Press Release

MOH Fabricated WHO Meningococcal Meeting

Documents received under the Official Information Act and from the World Health Organization reveal that the Ministry of Health fabricated a WHO meningococcal vaccine strategy workshop.

On 20 August 2004 the New Zealand Ministry of Health announced to the medical profession the Proceedings of a World Health Organisation Meningococcal Vaccine Strategy Workshop.[1] The inference has been that the MeNZB vaccination campaign had WHO oversight and approval.

No such WHO workshop occurred. Instead the MeNZB team piggybacked a real WHO/UNICEF meeting, using the facilities to announce the findings to themselves while the delegates, mostly from developing Pacific Island nations, were away on field trips.

This is not the first time the Ministry of Health has misappropriated WHO good faith.

In 2004 the MOH announced they had used the WHO definition of a meningococcal epidemic of 3 cases per 100,000 to justify the mass immunization campaign. When questioned about the definition the WHO's Dr William Perea denied that such a definition existed. He commented that any such definition would have been created by the MOH.

These incidents may seem of minor importance, but when taken in context with the reams of source documented evidence of serious undisclosed conflicts of interest, unethical misconduct and statistical fabrication they add weight to the call for a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the justification and ongoing manipulation of evidence in support of the MeNZB vaccination campaign.

"It is once again unfortunate that an esteemed body such as the WHO has become caught up in the fabrications surrounding this experimental vaccine and its concomitant fallout," says Risk & Policy Analyst Ron Law (juderon[at]gmail.com).

Evidence has also emerged, following OIA requests that the Ministry of Health has deliberately falsified the recent effectiveness study undertaken by Victoria University.

The Minister of Health’s refusal to release the methodology is being referred to the Ombudsmen’s Office, but the study’s author Dr Richard Arnold has confirmed that a number of vaccinated children have been classified as unvaccinated in his study.

Nearly half of the epidemic strain cases attributed to the unvaccinated group had in fact been vaccinated.

Papers obtained under the OIA show that 90 percent of children who were going to respond to the MeNZB vaccine had done so after the second dose.

“To include them in the unvaccinated group demonstrates that the so- called peer review process headed by Professor Terry Nolan was a farce,” says Barbara Sumner Burstyn.

These two examples of apparent systematic fabrication of MeNZB related material provides further reasons for concern and should also be referred to a Royal Commission of Inquiry.

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[1] "The Proceedings of the Meningococcal Vaccine Strategy World Health Organization Satellite Meeting" held in Auckland on 10 March 2004, published in the New Zealand Medical Journal.