Based Underground is now a conservative news aggregator AND curated newsletter.
(The Defender)—Drug manufacturer Merck misrepresented the efficacy of its mumps vaccine for years, “overfilling” the vaccine with live mumps virus to meet efficacy targets despite the lack of safety testing — and the practice may be continuing today.
Merck appears to have concealed the practice from public health agencies, which have taken no action to stop it.
Brian Hooker, Ph.D., chief scientific officer for Children’s Health Defense, joined “The Defender In-Depth” this week to discuss the revelations, which stem from a lawsuit two Merck whistleblowers filed in 2010 under the False Claims Act.
The 3rd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Philadelphia heard oral arguments in the case on July 9.
According to Hooker, the Merck measles, mumps rubella vaccine, MMR II — the only mumps vaccine licensed in the U.S. and listed on the childhood vaccine schedule for 12- to 18-month-olds — may contain up to 4 times the approved concentration of live mumps virus.
A two-part deposition by Dr. David Kessler, former head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), also indicates that Merck, rather than informing regulators that it was “overfilling” its MMR vaccine, relied on passive surveillance — reports from parents regarding vaccine reactions in their children — to identify possible safety signals.
‘We do not know how this is going to affect the body’
In this week’s interview, Hooker emphasized that vaccine dosages with a higher concentration of live mumps virus were never tested for safety or efficacy.
“What is in the Merck MMR II vaccine is not what is being reported,” Hooker said. “This is a live virus vaccine, and these viruses are at higher concentrations. and we know, as far as the mumps vaccine, that the concentrations that are in the vials have never been tested for safety.”
Hooker explained that guidelines for the amount of live virus in the MMR II vaccine were last changed in 1999, “as a result of an FDA action that showed that the mumps portion of the vaccine was losing potency over its sort of two-year [shelf life] before the vaccine expired.”
This prompted Merck to “change the mumps concentration of the vaccine,” Hooker said. However, Merck did so without informing health regulators or the public, gaining regulatory approval or performing safety tests.
“The mumps portion of the vaccine lost its potency to an ineffective and an unacceptable endpoint, and the FDA notified Merck of this in 1998,” Hooker said. “In order to compensate for this, Merck merely did something that is called ‘overfill’ to the virus, overfilled the vials to a higher starting level.”
“They started out with …100,000 TCID50,” Hooker said — referring to the measure of the number of viral particles in a vaccine. “They changed that to 160,000 active virus particles in 1999.”
Hooker added:
“What that means from a production standpoint is that the exact middle concentration of virus is 160,000. The vials can deviate as much as four times over that, and they can be as high as 600,000 viral particles, or they can be as low as 100,000 viral particles.”
This poses a public health risk, Hooker said, because concentrations higher than 160,000 viral particles are “far beyond anything that has ever been tested for safety.”
“Safety testing has only been done to that lower limit of 160,000,” Hooker said. “In order to achieve immunity, according to the FDA, you only need 20,000 … virus particles. So, looking at that, Merck is overfilling the vaccine, and it can be as high as 30 times what is required.”
Hooker said:
“More virus particles mean more problems. It means that you can have a cytokine storm. It means that you can have autoimmune reactions, and this has never ever been tested for safety.
“That’s a serious safety problem because we do not know what will happen without a maximum. There is no cap.”
Cytokine storm refers to “life-threatening systemic inflammatory syndromes involving elevated levels of circulating cytokines and immune-cell hyperactivation,” according to The New England Journal of Medicine. Hooker said this can lead to cellular damage and autoimmune disorders.
Hooker noted that higher concentrations of virus do not just mean a higher level of live virus, but also a higher concentration of “dead virus, RNA particles within the vaccine,” which can also lead to adverse reactions.
Don’t wait for a stock market crash, dedollarization, or CBDCs before securing your retirement with physical precious metals. Genesis Gold Group can help.
Referring to Kessler’s deposition, Hooker said it “came to the conclusion that Merck concealed this information [and that] the packet insert was incorrect. It was nebulous and it did not reflect the higher concentration,” Hooker said. “He basically said Merck is deceiving the public.”
Kessler also testified that this practice continued at least until 2018. Hooker said, “Nothing has changed since 2018 that we know of … If Merck has done anything to change the formulation of the vaccine, it has not told the public, it has not told the FDA.”
This means the practice of “overfilling” might still continue today.
