“Drug Companies Lie”: Jeff Winchester's Letter to the Editor
As humans, we have an innate (God-given) healing ability. We are born with self-healing, self-regulating bodies. The concept of inoculating children with formaldehyde, mercury, acetone, rabbit brain tissue, etc., seems to be a stupid choice.
This year the medical needle of choice is chicken pox.
Hasn't anyone seen the trend? Your child, not mine, has been injected with three shots in three years (hepatitis B, measles, meningitis). What will be the magic shot next year?
The facts are simple. Chicken pox is a harmless childhood disease that will provide you with lifelong immunity once you have had them. The needle for chicken pox does not offer you lifelong immunity.
There are more serious health risks to catching chicken pox later in life. Also, you do not know the long-term effects of a manufactured needle on your health.
Do not listen to drug company propaganda. The bigger the lie, the more believable it appears. Do not believe the chicken-pox lie.
Dr. Jeff Winchester
Chiropractor
Waterloo
Winchester's letter is a catalogue of standard anti-vaccine misinformation. Vaccines do not contain "rabbit brain tissue," and the trace formaldehyde involved is far below the amount the human body produces naturally every day. Chicken pox (varicella) is not harmless: before routine vaccination it caused thousands of hospitalizations and dozens of child deaths a year in North America, and the varicella vaccine provides durable, well-documented immunity while sharply cutting serious complications. Framing hepatitis B, measles and meningococcal immunization as a "trend" or "drug company propaganda" inverts the evidence — these are among the most rigorously studied and effective interventions in all of medicine. A chiropractor has no training in immunology or public health, and advising parents against vaccinating their children falls well outside any legitimate scope of practice.