Natural Family Blog Archive 🌹 The First 20 Years

Former Redskins cheerleader Desiree Jennings, the woman who suffered a paralyzing neurological disorder after taking a flu shot, has come under ceaseless attack from the medical establishment as well as websites acting as apologists for the pharmaceutical industry, who claim that her entire illness is a hoax despite the fact that her condition has been confirmed as genuine by numerous doctors.

The inserts on flu vaccines clearly state that side-effects can include nervous system disorders, many which are treatable, but pro-vaccine cheerleaders are claiming the Jennings story is a hoax because she has made progress in recovering from her illness. The only hoax here is the one being peddled by these mouthpieces for the medical establishment, who are trying to deny the manfestly provable fact that neurological disorders are a potential side-effect of vaccines.

Jennings was a fit and healthy cheerleader up until August when she got a seasonal flu shot. Ten days after the shot she began experiencing flu like symptoms, followed by severe convulsions and black outs. After seeing around 60 doctors, Jennings was eventually diagnosed with dystonia, a paralyzing neurological disorder that causes the muscles to relentlessly contract and spasm, causing extreme difficulties with walking, talking and general body movements.

Despite the fact that doctors who vigorously examined her condition at both Fairfax Inova and Johns Hopkins confirmed that she was suffering from dystonia, and that the cause of the illness was her reaction to the flu shot, numerous apologists for big pharma have ludicrously claimed that her story is a hoax and that her disease is imaginary, citing no evidence whatsoever and having had no contact with Jennings at all.

The chief culprit in erroneously circulating rumors that Jennings’ condition was a “hoax” has to be “The Inquisitr” website, a tabloid gossip rag that in-between obsessing about the vacuous activities of Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan, also thinks it has the knowledge to dismiss medical conditions by watching You Tube videos. On October 22, the website carried the headline, Cheerleader Flu Shot Girl: Hoax or Real? The story mentions that Jennings’ condition had been diagnosed by several doctors as genuine, yet still implies that the story is a “hoax,” citing no proof whatsoever. The agenda behind this becomes clear when the website lambastes “anti-vaccination nutters” for merely highlighting the case.

Not content with savaging a young woman whose life was almost destroyed just once, The Inquisitr went back for a second helping, with a story on Monday claiming that Jennings is now “cured” and that, “The chances of the whole thing being a hoax just went from about 50% to pushing towards 100%.” This time around, the website didn’t even bother to mention the fact that numerous doctors at major medical establishments had personally diagnosed Jennings with neurological problems, instead they claimed that Jennings had merely “told the media” that she had the disease.

In addition, the claim that Jennings is “cured” is another contrivance. The latest footage of Desiree shows her in a chair hooked up to a drip. Jennings has made progress as a result of treatment provided by doctors in LA with the aid of Generation Rescue, the charity that helped Jenny McCarthy’s son recover from autism after a vaccine, but she is far from “cured”.

Blogger Mark Lorenz, writing on the Manolith website, viciously attacks Jennings for ‘faking’ her disease while again providing no proof at all that she faked it, failing to mention that doctors confirmed she had a disease, and failing to explain what possible benefit a young, healthy and happy cheerleader could get from wasting months of her life “feigning” a debilitating illness.

“But guess what? It was all fake,” he writes. “Yes, fake. All of the hemming and hawwing and talk over how vaccines are terrible and need to be tested more, mostly from the same people who say no food is safe to eat but raw food, and LOOK AT MY HYBRID CAR — their poster girl is fake. Sorry if I seem contemptuous, but I have no sympathy for people who go on national TV feigning illnesses and blaming them on a source that might actually do some good in the world.”

The aggressive zeal with which these bloggers have ceaselessly attacked a diseased young woman is stunning to behold, but they seem to be borrowing most of their cockamamie talking points from Dr. David Gorski, labeled “the bitchy diva of Scienceblogs,” by Age of Autism writer J.B. Handley.

In his article today, Handley exposes how Gorski, who has been on the warpath attempting to smear and discredit the “anti-vaccine movement,” has seized upon the Jennings story with wanton abandon in an effort to rebuild the credibility of vaccines that are being rejected in accelerating numbers across America due to concerns about side-effects and dangerous additives like mercury and squalene.

Handley chastises Gorski’s “angry, disrespectful, biting, caustic, and immature approach” in his efforts to counter the Desiree Jennings case. The main body of his article is reprinted below.

The Desiree Jennings case appears to be bringing out the absolute worst in many of the bloggers who oppose our community. As one example, I read a post by Dr. Steven Novella where he “reported” on a string of events involving Generation Rescue and the Desiree Jennings case that had no basis in reality and was simply false. We have neurologists breaking tabloid-level stories? Dr. Novella as investigative journalist? Too funny.

In no particular order, the Desiree Jennings case appears to be causing doctors to break all sorts of medical ethical boundaries including:

– Challenging Ms. Jennings’ original diagnosis of dystonia. Since when do doctors make long-distance video-only diagnoses? Don’t these doctors realize, by offering up potentially false commentary on the nature of Ms. Jennings diagnosis in a story that has captivated the world, that they will one day be called to task for such a glaring breach of medical ethics?

– Claiming Ms. Jennings condition is all in her head. For parents of children with autism, this one has a familiar ring. How on earth do Doctors like Gorski and Novella dare throw out a psychological diagnosis on a patient they have never examined? Thank God she found a doctor who knew it was all in her body.

– Claiming the flu shot couldn’t possibly cause her condition. Once again, how on earth does a long-distance doctor determine this? Vaccines cause a wide variety of side-effects, but Ms. Jennings’ condition just couldn’t be vaccine-induced? To hell with what doctors who did examine her actually determined, we are the only arbiters of truth. It’s nuts.

– Claiming she couldn’t possibly recover from a condition she didn’t even have. Forget the HBOT, chelation, B-12, vitamins, etc., Ms. Jennings couldn’t possibly recover, much like our kids never do, either.

It’s great to watch these “doctors” dig themselves into a bigger and bigger hole. I’m not sure doctors like David Gorski realizes how silly their comments look to the average American and how much they have exposed themselves as the true story of what Desiree went through emerges. Thank you, Orac, for showing the world your true colors, because the world is most certainly watching.

The desperation with which apologists for the vaccine industry have gone about trying to savage the credibility of the Desiree Jennings case illustrates how damaging the story has been to the pharmaceutical lobby and their floundering agenda to coerce as many people as possible into taking their dangerous swine flu shot.

The Jennings case, allied to the story out of Germany about how elitists were given access to a special version of the vaccine that didn’t contain additives but was not available to the general public, has undoubtedly contributed to the mass resistance to the H1N1 shot that continues to build across Europe, Canada and North America.

No amount of callous back-biting, gnashing of teeth, and contrived smear attempts on behalf of the vaccine lobby and their media apologists can now stop that momentum. The word is out – people know what’s in your vaccines and there’s no way to reverse that revelation.

In a video message, Jennings gives an update on her condition and also reveals how her MySpace and Facebook pages have been constantly hacked.