Topic: WorldNetDaily
In a Sept. 1 and Sept. 3 WorldNetDaily article on swine flu vaccines -- a subject about which WND is fearmongering -- Chelsea Schilling references a claim by "investigative journalist Wayne Madsen" that "even scientists who helped develop a vaccine for small pox are saying they will not take the vaccine and urging friends and family to refrain from taking the injection as well." But Madsen has a record of making dubious claims -- including claims about Barack Obama's birth certificate that apparently even WND didn't find credible enough to embrace.
Madsen has already made one discredited claim about swine flu: that it is the result of "gene splicing" and could not have occurred naturally. In fact, research has shown that the progenitor for the virus first surfaced in pig farming and processing operations in 1998.
WND reported in October 2008 that one claim in a lawsuit filed by Philip Berg over Obama's birth certificate was that "Wayne Madsen, Journalist with Online Journal as a contributing writer and published an article on June 9, 2008, stating that a research team went to Mombassa, Kenya, and located a Certificate Registering the birth of Barack Obama, Jr. at a Kenya Maternity Hospital, to his father, a Kenyan citizen and his mother, a U.S. citizen." But WND has not referenced the claim since, suggesting that it doesn't believe it to be true (despite WND's history of reporting false claims on the subject).
Madsen has also claimed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is working with increasingly discredited birther lawyer Orly Taitz and conservative groups in the U.S. to use the birth certificate issue against Obama in retaliation for the Obama Administration's pressure on Israel to restrict expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and occupied Jerusalem. You'd think that this would be a claim tailor-made for WND, since it merges two of its favorite obsessions, the birther stuff and Aaron Klein's efforts to portray Obama as pro-Muslim and anti-Israel (mostly through anonymous sources).
But WND has curiously kept its hands off that claim as well. Do they not believe it? Or are they a functioning part of Netanyahu's conspiracy?
Given that WND apparently can't trust Madsen's reporting on other subjects it's interested in, it's strange that Schilling has decided he is trustworthy on the subject of swine flu vaccines -- even though he has previously been discredited.
