This article was originally published by Rhoda Wilson at The Daily Exposé.

According to Dr. Gary Goldman, before the universal chickenpox or varicella vaccine was introduced in the USA in 1996, 95% of adults had experienced natural chickenpox, usually as children, and had life-long immunity.  Subsequent exposures to natural chickenpox prevented or postponed shingles. 

Childhood chickenpox vaccination programs have increased the cases of shingles in adults by 100%.  To counteract the dramatic increase in shingles cases, a shingles vaccine, Zostavax, was introduced.  After the introduction of the shingles vaccine, adults began falling ill with chickenpox – a childhood disease.

Additionally, since the universal chickenpox vaccine was introduced, the high percentage of people with long-term immunity has been compromised.  Vaccination at best provides 70%-90% immunity that is temporary and of unknown duration making these children susceptible to chickenpox as adults.  It has, therefore, shifted chickenpox to a more vulnerable adult population where chickenpox carries 15 times more risk of hospitalization and 20 times more risk of death compared to children. 

At the inaugural meeting of Physicians for Informed Consent in 2017, Dr. Gary Goldman presented his varicella vaccine findings and whistle-blower experience as a lead research analyst in the Antelope Valley Varicella Active Surveillance Project. He described how a national chickenpox vaccine program altered the epidemiology of shingles and the ways in which the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (“CDC”) manipulated data to conceal the unwanted outcomes that occurred.

“[In the Antelope Valley community] we had 300 surveillance units – daycare [centers], schools, physicians, clinics, hospitals – [reporting to us] … [this] community of 300,000 would report cases of chickenpox to us. And we would follow up by calling the parents and getting a family history and background on other children. So really, we were going to produce perhaps some of the best data ever collected in history on this disease of varicella.”

Varicella is part of the herpes family of viruses. Chickenpox is caused by the varicella-zoster virus.  The same virus causes shingles, also known as herpes zoster. “So, after you’ve been exposed to VZV (the varicella-zoster virus) you will manifest that rash that is known commonly as chickenpox,” Dr. Goldman explained.

Despite the CDC’s fear-mongering, chickenpox is a benign disease. You have a greater chance of dying from a strike of lightning than from chickenpox, Dr. Goldman said.  Shingles on the other hand manifest as a painful rash.  The rash can be so sensitive just air or clothing rubbing on it will be painful.  Shingles has many manifestations because it can affect any nerve in the body – Bell’s palsy, for example, is caused by herpes zoster or shingles and some people even mistake it for a heart attack, he said.

Additionally, in the USA at the time of his presentation, 75% of varicella medical costs were related to shingles and 25% to chickenpox which indicates shingles is a far greater medical issue than chickenpox.  It should also be noted that with chickenpox trends, there is a naturally occurring downward trend in cases – it peaks over 3-5 years and then decreases, by as much as 50%, without vaccines. So, the focus of varicella vaccination should be on preventing varicella herpes zoster virus (shingles) and not chickenpox.

The perceived wisdom is that “you don’t catch shingles. You catch chickenpox first, the virus goes dormant in your body just sitting there and, usually, when you’re way older you get shingles – maybe in your 50s, 60s, or 70s – due to a declining immune system.” But Dr. Goldman’s research found this is incorrect.

The agreement that the FDA signed with Merck to license the chickenpox vaccine said the vaccine may increase the incidence of shingles in both the vaccinated and the unvaccinated.

It is not the endogenous (internal) immunity boosting, a dormant virus within the body reactivating, as claimed. Instead, it is the exogenous (external) immunity boosting, being exposed to a circulating chickenpox virus, that prevents shingles.

“When you’re near a child with chickenpox – contagious natural chickenpox – it provides an immune system boost [exogenous immunity boost] to all adults and that could protect the adult and postpone the outbreak of shingles,” Dr. Goldman said. Because of mass vaccination, the cases of chickenpox in children have unnaturally dropped and so children with chickenpox no longer provide the mechanism with which the community as a whole is protected against shingles.  The result, Dr. Goldman explained, is “shingles in adults has increased nearly 100% because of that lack of the boost due to the natural contagious chickenpox no longer providing that exogenous outside clinical boost.”

Effectively what Dr. Goldman is saying is that vaccinating children against a lesser disease, chickenpox, causes outbreaks of a more serious disease in adults, shingles.

