https://www.bbc.com/future/article/2020 ... ir-of-1976
The fiasco of the 1976 ‘swine flu affair’
It was around 10:30 in the morning on 12 October 1976, and Imperato was at the Chelsea Health Clinic, an Art Deco building in the lower west side of Manhattan. The clinic was one of around 60 locations dotted around New York, preparing to vaccinate almost everyone in the city.
That year, fears of a swine flu pandemic had loomed large, so President Gerald Ford had ordered an unprecedented mass vaccination of everyone in the United States. As Imperato rolled up his sleeve, it was the first day of the effort in New York.
Imperato was deputy health commissioner and the chair of the task force charged with rolling out the programme in the city, so had volunteered to be photographed for the newspapers as he got his shot. The mayor of New York City, when asked, had refused, so Imperato had stepped up. Turnout was strong across the city that morning.
But what was meant to be a ceremonial opening and positive public relations effort would turn sour. That week, the papers had begun reporting troubling news from vaccine clinics in Pittsburgh: three apparently unexplained deaths due to heart attacks.
“I remember that day. I remember it vividly,” recalls Imperato. “I saw those headlines on the subway. And I said, ‘Good God. All hell is breaking loose here.’”
https://archive.org/stream/murder-by-in ... s_djvu.txt
In what is now known as "the Great Swine Flu Massacre," the
President of the United States, Gerald Ford, was enlisted to persuade
the public to undergo a national vaccination campaign. The moving
force behind the scheme was a $135 million windfall profit for the
major drug manufacturers. They had a "swine flu" vaccine which
suspicious pig raisers had refused to touch, fearful it might wipe out
their crop. The manufacturers had only tried to get $80 million from
the swine breeders; balked in this sale, they turned to the other
market, humans. The impetus for the national swine flu vaccine
came directly from the Disease Control Center in Atlanta, Georgia.
Perhaps coincidentally, Jimmy Carter, a member of the Trilateral
Commission, was then planning his presidential campaign in
Georgia. The incumbent President, Gerald Ford, had all the
advantages of a massive bureaucracy to aid him in his election
campaign, while the ineffectual and little known Jimmy Carter
offered no serious threat in the election. Suddenly, out of Atlanta,
came the Center of Disease Control plan for a national
immunization campaign against "swine flu." The fact that there was
not a single known case of this flu in the United States did not deter
the Medical Monopoly from their scheme. The swine breeders had
been shocked by the demonstrations of the vaccine on a few pigs,
which had collapsed and died. One can imagine the anxious
conferences in the headquarters of the great drug firms, until one
bright young man remarked, "Well, if the swine breeders won't
inject it into their animals, our only other market is to inject it into
people."
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The Ford sponsored swine flu campaign almost died an early
death, when a conscientious public servant, Dr. Anthony Morris,
formerly of HEW and then active as director of the Virus Bureau at
the Food and Drug Administration, declared that there could be no
authentic swine flu vaccine, because there had never been any cases
of swine flu on which they could test it. Dr. Morris then went public
with his statement that "at no point were the swine flu vaccines
effective." He was promptly fired, but the damage had been done.
The damage control consisted of that great humanitarian, Walter
Cronkite, and the President of the United States, combining their
forces to come to the rescue of the Medical Monopoly. Walter
Cronkite had President Ford appear on his news program to urge the
American people to submit to the inoculation with the swine flu
vaccine. CBS then or later could never find any reason to air any
analysis or scientific critique of the swine flu vaccine, which was
identified as containing many toxic poisons, including alien viral
protein particles, formaldehyde, residues of chicken and egg embryo
substances, sucrose, theimorosal (a derivative of poisonous
mercury), polysorbate and some eighty other substances.
Meanwhile, back at the virus laboratories, after Dr. Anthony
Morris has been summarily fired, a special team of workers was
rushed in to clean out the four rooms in which he had conducted his
scientific tests. The laboratory was filled with animals whose
records verified his claims, representing some three years of
constant research. All of the animals were immediately destroyed,
and Morris' records were burned. They did not go so far as to sow
salt throughout the area, because they believed their job was done.
On April 15, 1976, Congress passed Public Faw 94-266, which
provided $135 million of taxpayers’ funds to pay for a national
swine flu inoculation campaign. HEW was to distribute the vaccine
to state and local health agencies on a national basis for inoculation,
at no charge. Insurance agencies then went public with their warning
that they would not insure drug firms against possible suits from the
results of swine flu inoculation, because no studies had been carried
out which could predict its effects. It was to foil the insurance
companies that CBS had Gerald Ford make his impassioned appeal
to 215,000,000 Americans to save themselves while there was still
time, and to rush down to the friendly local health department and
get the swine flu vaccination, at absolutely no charge. This may
have been CBS' finest hour in its distinguished career of "public
service."
Hardly had the swine flu campaign been completed than the
reports of the casualties began to pour in. Within a few months,
claims totalling $1.3 billion had been filed by victims who had
suffered paralysis from the swine flu vaccine. The medical
authorities proved equal to the challenge; they leaped to the defense
of the Medical Monopoly by labeling the new epidemic, "Guillain-
Barre Syndrome." There have since been increasing speculations
that the ensuing epidemic of AIDS which began shortly after Gerald
Ford's public assurances, was merely a viral variation of the swine
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flu vaccine. And what of the perpetrator of the Great Swine Flu
Massacre, President Gerald Ford? As the logical person to blame for
the catastrophe, Ford had to endure a torrent of public criticism,
which quite naturally resulted in his defeat for election (he had
previously been appointed when the agents of the international drug
operations had ushered Richard Nixon out of office). The unknown
Jimmy Carter, familiar only to the supersecret fellow members in
the Trilateral Commission, was swept into office by the outpouring
of rage against Gerald Ford. Carter proved to be almost as serious a
national disaster as the swine flu epidemic, while Gerald Ford was
retired from politics to life. Not only did he lose the election; he was
also sentenced to spend his remaining years trudging wearily up and
down the hot sandy stretches of the Palm Springs Golf course.
“Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; - Exodus 20:5