PamRotella.com

Giving Thanks
[Posted 23 January 2004]

Last Thanksgiving, when most Americans were planning big dinners and family gatherings, giving thanks for what blessings could be found in the midst of a bad recession, I was thankful for something else. 

A week prior to Thanksgiving, Marie Flowers (the activist behind MercuryPoisoned.com, an e-mail buddy of mine) started sending me e-mails on "Shaken Baby Syndrome."  As usual, Marie's information just floored me.  Apparently the retinal hemorrhaging found in Shaken Baby Syndrome is often caused by infant vaccinations along with common vitamin deficiencies. 

Marie was in touch with a woman who'd just returned from visiting Alan Yurko, a Florida father in prison for Shaken Baby Syndrome.  The nurse/activist in Florida suspected that his baby's retinal hemorrhaging was caused by vaccines.  While at the prison, the nurse noticed that Gary Null -- a leading health author with his own midday radio show on WBAI-New York -- was there filming a documentary on Shaken Baby Syndrome.

Marie herself was working on another Shaken Baby Syndrome case, which appeared to be caused by a second series of vaccines just prior to the baby's retinal hemorrhaging, which weren't then followed by a Vitamin K shot.  The mother's court-appointed lawyer refused to look at evidence linking mercury in vaccines to Shaken Baby Syndrome, so Marie and the baby's grandmother had scheduled to meet with a State Senator on the issue.

Marie also sent me a link on the issue:
VACCINES, VITAMIN C DEPLETION AND SHAKEN BABY SYNDROME

It occurred to me after reading Marie's e-mails that while others were running around working on dinner, these strong women were spending their time on a father in prison and a mother who'd lost custody of her baby, both  ostracized by a crime they probably didn't commit.  I e-mailed Marie back and told her that I was thankful for people like her on Thanksgiving -- the selfless activists spending their holidays on saving lives and educating people.  Thanks Marie, and everyone else trying to make a difference!


Deep down in our non-violent creed is the conviction there are some things so dear, some things so precious, some things so eternally true, that they're worth dying for. And if a man happens to be 36-years-old, as I happen to be, some great truth stands before the door of his life -- some great opportunity to stand up for that which is right.  A man might be afraid his home will get bombed, or he's afraid that he will lose his job, or he's afraid that he will get shot, or beat down by state troopers, and he may go on and live until he's 80. He's just as dead at 36 as he would be at 80. The cessation of breathing in his life is merely the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit. He died...  A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true.  So we're going to stand up amid horses. We're going to stand up right here in Alabama, amid the billy-clubs. We're going to stand up right here in Alabama amid police dogs, if they have them. We're going to stand up amid tear gas.  We're going to stand up amid anything they can muster up, letting the world know that we are determined to be free!
- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Selma, Alabama, 8 March 1965

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