“We’re in no-man’s land,” Hooker said. “We do not know how this is going to affect the body because this has never been tested at this concentration. This was a brand experiment that they foisted on the public of the United States.”
Merck ‘defrauded’ the government and the public
Hooker said the revelations stemming from the whistleblower lawsuit show the FDA was initially unaware that Merck was “overfilling” the MMR II vaccine — calling into question the agency’s capability to perform oversight.
“The only way the FDA found out was when these court documents actually surfaced, because the only thing Merck directly told the FDA was the concentration of mumps virus [was] 160,000 virus particles,” Hooker said. “So, FDA had no idea that they’re going even higher.”
The lawsuit was filed under the False Claims Act — under which whistleblowers can be rewarded for disclosing fraud that results in a financial loss to the federal government.
It’s the same law under which a lawsuit alleging safety deficiencies during clinical trials for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine was filed.
The two whistleblowers in the Merck case — Stephen Krahling and Joan Wlochowski, virologists who worked for Merck in the early 2000s — have since become the subject of a recently released film, “Protocol 7,” which chronicles their claims.
According to Hooker, the revelations may lead to further legal implications for the company and may call into question the liability shield it enjoys for its MMR II vaccine.
“Merck not only defrauded the government … Merck defrauded the public,” Hooker said. “From my contention, that would be a very, very good legal argument to opt out of the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program [because] it is a no-fault program, and it assumes that the vaccine manufacturers acted in good faith.”
Hooker said this “really means that this could be taken to court by … individual petitioners” because Merck was “duplicitous and they have not been forthcoming with the exact concentrations that are in those vials.”
“This is fraud, pure and simple,” Hooker said.
Merck ‘not an entity that we should trust to put things into our bodies’
According to Hooker, the allegations against Merck are indicative of broader corruption among public health agencies and pharmaceutical companies — including a “revolving door” between the two.
Hooker said Merck “is the company that brought us Vioxx, that basically knew that this was going to cause cardiac damage … in individuals that took Vioxx.”
Merck also faces hundreds of lawsuits relating to injuries and deaths connected to Gardasil, its human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine.
Don’t wait for a stock market crash, dedollarization, or CBDCs before securing your retirement with physical precious metals. Genesis Gold Group can help.
“The first version of Gardasil … that came out in 2007 was then very quickly put on the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] schedule,” Hooker said. “And then the CDC director [Dr. Julie Gerberding] … left the CDC in 2008 and started as the president of Merck’s vaccine manufacturing division … in 2009.”
“There’s a revolving door there, and I think that if we really were able to open the coffers in terms of the relationship with Merck and Gerberding while she was at the CDC, we would show that they did quite a few favors,” Hooker added.
“When you look at chief officials at the FDA, in the CDC and in the HHS [U.S. Department of Health and Human Services] … there’s so many conflicts of interest — and the conflicts of interest run not only at the top level, but they get down into the woodwork of the individual workers and scientists,” Hooker said.
Noting that Merck has had an “exclusive license” to distribute MMR vaccines in the U.S. “for many, many years,” Hooker said that this is likely why the company sought to quietly change the concentration of live mumps virus in its vaccine, “even if it meant fudging the books,” to maintain its market exclusivity.
“When you look at Vioxx, when you look at HPV, when you look at the … MMR II vaccine, this is not an entity that we should trust to put things into our bodies,” Hooker said, referring to Merck, adding that agencies like the FDA “are not trustworthy.”
“They are driven very, very much by financial gain directly through incentivization, through the pharmaceutical industry,” Hooker said.
Watch ‘The Defender In-Depth’ here:
Listen to the podcast on Spotify.
‘The Defender In-Depth’ airs on CHD.TV Wednesday at 10 a.m. ET/9 a.m. CT.
Based Underground is now a conservative news aggregator AND curated newsletter.
