Monday, July 23, 2012

Health Freedom and the News: Merck vs The Wall Street Journal


I don't generally blog about topical issues, but today - Dr. Mercola's post prompted me to write about Merck aka The Wall Street Journal.

A few days ago, the Wall Street Journal published an article about a lawsuit against Merck.  Former employers of Merck accuse the company of falsifying evidence about the mumps vaccine, and falsifying results of mumps vaccine testing - and publishing false results on vaccine information inserts. They claim that these lies gave Merck a monopoly in the sales of mumps vaccines - costing the taxpayers billions of dollars for a vaccine that was far less effective, and possibly more dangerous than represented.

A few days ago, this news didn't surprise me.  I am currently doing some research of a vaccine blog post, and I thought it would be useful info when I'm working on that post. What do I think about vaccines?  To tell the truth, I'm not sure.  I believe that the concept of vaccines is valid, and that they can work - but I also believe that each specific vaccine needs to be tested and constantly measured to ensure that it is both effective and safe.

Today, Mercola advises that the Wall Street Journal article is gone. It has disappeared from their website and also from all internet cache sites.  Google, for example, and Bing - don't seem to know it existed.  Links that were published are suddenly 'broken'.  According to Mercola, the article disappeared after an "elite" network of CFOs from the world’s top corporations met at the WSJ. Merck is on that executive council." You can view Mercola's post and comments here. 

It's worth checking out the Mercola article, and the comments as well.  I've actually made a point of saving the article to my computer, and also saving a PDF of the court documents because I'm worried about more censorship. 

I believe in health freedom - and it is difficult to attain any kind of freedom when our major news organizations decide what to publish, what not to publish - and what to 'unpublish' based on pressure from corporate interests. Frankly, why should anything they publish be 'unpublished'? If they want to apologize - they should be honest about it and apologize.  Unpublishing, making the news disappear is downright Orwellian. 

Everyone has a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of healthiness.  We all have a right to the news, not just the news that corporations decide to allow us to read.  Yesterday's news is part of history and should not be disappeared.

to your health, tracy
Tracy is the author of two book about healthicine: