our bodies to produce an internal reaction that will kill the Covid-19 Virus. There is no possibility of the same kind of “live virus” accident that happened at Cutter Labs. As I understand it, the entire development process for the Covid-19 Vaccine was computer generated.
Regrettably, just like the Polio Vaccine, today’s Covid Vaccine also has seen its share of death and injury. The Cutter Polio Vaccine is estimated to have injured 70,000, and today’s VAERS Report (the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System) indicates that the Covid-19 Vaccine has harmed 1.5 million. The Cutter vaccine permanently disabled 200, and today’s Covid Vaccine reports 197 thousand hospitalized. Perhaps most important, the Cutter Polio Vaccine contributed to the death of ten, and today’s Covid Vaccine has contributed to the demise of over 35 thousand.
Understandingly, with that number of injuries from the Polio Vaccine, several lawsuits were filed against Cutter Labs and the over Vaccine makers. Those lawsuits provided interesting precedents, which will likely reappear in any current lawsuit against today’s vaccine makers. The Courts ruled that while the Vaccine makers could be held financially liable, they were not criminally negligent. The rulings limited the awards against Cutter, a critical consideration for the family-owned Cutter, which as a private company, had nowhere near the assets of a modern-day Pfizer or Johnson and Johnson.
Cutter Labs went on in business for nearly twenty more years, in 1974. Cutter Labs merged with German Pharmacy Giant Bayer for an undisclosed amount.
Currently, there are a couple of avenues for the vaccine injured looking for compensation. First and foremost is the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, administered by the Health Resources and Services Administration. But you should not expect a quick resolution to your claim. Today over 11,000 claims have been filed, but only about one-tenth have been resolved.
According to the National Law Review, over 11,000 lawsuits have been filed because of a Vaccine injury. But the lion’s share of these is against employers for mandating their workers take the shot.
The huge issue is whether the Covid Makers themselves can be sued. As part of the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA), the Federal Government exempted those companies: Pfizer, Johnson and Johnson, Moderna, and others from legal liability. However, there are several lawsuits underway which challenge that exemption. I believe that we will see this issue settled by the Supreme Court.
There is a vast difference between the Federal Government of the mid-twentieth century and the twenty-first century. After reports of the Polio Vaccine injuries emerged, the Federal Government immediately suspended all distribution of the Vaccine in April of 1955. The Vaccines were not allowed to resume distribution until the authorities were satisfied with their “safety and efficacy” (to use today’s language). Today’s regulators, the FDA and all the rest, assure us that things are “save and effective,” take our word for it. One strategy proactively protects the public. The other is simply reactive.
Although nearly everything else has changed, the technology, the medical science, the nature of vaccines, still the process of lining up to get your Jab remains eerily similar to long ago.