Angel Reese Slammed After Bragging About COVID Vaccinations – ‘Waiting for the Next One to Come Out’
by Western Journal
When young people say dumb things, those who know better tend to err on the side of grace. After all, let them make their mistakes. On the other hand, when those young people emerge as athletic stars and then build a platform from which to spew nonsense in a way…
Sylvester Stallone Survived an Abortion: “I Was Brought Into the World by Accident”
by Life Site News
Sylvester Stallone, known for his roles in Creed and Rocky, opened up about surviving an abortion attempt. His daughters, Sophia and Sistine Stallone, host the Unwaxed Podcast. They interviewed their father about his new Netflix documentary, “Sly.” During the episode, they discussed Stallone’s childhood, something that is addressed in the…
‘What the F***’: Joe Rogan Destroys NYT Headline Warning About Dangers of Constitution
by Daily Wire
Podcaster Joe Rogan absolutely destroyed a recent New York Times headline that warned about the dangers of the U.S. Constitution, suggesting that there’s no amount of “gaslighting” the news organization could do to make him see their side. During “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast, Rogan and his guest evolutionary biologist,…
What Do They Know? Russia Increases Daily Gold Purchases by 700%
by Sponsored Post
In a significant move, Russia’s Finance Ministry has announced plans to allocate 8.2 billion rubles ($92 million) each day for gold and foreign currency purchases until October 4, the nation’s Finance Minister announced. “The amount of funds allocated for purchases of foreign currency and gold totals 172.9 billion rubles,” the…
CNN Data Guru Says Trump Will Win if He “Outperforms His Current Polls by Just a Single Point”
by Jason Cohen, Daily Caller News Foundation
(DCNF)—CNN senior data reporter Harry Enten said on Friday that former President Donald Trump will win the November election if he can slightly surpass his current poll projections. Vice President Kamala Harris is leading Trump by just 0.2% in the top seven battleground states, according to the RealClearPolling average. Enten,…
New Jobs Report Shows Millions of Americans Lost Jobs to ‘Foreign-Born’ Workers, F/T Work Yields to P/T
by Red State
Trying to nail down Joe Biden or Kamala Harris on the number of jobs they’ve “created” — the government does not create jobs; it can create economic conditions that can lead to job creation or job losses — during the last disastrous three-and-a-half years is like trying to nail Jell-O…
Putin Avoids ‘Kursk Trap’ as His Troops Poised to Take Pokrovsk
by SHTF Plan
President Putin has continued to downplay Ukraine’s major Kursk invasion, which has resulted in Russian territory occupied by Kiev forces, and has instead maintained that capturing and holding all the Donbas in eastern Ukraine remains the goal. “We have to deal with these thugs who made it into Russia,” he…
Leaked Army Advisory Warns of Migrant Gang Violence in Major Cities
by The National Pulse
A threat advisory issued by the U.S. Army to Department of Defense (DOD) personnel across the country warns the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua (TdA) has established a significant foothold in multiple American cities and poses a serious danger to local, state, and federal law enforcement. The document—designated as Controlled…
Are You Ready for the Big Steal … Again?
by Richard Blakley, WND
(WND)—The 2020 election was a mess. Only the gullible and self-deceived believe Joe Biden legally obtained more votes than any presidential candidate in U.S. history. If this were true, Democrats would have beaten their drums concerning this “historic” vote, like the pig in the old Valleydale Sausage commercials, but even…
YouTube Uses DOJ Allegations to Justify Axing Tenet Media’s Channel Without Due Process
by The Federalist
The widely used video platform YouTube removed Tenet Media and related channels from its services on Thursday after the Justice Department accused the company of partaking in a secret Russian influence operation. The revelation comes days after the Biden Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the seizure of nearly three dozen…
Has Anyone Noticed That We Know More About Yesterday’s School Shooter Than Crooks?
by Hot Air
The mainstream media has already done a deep dive into the bizarre details of the perpetrator of yesterday’s school shooting, and we have gotten more media availabilities from law enforcement on the events than we have yet gotten from July 13th’s attack on Donald Trump and the three other victims…
Strong Dad Engagement Programs Are Funding the Fight for Fatherhood to Save the Fatherless
by Caldron Pool
“The men the world is raising are not the men the world needs.” No man is born an expert on fatherhood. Good fathers are taught through blunt advice, wise counsel, observation, experience, and their environment. This is why responsible fatherhood programs are saving lives, and why we should be talking…
Ex-CNN Analyst Says Commiela Harris “Has More Riding On” the Debate Than Trump, She’ll Be “More Nervous”
by Jason Cohen, Daily Caller News Foundation
(DCNF)—Former CNN political analyst Chris Cilizza said Friday he believes that the upcoming presidential debate holds more significance for Vice President Kamala Harris than it does for former President Donald Trump. Trump and Harris are slated to compete in their only scheduled presidential debate on ABC News on Tuesday. Cillizza…