Anti-vaccine doctor speaks out in Havre

Dr. Jerry Taylor of Havre has been around long enough to know his anti-vaccine stance might earn him the "crazy" label and he said he's fine with that.

"I'm not here to convince anybody. I share information and then it's the individual's responsibility to go and find out for themselves if I'm a whack job," Taylor said, during an after-presentation interview Saturday.

Taylor was one of multiple presenters during Saturday's New Idea Expo in the Atrium Mall, a three-day event put on by Yellow Bus Creations, a small group of locals who started the event as a film festival 10 years ago.

Taylor said he had been studying vaccines for 17 years. His concern for the wellness of his family was the key reason he went into medicine. He said many years ago a sickness in a family member was traced to vaccination and when the vaccines were stopped and the member's lifestyle changed, that person got well.

"I didn't want to believe it," he said.

Taylor attended Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine and Health Sciences in Arizona where he got a degree in naturopathic medicine.

Although he has a medical degree, he downplayed the medical profession, referring to it as the "medical mafia" and saying the medical education system "weeds out independent thinkers" and looks for people to condition.

Taylor's two-hour presentation consisted mostly of YouTube videos that showed interviews and clips of people such as former research director of the Whittemore Peterson Institute, who was arrested on charges that were later dismissed, Judy Mikovits, and British former gastroenterologist, and medical researcher Andrew Wakefield.

Wakefield is a controversial figure in the medical world.

In 1998, Wakefield wrote a research paper that was published in the British medical journal The Lancet. According to the Time Magazine article "Great Science Frauds," the article said there was a connection between the administration of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine and the presence of autism and bowel disease.

The Lancet retracted Wakefiled's article 12 years later after a five-member tribunal of the British Medical Council found 36 charges against Wakefield proven, among them 12 counts involving the abuse of developmentally challenged children, according to Brian Deer's article on the GMC's Fitness to Practice Hearing regarding Wakefield.

Deer, a Sunday Times reporter, wrote an article in 2004, "Revealed: MMR research scandal," that played a major role in the attempt to discredit Wakefield. In the report, Deer also said Wakefield had "undisclosed financial conflicts of interest regarding the findings of his research."

Despite the GMC's findings and Wakefield having been barred from practicing medicine in the U.K., Wakefield has stuck to his guns. He released a press release in 2011 that can be found on PharmaLive.com under "Statement from Dr. Andrew Wakefield: No Fraud. No Hoax. No Profit Motive."

In the press release, Wakefiled said he wanted to make it "crystal clear" that his research was not a hoax and there was no fraud "whatsoever" involved. He added he did not seek to profit from the findings, and "despite media reports to the contrary" the results of his research have been duplicated in five other countries.

"I have lost my job, my career and my country. To claim that my motivation was profit is patently untrue. I will not be deterred - this issue is far too important," the release says.

Taylor said people like Wakefield are the "truth tellers." Taylor believes vaccines are about control and subjugation.

When asked if the polio vaccine eradicated polio, Taylor initially said the conversation was longer than "one single response" and mentioned a Dr. Suzanne Humphries as a good source of information on the topic. But then he continued and ultimately said the case of polio eradication was no different than other diseases that were wiped out.

"Basically, it was eradicated like all the other things, just like Spanish flu - it was sanitation, it was nutrition, better food, better water, sunlight, glass windows, underwear. All those things are literally eradicated as diseases of unsanitary conditions. And that's been the case time and time again," Taylor said.