[J.P.’s Moment of Common Sense on Broad View, KJFK 1230 AM Reno. Listen live Saturdays at 3:00 PM Pacific Time.]

Last week the U.S. government received its first shipment of a new medicine for treating smallpox.  That’s right, smallpox.  The new drug is called Arestvyr and this shipment is the beginning of a $463 million order for two million doses of the stuff.

If you’re confused by this news, it’s because you thought smallpox was cured forty years ago.  Well, it was.  Smallpox is the only human disease ever totally defeated.  It was officially certified as eradicated by the World Health Organization in 1979—which begs the question: why is the government spending so much money on a disease that no longer exists?

The answer you’ll get from the Obama administration is they’re protecting us from enemies who might re-create the smallpox virus, weaponize it, and spray it on New York.  Or crop dust the Super Bowl.  Or some other nightmarish notion.  That’s the official answer.  The real answer is more about political corruption and the pharmaceutical industry.

The company that makes Arestvyr is SIGA Technologies, a company whose controlling stockholder happens to be Ronald Perelman, a longtime supporter of the Democrat Party and Barack Obama.  In addition to normal political donations, he gave the president a big chunk of money to spend on inauguration parties.  He probably considers the money an investment and don’t worry, he’s getting a good return: the government is paying SIGA about $255 per dose for a drug that costs very little to make.

If that’s not suspicious enough, another member of the SIGA board of directors is Andy Stern, former president of the Service Employees International Union, maybe the biggest Obama supporter of all.

Back in 2011 when the Obama administration was pushing this boondoggle, SIGA Technologies complained about government negotiators who were quibbling about price.  How dare they?  So those government negotiators were replaced by new ones who didn’t negotiate, plus the Obama administration blocked anybody else from competing for the contract.  Federal law requires “full and open competition” for contracts but, hey, when it’s a choice between federal law and big political donors...

Two years ago I wrote about the swine flu vaccine scam.  The swine flu threat turned out to be as phony as a three dollar bill.  Not only did the government lie to us about the seriousness of the threat (to scare us into spending billions on vaccines), they lied about the number of flu shots we needed and the best dosage.  As it turned out, swine flu was milder than regular flu with the added benefit of conferring resistance to regular flu—so catching swine flu was about the best thing that could happen to you.

Every year we are inundated with government commercials urging us to get flu shots.  This manufactured hysteria is directly related to the billions of dollars at stake for pharmaceutical companies.  If they can create a new health scare on top of the normal health scares, that’s extra money for them.  Swine flu vaccine sales were somewhere between ten and fifteen billion dollars in 2009.  That was on top of regular flu shots and all the normal vaccines.

The real damage is being done to our children.  Pharmaceutical companies are like drug pushers who hang around school playgrounds.  The amount and variety of crap we’re shooting into our children in the name of vaccination is frightening.  Childhood diseases my generation simply accepted as part of growing up, like measles or mumps, and even diseases our parents encouraged because they helped us gain immunity, like chicken pox, are vaccinated against now.  The childhood immunization schedule in the U.S. specifies 26 vaccine doses for infants in the first year, including a vaccination against Hepatitis B before a newborn even comes home from the hospital.  That’s more than any other country and children who don’t get the required vaccinations can’t go to school—for some strange reason schools took on the role of vaccination enforcers.

Vaccine makers love using the government as a salesman.  In 2007 Merck managed to convince two states, Texas and Virginia, to mandate Gardasil vaccinations for 12-year-old girls.  The graft and tyranny behind that decision in Texas may have cost Rick Perry a shot at the presidency.

Often there are serious health consequences to the vaccines themselves.  We don’t really understand all the repercussions of giving babies so many injections but doctors see enough adverse reactions to know vaccines are dangerous.  Asthma is reaching epidemic levels in the United States and some studies blame yeast-based vaccines we are injecting into babies before their immune systems have a chance to develop.

Even adults can have problems with too many vaccines clustered too close together.  More than a third of U.S. troops involved in the Persian Gulf War came home with something called Gulf War Syndrome which has been linked to the giant cocktail of vaccines they received before deployment.  (Because of bureaucratic over-kill and incompetence, U.S. troops can be inoculated against every possible disease more than once.)

Sometimes vaccines are just stupid.  A new vaccine for babies called Menactra, for example, is intended to prevent invasive meningococcal disease but the chances of dying from the disease are one in a million—your baby’s chance of being paralyzed by Guillain-Barré syndrome contracted from the vaccine are 1.25 in a million.

Cold-bloodedly, they’re willing to paralyze five babies to save four lives.

Want some more bad numbers?  This year’s flu shot, the one they’re still hawking on TV commercials even as Spring approaches, the one they’re still urging people to get even though they admit it’s been a mild flu season, was only 9% effective for the senior citizens considered most at risk.

So 91% of the seniors who got a flu shot last fall were protected from nothing.  Meanwhile, the vaccine pushers made billions.

(It’s actually worse when you consider that only about 2% of people catch the flu in a given season—so 9% of 2% was the total protection rate for seniors.  That equals 0.18%.)

That’s... today’s dose of common sense.

“Delay of DPT immunisation until 2 years of age in Japan has resulted in a dramatic decline in adverse side effects.  In the period of 1970-1974, when DPT vaccination was begun at 3 to 5 months of age, the Japanese national compensation system paid out claims for 57 permanent severe damage vaccine cases, and 37 deaths.  During the ensuing six year period 1975-1980, when DPT injections were delayed to 24 months of age, severe reactions from the vaccine were reduced to a total of eight with three deaths.  This represents an 85 to 90 percent reduction in severe cases of damage and death.” —Raymond Obomsawin, M.D.

“Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.” —Erma Bombeck

From Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA        Tweet

March 16, 2013 - Both of my younger kids have exercised induced asthma. They also had the chicken pox vaccine, which I didn't want them to have. But the hubbie took both of them for their kindergarten physical and let them give it to the kids. I wanted my kids to get chicken pox naturally. I kept shoving them towards anyone that had them, hoping they would get them. Now my concern is that no one seems to be able to tell if they will have to have boosters throughout their lives. The Gardicil shot, our doctor refused to give it to my daughter. Said if we want her to have it we needed to take her elsewhere for the shot. Our physician is against pre marital sex and his theory was if she isn't having sex she doesn't need the shot. And who knew dogs could get the flu? – Pam T., Virginia

March 16, 2013 - Just so you know it isn't any different for pet owners. It never fails that every time I take my one of my three dogs in for shots, or boarding all three of them, there is always some sort of new shot that the vets insist the animal(s) need. Last year it was a flu shot, I get a lecture every year because I refuse to put all three of them on heart worm medicine. It's outrageously expensive for one let alone three. It has to be given once a month at the same time, which invariably I forget. And if you ever watch Animal Planet, the SPCA shows, every dog that pops positive for heart worm is a dog that was left outside all the time, which my dogs are not. For that price, I'll chance that my dogs will get bitten by the one mosquito carrying the disease in the five minutes it takes them to do their business and come back in. – Pam T., Virginia

J.P. replies: Flu shots for dogs?  That’s just about the craziest thing I ever heard.  Pharmaceutical companies have run amok.