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A Midwestern Doctor@MidwesternDoc · Oct 23, 2026

In 1979, a prime-time network news show aired a segment no network would dare air today. 46 million Americans had…

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Summary

A thread discusses a 1979 news segment about the 1976 swine flu vaccination campaign, where 46 million Americans received shots for a pandemic that never materialized, resulting in thousands of lawsuits and cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome paralysis. The thread argues that media coverage of vaccine adverse events became impossible after 1997 when the FDA legalized pharmaceutical advertising on television.

Summarized by ThreadOut AI from the full thread. May miss nuance — read the thread below.

  1. #1

    In 1979, a prime-time network news show aired a segment no network would dare air today. 46 million Americans had "obediently" taken the 1976 swine flu shot, and 4,000 were now suing. Then the CDC official tracking the shot's side effects admitted he'd warned his bosses about neurological disorders before the campaign began. His bosses claimed he never told them. His answer: "That's nonsense." This is what the news looked like before Pharma bought it. 🧵

  2. #2

    Did you know the news used to regularly air stories about people's lives being ruined by vaccines? That all changed after Clinton let Pharma buy out the media. Here I compiled 56 mind-blowing news segments they'd never air today. midwesterndoctor.com/p/vaccine-amne…

  3. #3

    The CDC's swine flu surveillance chief, asked if he knew ahead of time that flu shots had been linked to neurological illness: "Absolutely." "I can't believe that they would say that they did not know... That simply is not true. We did know that."

  4. #4

    The "pandemic" they vaccinated 46 million people against never came. In 1976, a swine flu strain was found in a soldier who died. The FDA's own Chief Vaccine Control Officer, Dr. J. Anthony Morris, concluded it was nothing to worry about, because that strain only very rarely traveled from person to person. Because the strain grew too slowly to make a vaccine in time, it was hybridized with the 1918 influenza. Morris found the vaccine was unsafe and ineffective. He was told to keep his concerns to himself.

  5. #5

    The vaccine went out anyway. Hundreds of Americans were paralyzed by Guillain-Barré syndrome, dozens died and thousands of lawsuits were filed. The official count claimed only 1 in 100,000 got GBS. But a colleague of mine who was in practice back then has personally told me that 6% of their patients developed it. One woman in the segment, perfectly healthy before her shot, was "totally paralyzed" within weeks. Doctors had to operate so she could breathe.

  6. #6

    What did health authorities learn from it? One public health guide summed up the 1976 "debacle" as mismanagement and poor communication that caused "grave damage to confidence in public health agencies." In other words, the mistake wasn't the unsafe, unneeded vaccine. It was losing control of the story. And they fixed that. In 1997, the FDA legalized drug ads on TV (only the US and New Zealand allow them), and a segment like this one became unthinkable.

  7. #7

    Here's the full 1979 segment. It also shows the government's ad campaign using celebrity names as proof the shot was safe. One of those celebrities says on camera she never gave permission, and never took the shot.

  8. #8

    I compiled 75 forgotten news reports like this one, from the swine flu fiasco to DPT, autism and Gardasil. Each was aired by the mainstream media before Pharma bought it out, and none would air today: midwesterndoctor.com/p/vaccine-amne…

  9. #9

    We need real medicine so I've dedicated myself to exposing Pharma corruption and revealing life-changing therapies the medical cartel buried. If you want to support this mission please give me (@MidwesternDoc) a follow and visit me on Substack! midwesterndoctor.com