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Vaccine Whistleblower William Thompson Revisited:
A Look Back at a Lukewarm Scandal
By Ginny Stoner | nworeporter.com
Image by Ed. | nworeporter.com
August 28, 2042
Twenty-eight years ago this week, a big to-do erupted in the vaccine world when CDC whistleblower William W. Thompson came forward with a confession: he and several other respected researchers at the CDC had covered up evidence that the MMR vaccine was linked to an increase in autism in African-American boys when it was given prior to 3 years old.
It had all the makings of a tasty public scandal: wrongdoing by people in high places with lots of letters after their names, secretly recorded confessions, and hints of a government coverup with undercurrents of racism.Unfortunately, what had at first seemed like a thick, juicy scandal to really sink your teeth into, ended up being little more than a bowl of bland oatmeal.
Never one to be deterred by a story with little potential, NWO Reporter contributing editor Henry Foster quickly jumped in the news van when he received an email invitation for an interview from the man who was right smack in the middle of this historic quasi drama -- Dr. William Thompson himself.
Foster: Dr. Thompson, tell us about your confession. Some people said the whole scandal was planned and orchestrated. Was it?
Thompson: Good Lord, no! Are you kidding? I almost lost everything. Instead of sitting here in my luxury suite at the Senior Resort for the Aged Affluent, I might have been mouldering away in some sleazy charity retirement death camp in Detroit.
It all started with the Paxil. Damn stuff made me run my mouth like crazy. I would even call up my senile Aunt Esther and chat for hours about her Kewpie Doll collection. I wanted to smack my psychiatrist after this whole thing was over. But I was going through some stuff, you know? Mid-life crisis and whatnot.
Anyway, I ended up meeting a few mothers whose kids had autism, and they started telling me what they were going through. They'd talk about how they had hoped their son would go to college and grow up to be a doctor like me, but instead, they were just hoping they could find a way to keep him from banging his head against the wall and masturbating in public.
After that, my mind started to wander to places I'd never allowed it to go before -- dangerous places.
I mean, when we did the MMR study, all we were doing was comparing whether it made a difference to vaccinate earlier or later.
I started wondering, what if we did some studies comparing the health of fully vaccinated versus fully unvaccinated kids? Not just looking at autism, but other stuff as well, like autoimmune disorders, asthma, severe allergies, or even cancer.
And what if we did safety studies on vaccines using real placebos for the control group, like saline, instead of placebos that contained all the same stuff as the real vaccine, except the germ -- the same aluminum, mercury, formaldehyde, foreign DNA, and so forth. I started thinking about the fact that the EPA classifies some of these vaccine ingredients as poison, and lists symptoms of poisoning that look strangely similar to a lot of the health problems kids are having today.
Like I said, I was treading in very dangerous territory -- places I knew I couldn't go if I wanted to keep my job.
I mean, when we did the MMR study, all we were doing was comparing whether it made a difference to vaccinate earlier or later.
I started wondering, what if we did some studies comparing the health of fully vaccinated versus fully unvaccinated kids? Not just looking at autism, but other stuff as well, like autoimmune disorders, asthma, severe allergies, or even cancer.
And what if we did safety studies on vaccines using real placebos for the control group, like saline, instead of placebos that contained all the same stuff as the real vaccine, except the germ -- the same aluminum, mercury, formaldehyde, foreign DNA, and so forth. I started thinking about the fact that the EPA classifies some of these vaccine ingredients as poison, and lists symptoms of poisoning that look strangely similar to a lot of the health problems kids are having today.
Like I said, I was treading in very dangerous territory -- places I knew I couldn't go if I wanted to keep my job.
Foster: How so? According to my programming, vaccines are super-safe, and although a few fragile outliers might have some ill effects, overall, vaccines have saved the world from widespread death from disease.
Thompson: Well, yes (chuckling softly), I was programmed to believe that, too. I remember my mother used to take me to old cemeteries and show me graves of whole families of kids that had died, and she told me the vaccine program had stopped that, and I might not be alive without vaccines. Or I might have withered arms or legs from polio like my uncle Bob. It really made an impression.
I should never, ever have looked into that.
When I found out that the polio and deaths had already mostly stopped before the vaccines ever came into widespread use, apparently just from improvements in nutrition, sanitation and water purity, I was totally floored. I think I really did go a little crazy around that time. It was like the whole paradigm of my life was crashing down around me.
I knew I had to do something to stop it. Prestigious government jobs and lucrative pensions don't grow on trees, you know. I had a $10,000-a-month mortgage to pay, a new Mercedes to buy, and a comfortable retirement with lots of exotic, fun-filled vacations to think about.
I started to think, maybe if I confessed -- confessed just to that little fib we told in the MMR study -- I could stop my mind meltdown, patch up my crumbling paradigm and save my future. So I found a vaccine priest, and I confessed.
I started to think, maybe if I confessed -- confessed just to that little fib we told in the MMR study -- I could stop my mind meltdown, patch up my crumbling paradigm and save my future. So I found a vaccine priest, and I confessed.
Then that little rat priest spilled the beans, recorded my calls without my knowledge, and told everyone about the data I'd leaked. I wanted to strangle him.
Foster: Yes, I can imagine. That's quite a betrayal. It seems like there's so little integrity in the world anymore, doesn't it?
Thompson: Yeah, tell me about it. Anyway, of course the CDC got wind of it, and all hell broke loose at first. They basically told me I was going to lose everything -- my job, pension, everything.
We were going to get sued, everyone knew that. There would be a class action. The attorneys fees would be in the millions by the time it was over. It would settle, of course -- they always do.
Do you know how much it costs to support just one of those disabled kids for life, give him special rehabilitation, and all that? Hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars for each one. I'd lose everything I have, everything I would ever have.
They said I'd most likely get a criminal indictment, too -- maybe even prison time. Just like all the other whistleblowers who seemed to have fallen through the cracks of the Whistleblower Protection Act.
That night, I cried. For the first time in years, I cried.
The next day, the higher-ups called me in to talk. They had a Solution. They had a plan that would save both me and the CDC. This whole fiasco was, in a way, an opportunity. A chance for the CDC to clean up its shadowy image and restore the public trust.
The next day, the higher-ups called me in to talk. They had a Solution. They had a plan that would save both me and the CDC. This whole fiasco was, in a way, an opportunity. A chance for the CDC to clean up its shadowy image and restore the public trust.
I would come out with a humble public apology for my sins, along with a staunch Hail Mary to the vaccine church. Then I would keep my mouth shut and wait for further instructions.
In return, I could stay on the team. My job, my pension, everything I had would be safe. All the attorneys fees and payouts from the lawsuits would be covered by taxpayers.
The CDC would say they were grateful for my integrity, and give me a Whistleblower of the Year Award.
As a bonus, they would do everything they could to destroy the vaccine priest who betrayed me.
I mean, it's not like the research team had actually outright lied -- we had "a reason" for omitting some of the data, and even though it hid some of the dangers of the MMR for some kids, in the back of all our minds, we could think of it as just "poor judgment".
So that's how we spun it. Some of the CDC researchers had used "poor judgment" and regretted it. The CDC would express their disapproval, apologize to the public for the breach of trust, and tell them it would never happen again.
It was, in the end, good PR -- a garden of thorns from which we all emerged smelling like a rose, with only a few scratches to show for it. ***
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