FDA Presentations

FDA Presentations (http://www.fda.gov/cber/summaries.htm)

 

ICDRA Conference – 9/19/2008

• Responding to Vaccine Safety Events (PPT – 597 KB) – Karen Midthun, MD
• Post-Marketing Surveillance: Passive and Active Approaches and Use of Electronic Databases (PPT – 411 KB) – Karen Midthun, MD

Vaccinations: Safe or Unsafe?

by Lynda Lambert

In 1954, at the age of 8, I “read” an article in Life Magazine about polio and how it was treated. Stuck, even now, in my mind is the double-page picture of the children in iron lungs. It seemed like there were acres of them; as far as the eye could see. I learned only one thing from those pictures of iron lungs: I never wanted to be in one.So, when my mom said, “Don’t play in puddles?” I didn’t. And when my mom said, “Wash your hands!” I did. And, when the government said to all of us, line up to get your shot, I could hardly wait to get to the head of the line. I feared shots; but I feared polio more.

And when they told us to line up again a few years later and suck down Sabin’s sugar cube, I didn’t hesitate: the more immunization, the better.

I was not the only one who thought that way. For the last 50-plus years, the entire government structure, from the Centers for Disease Control to local departments of Education and the Congress of the United States, has based its public vaccination policy on that concept: the more immunization, the better.

However, given the natural exposure to disease—if there were no vaccines and no vaccinations—most children would only contract two to three childhood diseases in a lifetime. As example: I had measles and mumps; my sister had measles and scarlet fever (no vaccine for that). My daughter had a tendency toward croup, but her only disease in the “childhood” category was chickenpox, which she got at the age of 12. It is simply irrational to think that any child would be in a position to contract 11 to 15 different diseases in a lifetime

Government requires every child in the United States, if he or she is going to attend school, to have a minimum of 11 immunizations. In some states, it’s more; for instance, Maryland requires 15 immunizations.

However, government requires every child in the United States, if he or she is going to attend school, to have a minimum of 11 immunizations. In some states, it’s more; for instance, Maryland requires 15 immunizations. The Congress has recommended 22. These result in 36 to 60 injections for our children before the age of three. Averaged out at the top end, that’s 1.6 shots a month, beginning with their first month of life.

There are some serious problems with this. They fall into two main categories: the viruses themselves and the dilutions through which they are delivered.

Vaccines: too much disease

Imagine what would happen to your body if you, an adult with a mature immune system, contracted measles, mumps and Rubella at the same time. Are you saying, “Well, I’d probably die!”? Indeed. The human immune system, even when it’s fully mature, totally healthy and balanced, is simply not equipped to deal with that much disease all at one time. It is debilitating; it often causes what is called a compromised immune system, one that has difficulty performing the task for which nature designed it.

Yet, vaccines simulate disease. Inside the body, when a vaccination is given, our immune systems believe they are getting the disease. That’s why they react to the vaccine and create antibodies to it. And every time we shoot a child up with the Measles-Mumps-Rubella vaccine (MMR), we are simulating that hypothetical situation in which the child’s immature immune system thinks that it is getting all of these diseases at the same time.

The MMR & DPT

In the United States, the link between the MMR and autism continues to be denied by government and the drug companies; but there are proven statistical commonalities among children who have been vaccinated and autism. One study, for instance, showed that among the Amish, who do not vaccinate their children, there could only be found three cases of autism. All three of these children had come to the community from “outside” and all had been vaccinated.

The Diptheria-Pertussis-Tetanus (DPT) shot is another that “infects” our children with three diseases at a time. And there are some definitive data that link the DPT shot to ADD, ADHD, dyslexia, dissociative disorder, schizophrenia, seizures, Crohn’s disease, and, yes, autism. But, even without these possible long-term debilitating complications, the DPT has immediate deleterious effects.

“Assistant Secretary of Health Edward Brandt, Jr., MD, testifying before the U.S. Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, rounded… figures off to 9,000 cases of convulsions, 9,000 cases of collapse, and 17,000 cases of high-pitched screaming for a total of 35,000 acute neurological reactions occurring within forty-eight hours of a DPT shot among America’s children every year.” (Coulter, HL and Fischer, BL quoted in Rappaport, J., 2003 [emphasis added])

Allergies

I am someone who carries a medic alert bracelet which says, “allergic to all tetanus toxoids.” I had so many tetanus shots as a child—when they gave them to you for every bee sting—that I will now go into anaphylactic shock if a tetanus shot is administered. The last tentanus shot I had was in 1960; I was violently ill for more than two weeks and almost died.

In 1965, I rammed my heel on a rusty nail, but convinced the doctor to test me for toxoid allergy before giving me a tentanus shot. He injected 1/100th of the normal dose under my skin. Then, as he was telling me to come back in two days so he could see the reaction, he suddenly went mute and sat amazed as my forearm swelled to twice its normal size. It stayed that way for more than two weeks. He did not, needless to say, give me that shot.

The reason my arm swelled up was because, as far as my immune system was concerned, the toxoid was an invading enemy that needed fighting. It had built up immunity to the shot itself. My system sent thousands of antibodies and plenty of blood to the location of the invasion to fight it; and, had I been injected, my system would have attacked my entire body to stop it.

Allergies indicate a malfunction of the immune response, and, as my case shows, can be caused by too much vaccination. But none of our children are tested for allergic reactions to these vaccines before they are administered, even though the onset of autism, for instance, does not usually occur until the second MMR shot— and it is known that 90% of immunity is produced by the first.

Allergic reactions, however, do not necessarily show themselves only in allergic reactions to the vaccinations. The corrupted immune response can show itself in allergies to other normal things, like food.

Today’s children have more allergies, particularly to food, than any generation before them. These responses are often life-threatening, systemic, and can be directly correlated to out-of-whack immune systems.

Food allergies are particularly symptomatic of immune system malfunction in the intestinal tract, as are bowel diseases, because 70% of our immune function is resident in our gastrointestinal tract. When the gastrointestinal tract is in good working order, then we have a 70% chance of remaining healthy, have few allergies, and few problems like diabetes and asthma. When it is out of balance, then the whole body gets out of balance.

Dr. Daniel More reports that “Allergy to egg, milk, soy, wheat, peanut and tree nuts represents 90% of all food allergies in children.” The peanut allergy, in particular, is ubiquitous. In 2007, Dr. Michael C. Young, Assistant Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and a practitioner at Children’s Hospital, answered some questions about this for PBS. He said:

“The number of kids with peanut allergies has been increasing over the last ten to fifteen years. In the past five years, the number has doubled…. In fact, all allergic diseases in children—including food allergies, environmental allergies, asthma and eczema—have been increasing at similar rates over the last decade.”

DrGreene.com reports that “most children who develop life-threatening food allergies either have asthma or a family history of asthma, eczema, or hay fever.”

Interestingly, neither Dr. Young nor Dr. Green could come up with a reason. “No one knows why this is happening,” said Dr. Young. Yet, all of these conditions indicate a corrupted immune system. And what has been happening over the last 15 to 20 years that could corrupt young immune systems? Increased vaccination should top the list, one would think.

In a study of autistic children, doctors found a “high prevalence of histologic [tissue] abnormalities in the esophagus, stomach, small intestine and colon, and dysfunction of liver conjugation capacity and intestinal permeability were reported. Three surveys conducted in the United States described high prevalence of gastrointestinal symptoms in children with autistic disorder” (Horvath, K, and Perman, J.A.,2002).

In other words, children who had autism also had tissue disruptions in the very part of their bodies which hold 70% of their immune function. It is not too far to jump to assume that the immune system destruction may have contributed to the autism, and not the other way around.

I am fascinated by the fact that no doctor anywhere seems to want to even look at this relationship; yet it seems very plain and obvious. It’s not as if we haven’t openly recognized the dangers of vaccines in the past.

We made a good decision with smallpox 30 years ago. We stopped vaccinating for smallpox because the risk of the vaccination outweighed the risk of getting the disease. We recently stopped administering the Sabin live polio vaccine, because it had been causing children to get polio.

Even so, in an article about vaccination published by the Baltimore Sun (2008), a Dr. Neal Halsey was quoted as saying that, “One of the reasons that some parents have withheld measles vaccines is that they believe that the risk is very low. This is, unfortunately, a false belief.”

In fact, the parents are correct and Dr. Halsey is incorrect. The highest number of cases of measles in the U.S. in recent years reported by the CDC is 131; that makes the chance of getting measles approximately 1 in 2 million. If the MMR does, in fact, cause autism, then the risk for autism is much higher than the risk of getting the disease. The current risk of getting autism is 1 in 5.

Of course, many will say that the reason the risk of measles is so low is that children have been getting vaccinated against measles. And, though this may be true, the same was true for smallpox; the risk of the shot now outweighs the risk of getting the disease.

But it is not just the viruses themselves that cause problems; preservatives and contaminants must be considered when looking at these complications and reactions.

Additives, Preservatives and Dilutions

Everyone remembers the Mad Hatter from the tale of Alice in Wonderland. What some of you may not know is that mad hatters were very prevalent in 19th Century. In order to mold hats, the hatter would immerse the hat and his hands in vats of mercury, eventually—and unalterably—becoming poisoned. In the 21st century, we are still concerned with mercury poisoning. We stopped using mercury thermometers, for instance, because of the “risk”. We’ve stopped putting mercury in tooth fillings. But the fact is that these minute amounts of mercury did not cause direct harm. Large amounts, however, do.

An environmental website, Alliance for a Healthy Tomorrow, reported in 2005 that:

“Since the 1950s it has been known that when women eat fish highly contaminated with mercury, their children are at risk for mental retardation, seizures and other serious problems. Yet trash incinerators and coal-burning power plants continue to emit tons of mercury [70 million tons a day, to be exact], which builds up in the food chain to contaminate fish. The result is that many fish species are now unsafe to eat. Women of childbearing age and small children have been warned to no longer eat tuna steaks, shark, swordfish, or any fish from Massachusetts ponds and rivers. Eating these fish increases the risk of permanent harm (such as learning and attention problems) to the developing fetus or young child. In spite of this damage to an important food source, the industries that emit mercury continue to lobby against mercury reductions. Now 1 out of 10 women of child-bearing age have mercury levels that exceed the advised safe limit, putting untold numbers of future children at risk for learning and attention problems.” (emphasis added)

A website called Toxfaqs, posted by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, a division of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), states that:

“Very young children are more sensitive to mercury than adults. … Mercury’s harmful effects… include brain damage, mental retardation, incoordination, blindness, seizures, and inability to speak. Children poisoned by mercury may develop problems of their nervous and digestive systems, and kidney damage.”

The National Autistic Society writes that “75 symptoms of autism parallel those of mercury poisoning.” Recent experiments in treating autism as mercury poisoning are, in fact, resulting in some cures.

One wonders, then, why the government would compel us to deliberately pump more mercury into our children’s healthy bodies. Some Hepatitis B vaccines and the flu vaccine are still preserved with thimerosal, a trade name for a form of mercury preservative, which began being used as a preservative in vaccines since 1931.

You might be agreeing with the American Association of Pediatrics, saying, “Well, heck, if it’s been used since 1931, then it must be safe.” But, in fact, in 1931, the only vaccine that was given to children was smallpox; and it was never injected into the body, but was only pricked into the skin. And, even though it seems that that would not be enough to poison a child, it was the beginning of autism, which, up to that point, had never been documented before.

