On February 4, 1976, a young soldier at Ft. Dix, NJ named David Lewis died of a new form of flu. Other soldiers there became ill and recovered.
In the middle of February, F. David Matthews, the U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, announced that an epidemic of the flu that killed Pvt. Lewis was due in the fall. “The indication is that we will see a return of the 1918 flu virus that is the most virulent form of flu,” he said. He went on: The 1918 outbreak of “Spanish flu” killed half a million Americans, and the upcoming apocalypse was expected to kill a million.
President Ford was running for office and politicians saw an opportunity to appear as saviors to constituents. The resulting campaign pitch was every American should take the shot.
However, in the fall of 1976, dozens of Americans died within 48 hours of receiving the swine flu vaccine as 25% of the population was injected in 10 months. Fort-six million people obediently took the shot and 4,000 Americans then claimed damages of Uncle Sam amounting to $3.5 billion.
Two-thirds of the claims involved neurological damage and death. At the time of a 1979 60 Minutes swine flu episode the damaged people were unsatisfied with the government’s response. After 200 million doses were made and by the time the injections began, the flu never moved beyond Ft Dix and the vaccine was creating serious side effects.
Judy Roberts was a perfectly healthy teacher until injected in Nov 1976. Her legs immediately became numb and then she was totally paralyzed. She needed an operation to save her life. For 6 months she was a quadriplegic. The diagnoses was a neurological disorder called Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS)
She was confined to wheel chair for more than a year and eventually progressed to braces. More than 300 died from GBS and many survivors of GBS never fully recovered.
Dr. David Sencer, head of the CDC (Centers for Disease Control), developed the vaccine campaign that began Oct 1, 1976. At that time worldwide there were some cases reported but none confirmed. The CDC never confirmed any flu out breaks worldwide.
The informed consent document stated that the vaccine had been properly tested. However the form did not reveal that another untested vaccine was developed after the approved tested version. The untested drug was the one used on humans. It was called X53A. X53A was never field tested. Dr. Sencer when questioned by 60 Minutes Mike Wallace in 1979 said he could not recall that fact.
The consent form was to warn people of any serious complications from the shot but Judy Roberts said there was no such declaration. Dr. Sencer told 60 Minutes that no one ever informed him of the potential of neurological damage.
Dr. Michael Hattwick led the surveillance team for the CDC to identify any possible adverse effects of the shot and report those findings to his superiors. Hattwick told Mike Wallace that he was well-aware of neurological damage from the shot and reported his findings to those in charge.
In separate interviews Hattwick and Sencer said the other was lying about the fore- knowledge of neurological damage.
Wallace then showed Sencer a CDC report dated July 1976 showing potential neurological complications from the shot. Sencer, physically disturbed by the report along with Hattwick’s comments maintained that the risk of damage was worth it.
Then Wallace revealed the CDC advertising campaign listing many famous Americans that supposedly had taken the shot including television star Mary Tyler Moore. Moore denied on camera taking the shot fearing potential adverse reactions.
If there was a single factor behind the debacle over four decades ago, government records say it was the speed of the decision making, fueled by a political climate in which dissenters were chastised and punished.
"They moved too quickly. Mistakes were made," said Dr. Harvey Feinberg, director of the Institute of Medicine, who investigated the scandal for the federal government. "People had vivid memories of the 1918 flu epidemic, of young people dropping dead. It colored everything."
Congressional inquiries at the time and Feinberg's report, which was called "The Swine Flu Affair: Decision-Making on a Slippery Disease," found that the process was fast-tracked largely by Dr. David Sencer who lost his job over the fiasco. Feinberg's report described Sencer as a "wily autocrat" who managed, with little evidence that a pandemic would ensue, to steamroll the President into announcing a national campaign.
The risks were supposedly disclosed in the fine print of a two-page consent form at the time, although the rate of potential risk was not known, Hattwick said. Roberts and her husband never saw the disclaimer.
The swine flu inoculations were halted after a few months due to adverse reactions and no pandemic.
(Lou Binninger can be heard on No Hostages Radio podcast, live on KMYC 1410AM 10-1 Saturdays, read at Live with Lou on Facebook and at Nohostagesradio.com)
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