CFS and vaccination - secret papers deny funding.

[snowathlete]

The UK is considered by some, including journalist Heather Brooke, to be one of the most secretive governments in the western world. This appears to be changing, with more options now available to access material which was previously denied to the public. I am still investigating this.

As someone from the UK, I think we are only a small step above China in some areas (obviously, not all). One of the major problem areas in my opinion is that regardless of rights and what the law says, getting your rights and the law enacted is incredibly difficult in this country. In other words, how things appear to look in this country and how they actually are is very different.

What were the processes involved in extending the usual 30 year period for archived files at Kew to 73 years? Does anyone have evidence of this process? There is a lot of discussion, but not a lot of evidence that I can see.

Presumably this happened before the 2005 FOI Act?
But I agree that it is very important to understand how and when these records became anomalous. If someone can tell me what records exactly we are talking about then i will search the net for the answer, and if i cant out for sure then I'm willing to write to the archives and ask, and should get an answer (assuming that info isnt classified too)...

 

[snowathlete]

I just did a search and found the following threads related to this topic. I haven't read them all yet, but maybe there is important info in one of these:http://forums.phoenixrising.me/inde...-to-the-houses-of-parliament.4256/#post-97064
http://forums.phoenixrising.me/inde...-to-the-houses-of-parliament.4256/#post-97064

http://forums.phoenixrising.me/index.php?threads/mrc-secret-me-files-question-page.4315/#post-98149
http://forums.phoenixrising.me/inde...le-on-me-cfs-comes-to-light.6775/#post-138411

http://forums.phoenixrising.me/inde...cess-to-secret-me-cfs-files.7306/#post-144957

http://forums.phoenixrising.me/inde...fying-information-about-m-e.8265/#post-158181

http://forums.phoenixrising.me/inde...pened-in-the-early-eighties.8962/#post-167030

http://forums.phoenixrising.me/index.php?threads/big-mistake-conspiracy-or-nothing-unusual.9501/page-3#post-174970
http://forums.phoenixrising.me/inde...e-a-state-secret-in-uk.1344/page-4#post-36438

http://forums.phoenixrising.me/inde...uk-loves-me-cfs-more.14064/page-4#post-233063

http://forums.phoenixrising.me/inde...ticle-on-me-in-the-uk-daily-mail-today.16101/

The guy who wrote the Daily Mail article in the last thread might be worth involving to find out what he knows and to see if he can help us find out more.
I'm going to work my way through them, but if someone wants to join me on this little mini adventure then feel free.

 

[SilverbladeTE]

As someone from the UK, I think we are only a small step above China in some areas (obviously, not all). One of the major problem areas in my opinion is that regardless of rights and what the law says, getting your rights and the law enacted is incredibly difficult in this country. In other words, how things appear to look in this country and how they actually are is very different.

BINGO!!
they don't shoot folk here, they just divert them with endless bullshit, subcommittees, lost paperwork etc until they have died of old age etc!

 

[snowathlete]

BINGO!!
they don't shoot folk here, they just divert them with endless bullshit, subcommittees, lost paperwork etc until they have died of old age etc!

I think I'd rather be shot. It would be more humane.

 

[In Vitro Infidelium]

What were the processes involved in extending the usual 30 year period for archived files at Kew to 73 years? Does anyone have evidence of this process? There is a lot of discussion, but not a lot of evidence that I can see.

I think you are confusing a general process with a notion of some especial action. The 30 year rule was long established practice and became enshrined in Law in 1958. The 2000 FOI Act changed some of the context, but left the 30 year period as the basic 'closed period' - BUT - in accordance with the requirements of both the Data Protection Act and Human Rights legislation, additional protection was given for personal data under the FOI, which in practice means that for all personal data (Section 40 of the FOI - guidance http://www.justice.gov.uk/downloads/information-access-rights/foi/foi-exemption-s40.pdf) the established practice is closure for 75 years. There was a one off change extending the 30 year rule to 75 years in 2005 when FOI Act came into full effect - however 100 year rules had also been in operation for various classes of data prior to 2005. 75 years is for most data, an effective human lifetime; data affecting children e.g adoption records is subject to 100 year closures.

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/information-management/legislation/public-records-system.htm

Some records used to be closed for periods longer than 30 years. There were various reasons for this extended closure. Some records contain distressing personal information about people and events. Others include information whose release could damage national security or international relations, or the information may have been supplied subject to certain confidential undertakings. The release of other types of information may be barred under legislation. Records that were closed for extended periods for reasons like this before the FOI Act came into force in January 2005, remain closed only where an exemption in the FOI Act applies.

Again, there really is nothing exceptional about the M.E/CFS related files. Anyone who believes they are personally the subject of any given file can apply to have access to data which specific to them - if the data can't be provided without exposing data on another person, then the file may still be exempt under the FOI provisions. But this is all standard application of the legislation.