In 2001, two Massachusetts families, parents of autistic children, filed suit against the makers of “hepatitis B, diptheria/tetanus and other vaccines,” alleging that their children had been “poisoned with toxic mercury” (Hepatitis Week, vol. 1, 33).

HepB

Hepatitus B is a blood or fluid transmitted disease. Like HIV, it is prevalent among drug users and those who have unprotected sex. One would not think that an infant is not in need of a vaccination for a sexually transmitted disease, unless he or she has a chance of exposure in the womb. In British Columbia (BC), for example, the vaccine is only given to infants if they are “… born to a mother with hepatitis B or a mother at high risk of the infection, or a baby who has another household contact or a caregiver with hepatitis B infection.” And, in BC, the first shot is given at two months, after the baby’s breathing reflex, eating, etc., have stabilized.

But in the United States, where the CDC reports only 10,000 cases of the disease every year, unless the parents file a protest and say they will not allow the vaccination (which few parents are even told they can do), their perfect newborn baby will be vaccinated for HepB when he is only two hours old—even if there is no indication of current or potential exposure. At two hours old, a child’s body is still adjusting to being outside the womb and his entire immune system is dependent on his mother’s milk.

And, although other countries are more cautious, in the U.S., the HepB vaccination is considered “safe.” But what is “safe”?

Michael Belkin, who was at the time Director of the Hepatitis B Vaccine Project of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), in testimony before the Center of Disease Control’s (CDC) Committee on Immunization Practices in 1999, said the following in regard to HepB vaccine:

“As a UC Berkeley graduate and advisor to some of the largest financial institutions in the world, I am qualified to analyze and make conclusions about statistics. Based on that experience, I am astonished that the scientists on this Committee would disregard or cover up data showing the number and severity of adverse reactions to this vaccine. Science is observing and learning from what is observed. The assertions of the CDC that the many reported adverse reactions to this vaccine do not exist or are a coincidence violates the basic principle of science, which is rooted in the observation and analysis of data.

“A benefit/risk analysis of the hepatitis B vaccine for the average infant in America, not born to infected parents, must conclude that the VAERS data on adverse reactions shows the real-world risk of a newborn infant dying or being injured by the hepatitis B vaccine is a greater threat than the remote chance of contracting the primarily blood-transmitted disease. (emphasis added)

“My 5-week-old daughter, Lyla Rose, died within 16 hours of her hepatitisB vaccination, which she received because of the universal vaccination policy this Committee instituted in 1991. At her death, Lyla had four of the eight highest-reported symptoms in the VAERS hepatitis B vaccine adverse reaction data. The NY Medical Examiner observed brain swelling at the autopsy but refused to record that or mention the hepatitis B vaccine Lyla received in the autopsy report.” (Belkin)

Belkin also noted in further testimony that:

“…the CDC’s own Fact Sheet on the Hepatitis B disease does not include newborn babies as a risk group for that disease. That Fact Sheet lists the risk groups as injection drug users, homosexual men, sexually active heterosexuals, infants/children of immigrants from disease-endemic areas, low socio-economic level, sexual/household contacts of infected persons, infants born to infected mothers, health care workers and hemodialysis patients—NOT NEWBORN BABIES.”

HepB, however, does not just pose the risk of sudden death. Rheumatic fever, encephalitis, and optic neuritis, as well as other debilitating diseases are all on the list. For instance, in France, the HepB vaccine has been suspended for everyone, even adults, “due to its association with Multiple Sclerosis” (thinktwice.com).

How can this vaccine be listed as “safe”? Perhaps the reason is similar to why vaccines containing mercury were considered “safe” for so long.

The Kennedy Report

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., in 2005, wrote a startling exposé concerning the relationship between mercury and an international increase in autism, and the government’s cover-up of that relationship. Among other things, he notes that as early as 1935 the safety of thimerosal was being questioned, and:

More than 500,000 kids currently suffer from autism, and pediatricians diagnose more than 40,000 new cases every year. The disease was unknown until 1943, when it was identified and diagnosed among eleven children born in the months after thimerosal was first added to baby vaccines in 1931….

Skeptics often say, well, if thimerosal is the culprit, then why are has the number of autistic cases only increased precipitously in children born between 1989 and 2003 (Kennedy, 2005). It is, quite obviously, the increase in the number of vaccinations required of this generation; every one of which, at that time, contained thimerosal.

“Russia banned thimerosal from children’s vaccines twenty years ago, and Denmark, Austria, Japan, Great Britain and all the Scandinavian countries have since followed suit” (Kennedy, 2005). Yet, in this country, though many vaccines are no longer preserved with mercury, we do not recognize the connection. The reasons are exposed in Kennedy’s report. The Bush Administration, in power when a definitive connection between thimerosoal and autism was discovered—and heavily supported by the pharmaceutical industry—wanted to avoid lawsuits that might put those companies out of business, and so actively chose to cover-up the information.

Kennedy claims:

The CDC paid the Institute of Medicine to conduct a new study to whitewash the risks of thimerosal, ordering researchers to “rule out” the chemical’s link to autism. It withheld Verstraeten’s findings [that directly linked autism and thimerosol], even though they had been slated for immediate publication, and told other scientists that his original data had been “lost” and could not be replicated. And to thwart the Freedom of Information Act, it handed its giant database of vaccine records over to a private company, declaring it off-limits to researchers. By the time Verstraeten finally published his study in 2003, he had gone to work for GlaxoSmithKline and reworked his data to bury the link between thimerosal and autism.

To me, this is just plain stupid. If someone does something with good intentions, not knowing that it may be harmful, then they should not be held responsible. However, if they find that it is harmful, and yet keep doing it, then that is an altogether different matter. What the government did by covering up this information was commit a criminal act, which has so far resulted in the mental, emotional, and physical damage to thousands of children.

As one researcher put it in the Kennedy report:

“You couldn’t even construct a study that shows thimerosal is safe,” says Haley, who heads the chemistry department at the University of Kentucky. “It’s just too darn toxic. If you inject thimerosal into an animal, its brain will sicken. If you apply it to living tissue, the cells die. If you put it in a petri dish, the culture dies. Knowing these things, it would be shocking if one could inject it into an infant without causing damage.”

Mercury preservative is still used in vaccines exported to other countries; and, as noted above, in some HepB and flu vaccines; yet the government continues to require their administration. Just this winter (2008), the governor of New Jersey made flu shots for infants mandatory.

Admittedly, since 2000, most mercury preservatives have been removed in most vaccine shots in the U.S.; however, other additives and preservatives have taken its place. For instance, aluminum is now often added to vaccines.

In a study done on animals by the Department of Opthalmology and Program in Neuroscience, University of British Columbia and reported in Neuromolecular Medicine (2007), it was found that:

“Apoptotic neurons were identified in aluminum-injected animals that showed significantly increased activated caspase-3 labeling in lumbar spinal cord (255%) and primary motor cortex (192%) compared with the controls. Aluminum-treated groups also showed significant motor neuron loss (35%) and increased numbers of astrocytes (350%) in the lumbar spinal cord.” (Note: Apoptosis—the syndrome caused by apoptotic neurons—is, according to Webster’s medical dictionary, “a … process of cell self-destruction that is marked by the fragmentation of nuclear DNA,”)

The adult HepB vaccine contains “… aluminum phosphate and aluminum hydroxide as adjuvants and 2-phenoxyethanol as a preservative.” (CDC, 2006)

Kennedy reports that, in 1982, “Dr. Maurice Hilleman, one of the fathers of Merck’s vaccine programs” suggested that there were “non-toxic alternatives” to these preservatives, and “‘The best way to go… is to switch to dispensing the actual vaccines without adding preservatives.”

But, even if the government were to finally follow that advice, the fact is that preservatives are not the only problem.

Other Toxins

Much has been made of the toxins in cigarettes. Second-hand smoke has been linked—albeit with many qualifiers—to every childhood ailment from sudden infant death to asthma. Yet, even if you consider impossible exposure to cigarette smoke—24/7 in a non-vented environment—the amount of these chemicals entering the body are minuscule compared to those that would enter the body if those chemicals were directly injected into a child’s bloodstream.

You, say, “But this would never happen!” Well… cigarette toxins include formaldehyde, benzene, acetone, ammonia, arsenic, hydrogen cyanide, and more; vaccine toxins include formaldehyde, antifreeze, acetone, disinfectant, borax, and latex, and more. The biggest difference is that the vaccine toxins are directly injected into a child’s body every time he or she receives a vaccination.

Vaccines also can contain some unique toxins that do not occur in cigarettes, such as MSG, methanol, dye, and glycerine. Then, too, a vaccine may include “ingredients” that supposedly support the actual immune response, such as “aborted human foetus cells,” “mutated human viruses,” and “animal organ tissues and blood.”

One of the most effective vaccines—and supposedly one of the “safest” because it contains no preservatives of any kind—is the chicken-pox vaccine (Varivax). The Merck website lists the following ingredients.

Each 0.5 mL dose contains the following: a minimum of 1350 PFU (plaque forming units) of Oka/Merck varicella virus when reconstituted and stored at room temperature for 30 minutes, approximately 25 mg of sucrose, 12.5 mg hydrolyzed gelatin, 3.2 mg sodium chloride, 0.5 mg monosodium L-glutamate, 0.45 mg of sodium phosphate dibasic, 0.08 mg of potassium phosphate monobasic, 0.08 mg of potassium chloride; residual components of MRC-5 cells including DNA and protein; and trace quantities of sodium phosphate monobasic, EDTA, neomycin, and fetal bovine serum.

Are any of these substances that you want in your child’s bloodstream? Serum made from cow fetuses? Potassium chloride? MSG?

Is it worth it?

Vaccination is dangerous. There is simply no getting around that. Yet, if it really works to stop some of the most dangerous diseases from spreading and decimating whole populations, then it is worth it. And there is some evidence that it does work. Still, there is some evidence that it doesn’t.

In investigating the effectiveness of vaccines, I found, for instance, that polio was already on the decline when the polio vaccine was administered to thousands of us.

In some instances, as with whooping cough, I found that vaccination does not seem to have any effect, or may have a negative effect. As well, there is some evidence that with increased vaccination for pertussis came increases in the number of cases of pertussis. A report in Lancet, the British medical journal, stated that:

“While 70-80% of British children were immunized against pertussis in 1970-71…, in 1970/71, there were more than 33,000 cases of pertussis with 41 fatal cases among the very well immunized British child population; whereas in 1974/75, with a declining rate of vaccination [39%], a pertussis epidemic caused only 25,000 cases with 25 fatalities.” (Ehrengut, 1978)

And the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that,

“Administration of KMV [killed measles vaccine] apparently set in motion an aberrant immunologic response that not only failed to protect children against natural measles, but resulted in heightened susceptibility.” (1980, vol. 244, p. 804).

And then, there are some vaccines whose effectiveness simply wanes with time. The chickenpox vaccine, for instance, has been shown to lose its effectiveness after 10 years. This is a problem, because chickenpox when one is age 5 or 10 is not dangerous, but chickenpox as an adult can be very dangerous.

Or, sometimes, the vaccinations simply don’t “take” and children are susceptible to the disease anyway. In a Baltimore Sun article, it was noted that in a study measuring the effectiveness of vaccines, of 131 children who came down with measles, “… 11 of the 131 had been vaccinated.” That means that even with vaccination, that group still had a 30% chance of getting the disease.

