VACCINES. "We can handle an open discussion on vaccines". But we are not getting one. The views of two ex-Guardian readers.

Soroush Ebrahimi and I have at least two things in common.

• We are both homeopaths. 
• And we are both former readers of the Guardian newspaper.

There is a third link too, as both of us now believe that these two things are incompatible. As homeopaths we both expect to come under constant attack from the conventional medical establishment - during the last 15-20 years this has become an occupational hazard. What we do not, and cannot accept is that 'our' newspaper, one that we bought because of it open and liberal stance on social and political issues, should have become so opposed to any kind of health debate.

Soroush sent me a copy of his letter sent recently to Sarah Boseley (Health Editor of the Guardian), and he has given me permission to reproduce it here - not least because he is not expecting any response from the newspaper. This is it

     "As a Guardian reader of many years I am well aware that you are very pro-vaccination.

     "We rely on organizations like FDA, CDC and WHO to tell us the truth about the safety of medicines in general and particularly regarding vaccines. But what we find is the ‘game-keeper’ has become the poacher. I would like you to kindly read this article by Robert F Kennedy Jr., 'Americans can handle an open discussion on vaccines' , published by the Children's Health Defence website. In this you will see that:

• "FDA receives 45% of its annual budget from industry.
• The World Health Organization (WHO) gets roughly half its budget from private sources, including the pharmaceutical industry and its allied foundations. 
• And CDC, frankly, is a vaccine company; it owns 56 vaccine patents and buys and distributes $4.6 billion in vaccines annually through the Vaccines for Children program, which is over 40% of its total budget.
• The pharmaceutical industry directly funds, populates and controls dozens of CDC programs through the CDC foundation. 
• A British Medical Journal editorial excoriates CDC’s sweetheart relationship with pharma quotes UCLA Professor of Medicine Jerome R. Hoffman “most of us were shocked to learn the CDC takes funding from industry… It is outrageous that industry is apparently allowed to punish the CDC if the agency conducts research that has potential to cut into profits.
• For American kids born in 1986, only 12.8% had chronic diseases. That number has grown to 54% among the vaccine generation (those born after 1986) in lockstep with the expanding schedule.
• Dr. Aaby was one of five co-authors of a 2017 study of the diphtheria tetanus, and pertussis (DTP) vaccine, the most widely used vaccine on earth, which found that children who received DTP had ten times the risk of dying compared to DTP-unvaccinated children.

      "I would really appreciate your comments especially if you can refute any of RFK’s assertions, and I look forward to hearing from you soon.

     "Kind regards, Soroush Ebrahimi

I have asked Soroush to let me know if the Guardian responds to his letter, and if they do I will share their response here. However, the hostility of the Guardian towards any form of natural medicine during the last 20 years, alongside its meek and uncritical compliance to the agenda of the conventional medical establishment, means that we are expecting little.

If the Guardian was still an open and liberal newspaper it would not only respond to Soroush's letter, it would commission Robert F Kennedy to write an article outlining his views. It would examine those views, investigate them, and it would ask those with a differing view to respond to them.

It would, in other words, initiate a health debate on vaccines, and the overall impact conventional medicine has had on our nation's health during its 70 years of almost total dominance within the NHS.

Yet the Guardian, alongside the rest of the mainstream media in the UK, steadfastly refuses to do so. This is why there is little or no 'informed' patient choice in this country about vaccines, and pharmaceutical drugs generally.

• Vaccines, we are told, are safe; and any suggestion that they are cause harm is censored by the mainstream media.
• Pharmaceutical drugs are 'wonder cures', they keep people alive; and if anyone suggests that people now suffer more chronic disease than ever before, they are not heard because the Guardian, and other papers, do not want to know.

Robert F Kennedy, Jn, is correct. We can handle an honest debate on vaccines. Indeed we desperately need to have one. But in order to survive newspapers have to listen to its paymasters, and this is no longer its readers, it's the advertisers. And it's been estimated that some 70% of advertising revenues now comes from the pharmaceutical and allied industries.

So Kennedy is not published in the mainstream media, his views are aired on the internet, by the Children's Health Defence website. And the internet is, of course, fake news, it cannot be relied upon, and so now the conventional medical establishment wants to stop it being published.

All this confirms one thing. The Guardian is no longer an open, liberal newspaper. It is struggling financially, and perhaps one reason for this is that people like Soroush and myself will no longer support it.

And another is that everyone who has received homeopathic treatment will quickly recognise that what it says about natural medicine is untrue..... so why should they believe what the Guardian writes about any other subject is not equally biased and unreliable?

Why should it be?