IVI

 

[Mark]

My memory on this may not be accurate, but from my recollection of reading the redacted and released version of one of the restricted files, the redacted 'personal information' appears to include the names of researchers and committee members, rather than patients (as one might assume) - for instance I recall a passage that appears to redact the name of a specialist (neurologist) who was due to present at a conference, and the name of the specialist who replaced him at the last minute. There are also other redactions in that file which appear to be redactions of text sections - a couple of lines of text within a sentence, for example, in a context that has nothing to do with patients. Does anybody have the references on those redactions? I think they've been discussed here before.

My main observation on the restricted files - the "S files" - is based on a day I spent reading through all the titles of the 5000+ restricted files in that section. The main theme of the 'S files' section seems to be medical science and correspondence relating to industrial health problems. There are files concerning the impact of asbestos, the impact of coal dust on miners' health, data on radiation leaks (one file relates to a radiation leak from an address in central london, several files detail radiation levels in the Welsh hillsides collected, if I recall correctly, a few years before the first known radiation leak from a nuclear power station in the UK), the first data on compression sickness during work on the Blackwall Tunnel, a large cache of papers concerning the residents of tristan de cunha, surveys relating to the health of steel foundry workers, vaccine trials (several files still secret concerning the 'Polio Vaccine Crisis' of 1956), and occasional oddities such as findings regarding the health impact of high heels (!). There are other topics covered too, but the broad theme of the titles of files in the 'S files' archive does not seem to me to be at all consistent with the idea that the restricted files and redactions are purely concerned with preserving the confidentiality of personal data. This looks to me like an archive of secret files dating back to the 1940s or so, concerned with adverse impacts on human health in relation to controversial industrial and scientific issues. My project to document and classify the titles of the files in this archive had to be abandoned, but it would be a worthwhile job for someone in my opinion; once you have paged through the first 10 or 20 pages of titles it starts to get really rather interesting. I would recommend anyone to page through the titles of the contents of the S Files before making any assumptions about why they are secret.

 

[SilverbladeTE]

IVI
you are very very naive about the way bureacracy and government really works

Camelford, odds are hundreds, or even thousands will suffer and die from that
cover up to the highest level, FACT.

Hillsborough, government using cops as thugs to keep control, cops are thus "sacrosanct"
Cops arrogance, calloussness and stupidity leads ot 92 folk dying.
Government covers this up. Fact.

Sellafield accidents illegal dumpings...bio and chem weapon tests on unsupecting military personnel...
etc etc do you REALLY need me to list the crap I can remember?

So, puhlease, while you are logical and calm, and normally that's great
In the REAL shady world of bullshit and pass the buck, it is NOT how it works.
You are grossly wrong. You are a minnow swimming in sharks.

Very often things get covered up "just because" some civil servant fears exposure of something, just the suspicion is enough to start it off. Doesn't require hard evidence or a direct order.
They are not called the "Whitehall mandarins" for nothing.

Give you one small example
Windscale disaster, reactor fire. the government still insists there was little danger to the public, mostly true and only because ONE man fought to put filters in the reactor chimneys, otherwise vast numbers in North England would have died! he had to fight to put them in because all the bureacrats/bean counters asshole politicians see is money/passing the buck.
So, disaster occurs, and what happens...the meteorological records for that day...disappear!
Now, the weather service in the UK , the Met Office, is part of the Ministry of Defence, back then, it was much more tightly an offshoot of the military. You would be SCREWED, severly, if you lost the entire freakin weather record (which isn't just like one sheet of paper!), and yet, it happened *just for that day of the Windscale disaster*

 

[In Vitro Infidelium]

My memory on this may not be accurate, but from my recollection of reading the redacted and released version of one of the restricted files, the redacted 'personal information' appears to include the names of researchers and committee members, rather than patients (as one might assume) - for instance I recall a passage that appears to redact the name of a specialist (neurologist) who was due to present at a conference, and the name of the specialist who replaced him at the last minute. There are also other redactions in that file which appear to be redactions of text sections - a couple of lines of text within a sentence, for example, in a context that has nothing to do with patients.

The DPA doesn't distinguish between patients and other people - it applies to information about anyone/everyone. If the document is itself not a published document - then even though personal data (such as attending a conference) may be in the public domain, an archivist might still feel that the DPA applied and rather than endanger the potential of a document to remain closed, would err on the side of caution and remove all identifying material. This can be more than just names.

I would recommend anyone to page through the titles of the contents of the S Files before making any assumptions about why they are secret.