A New York Times article gave another measles example that occurred in 1994. “Out of 625 children exposed to the disease, 17 got measles. Of those 609 who had previously been vaccinated, only 10 (or 1.6%) developed measles. Of the 16 children who were not immunized, 7 (or 44%) developed measles. Thus, the risk for immunized children was less than 2% while the risk for un-immunized children was 44%.”

It is true that “7 of 16” equals 44%, that does not equate to a 44% chance of getting the disease. Indeed, it seems to me that to get the correct percentages, one would need to compare both 7 and 10 to the full complement of the study, which, if one does so, shows that of 625 children, immunized children, had a 1.6% chance of getting the disease and unimmunized children had a 1.1% chance of getting the disease.

It is often said that un-immunized children pose a risk to immunized children, but that should not be the case. If one is immunized, then the unimmunized should carry no risk at all. Unimmunized children should have a higher risk of getting the disease; however, based on the above numbers, this appears to be incorrect.

Conclusion

New vaccines are being discovered all the time, and most of them are immediately slated for the childhood immunization requirements. Gardasil, for instance, hit the world by storm. Wow! A vaccine to save girls from cervical cancer. Gotta use it!

In fact, it was so well sold that it whizzed through FDA approval, and was adopted as mandatory for girls over 12 in Texas, and the UK placed it on the list of mandatory vaccinations for children in 2007. All that was before three healthy young women died within days of receiving the vaccine… before a series of women who didn’t even know they were pregnant had miscarriages… before the 1,700 other women suffered everything from blood clots to paralysis and seizures.

All this reminds me of the birth control pills that killed many women before anyone would even admit that they were dangerous. The makers of Gardasil are still trying to say, “Oh, no, it wasn’t our fault.” But the British Telegraph reported said that, if this shot stays on the list of required vaccinations, children taking Gardasil would be “no better than human guinea pigs.”

It seems to me that, perhaps, we have all been guinea pigs in the study of vaccination. And, perhaps, it was worth taking a chance on when there was a real danger of world-wide epidemics of smallpox or polio, and only a very few children were harmed by being vaccinated. But this is no longer the case.

The immediate, known risk to a child from multiple vaccines is more dangerous than the possible risk of almost any childhood disease. Instead, we have epidemics of autism, food allergies, childhood diabetes, childhood cancer, immune deficiency syndromes, and more, all of which may be directly related to vaccination. Surely, if there is only a chance this is true—and I think there is more than a “chance”—then we should suspend all mandatory vaccination and begin to study unvaccinated populations to see if they have the same problems that the vaccinated do.

It is time that the health of our children was put back in our own hands. The government simply has no right to make such a choice for us. It has no right to ask us to knowingly poison the smallest and most defenseless among us. We have to end mandatory vaccination now, before any more children are harmed or killed.

Michael Belkin’s final comments about Hep B vaccine before the CDC sum it up better than I can:

At the NVIC, we are overwhelmed following up constant new reports of deaths, seizures and autoimmune reactions following hepatitis B vaccination. Because the CDC refuses to acknowledge this large number of serious adverse reactions, hospitals and doctors who have been misled about the risks continue to administer the vaccine and then deny any vaccine connection when children die, get ill or have seizures within hours or days. CDC officials tell parents they have never heard of hepatitis B vaccine reactions.

That is a lie. For this government to continue to insist that hepatitis B vaccine adverse reaction reports do not exist is negligent, unethical—and is a crime against the children of America.

HepB, MMR, DPT, Chickenpox… for all of them, the dangers of vaccination are real. More is not better. Wholesale vaccination needs to be stopped. Now.

References:

• Alliance for a Healthy Tomorrow. “Lead and Mercury: Late lessons from early warnings.” September, 2005.
• Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. “Toxfacs for Mercury“, April 1999.
• Belkin, M. (1999) Testimony before the Committee on Immunization Practices, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (February 17).
• CDC (2006). Traveler’s Guide.
• Cockcroft, L. (2007) “Cervical cancer drug Gardasil linked to deaths.” The Telegraph.
• Ehrengut, W. in Lancet, Feb. 18, 1978, p. 370 Retrieved on 5/25/08
• Horvath, K, and Perman, J.A., (2002) Department of Pediatrics, Division of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition, University of Maryland School of Medicine.
• JAMA Aug. 22, 1980, vol. 244, p. 804.
• Kennedy, R.F., Jr. (2005) “Deadly Immunity“. In Rolling Stone.
• National Network for Immunization Information. (2007) “Parents: Why Immunize? Vaccine Effectiveness.“
• Primary Immunodeficency Resource Center. (2008) Primary Immunodeficiency Booklet.
• Reuters. “Chickenpox Vaccine Loses Effectiveness in Study“. New York Times, March 15, 2007.
• Skeptics magazine. “Japan, SIDS and Pertussis Immunization“.
• Scheibner, Viera, M.D. (1998) “Comments on Japanese SIDS ‘rebutal’“.
• Vaccination Information Service (1998 ) “Confusion” brochure
• “What Parents should know about Thimerosal“.

<!–

–>

Dr. Paul Offit: Fox in a Henhouse, the ACIP Years (1998-2003)

Dr. Paul Offit: Fox in a Henhouse, the ACIP Years (1998-2003)    By J.B. Handley

 

The screaming started four hours after 8-month-old Chaise Irons received a vaccination against rotavirus, recommended in June 1998 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for every infant to prevent serious diarrhea. Within a day he was vomiting and eliminating blood. Doctors performed emergency surgery, saving him by repairing his intestines, which were folding in on one another. A doctor later figured out the vaccine caused Chaise’s problem. In October 1999, after 15 reports of such incidents, the CDC withdrew its recommendation for the vaccination — not because of the problem, the agency claims, but because bad publicity might give vaccines in general a bad name. But a four-month investigation by United Press International found a pattern of serious problems linked to vaccines recommended by the CDC — and a web of close ties between the agency and the companies that make vaccines.”

….The Rotashield introduction and withdrawal was such a fiasco it triggered a Congressional investigation, and a blistering report from the Committee on Government Reform which was released on August 21, 2000 and titled, Conflicts in Vaccine Policy (HERE).
 
And who would you guess was at the center of the Congressional report’s criticism? You guessed it: Dr. Paul Offit.

 
People often ask me how the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) went from recommending 10 vaccines for children in the mid-1980s to the bursting-at-the-seams 36 vaccine schedule of today. My answer, which always surprises people, is a four-letter acronym: ACIP.
 
ACIP? Most people have never heard of it, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. Locked away inside a single page on the CDC website, the ACIP is described as:
 
“15 experts in fields associated with immunization who have been selected by the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to provide advice and guidance to the Secretary, the Assistant Secretary for Health, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on the control of vaccine-preventable diseases. The Committee develops written recommendations for the routine administration of vaccines to children and adults in the civilian population; recommendations include age for vaccine administration number of doses and dosing interval, and precautions and contraindications. The ACIP is the only entity in the federal government that makes such recommendations. [emphasis added].”
 
The ACIP is a remarkably powerful committee of appointees. Let’s say you’re Merck, a giant pharmaceutical company with vaccines as a primary business line. And, let’s say you have invested several hundred million dollars in developing a vaccine. Just for fun, let’s imagine the vaccine you have developed is for Rotavirus. Let’s say you would like to sell your vaccine to as many people as possible.
 
Well, if you’re Merck, and if you want to sell your new Rotavirus to as many people as possible, you can pass through one door and one door only: the ACIP. If the ACIP approves your vaccine, you can write your ticket. If the ACIP denies your vaccine? Zero. As Congress’ report notes:
 
“The recommendation [by the ACIP] for routine use of a vaccine is tantamount to a Federal mandate for vaccine use.”
 
It’s almost hard to comprehend the amount of pressure pharma would be under to “manage” the ACIP and give their vaccines the best possible chance for approval – there are literally billions of dollars at stake for a single vaccine.
 
Enter Dr. Paul Offit. With Merck’s funding and support, he filed a patent for a Merck-sponsored Rotavirus vaccine on December 9, 1994. Four years later, as his own vaccine was going through trials and no Rotavirus vaccines were YET on the U.S. vaccine schedule, Offit was appointed to the ACIP as a voting member of the committee.
 
Of course, Offit was well aware that a competing vaccine for Rotavirus made by Wyeth was years ahead of his own vaccine and preparing for a presentation to the ACIP in the near future. In fact, he joined the ACIP only three weeks before the committee voted to approve Wyeth’s Rotashield vaccine for the Vaccines for Children program (Offit voted “yes.”). What’s so bad about voting for another company’s vaccine for Rotavirus vaccine when you are developing a competing product? Congress explains:
 
“Members of the ACIP are allowed to vote on a recommendation for one company’s
vaccine even if they have financial ties to a competing firm developing a similar vaccine.
For example, in the case of the rotavirus vaccine, the vaccine before the advisory committee was developed by Wyeth-Lederle. However, Merck and SmithKline29 Beecham had rotavirus vaccines under development. A recommendation for Wyeth- Lederle’s vaccine would help pave the way for future recommendations for the products of Merck and SmithKline-Beecham. While ACIP members with ties to Wyeth-Lederle were not allowed to vote on recommendations for the rotavirus vaccine, those with ties to Merck and SmithKline-Beecham were allowed to vote.
 
This stands in stark contrast to the policies of the FDA. In discussions with FDA staff on this specific issue they informed the Committee staff that when the VRBPAC is deliberating the licensure of a vaccine, a company is considered affected [an affected company is one with a direct interest] if they are direct competitors of the manufacturer of the vaccine being considered. They further clarified that that this policy was in place because of the competing interest of the affected company and not because of concerns about the release of proprietary information.”
 
Dr. Paul Offit joined the ACIP three weeks before they voted on a Rotavirus vaccine manufactured by Wyeth to be added to the vaccine schedule. He held a patent on a competing vaccine. 
 
It’s almost incomprehensible, and certainly shows the worst of how pharma games the US Vaccine system. It’s hard to believe, but this story actually gets worse.
 
As we know from above, this initial vaccine that Paul Offit voted to approve was pulled from the market one short year later because of the level of adverse events affecting children. From the report:
 
“A product was placed on the market that had to be withdrawn within one year because it was injuring the children it was meant to protect.”
 
Perhaps worse, and even more shocking, was the timing of the ACIP vote to approve Rotashield:
 
“A particularly troubling aspect of the deliberations on the ‘RotaShield’ vaccine is the sequence of events. The ACIP Committee voted to recommend universal vaccinations of infants before the FDA licensure of the vaccine. Officials of the CDC acknowledged that they knew of no other instance where this has happened.”
 
Wait a minute. They approved the vaccine for universal use in kids before the FDA licensed the product? Why, that stands in rather marked contrast to the reassuring words of Dr. Renee Jenkins, President of the American Academy of Pediatrics:
 
“The vaccine schedule undergoes vigorous scientific and evidence-based review each year…The vaccine schedule has evolved over the past 50 years based on scientific evidence.”
 
