While watching the local news this morning...

[Carl_King]

...I saw a 5 minute piece on the importance of micro-chipping your pets! Shaking my head and sipping my coffee, I sighed internally at the thought of what this was really all about, and began joking with my wife about how the next step will obviously be children, and that we should probably ask about it at our daughter's check up next week. Her response was to look up the producer of the featured product's website (to see if there were any coupons or discount offers, of course) and what we found was incredibly disturbing.

http://public.homeagain.com/

The website itself doesn't seem threatening at all, but rather quite comforting with its message of hope and cute little Peanuts characters. What scares us is only noticeable if you look aaaaaall the way at the bottom of the page where it says that the manufacturing company (Intervet) is a subsidiary of Merck & Co.

Wait a second, that sounds so familiar... Where have I heard that name before?!? Oh yeah, aren't they the producers of the vaccines my child is scheduled to receive? Sure enough, they are the leading producer of MMR vaccines, as well as the HPV Vaccine Gardasil, and various other treatments distributed across the states and world wide.

What starts as a sarcastic whim has now turned in to a paranoid panic fest, and we both began reading as much as we could about this company. We found that they rank highest in out of court settlements for death and injury caused by their products, and have actually been caught at least once (in Australia) for publishing phony medical journals supporting false claims based on fake research. For a company that has been around since the 1800s, to have screwed up as much as they have, and to not only still be around, but to have continued to grow into the massive conglomerate that they have become raises all kinds of alarms for me.

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/da...74705dex21.htm

The link above shows all of their registered subsidiaries. These guys have their hands everywhere and are tied to just about everything from feedlot management solutions for beef and pork, to satellite surveillance and Biosoftware (whatever the fuck that is). Now I've flirted with conspiracy theories in my past, and I remember warnings of RFIDs ending up in people's bloodstreams and tissues without anyone ever noticing, but I've never been more legitimately fearful of such a possibility than I am after tracing this very simple paper trail.

I thought there were more than enough reasons to tune the whole anti-vaxxer thing out, but now I'm seriously second guessing. My daughter is due for her first round of MMR and immune boosters next Monday, and Merck makes the shots she is supposed to receive. WTF would you do???

[Tranlers]

To be honest, I'm at a slump of my own. They control a major part of the world's market and do as they please with it. You said that they lied about their research. This gives me the idea that they could be falsifying other products. If that is the case, I would stay away from the vaccination from that company and try to find others. On the other hand, if they are the lead in vaccines, then the vaccines must be doing something right. If you ask me, I would consult the doctor for the best solution. Thanks for sharing this. I will be sure to be more wary the next time I see Merk & Co.

[Joshua Jarboe]

I guess you have to do a risk analysis: which is more likely to hurt your kid, Merk & Co making harmful vaccines (which smells a bit crazy to me) or catching measles, mumps, rebella etc, maybe spreading that to other kids....

For context: I'm super suspicious of my government and many would probably regard my views as crazy. But I'm not at the point where I'm going to stop getting my kids immunized.

I'm not going to rush off and get them RFID tagged mind you! Gee whiz.

My two cents

[Carl_King]

100% sarcasm in reference to finding a coupon for chipping our kid. That's exactly the opposite of what we want =P

While it would certainly seem counterproductive and just plain bad for business to knowingly produce something intended to be helpful that turns out to be harmful in another way, that doesn't seem very uncommon among monstrously huge corporations (especially within the pharmaceutical industry). They'll always have something else to sell you when one of their products fails, so it's almost better to have risky products which could lead to more consumption of others (except in the case of Gardisil, which just flat out killed people).

Reading about the ties between this parent company and some of its subsidiaries suggests they have more than enough hands to shake to keep the ball rolling and more than enough cash to throw at anyone who gets too loud about the consequences of their poor or nefarious decision making. From being on the FDA's "fast track" for approval of new products after such a long history of failures and subsequent settlements, to their purposeful over-billing of medicaid and similar programs to further milk a system they already have by the balls, there's plenty of well documented reasons not to trust them, and that's only considering what's actually been brought to light.

I had previously heard of the political corruption and misinformed marketing ploy which led to MMR being the most subsidized and universally pushed vaccine (even though in the opinion of the CDC only measles and rubella actually posed a threat to the infants receiving the vaccine, while mumps didn't become nearly as severe until adolescence), but I never knew anything about who was involved or what else they might be involved in.

I know it's a crazy sort of connect the dots idea to accept, but it was incredibly unsettling to just look into it on a gut feeling and start to see such a horrifying picture come together. I'm not the type to buy into all the chem-trails or 9/11 stuff, but to have heard about something like this from friends who do, and then to start seeing something like this for myself, it's making me question my previous views...