Corruption always follows a similar pattern. It’s just the players and the situation that change. Human nature remains the same.
I’m honored to write the foreword to Brett Wilcox’s masterful and thoughtful book about vaccines and the devastating toll they are taking on our generation. Most people would be surprised to learn that in 1986, the United States removed vaccines from the traditional civil court system and placed them in a different judicial system. It was called the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act. Even our own Justice Department recommended that President Reagan veto the bill. Reagan went ahead and signed the bill, but not before putting on the record his reservations about the constitutionality of the new court and a plea that changes be made before any such court came into existence. Sadly, these changes were never made, and we find ourselves today in a virtual civil war over vaccines. Even with all of these problems, this so-called “Vaccine Court” has already paid out more than three billion dollars in claims to vaccine-injured children, another fact of which most Americans are unaware.
When I say that corruption always follows a similar pattern, I mean that certain conditions must exist. The writers and thinkers of the Enlightenment, whose views on the nature of man found its greatest expression in our own US Constitution, believed a number of revolutionary things. They believed each of us were given certain rights and obligations by our Creator, and that in the exercise of our own judgment we would find our own best path. It followed that if our Creator gave each person the tools necessary to run their own lives, then any attempt to infringe upon the freedom of another person had to be closely examined.
Humanity will inevitably organize itself into political units, but each effort inevitably brings the danger of tyranny and injustice. That’s why our Constitution has as part of its very soul an inherent distrust of any political organization and views the existence of any assembly as inherently suspect, unless there is a robust system of checks and balances. Any group of human beings that does not have strong oversight and is not periodically challenged as to their actions will inevitably fall into corruption.
Understanding this concept explains why I believe so strongly that the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act set the stage for the litany of horrors described so thoroughly by Brett Wilcox in this book. Many writers have talked about the political uses of fear and how a perceived danger will often override the public’s critical consideration of important issues. Shouldn’t we as a society be asking whether it’s a smart move to remove pharmaceutical companies from being required to provide all relevant safety data about vaccines? Isn’t it valid to question the wisdom of removing pharmaceutical companies of any financial liability for harm caused by their vaccines? How is it that the media has been complicit in painting parents who ask for something as simple as a study of the health outcomes of vaccinated and nonvaccinated children as dangerous renegades who want children to die?
Corruption is the inevitable byproduct of powerful groups not being challenged. One need look no further than the clergy abuse scandals of the Catholic Church. Priests, Brothers, and Nuns were viewed by their congregations as doing God’s work on Earth. For most of them this was true, but the lack of oversight was appalling. I was fortunate enough to go to a Catholic high school, De La Salle, which may be known to you for its football team, which had the longest winning streak of any sports team in history. This accomplishment is depicted in the movie When the Game Stands Tall, starring Jim Cazaviel and Laura Dern. The order that ran the high school and the college I attended is called the Christian Brothers, and I have rarely known a finer group of people. For many years, I considered whether I wanted to become a Christian Brother and dedicate my life to that mission. I wanted to serve God and humanity. Eventually, I opted not to join, as I wanted to have a family.
But De La Salle also had an abuse case, a Christian Brother who lived off-campus, gave drugs and alcohol to two of my friends, and sodomized them, eventually resulting in a six-million-dollar settlement. When this case came to light years later, I was appalled to read that many of the Christian Brothers I knew had personally taken measures to conceal these crimes or dismissed their importance. It is a betrayal at the most fundamental level, and it complicates my religious sentiments to this day.
Although I do not think I have completely resolved these feelings, I tell myself that these members of the clergy were simply human, doing things that humans inevitably do when they are not subject to proper oversight, which is to minimize the bad and focus on the perceived good. We need our critics, even the best of us.
I never expected that in my life I would become an adversary of the current vaccine program. But once my eyes were opened to the problem I could not turn away. The great scientist Albert Einstein once wrote, “Those who have the privilege to know, have a duty to act.” Although I may have lost some measure of faith in the incorruptibility of the Catholic clergy, I still believe there will come a time when I will stand before my Creator and be asked to account for my life. In an infinite and loving voice, my Creator will ask me what I did for the weak and powerless, and those like my eighteen-year-old daughter, who still can’t speak.
I will stand before my Creator in that moment and say that I tried to end the silence, both figurative and literal. I will not say these words with arrogant pride, because I know that all fall short in the eyes of God, but I will take some small measure of comfort that I did not remain silent. I encourage you to read this fine work by Brett Wilcox, use your own God-given powers of reasoning and deduction, and if you find his words to make sense, speak your truth. All of us have but a few, brief years in this world, and there is much work to be done.
Kent Heckenlively, JD
coauthor of PLAGUE: One Scientist’s Intrepid Search for
the Truth about Human Retroviruses, Chronic Fatigue
Syndrome (ME/CFS), Autism, and Other Diseases