It appears Paul Offit joined the ACIP to ensure he could influence the approval of the Rotavirus vaccine, from which he would later benefit greatly when his own version of rotavirus vaccine was approved. Not surprisingly, Paul Offit voted yes on every action he could relating to the approval of Wyeth’s vaccine. But, when the vaccine was being pulled from the market, Offit abstained:
 
“Dr. Offit began his tenure on ACIP in October of 1998. Out of four votes pertaining to the ACIP’s rotavirus statement, he voted yes three times, including voting for the inclusion of the rotavirus vaccine in the VFC program. Dr. Offit abstained from voting on the ACIP’s rescission of the recommendation of the rotavirus vaccine for routine use. He stated at the meeting, ‘I’m not conflicted with Wyeth, but because I consult with Merck on the development of rotavirus vaccine, I would still prefer to abstain because it creates a perception of conflict.'”
 
Approve it? “Yes.” Approve it? “Hell yes!” Approve it? “Absolutely.” It’s hurting a bunch of kids, we need to pull it! “Umm….I have a conflict, gotta go.”
 
Unbelievable.
 
On February 23, 2006 the ACIP voted to add Paul Offit’s vaccine, Rotateq, to the U.S. Immunization schedule. As we all know, Dr. Offit has conceded this vaccine “made him rich.” An analyst for Merck notes, “At a cost of $187.50 for the three-dose series, RotaTeq is one of the most expensive vaccines to date; by 2009, the company forecasts that the vaccine could bring in as much as $500 million in annual revenue.”
 
In May 2008, it was reported that, “Later in 2007, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that there were 117 confirmed cases of intussusception among recipients of Rotateq between March 2006 and June 2007.”

Also, in 2008 it was reported that, “The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved an update to the product label for Merck & Co.’s Rotateq vaccine to include the report of a death of a recipient due to an intestinal obstruction.”
In 2008, Medical Science Monitor published a study critical of Paul Offit’s vaccine (HERE).
 
It stated: “This study found that, after a significant decline in intussusception adverse events entered into VAERS after the withdrawal of RotaShield, the previous rotavirus vaccine, a significant, rapid increase in intussusception adverse-event reports was observed after the licensing of RotaTeq, the current rotavirus vaccine, on February 3, 2006… From February 3, 2006 through July 31, 2007, a total of 160 (of the 165 reported) intussusception and 11 (of the 16 reported) Kawasaki disease adverse event reports were identified when RotaTeq was administered or co-administered with other vaccines. Time-trend analyses showed that there were significant increases in the total number of intussusception and Kawasaki disease adverse events entered into VAERS in comparison to previous years.”
 
And the study concluded:
 
“Based on the preceding realities, it would seem that the ACIP recommendations for the universal use of RotaTeq were, at best, premature and unwarranted. It is important that healthcare providers continue to report adverse events that occur following RotaTeq vaccine so that more information may be gleaned about its safety profi le, and those patients that may have experienced an adverse effect of RotaTeq vaccination should be advised that they may be eligible for compensation from the no-fault National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP).
 
The acceptance of RotaTeq vaccination for the US market may be significantly limited by its apparent lack of economic savings, and given the fact that it may alter disease patterns of intussusception/ Kawasaki disease, so that they occur with greater frequency among segments of the population that previously had only limited experience with such conditions. Moreover, if the serious adverse events being reported following vaccination with RotaTeq are indeed vaccine related, then, like the previous rotavirus RotaShield, RotaTeq should be immediately withdrawn from the US market.”
 
As of January 2009, Rotateq remains on the market.

Secret British MMR Vaccine Files Forced Open By Legal Action

Secret British MMR Vaccine Files Forced Open By Legal Action

The UK’s Daily Mail newspaper reports today that the British government was desperately trying to prevent secret files on the proven dangerous Pluserix MMR vaccine from being released publicly under the UK’s Freedom Of Information laws.  In a recent case they have been forced to open the files up to scrutiny:-

And here is some of what will be discovered.

British Government’s Reckless Disregard for Child Health Safety

The UK’s Department of Health and others appear to have been reckless as to the safety of British children over the manner in which Glaxo company, Smith Kline & French Laboratories Ltd’s Pluserix MMR was introduced and used on British Children in 1988

• the problems with Pluserix MMR were known to the supplier, Glaxo company Smith Kline & French Laboratories Ltd from the experience of its introduction to Canada, in 1986, where Pluserix was marketed under the name “Trivirix”

• Trivirix (Pluserix) was withdrawn from use in Canada in 1988 because it was dangerous, causing high levels of adverse reactions in children

• the high levels of British adverse reactions to the vaccine were apparent and known about at British Ministerial level in 1990, as shown by ministerial correspondence

 
• Pluserix/Trivirx are the identical vaccine manufactured in the identical Smith Kline factory in Belgium and with the exact same component parts and constituents

 
• despite the Canadian position and contemporaneously with the final withdrawal of Pluserix/Trivirix in Canada the UK signed the contract to purchase Pluserix MMR from Glaxo company, Smith Kline & French Laboratories Limited in July 1988, even though it was known by then to be too dangerous for use on our children
  

 
• SK&F was provided with a blanket indemnity in that contract by the NHS Procurement Directorate
  

 
• the contract was signed up by the backdoor through the North East Thames Regional Health Authority as agent for the NHS Procurement Directorate rather than being a contract directly entered into with the NHS Procurement Directorate which negotiated the contract or the NHS Executive of the time
  

 
• there was no Parliamentary scrutiny of this and it seems to have been effected in a manner Ministerially deniable

 
• similar problems were experienced in Japan with the Japanese MMR vaccine which, in common with Pluserxi/Trivirix, contained the Urabe strain of mumps virus

 
• the Japanese MMR was also withdrawn by 1992 on safety grounds having caused high levels of adverse reactions

 
• the British government continued the licence for Pluserix MMR after 1992, which enabled it to be supplied overseas

 
• even today, because it is cheaper than safer alternatives, organisations like UNICEF continue supplying urabe strain containing MMR vaccine to the more adverse reaction vulnerable and less well nourished third world children
  

 
• since 1998, statistical paper after paper has been published in a blaze of publicity, claiming no evidence of an association between the MMR vaccine and autism, but when all the noise has died down, on subsequent careful examination, each one has been found to be flawed

 
• other than the Royal Free’s paper, no clinical studies of the MMR child litigants were undertaken or published
  

 
• after being put under financial pressure by the British Government, in 2005 the Oxford based Cochrane Collaboration published a systematic review of all prior papers and its authors claimed to conclude the MMR vaccine was safe:-
   
  • it was shown the authors had violated the standards of evidence-based medicine and
  • their conclusions were not supported by the body of the review
  • and it later was discovered that the British Department of Health had increased the funding for Cochrane’s Oxford administration by £1 million per annum and extended the contracts of its British groups.

 

 

Autism Explosion Followed Big Change in MMR Shot

Olmsted on Autism: Autism Explosion Followed Big Change in MMR Shot

By Dan Olmsted

In 1990, Merck & Co., manufacturer of the mumps-measles-rubella vaccine known as the MMR, made a significant but little-noticed change: It quadrupled the amount of mumps virus in the combination shot, from 5,000 to 20,000 units. Then in 2007 it reversed course, reducing the amount to 12,500 units. Neither the measles nor the rubella (German measles) component of the MMR was changed at all — each remained at 1,000 units throughout.
 
Merck also makes the single-component mumps shot, and in 1990 it also increased the potency of that shot by the same amount, from 5,000 to 20,000 units. But unlike the MMR shot, the standalone mumps shot’s potency was not scaled back in 2007. It remains at 20,000 units.
 
These changes were mentioned in passing recently during an informal conversation with a Merck scientist. I started looking for an explanation for the sequence of events, but Merck did not respond to a detailed written request for comment.
 
Absent such an explanation, simple logic dictates the reduction had something to do with the MMR in particular rather than the mumps vaccine in isolation. But what? And what about the timing — the increase in 1990 and the decrease in 2007?

 
The huge rise in autism cases began about the time the mumps component in the MMR was raised in 1990. One theory, dismissed by Merck and federal public health officials, is that viral interference between the components in the MMR could create a persistent sub-clinical measles infection in a subset of vulnerable children; and because the measles virus can cause brain damage, that could lead to autism.
 
A study released last week by the M.I.N.D. Institute at UC Davis reported that most of the fivefold increase in full-syndrome autism — from 9 in 10,000 children in 1990 to 44 in 10,000 children in 2000– is real and cannot be accounted for by broader categories or diagnostic substitution. And from 1990 to 2007, the mumps portion of the MMR was higher by roughly the same amount — quadruple.
 
Merck’s decision to cut back on the increase in the mumps vaccine also is surrounded by interesting timing.  The cutback, in 2007, came at the same time Merck announced it was suspending its recently introduced, much-hyped four-in-one shot, ProQuad — the MMR with the chickenpox vaccine added to it. In suspending ProQuad, Merck cited a shortage of chickenpox vaccine; subsequently, a study showed ProQuad caused twice as many fever-induced seizures as separate MMR and chickenpox shots given at the same time, and a CDC advisory committee withdrew its preferential recommendation of the vaccine. Merck won’t say when ProQuad will return to the market.
 
An investigation I conducted while at UPI in 2006 found two cases of regressive autism in one small city — Olympia, Wash. — in clinical trials leading up to approval of the vaccine. Merck said the parents originally failed to report those cases to it (though the pediatricians paid to conduct the studies for Merck certainly knew about them and would have been expected to report them); the company alerted the FDA only after my inquiry.

The Merck scientist I spoke with recently also acknowledged that viral interference can affect the potency of individual MMR ingredients; that explains why the company added a whopping dose of chickenpox vaccine to the ProQuad shot, several times more than the standalone chickenpox vaccine contains. Using the same amount of chickenpox vaccine in the MMR shot as the standalone vaccine simply wouldn’t have protected children against the disease, because more virus was needed to offset the interference from the other components.
 
A significant number of parents of children with regressive autism cite the MMR as the proximate cause — they say their child was developing normally until the shot, then in many cases had a serious physical reaction within a short period of time and began losing developmental milestone and showing typical signs of the disorder. Some also developed severe gastrointestinal problems, an ailment first described in cases of regressive autism following the MMR shot by Dr. Andrew Wakefield in Britain in 1998; he named it autistic enterocolitis and found measles RNA in the children’s GI tract, suggesting persistent infection.
 
In looking at whether the increase in mumps potency in 1990 could buttress this theory of the autism epidemic, two questions arise: Is there evidence that increasing the mumps portion of the MMR could have any impact on measles infectivity or create symptoms consistent with those described by Wakefield and parents? And, could ProQuad’s higher rate of measles rash and fever-induced seizures be a warning sign that something is amiss with the MMR itself, especially beginning in 1990 when Merck tinkered with the proportions of the components?
 
The answers seem to be, yes and yes.
 
In the real world, children rarely get two viral illnesses at once — for instance, chickenpox and rubella. But when they do, viruses tend to interact — or interfere — with each other in unpredictable and synergistic ways. One example: Studies in the UK and Iceland showed that when mumps AND measles epidemics hit these populations in the same year, the risk of inflammatory bowel disease spiked. That’s an epidemiological argument for immune interference, and a striking fit with the observations by Wakefield, and thousand of parents, that a similar condition occurs in many children with regressive autism after they get the measles-mumps-rubella shot.
 
A related finding comes from a study funded by Merck.  In 2005, the study reported that the four-in-one ProQuad shot — the MMR and chickenpox — was “generally well tolerated” and had a safety profile similar to the MMR and the chickenpox shot (also made by Merck and called Varivax) when given separately.
 
