Summer 2022 www.nvda.org 5 Featured Article Health Officials Said Cigarettes, Heroin, and Asbestos Were Safe; Today They Say, ‘Get a COVID Shot’ By Aaron Poynton Millions of hardworking Americans are being pushed into the shadows of society by corporations that have aligned with the Biden administration’s proposed vaccine mandates. Workers are being forced to choose between their employment or sacrificing their religious convictions, free will, or well-being. Employers should not be so autocratic and hardline in their policies because, besides being inhumane and medically unnecessary, they could also end up being on the wrong side of history. History is replete with times government and medical authorities got serious health issues wrong, reversing course on things it once considered safe. Lead paint and pipes, asbestos, heroin, and cigarettes—these are just a few notable examples. In another example, the U.S. government was once the world’s biggest buyer of cigarettes. The U.S. Army’s chief medical officer, William Gorgas, pushed it to soldiers to sustain morale and discipline, calm nerves, boost alertness, foster camaraderie, and suppress hunger. Today, with the benefits of long-term studies, we know that cigarettes are a Group 1 carcinogenic, and the Centers for Disease Control states, “Tobacco smoke has at least 70 chemicals that cause cancer.” Likewise, the government once deemed asbestos safe, and the U.S. Patent Office even issued a patent for its use as an “Improved Compound for Roofing and Other Purposes.” Again, with the benefit of time, we know that asbestos causes mesothelioma, and those symptoms can take up to 40 years to appear. Today, the once-safe material that was promoted as “completely harmless…so safe, so effective, it actually is used to help filter the air in hospital operating rooms” (and cigarettes) is responsible for more than 255,000 deaths annually, 114 billion dollars in direct costs, and is the longest-running mass tort litigation in history. Drugs and vaccines are also imperfect. The CDC reports there have been numerous vaccine safety concerns and recalls, dating back to the Cutter Incident in 1955 when the polio vaccine caused 40,000 cases of polio, leaving 200 children with paralysis and killing ten. (Editor’s Note: Compounding the issue, the CDC changed its definition of vaccine 01 SEP 2021 to accommodate the novel experimental formulations for COVID, which did not fit the historical definition of vaccines.) Moreover, a Yale School of Medicine study found that nearly one-third of drugs approved between 2001 and 2010 had major safety issues years after they were made widely available to patients. It took a median of 4.2 years after approval for these safety concerns to surface, and issues were more common among drugs that were granted “accelerated approval” and those approved near the regulatory deadline. » 1 2 3 4 5
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