Summaries on the exemptions to the FOI are avaible here - http://www.justice.gov.uk/informati.../exemptions-guidance/foi-exemptions-summaries and guidance for archivists is available here http://www.justice.gov.uk/informati...uidance-for-practitioners/exemptions-guidance .The provisions of the DPA are certainly not the only basis for exemptions under the FOI and older documents may tend toward classifications arrived at under older (pre 2005) legislation either because theyhave yet to be fully appraised under the 2005 Act or because recent appraisal has simply confirmed earlier classification by dint of a lack of compelling reasons to change. This doesn't mean closed documents shouldn't be made public - but the law is pretty comprehensive and post 2005 there seem few arbitrary decisions - with the exception of the frequently misused cost limitation (effectively set at £600 per enquiry) where a public body can claim making the information available is too expensive.

IVI

 

[user9876]

The DPA doesn't distinguish between patients and other people - it applies to information about anyone/everyone. If the document is itself not a published document - then even though personal data (such as attending a conference) may be in the public domain, an archivist might still feel that the DPA applied and rather than endanger the potential of a document to remain closed, would err on the side of caution and remove all identifying material. This can be more than just names..

IVI

I seem to remember some guidance from the ICO saying that officials opinions in carrying out there job are not their personal data but could be deemed the personal data of the person they were expressing an opinion about. The guidance related to requests for personal data rather than FoI requests.

 

[currer]

I'm with Mark on this.

The most enlightening thing is the company our illness keeps in these files.

 

[Jarod]

I think many people are watching these vaccines more carefully now after a couple of recent iccidents with vaccines. The most notable is in 2009 when Baxter International took live Avian flu virus out of it's secure experiemntal lab, and shipped it off to make vaccines.

It wasn't caught until animals started dying from the vaccines that anybody noticed. Kind of scary. So now people are paying attention.

The other vaccine incident that was caught before anything could go wrong was Novartis had strange particles in it's vaccines and it was banned in 6 countries.

The 2009 inccident with Baxter is baffling to me though. See quotes from below.

How a live virus could get out of an experimental virus lab and out in to production????


"Baxter admits flu product contained live bird flu virus"

And an official of the World Health Organization's European operation said the body is closely monitoring the investigation into the events that took place at Baxter International's research facility in Orth-Donau, Austria.

"But what remains unanswered are the circumstances surrounding the incident in the Baxter facility in Orth-Donau."

"It was live," Christopher Bona said in an email.

The contaminated product, which Baxter calls "experimental virus material," was made at the Orth-Donau research facility. Baxter makes its flu vaccine -- including a human H5N1 vaccine for which a licence is expected shortly -- at a facility in the Czech Republic.

People familiar with biosecurity rules are dismayed by evidence that human H3N2 and avian H5N1 viruses somehow co-mingled in the Orth-Donau facility. That is a dangerous practice that should not be allowed to happen, a number of experts insisted


Read more: http://www.ctvnews.ca/baxter-admits-flu-product-contained-live-bird-flu-virus-1.374503#ixzz2ChYHa4fh

 

[CaronR]

The Hep B vaccine has thought to be a trigger or cause of ME for many years, but recently the HPV vaccine which is given to all 12/13 year old schoolgirls has come under scrutiny by some adovacy groups for causing ME type illnesses. Many of the girls injured by the HPV vaccine have been given ME/CFS or autoimmune diagnoses.

Both HepB and HPV vaccines are recombinant vaccines which use genetically modifed material.

Recent findings about the HPV vaccines (both Gardasil and Cervarix) have shown that the vaccines are producing some unexpected events in vaccinated girls.

The Gardasil vaccine was found, last year, to be contaminated with recombinant HPV DNA, despite the manufacturer (Merck) originally assuring that no HPV DNA existed in the vaccine. A private lab tested several samples of the vaccine to find the genetically modifed HPV DNA firmly attached to the aluminium adjuvant.

http://sanevax.org/sane-vax-inc-announces-the-discovery-of-viral-hpv-dna-contaminant-in-gardasil/

Earlier this year, autopsied brain and speen tissue was analysed from two teenagers who died of unknown reasons after receiving the Gardasil HPV vaccine. Fragments of the HPV antigen from the vaccine were found in the brain blood vessels and adhering to the blood vessel walls, proving that the antigens which are absorbed onto aluminium adjuvants had crossed the blood brain barrier. Both Gardasil and Cervarix use aluminium adjuvants designed to provoke an extra strong immune response.

http://sanevax.org/breaking-news-gardasil-fingerprints-found-in-post-mortem-samples/

Notably, many of the girls injured by the HPV vaccines were sporty, active and high achieving girls and many were are particular points within their menstrual cycles - both of which have been thought to have played a part in trying to understand why these girls had a reaction while other girls seemed to be unaffected.

Vaccines certainly are a trigger for ME and the recombinant vaccines seem to be the worst culprits. Of course, vaccines are considered the Holy Grail of modern medicine that simply cannot be seen to be unsafe. No government will ever admit to a link between vaccines and ME/CFS.