But there were a couple of interesting differences. First, “Measles-like rash and fever during days 5-12 were more common after the first dose of MMRV [ProQuad]” than after the MMR and Varivax given separately. The difference was substantial — 5.9 percent who got the MMRV had the rash and 27.7 percent had fever, compared to 1.9 percent with rash and 18.7 fever after getting separate shots. While that did not alarm the researchers, it could be a foreshadowing of the doubled rate of fever-induced seizures that was spotted after ProQuad was approved.
 
Second, even though the new element in ProQuad was the chickenpox portion, something new and unexpected was also going on with the mumps and measles components. “Geometric mean titers to measles and mumps were significantly higher after 1 dose of MMRV than after administration” of MMR and Varivax separately, according to the study’s summary. Later, the authors state: “This suggests that the measles and mumps virus replication is greater after MMRV than it is” after the MMR and Varivax given separately.
 
In non-scientific language, it looks like the addition of another live virus — chickenpox — potentiated the measles and mumps components: It kicked both viruses into higher gear and they replicated at rates higher than in the MMR. At the same time, the researchers observed a greater incidence of measles-like rash, and fever, in those who got ProQuad. Were the increased measles and mumps viruses interacting in some unexpected and potentially dangerous way?
 
Then, for whatever reason, sometime between February and December of last year Merck reduced the mumps component of the MMR from 20,000 units to 12,500 while leaving the standalone mumps shot as it was. During that same period, it decided to suspend production of ProQuad. In April 2007, it announced the suspension, and said no more would be available after July. Then in early 2008, Merck’s study showing the doubled risk of seizures in ProQuad was unveiled and the CDC withdrew its recommendation.
 
And just last month, Merck said it would stop making the individual MMR component shots including, of course, the mumps shot. That leaves the MMR as the only vaccine in town, and it means there will no longer be a mumps vaccine formulation on the market with the dose the MMR contained from 1990 to 2007.
 
None of this might matter if not for the fact that measles is capable of causing cause catastrophic brain damage and death; that’s an argument for the measles vaccine. In medical parlance, it’s a neurotoxic virus.
 
“The invasion of the CNS [central nervous system] by MV [measles virus] is apparently not an uncommon event, as reflected by the finding of genomic sequences in normal autopsy cases and the widespread distribution of MV in in neurons, glial cells and vascular endothelial cells of the diseased brain,” according to “Measles Virus Infections of the Central Nervous System” by Uwe G. Liebert of the University of Leipzeig, Germany, published in Intervirology in 1997. “The susceptibility of the host as well as his age and immune status at the time of infection constitutes significant factors for disease progression.”
 
Merck acknowledges the three viruses can indeed interact to affect a child’s immune system, although in ways it says are not harmful.
 
A Merck scientist publicly discussed the interference issue at a CDC meeting in 2004, the year before ProQuad was approved, according to agency minutes. Dr. Florian Schodel “confirmed the possibility that the chickenpox virus component of ProQuad was causing a local immune suppression and an increase in measles virus replication. … The current hypothesis is that the varicella and measles virus are co-infecting the same or proximate areas of the body and engaging in a specific interaction, but how that works is as yet unknown.
 
“He said the interference appeared to involve only the chickenpox and measles viruses – ‘there is no such effect for the mumps or rubella vaccines administered locally at the same time.'”
 
Yet based on Merck’s own 2005 study cited above, ProQuad triggers an increase in mumps virus replication, too. Live viruses in ProQuad seem to be behaving in ways “as yet unknown” that cause immune suppression, co-infection, interaction and increased replication. Even without ProQuad on the market, interaction between the MMR components and the chickenpox virus remains a possibility. The CDC started recommending the chickenpox shot in the mid-1990s at the same 12-month well-baby visit as the MMR. 
 
That suggests the pattern highlighted by ProQuad could be at work through the increased mumps component of the MMR and the addition of chickenpox to the childhood immunization schedule in the mid-1990s. The lesson could be that combining live viruses, and then increasing them or adding new ones, is inherently dangerous, especially when invasion of the brain by one of them “is not an uncommon event.”
 
As Andy Wakefield told me when I was working on the series in Olympia describing the children in the ProQuad clinical trials who became ill after the vaccination and subsequently regressed into autism: “It’s actually heartbreaking, listening to these parents, for more than just the immediate reasons their child has met this fate. It’s that you’re staring into an abyss,” Wakefield said. “You’re listening to stories which reflect the fundamental misconception of vaccine manufacturers of what viruses are and what they do.”
 
Two additional points worth noting: After the increase in 1990 and decrease in 2007, there is still more than twice as much mumps virus in the MMR as there was in 1990.
 
The changes in the mumps virus component of the MMR serves as a potent reminder of something else: MMR is not one thing but three different exposures. And over the period 1980-2009 the MMR has changed significantly at least twice, making epidemiological studies even more difficult to interpret.

Kawasaki’s disease, acrodynia, and mercury.

Kawasaki’s disease, acrodynia, and mercury. 

PMID: 19075648

A superantigen or autoimmunity has been hypothesized to be the main cause of the Kawasaki’s Disease but the etiology is unknown. Medical literature, epidemiological findings, and some case reports have suggested that mercury may play a pathogenic role. Several patients with Kawasaki’s Disease have presented with elevated urine mercury levels compared to matched controls. Most symptoms and diagnostic criteria which are seen in children with acrodynia, known to be caused by mercury, are similar to those seen in Kawasaki’s Disease. Genetic depletion of glutathione S-transferase , a susceptibility marker for Kawasaki’s Disease, is known to be also a risk factor for acrodynia and may also increase susceptibility to mercury . Coinciding with the largest increase (1985-1990) of thimerosal (49.6% ethyl mercury) in vaccines, routinely given to infants in the U.S. by 6 months of age (from 75microg to 187.5microg), the rates of Kawasaki’s Disease increased ten times, and, later (1985-1997), by 20 times. Since 1990 88 cases of patients developing Kawasaki’s Disease some days after vaccination have been reported to the Centers of Disease Control (CDC) including 19% manifesting symptoms the same day. The presented pathogenetic model may lead to new preventive- and therapeutic strategies for Kawasaki’s disease.

The Vaccine Hard Sell at Pediatrics

The Vaccine Hard Sell at Pediatrics-Age of Autism

A Shot of Reality
By Michael Wagnitz, B.S.
 
As a chemist with 27 years of experience evaluating material for heavy metals, I find it unfortunate that the journal Pediatrics has allowed Dr. Paul Offit to repeat misinformation  regarding the use of neurotoxic metals in vaccines. He scolds Dr. Bob Sears for not giving the proper scientific credit to the paper, “Weight of Evidence Against Thimerosal Causing Neuropsychological Deficits” (1), published in the NEJM.  Let’s take a look at the quality of this paper starting with the impartiality of the authors:

Dr. Thompson – the lead investigator – is a former employee of Merck.

Dr. Marcy has received consulting fees from Merck, Sanofi Pasteur, GlaxoSmithKline, and MedImmune.

Dr. Jackson received grant money from Wyeth, Sanofi Pasteur, GlaxoSmithKline, and Novartis. He received lecture fees from Sanofi Pasteur and consulting fees from Wyeth and Abbott. Currently, he is a consultant to the FDA Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee.

Dr. Lieu is a consultant to the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.

Dr. Black receives consulting fees from MedImmune, GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis, and Merck, and grant support from MedImmune, GlaxoSmithKline, Aventis, Merck, and Novartis.

Dr. Davis receives consulting fees from Merck and grant support from Merck and GlaxoSmithKline.

(The above information was included in the fine print of the published article)

The article states that any child with a preexisting neurological condition was eliminated from the study. Isn’t this what the study was supposed to examine, whether thimerosal causes neurological damage? These preexisting conditions included encephalitis and meningitis. The possibility that thimerosal might cause these conditions was eliminated from consideration.
 
Children were eliminated for other reasons from the study. One group excluded was children whose birth weight was under 2,500 grams, or 5.5 pounds. The number of  babies eliminated because of this was not reported. Babies of this weight are not rare and they are not excluded from any  vaccine. In fact, in a study published last year in Pediatrics, it was shown that low weight babies had a much higher rate of autism (2). In the end, only about 30% of the original study participants remained. The authors seemed to weed out anyone who didn’t fit their desired conclusion. Offit says (and I quote), “It is hard to imagine a better conceived, better designed study on the subtle effects of mercury poisoning”. No Offit, it’s hard to imagine a better conceived and better designed study to obfuscate the issue concerning the safety of thimerosal.

Offit tells us how aluminum in babies formula and breast milk dwarfs the amount in vaccines. What he doesn’t explain is that aluminum is only dangerous once it’s in the bloodstream. Aluminum is not absorbed through the gut. It is 100% absorbed through vaccination. He ignores the paper published in 2007 linking aluminum in vaccines to Gulf War Syndrome (3) . If it can harm healthy, adult, combat ready soldiers, at a lower dose per body weight, what is it doing to newborns?

Here is one subject Offit never touches; multi-dose vaccine vials, including current versions of the flu, tetanus and meningococcal vaccines, contain 50,000 ug/l of Hg, a level 250 times higher than what the EPA classifies as hazardous waste (4). All these vaccines are recommended for children. Primates exposed to injected ethylmercury from vaccines, as opposed to equal doses of ingested methylmercury, end up with twice as much Hg++ deposited in the brain (5). This form remains permanently trapped and has been identified as the primary toxic agent in degenerative brain diseases (6). State of the art research has shown us that autism is a degenerative brain disease (7).

Parents understand the difference between truthful information from honest, caring professionals like Dr. Bob Sears and the aggressive, bullying tactics that Offit and others are trying to sell them. The cat is out of the bag and it’s not going back in.

Full Article

MMR vaccine and Childhood Chronic Disease

Current childhood vaccine programs: An overview with emphasis on the Measles-Mumps-Rubella (MMR) vaccine and of its compromising of the mucosal immune system

 

– Harold E. Buttram, MD – (full text pdf) journal article (Medical Veritas) via VIC Vaccine Injury Coalition

Encephalitis and Encephalopathy (part 3)

 

 

 

Since the 1950’s, an increase in chronic disease was underway and has continued to rise rapidly ever since. We have essentially replaced self-limiting infectious diseases with chronic diseases that last a life time. Asthma, allergies, diabetes, seizure disorders, epilepsy, auto-immune diseases, sleep disorders, ADD/ADHD, dyslexia, behavioral syndromes, obesity, alcohol abuse, drug abuse, mental retardation, eating disorders, and sexual disorders are some of the chronic diseases children and adults suffer from today. Do parents or the medical community really think that trading a self-limiting disease, such as the chickenpox, for long life chronic disease is better?

What has history shown?

1. It is not surprising that the rise started in the 1950s and 1960s. Mass vaccination started after World War II, in the mid-1940s. Discussion of why “Johnny can’t read” started in the mid-1950s, when this vaccinated generation started going to school, as did the rise in autoimmune diseases. But when this generation came to the age of 18 (1963) and entered the adult statistics, IQs started to decline, the crime rate started to rise, etc. etc.

2. The role of genetics: not everyone suffers equally from a vaccination. This tendency does run in families, however, and would seem to have a genetic component.

3. The black population and urban violence. Black children suffer from a variety of disabilities which makes them much more vulnerable to the effects of vaccination: more than 50% are out-of-wedlock births, meaning no father, an uneducated mother, no funds, no pregnancy care etc. Also more than 50% (75% ?) are premature and low birthweight (under 4-5 pounds). This also renders them highly vulnerable to the effects of vaccination.