When Dr. Goldman joined the Antelope Valley Varicella Active Surveillance Project they were only monitoring and collecting data on chickenpox cases.  If it is the same disease, why would they choose not to track shingles as well? “Well, they knew the answer. They knew that there was an immunologically mediated link between the diseases. If you shut down [natural] contagious chickenpox by vaccinating, you’re going to increase shingles and they did not want that effect to be discovered,” Dr. Goldman said.

The chickenpox vaccine was first administered by healthcare providers in 1996, the year after the Antelope Valley Varicella Active Surveillance Project began.  In 2000, the first year Dr. Goldman began to collect data on shingles, he found an unusually high number of cases.  Merck’s Dr. Oxman was researching shingles in adults at the time.  Dr. Goldman attempted to contact Dr. Oxman to discuss findings, but “I got shut down on that,” he said.

The following year, in 2001, Dr. Goldman again noticed a statistically significant increase in shingles cases in every age group under 70 years old.  The following year, Dr. Goldman resigned from the Surveillance Project because the CDC refused to publish data on shingles in his study. After prevailing against a cease-and-desist order from the CDC, Dr. Goldman published his study in 2003.

Read more: Varicella susceptibility and incidence of herpes zoster among children and adolescents in a community under active surveillance, G. Goldman, 1 October 2003

Dr. Goldman ended his presentation by talking through the various studies on the effects vaccinating children has had on the incidence of shingles in a community and the real-world effectiveness of the varicella vaccines, which declines as exogenous immunity boosting from exposure to naturally circulating varicella viruses declines.

To make matters worse, the varicella virus in the vaccines is a different strain from the naturally occurring strain.  Additionally, attenuated strains used in some vaccines mutate into a more virulent strain.  Each strain will cause shingles.  So, a vaccinated child may harbour two or more strains and each of which can reactivate shingles.  To compensate for the problem caused by childhood vaccines, they introduced a vaccine for shingles – Zostavax.  Since the introduction of Zostavax, adults have been getting chickenpox.

“It’s created a whole new world of, what I call, a cycle of disease and treatment,” Dr. Goldman said. “The CDC themselves with these financial conflicts of interest. the data manipulation that goes on – you can call that pseudoscience [or] quackery. There’s no more truth. I would say a good percentage of studies that you can pick out, there’s a fundamental methodological flaw in there to promote vaccination.”

Dr. Goldman sums up his presentation beginning at timestamp 45:40. We have embedded the video of his presentation to begin at this timestamp as it contains important information on other vaccines – for example, influenza vaccines given to pregnant women being linked to foetal death – that we have not included in the text above.  If you wish to watch his full presentation then simply “rewind” to the beginning.

Who is Gary Goldman?

Gary Goldman, Ph.D., served as Editor-in-Chief of Medical Veritas, a reviewer for the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Vaccine, The American Journal of Managed Care (AJMC), Expert Review of Vaccines (ERV), Expert Review of Dermatology (ERD), Journal of the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology (JEADV), Epidemiology and Infection, Human and Experimental Toxicology (HET), BioMed Research International (Biomed Res Int), and British Medical Journal (BMJ). He is included on the Editorial Board of Research and Reviews in Bioscience.

After participating in a CDC-funded study of the effect of the widespread use of the chickenpox vaccine in California between 1995 and 2002, Goldman published a major paper in 2005 warning that the decline in the incidence of chickenpox would lead to an increase in children developing shingles.

“In 1995 I was hired as an Epidemiology Analyst on the Antelope Valley Varicella Active Surveillance Project – a joint project of the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services (LACDHS), Acute Communicable Disease Control Unit and the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, Atlanta, GA).

“Initially, I considered it an honour to be part of a team that was to study the effect of the varicella vaccine on the 300,000 residents comprising the Antelope Valley region. While all positive effects of the vaccine were readily approved for publication, it appeared the deleterious effects (e.g., increases in shingles incidence among unvaccinated children and adults that had natural varicella) were being suppressed.

“After 8 years, I resigned from my employment so as to publish all the results and not be a party to what I perceived as research fraud – with the sponsors of the research seemingly squashing objective research and dictating published outcomes. I was served a notice to “cease and desist” publication of the results in a medical journal, but overcame that objection and the studies were indeed published. Both the LACDHS and CDC continued (unsuccessfully) to interfere and attempt to prevent publication of manuscripts after they had already been accepted and approved for publication by various medical journal editors. Intervention of my attorney was necessary in some cases.” – Gary Goldman, PhD

Gary Goldman, PhD, Physicians for Informed Consent

Further reading:

• Gary Goldman, Ph.D. – Exposing Problems with Chickenpox Vaccine, Whale. to
• Dr. Gary Goldman, Vaccine Truth