Big Tobacco Playbook

Larry Law

In his book, How to End the Autism Epidemic, J.B. Handley writes about how for fifty years the tobacco companies rejected the idea that tobacco caused cancer. It is instructive to review because this is the same playbook Big Pharma is using to stave off attacks on vaccination credibility.

"In November 1998 a Master Settlement Agreement was reached between tobacco companies and attorneys general from forty-six states. Tobacco companies were finally accountable for at least some of the damage cigarettes had caused. But the first science implicating tobacco was a mouse study published in 1953 in which scientists demonstrated, clearly and unequivocally, that cigarette tar caused cancer. The penalty of the settlement was $206 billion. What did US District Judge Gladys E. Kessler find the tobacco companies guilty of? 'Conspiracy.' There's that word again."
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"It took forty-five years for a reckoning because right after the mice study, to actively muddy the waters, tobacco companies formed the "Tobacco Industry Research Committee" so they could challenge all scientific evidence implicating tobacco. The organization provided hundreds of millions of dollars of funding for research at many of the leading institutions in the country that could sow doubt about the tobacco-cancer link. Producing "distracting research" that would sow endless doubt about a fast-emerging certainty became their primary goal. Committee members met with the leadership of every major newspaper, magazine, and television network, explaining their intent to fund a "research program devoted primarily to the public interest," which was really a euphemism for research that would exonerate tobacco., or at least muddy the scientific waters and generate as much doubt as possible about the link between smoking and lung cancer." They were able to extend the tobacco day of reckoning four decades!

Big Pharma is today's Big Tobacco. They are the largest purchaser of advertisements in mainstream media. They spend the most of any lobby working with Congress. They are in bed with governmental agencies. For example, Dr. Julie Gerberding was head of the CDC from 1998 to 2009 and oversaw a massive expansion in the number of vaccines approved to be given to children (and a massive explosion of autism cases during that same period!). Where did Dr. Gerberding go after her "successful" reign at CDC? She became the president of Merck's vaccine division. Merck is the largest pharmaceutical  company and the largest producer of vaccines. The vaccine market is worth $60 billion in 2020. In the 1980s there were no childhood epidemics. In the 1960s there were only three vaccines for children. Today there are 38. The vaccine industry was worth a paltry $170 million in the 1980s. $60 billion today represents a 350 percent increase!
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Autism is tobacco 2.0. Just like tobacco, there are mice studies showing exactly how a vaccine can cause autism in the brain of a newborn. Since 2010, the biological evidence has been accumulating. Scientists have discovered that autism is caused by an "immune activation event," which is exactly the thing vaccines are designed to do! In the 1970s the rate of autism was one in 10,000. Today it is one in 36. That's a gain of 30,000 percent! An epidemic like this must have a simple explanation, just like lung cancer was usually caused by smoking tobacco. But Big Pharma plays the tobacco playbook very well. They avoid cause and effect biological studies and focus on less powerful epidemiological studies. They smear scientists that don't support the party line. They lie to the public just like the CEOs from the seven Big Tobacco companies did when they stood before Congress and said that cigarettes were not addictive and were not causing cancer. When the profits are big enough, corporations do what they were designed to do: protect profits. For more information on vaccines, see my book.