Short-term vs. Long Term Chronic Disease

Short term, or also known as acute reactions, is also known as encephalopathy. They are usually seen as physical symptoms. These could be seen as swelling at the injection site, high fever, rash, high pitched crying or screaming (cry-encephalitis) that continues for days, breathing difficulties, fainting, sleepiness, convulsion or a seizure, or a “sudden death.” The short-term reactions can be recovered from. But all too often, the long-term effects begin to be seen. Seizures or convulsions become chronic epilepsy. Vision or hearing problems begin, or your baby or toddler suddenly becomes mute. Cerebral palsy or Autism is now questioned or evaluated.

 

According to Harris L. Coulter, Ph.D:

 

…children and adults who have been damaged by vaccination but not severely enough to be institutionalized. Their condition I have called the “post- encephalitic syndrome.”

The modern literature of psychiatry describes this condition as “conduct disorder” in young children or “sociopathic personality” in adults. These are subcategories of a larger group called “developmental disabilities,” which includes autism, dyslexia, hyperactivity, attention-span difficulties, and several dozen other conditions. The most recent edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual published by the American Psychiatric Association devotes 80 pages to these disorders.

Encephalitis (whether from vaccination or from some other cause) can range from severe to moderate, even subclinical. It is also possible to have encephalitis in which the acute symptoms are extremely mild but which still does much long-term damage.

They rarely show remorse for what they have done but dissociate themselves from their acts. This may be because they sense that the impulse is outside their ability to control it — like a facial tic or a sneeze.

The “less serious” long-term sequelae resemble the more severe cases but are milder.

They have lowered resistance to infection — due, presumably, to defective operation of the immune system.

Instead of having epilepsy or seizures, the children suffer from what are called “staring spells” or “absence seizures.”

Instead of being totally deaf, they have mild loss of hearing. Or they have chronic earaches — otitis media. This is called in the United States “glue ear,” and it is a kind of buildup of water in the ear, often requiring the installation of little tubes for drainage.

Instead of being mentally retarded to the point of incapacity to function in society, they suffer loss of IQ: many function at the 80 or 90 IQ level — just above subnormality.

They are given to outbursts of rage. When combined with their tendency to impulsive behavior, this leads to many acts of impulsive violence. These individuals are frequently involved in crime, or the violence may be self- directed (suicide).

Instead of paralysis or cerebral palsy, they may lose a degree of muscular control — “atony” — especially of the hands. The parents will say that the baby doesn’t use his hands for crawling, or that he picks up objects with his feet instead of his hands.

The child will have asthma or other breathing difficulties. The incidence of asthma has been steadily rising in the United States for the past several decades — especially asthma in very small children. Children now are dying of asthma, whereas in the past doctors always used to say that “no child ever dies of asthma.”

They manifest all the cranial nerve palsies, but in a less severe form.

Another long-term effect of this vaccine is tendency to allergies, especially allergy to milk. Needless to say, a large proportion of the population in all of the industrialized countries of the world today suffer from allergies. We found that newborn infants with colic — meaning an allergy to milk– tend to react more strongly to the vaccine. Undoubtedly colic should be considered a counterindication to vaccination.

Instead of being blind, they have astigmatisms and nystagmus (involuntary and jerky repetitive movements of the eyeballs). They can be cross-eyed. They may have trouble moving their eyes from side to side. Or they are dyslexic, cannot read letters, cannot spell, cannot understand numbers, and the like. A peculiar feature is that they sometimes have obsessions about people’s eyes, are afraid to look others in the eyes, etc.

They are fascinated by fire and attracted to burning buildings and the like.

…This particular “glue ear” type of otitis was not known in American medical practice before the late 1940’s or early 1950’s — in other words, the time when the pertussis vaccine was being introduced.

Instead of being completely dumb, they may have a peculiarly harsh or dull or inexpressive voice. Often they stutter and have other speech impediments.

Migraine headaches are also very common in this population.

Another long-term effect is disturbance of sleep rhythm; the child turns night into day and day into night.

 They have sleep and appetite disturbances — anorexia and bulimia. In the latter case, they will often put on weight.

So one finds the same kinds of physical disabilities as in the more profoundly affected children, but everything is somewhat milder. “Mild” here is a relative term. After all, hyperactivity, dyslexia, and short attention span are very serious social problems — leading, in fact, to the collapse of the American educational system today.

They are often hyperactive. They have an extremely short attention span. Their behavior is dominated by impulses.

Other serious disorders are: seizures and epilepsy, blindness or loss of speech, paralysis or palsy of one or several limbs, and mental retardation. These are all possible effects of the vaccine.

…the mental, emotional, and moral dimensions of vaccine damage.

These children have a typical personality profile. They are alienated and paranoid. They have severe ego weakness — low self-esteem. They are anxious and depressed. They cannot tolerate frustration. They have an overwhelming need for control and panic when losing control of a situation. They are precociously sexual with a high level of homosexuality and bisexuality, and have tendencies to obsessive behavior, including alcoholism and drug abuse.

 

All of these sound familiar don’t they? What then happens to these children when they become adults?

 Harris L. Coulter, Ph.D:

…As this same generation went on into early adulthood, it created and has maintained the present historically high incidence of violent crime. Violent crime (murder, rape, aggravated assault) started to rise in the early 1960s and is still on the rise today.

At least two routes connect the post-encephalitic adolescent with alcoholism and/or drug abuse. (1) These individuals, as already noted, suffer from anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem and are thus naturally inclined to indulge in these various forms of escape. (2) There are numerous programs in U.S. schools today calling for the drug treatment of children with such conditions as hyperactivity, attention-span difficulties, and learning disabilities; approximately a million such children throughout our school systems are regularly being prescribed amphetamines and amphetamine-like drugs such as methylphenidate or pemoline for these conditions. These are addictive drugs, and it is not surprising that these children should grow up to become drug addicts.

…A large body of research has been done on the neurologic status of persons involved in violent crime. They are seen to have a very high incidence of typical post-encephalitic conditions: low IQ, hyperactivity, allergies, mental retardation, and seizure disorders.

…There is a clear relationship between the post-encephalitic syndrome and premature, exaggerated sexuality. Today we are confronted with a rise in sexually related crimes, including acts of sexual violence committed by children — as young as six or seven years of age. Accounts of these children make it clear that they suffer from other symptoms along the lines we have discussed: mental retardation, hyperactivity, learning disabilities, tendency to commit arson, and, finally, lack of remorse for their acts.

Drugs and alcohol potentiate the inherent weaknesses of the post- encephalitic personality, releasing the few inhibitions which these individuals already possess…

It would not be an exaggeration to state that the three major social problems facing the United States today: the collapse of the educational system, drug abuse, and the epidemic of violent crime are all rooted, to a considerable extent, in the prevalence of the post-encephalitic syndrome in American society. This is true for many European countries also, although to a lesser extent.

 

All of these above disorders of post-encephalitic syndrome were rare before the mandated vaccine programs began and history has shown this.

 

Harris L. Coulter, Ph.D:

 

“In examining the enormous literature on infectious encephalitis, I realized very quickly that the long-term effects of encephalitis is totally congruent with what we see today in the DSM3 of the American Psychological Association as “Disorders usually evident in infancy or childhood” (developmental disabilities).  That includes autism, hyperactivity, dyslexia, attention span difficulties and several dozen other conditions.”

“But no biological phenomenon is either all or nothing.  Vaccination cannot be considered to either leave a child perfectly normal or have a very severe impact on a child.  There’s got to be a range of effects-how about the children in the middle?  How about those who are slightly affected by the vaccine?  Anybody who knows anything about the biology of medicine knows that this has to be because it would be impossible to stress a large group of people, like two million babies a year in the United States and not have the reactions go along a  whole range of effects….Some of the side effects or long term affects make themselves felt not the next week or two weeks later but five or ten years later when the parent realizes that their child is not acting or behaving like other children act and tries to figure out what the reason for that is….”

 

“This is, at first glance, a startling omission,” says Coulter.  When the neurologic (as opposed to psychological) nature of autism was finally revealed, “mental health professionals should have immediately appreciated the tie with encephalitis.  Furthermore, it had long been known that a variety of encephalitis was caused by vaccination.  But this is precisely why physicians shied away from the topic!  Since no one wanted to impugn the [vaccination] programs, encephalitis was never discussed openly and fully.

“The Vaccine Compensation Bill of 1986 provided for the establishment of a committee under the The National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine to review data on vaccine damage.  This committee has published two books – one in 1989 and one in 1993 on the damage of various vaccines and they have stated in the first of these books that the evidence supports the existence of a causal relationship between the DPT vaccine and encephalitis.  That has changed the whole terms of the debate because now you can talk of vaccine damage in terms of encephalitis-that is a much more solid scientific basis.

 

 Autismfacts.com

Many of the studies found a substantial proportion of children had a physical condition such as maternal rubella, prenatal trauma, encephalitis, epilepsy or tuberous sclerosis which were all potential explanations for the autism disorders. Most of today’s children with autism were born healthy and suffered no injury or illness that could be a possible explanation.

  Different diagnostic criteria were used in the studies. Those used were:

 Kanner’s Criteria:

1) A profound lack of affective contact
2) Repetitive, ritualistic behavior which must be of an elaborate kind

 

   *Kanner gave some examples of behavior and did not include age of onset as essential. Kanner’s Criteria for diagnosis is the most restrictive criteria used. It mainly focuses on the most severe forms of autism and does not allow for milder cases of autism found in Asperger’s Syndrome and PDDNOS (Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified). Some studies, however, that used Kanner’s criteria allowed for “atypical” autism cases to be counted, or those that did not fully fit the picture of Kanner’s criteria.

 

Rutter’s Criteria:

1) Impaired social development which has a number of special characteristics out of keeping with the child’s intellectual level
2) Delayed and deviant language development that also has certain defined features and is out of keeping with the child’s intellectual level
3) “Insistence on sameness” as shown by stereotyped play patterns, abnormal preoccupations or resistance to change
4) Onset before 30 months

 

   *Rutter gave many examples of behavior. Rutter’s Criteria for diagnosis is broader than Kanner’s and allows for more children to be diagnosed, but whom still fit more typical or classic autism patterns. Milder cases of the Autism Spectrum would still not fit the criteria.

 

DSM-III Criteria

1) Lack of responsiveness to others
2) Language absence or abnormalities
3) Resistance to change or attachment to objects
4) The absence of schizophrenic features
5) Onset before 30 months

 

   *DSM-III also had categories for childhood onset (after 30 months and before 12 years) and for atypical pervasive developmental disorder (PDD).

 

   *The DSM-III criteria for diagnosis was far broader than any previous criteria. It recognized that autism could occur in any level of severity and now included the symptoms of Asperger’s Syndrome, although it did not directly name the disorder. Passive acceptance of social approaches and one-sided approaches were now included as social impairment. The criteria allowed for more milder cases of autism to be counted.

 

DSM-III Revised criteria:

1) Impairment in reciprocal social interaction (at least 2 from 5 items, comprising of specified clinical examples)
2) Impairment in verbal and nonverbal communication (at least 1 of 6 items)
3. Markedly restricted repertoire of activities and interests (at least 1 of 5 items)
4. A grand total of at least 8 from among the 16 items listed.

