Dear Editor: Pleased and a Bit Surprised

Dear Editor,

I was pleased and a bit surprised to read the opinion piece from Pam Hanna on the front page of last week's Ledger. Pleased that she focused so heavily on the natural strength of the human immune system and the various ways - clean diet, regular exercise, reducing stress, and good sleep - that we can aid, or at least stop undermining, those systems. Surprised because, at least from the top down, at the levels of national government and media, we rarely see such focus, and are instead constantly told that we suffer from a deficiency of pharmaceutical products.

While this piece included the obligatory nod to vaccines, I note that vaccines received relatively minimal attention in this article, most of which came at the end. And I take heart at this because to my eye this echoes and represents a major shift in experience, understanding, and attitude currently playing out in our society. From my research, I see that we now have tens of millions of people in this country (a great many of whom are scientists, researchers, and health professionals) who are questioning the safety, efficacy, and necessity of vaccines. Around the world, those numbers soar even higher. It's no longer a secret that vaccines are responsible for far more deleterious health effects than we've ever before been told. And it's clear from the actual data that their effectiveness or necessity is no longer a certainty. I've been studying this phenomenon for six years now. The change in attitudes and knowledge has been breathtaking to behold, even though much work remains to be done.

For so long, it has been impossible to have such a conversation at the societal level, because people had been taught to think of vaccines as an "unquestionable good." Now, with so much new and stunning real-world data to process, that belief is unraveling. Now we can begin to talk. I'm so glad of that. And I'm so glad that Pam Hanna focused on what I consider more basic and real factors in human health: diet, exercise, stress, and sleep.

Thank you,

Timothy Bennett

Citizen Scientist