 

   *This shift included children with the most subtle symptoms. The DSM-III Revised criteria for diagnosis was the broadest criteria to exist to date. The DSM-III had been revised because many doctors believed the DSM-III was too restrictive and did not allow for children who were clearly autistic to be diagnosed because of varying symptoms and histories. But, many doctors felt that the DSM-III Revised edition was too broad and would include children who did not have autism to fit the criteria. The various subtypes of the spectrum were put into a single category of PDDNOS.

 

Criteria used in one Japanese study:

1) Disturbed interpersonal relationships (defined by a list of clinical examples comprising of 9 items)
2) Absence or deviance in speech and language development (8 items).
3) Insistence on the preservation of sameness or resistance to change (6 items).
4. Abnormal responses to sensory stimuli or motility disturbance (10 items).

 

   *The criteria used in this one study is a mix of new and old criteria used in other studies. Numbers 2 and 3 are similar to criteria used in other studies, but the broadness of number 1 is different than others and number 4 is the only criteria that included sensory and motor disturbances.

 

Today’s criteria, DSM-IV:

   DSM-IV, which is used today, continued the broader conception of the DSM-III, yet attempted to rein back on its DSM-III Revised edition by combining the two, but also restricting the criteria so that it would not catch those who did not have an autistic disorder. It achieved this by improving its specificity as well as separating the subtypes of autism.

THE STUDIES

 

   In 1966, Victor Lotter published the first study of the prevalence of autism in Middlesex, an English county in Britain.

 

   He searched for children with typical autism between the ages of 8 and 10 who were born between 1953 and 1955 as described by Kanner. He used a screening schedule for teachers in all schools and case notes reviewed for children in special schools as his method. He found 35 children out of 77,800 with a rate of 4.5 children per 10,000 (1 per 2222). Of those who fit typical autism, 2 per 10,000 (1 per 5,000) were found and a rate of 2.5 per 10,000 (1 per 4,000) were found with atypical autism.

 

   Classification of typical autism or atypical autism depended on how closely the clinical picture fitted the clinical criteria. Almost all had some degree of mental retardation and some had other conditions suggesting brain dysfunction. He also found that girls diagnosed as autistic tend to be more severely mentally retarded than the autistic boys. A substantial proportion of children had a physical condition such as maternal rubella, prenatal trauma, encephalitis, epilepsy or tuberous sclerosis. The rates given were below the mean rate tabulated.

 Continued…

 

Classic and everyday children’s illnesses in practice

Post-vaccinal encephalitis (PVE)

1. Post-vaccinal encephalitis (PVE)

The Prague pathologist Prof. Lucksch coined this phrase in 1924 and described, in a number of scientific studies, brain damage following inoculations where the children were all over the age of three.  Austrian professors Kaiser and Zappert adopted Prof. Lucksch’s designation in an investigation carried out on 240 children, 237 of whom were older than three at the time of vaccination.

2. (Bland) post-vaccinal encephalopathy

The Dutch pathologist de Vries demonstrated that, up to the age of three, a child cannot react to damage caused by inoculation with an inflammatory defensive reaction of the brain! A baby’s brain merely reacts to post-vaccinal damage with cerebral oedema and unformed blood constituents escaping from the blood vessels as an expression of disruption of the blood-brain-barrier.

Unlike encephalopathy, encephalitis is an easily identifiable clinical picture. Consequently post-vaccinal damage was identified in Austria, yet not in Germany and it is becoming apparent why there were seemingly fewer post-vaccinal reactions in Germany than in Austria.

Lucksch, Kaiser and Zappert were unable to make a distinction between the above terms as, in Austria and northern Bohemia, inoculations were carried out at a much later stage than was the case in Germany.

3. Post-vaccinal reactions / post-vaccinal complications / post-vaccinal damage

As defined by the German Federal Epidemics Law, post-vaccinal damage is health damage which extends beyond the usual extent of a post-vaccinal reaction and is generally permanent. This damage must become apparent within a certain period after inoculation and is known as “standardized incubation period.” An incubation period of between three days and three weeks is given for PVE and post-vaccinal encephalopathy with acute symptoms of disorientation and even unconsciousness, fever extending beyond the tenth day after inoculation, convulsive attacks either generalised or accentuated on one side, limb pal[TEXT INCOMPLETE IN ORIGINAL SOURCE.] occasionally isolated cranial nerve p[TEXT INCOMPLETE IN ORIGINAL SOURCE.] rare cases meningism.

In addition, however, developments with fewer symptoms are described, known as bland post-vaccinal encephalopathy. The symptoms here are abnormal behaviour such as drowsiness, loss of interest, refusal to eat, vomiting, arrested development with loss of previously acquired faculties, progressive cerebral organic disorders.

Sticker (1908) and Petov (1930) were able to prove beyond doubt firstly, that hayfever occurred far more frequently among the privileged classes of town dwellers than in the rural population where pollen was more prevalent. Secondly, they described initial manifestation following revaccination beginning in the person’s early twenties, i.e. following the second vaccination against smallpox conducted in accordance with the German Reich’s Vaccination Law.

In 1962 Professor Herrlich pointed out that post-vaccinal encephalopathy required a certain period of illness before anatomopathological changes developed in the central nervous system and yet these were barely identifiable externally. He named the main symptoms as hypersomnia with disrupted day-night rhythm, apathy, unmotivated shrill crying, therapy-resistant convulsive attacks.

Without doubt there is an enormous spread to the effect that most children tolerate vaccinations apparently without problems and others suffer severe brain damage with debility, paralysis or epilepsy.

So it becomes apparent that, in the acute stage, encephalopathy is hard to identify, yet produces delayed damage to a large extent. Late sequelae are all the more severe, the younger the child is at the time of injury. Post-vaccinal damage is not generally immediately obvious. The possibility of damage is usually only considered weeks, months or even years later as there are virtually no characteristic medical features to indicate whether the child’s symptoms are the result of vaccination or not. This generally applies to all vaccinations.

Basically there is only one definite hallmark of a post-vaccinal reaction, so-called “arrested development” following inoculation. If a child has developed normally and unimpaired up to a certain time and fairly soon after an inoculation remains at a certain stage or regresses and develops abnormal behaviour, then it can be assumed that the vaccination is the cause.

It is extremely difficult to identify this in infancy where points of development are fluid and where timing cannot be precisely determined; even if it has been admitted by official quarters that post-vaccinal damage may involve few symptoms.

Typical post-vaccinal reactions here are: agitation, tendency to take fright, irritability, uncertain movements and reactions, dazed state even apathy, eating disorders, disturbed sleep, fever, cutaneous reactions, headaches, twitching limbs, convulsive attacks, etc.

French and American studies (e.g. by Dr. Abeltier, Dr. Calmar and Prof. Delore) described changes in emotional state and character in the context of post-vaccinal damage with behavioural disorders such as lack of concentration, impaired learning faculties, aggressiveness, hyperactivity, reduced inhibitory threshold and much more.

Syndromes connected with post-vaccinal reactions:

1. Minimal Cerebral Dysfunction (MCD)

An abundance of detailed material, particularly related to the DPT vaccine, has been available in the USA since 1948 following a study in Pediatrics by Byers and Moll. Following a dramatic cluster of SID syndrome connected with decades of vaccination and reports to the FDA and CDC health authorities (the latter operates a system for monitoring disease following vaccination, the MSIFI), the whooping cough component was withdrawn for the time being, resulting in a marked drop in SID syndrome.

This is a collective term for changes in small children which are difficult to diagnose and which have been described with increasing frequency since the fifties. The frequency with which medical reports are received from countries where vaccination is carried out very early and on a particularly large proportion of children, such as the USA, France, the Netherlands and Germany, is striking.

The most frequent sign of a possible case of hard-to-identify minimal encephalopathy, in children of average intelligence and normal functional capacity, is severe distractibility with inability to focus attention and exaggerated coordinated movements. If the inducement is significantly increased, the child’s emotional state is frail and their staying-power minimal, particularly as regards their memory and ability to learn as they are characterized by extreme restlessness.

The symptoms also extend to delays in speech development. In Germany the number of children who learn to talk very late and have difficulties forming proper sentences is estimated at between 18 and 34%.

In the USA the number of children with learning difficulties increased by over 30% between 1958 and 1980. This increase is debated in connection with three decades of whooping cough vaccination as the number of children with congenital alexia rose by leaps and bounds in a staggered manner.

2. Hyperkinetic syndrome (HKS) or Psycho-organic syndrome (POS)

This describes behavioural disorders which extend beyond those so far mentioned, characterised by hyperactive and uncontrolled behaviour, increased aggressiveness, reduced inhibitory threshold and significant loss of concentration. Instead of “fidgety Phil” here we have “problem children” who are treated with methods based on educational psychology and, in extreme cases, are prescribed psychopharmaceuticals with all the associated risks for their later emotional behaviour and physical activity. The number of children under 12 taking psychopharmaceuticals is around 1.4 million.

3. Autism

4. Allergic diseases

“Autistic syndrome,” first described in 1943 by the American child psychiatrist Kanner, is characterized by disrupted intellectual and speech development, extreme isolation from their surroundings and an anxious, obsessive need to maintain the status quo in their material environment (fear of change).

The condition is suspected to be a consequence of post-vaccinal encephalopathy which was not identified, especially as the cause is known as “infantile cerebral organic damage” in conventional medicine…

Recent decades have witnessed an increase in this group of disorders which is expected to continue further.

Professor Herrlich was the first to point out this connection in the Handbuch der Schutzimp-fungen [Handbook of prophylactic vaccinations]. Later it was the Prenzlau diabetologist Dr. Schneider (1973 and 1975) and also Prof. Stuck 1993 in Padiatrische Praxis [Paediatric practice], volume 1 with the article: “Mumpsimpfung und Auftreten eines Diabetes mellitus Typ la” [Mumps inoculation and the occurrence of Diabetes mellitus type la], in which he described 19 cases connected with mumps vaccination.

In addition to food allergies, allergic asthma and neurodermatitis, hayfever is above all the disease perhaps most associated with infantile inoculation.

Pollen may perhaps be the external cause of this syndrome yet the organism’s immunological sensitivity is the more fundamental process whereby, to appreciate Louis Pasteur’s epidemiology, the underlying principle should be: “Germs are nothing–it is the territory which is important.”

Interestingly, the first reports of hayfever came from England, only a few years after Edward Jenner incorporated foreign protein into the human body.

If today one child in four suffers from some form of allergy, the question must be asked as to whether the process of sensitizing with foreign protein represents not just immune training but possibly also leaves behind a confused “allergic” immune system.

While at that time only two vaccinations were given (at age 2 and 12), from the sixties onwards early multiple inoculations were carried out accompanied by the parallel geographical and sociological occurrence of epidemic hayfever in infants.

5. Immunodeficiency

6. Diabetes mellitus

The increase in children with lowered resistance from the recurrent infections described above, childhood diseases experienced retoxically, multiple bouts of a childhood disease, otitis or tonsillitis as toxic foci and the increase in bacterial and viral resistance.

So far twelve cases of infantile diabetes have been reported in the literature connected with prophylactic inoculation against smallpox.

7. Multiple sclerosis / facial paresis / Bechterew’s disease

Articles 51 and 52 of the German Federal Epidemics Act make statutory provision for a condition to be recognized as “compensable post-vaccinal damage” and a hardship clause is included for disease where evidence of probability cannot be produced, as medical science is undecided as to the cause of the diagnosed condition. This so-called “authorization” was created by the legislator, aware that certain diseases may be provoked by external influences. We talk here of a “trigger mechanism.”

Since viruses, acting as “trigger mechanisms,” are capable of setting the start of these diseases in motion, it is just as possible that vaccines containing viruses or viral constituents can have the same effect.

MS and facial paresis are named in the Federal Epidemics Act and it is pointed out in “Anhaltspunkten fur arztliche Gutachtertatigkeit im sozia-len Entschadigungsrecht und nach dem Schwerbe-hindertengesetz, Ausgabe 1983 [Grounds for expert medical involvement in social compensation law and under the Severely Disabled Act, Edition 1983]” in point 139 “Assessing causality” that Bechterew’s disease also falls under Art. 52, Para. 2.

8. Sudden infant death (SID) syndrome (cot death)

Virtually all infectious diseases have been declining regularly and almost uniformly for decades, yet the so-far unexplained phenomenon of cot death has been increasing continuously, albeit with a slight regression in the last ten years. In 1965 the Leipzig pathologist P. F. Mahnke published his study: “Plotzlicher Tod im Kindesalter und vor-ausgegangene Schutzimpfungen” [Sudden death in childhood and previous prophylactic vaccinations]. The Paul Ehrlich Institute (PEI) published the following statement in numerous medical journals in October 1992: “The PEI is calling for cases to be reported. Death from unknown cause in babies and infants following prophylactic vaccination. The PEI is interested to learn whether deaths of babies and infants from unknown causes have been observed in Germany in the past 12 months, especially following prophylactic vaccination.”

 

*Note, the Back to Sleep Campaign was initiated in 1994. The DTaP vaccine was licensed in 1996 and recommended for routine use, and a year later replaced DTP vaccines in most medical offices.  Yet:

… despite our best efforts to date, SIDS remains the leading cause of death for infants one month to one year of age, claiming the lives of approximately 2,000 babies in the U.S. each year.  Even more alarming is the fact that African American and Native American babies continue to be at 2-3 times greater risk than Caucasian babies….” (See history #3 above)

The SIDS rate has declined but was it due to the Back to Sleep Campaign or the discontinued use of DTP vaccine shortly after?

October 31, 2008 Pediatrics Study:

Health Risk Behaviors in Adolescents With Chronic Conditions

RESULTS. Youth with a chronic condition were more likely to smoke daily, to be current cannabis users, and to have performed violent or antisocial acts. Youth with a chronic condition were also more likely to report 3 or 4 risk behaviors.

CONCLUSIONS. These results indicate that having a chronic condition carries additional risks for engaging in health risk behaviors and emphasize the importance of health risk screening and preventive counseling for young people in general and among those suffering from chronic conditions in particular.

A Government Call for Vaccine Research

A Government Call for Vaccine Research

The National Institutes of Health has put out a call for answers

By Bernadine Healy M.D.

Posted December 11, 2008

The way to cool the hot debate on vaccine safety is to turn to science and get the facts, and here, there is reason for optimism. Last August, the National Institutes of Health embarked on an effort entitled “Research to Advance Vaccine Safety,” involving five of its institutes plus the CDC. The operating premise: Vaccines are of vital importance to human welfare, and new and better technology enables researchers to address as never before gaps in knowledge about how to use them more safely and effectively. Areas the NIH wants to see tackled include:

Vaccine response. Vaccines do more than stimulate antibodies. Yet there is scant research on the way the complex networks of specialized white blood cells and immune chemicals behave in response to the currently licensed vaccines and their assorted nonvaccine components. Reactions vary among children and those of different ages, and sometimes, vaccines can induce overly sensitive immune reactions. Studies showing that early childhood vaccination may promote chronic allergies, for example, beg for further research.

Susceptible groups. The recognition that vaccines can be unsafe for some children made headlines last spring when experts determined that Hannah Poling, who had an unknown mitochondrial disorder, suddenly and dramatically developed autism as a toddler in reaction to nine immunizations administered at once, validating many parents’ concerns. Recently, serious complications from the new smallpox vaccine have been tied to specific gene variations, and there is ongoing concern that rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune conditions have been triggered by the hepatitis B vaccine in those with genetic susceptibility. The NIH wants to identify risk factors and biological markers predictive of adverse reactions, which could protect vulnerable groups and allow better clinical trials.

Vaccine schedules. The one-size-fits-all vaccine schedule has served the public well but has yet to be tested for optimal efficacy and safety. The NIH proposes comparisons of the immunologic and physiologic effects of different combinations of vaccines administered on different schedules. Supporting this need is a 2008 Canadian study that found that delaying the diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus vaccination a few months cut the risk of childhood asthma by 50 percent.

Immune capacity. As infants leave the womb’s sterile environment, their immune system is virtually a blank slate, soon molded by generally benign and natural exposures—to pollen in the air, proteins in food, microbes on their mother’s skin. It’s assumed the little ones can handle with the same ease a sudden and concentrated exposure to the less benign antigens in vaccines. Research on the capacity of the young immune system to do so needs further investigation, particularly with the flood of new vaccines on the horizon.

Dr. Healy formerly headed the NIH.

Encephalitis and Encephalopathy (part 2)

All of my children had the DTP vaccine, with the exception of one, who had the DTaP. I can still remember to this day, and it goes back 18 years ago, dreading the ‘shot day’ when I knew they were going to get a DTP or DTaP. I told a nurse before the injection of one of my children, “I hate this shot.” She asked me why. My response was “Because they cry and scream for days afterwards, run fevers, and are not themselves for weeks.”  Her response? She raised her eyebrows but said nothing! I can also remember calling the doctor’s office once regarding a concern I had days after the DTP vaccine was given and how my child was acting. Their response? “It’s normal. Give him some Tylenol. He will be fine in a few days.”

 

How many parents are still told this today? Problem was he was never ‘fine’ and neither were the rest of them with the exception of one, who is not fully vaccinated according to the CDC recommended schedule. To this day they suffer from one chronic illness or another such as asthma, allergies, bowel issues, severe eczema, and a learning disability. Their chronic illnesses are simply seen as ‘typical’ and ‘normal’ in children today. When my youngest child started public school and has no chronic illness, I was told by a school nurse, “…that’s very unusual today.” Funny thing is, when I was growing up, it was unusual to have any of the above mentioned!

 

I witnessed the first upward shifts in chronic illnesses in very young children in the late 1980’s in daycare centers. There was always at least one infant (8 in a room) or toddler (12 in a room) in a daycare center room that suffered from a chronic illness. I recall the Director at the time said, “I don’t understand what is happening to these children today. Kids were much healthier years ago…” I agreed and at the time I didn’t understand it either. It certainly didn’t get better, but much worse. Diabetes, asthma, allergies, hearing and eye problems, learning disabilities, enuresis and encopresis, behavioral issues, autism spectrum disorders, and the list goes on. So what had happened to those children, and children of today, and children who go on to be adults? How does this relate to encephalitis or encephalopathy?

 

To answer those questions, we need to go back and look at the history. History in regards to vaccines; can tell us what has already taken place, what has been done and why, what the positive or negative effects were and why, and change the direction or path we are on if needed. Unfortunately, changing the path for the overall health of all, simply hasn’t worked that way.

  

Let’s take a look at some of the DTP and DTaP history:

 

The True Story of Pertussis Vaccination.  A Sordid legacy?

(This article explains the history of whooping cough vaccination. The Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences (57:3, July 2002) awarded it the best article published in 2000, 2001 and 20002, and thus won the 2003 Jackson prize.)

 

Excerpts:

 Page 249: 

 

 (End quote)

 In the mid 1960’s, most states mandated the DTP vaccine be given as a prerequisite to entering school. And thus:

 

Page258-260: 

 

  Page 282-283:  

 

“The Hygienic Care of Children“ by Herbert M. Shelton states: (bolding mine)

The New York State Journal of Medicine, May 15, 1926, carried two articles from foreign Journals discussing similar cases on the European continent. In one of these Carl Leiner, (Vienna) is said to have discussed encephalitis and meningitis developing in nine to fifteen days after vaccination. He admits that in a generalized infection, like generalized vaccina, there may be intracranial complications. The article also states that Dr. Lucksch saw three cases and knew of four more, and of the seven children, five died. In two autopsies, which he obtained, he was able to show beyond doubt that “death had been due to encephalitis.” Bastianse, of the Hague, collected notes of 34 similar cases which occurred in Holland during 18 months of 1924–25, with a mortality of forty per cent–“deadlier if anything than ordinary epidemic encephalitis.” “In addition several cases of serious meningitis have been reported.”

Three cases reported, by the author of the article, in Austria, showed that “not only the encephalon but the cord and peripheral nerves may be involved, so that the affection may be spoken of broadly as a meningoencephalitis polyneuritis.”

The other article is a brief of an article by Dr. W. F. Winkler, chief of the University Clinic of Rostock. It says: “Quite recently isolated cases of cerebral symptoms, suggesting encephalitis, following vaccination have been reported from Holland, Czechoslovakia, and Germany and from Switzerland there have been reported two cases of serious meningitis.”

The Netherlands, and other countries, for instance, France, have also reported cases of this kind. In the Journal of the American Medical Association, July 3, 1926, P. 45, is an article by its Berlin correspondent discussing “Nervous disturbances and Smallpox Vaccination.” In it are these words: “In regions in which there is no organized vaccination of the population, general paralysis is rare. In patients with general paralysis he (Dr. Daraskwiewicz), has never seen smallpox scars, but vaccination scars were always present.” It is noted that, whereas, boys are most susceptible to post-vaccinal tetanus, girls are most susceptible to post-vaccinal encephalitis.

(See also Neurologic Adverse Events Associated With Smallpox Vaccination in the United States, 2002-2004)

 

…Dr. Pierre Baron, Ancien Intern of the Hospitaux de Paris, prefaces his work on post-vaccinal encephalitis (1929), in which his conclusions are based on his own observations, by a case he found after searching through medical annuals and unearthed a report of a case in the “Archives tie Medicine des Infants,” in 1907. Dr. Combay of the Medical Society of the Hospitals of Paris, reported a case which had occurred in his practice in 1905.

Dr. Comby tells of a baby girl, in excellent health when vaccinated at four months of age, who developed convulsions on the eighth day, followed by strabismus and other troubles. She did not die but was left with an “important sequel.” She no longer recognized her surroundings; almost forgot how to nurse; had a vague look; “veritable intellectual obnubilation,” developed idiocy with progressive cerebral sclerosis (hardening of the brain), and nearing her eighteenth month died. Her death went into medical “statistics” as due to pneumonia–and old trick in hiding their crimes.

Dr. Baron’s book discusses 255 cases of post-vaccinal encephalitis, avowedly discussed as such in medical works. His list is far from complete, for he credits the United States with only four cases, all of these before 1927.

Great Britain appointed two committees to investigate this matter–the Andrews Comittee, appointed Nov. 1923, which made its report May 1925; and the Rolleston Committee appointed Feb. 1926, which made its report Feb. 1928. These two committees were composed of eminent medical men all of whom supported vaccination.

The Andrews Committee reported 62 cases of post-vaccinal encephalitis with 36 deaths–40 females and 22 males; average age 10-1/2 years. Four cases were under one year, one case fifty years, and forty-eight cases were from six to sixteen years. Government vaccine had been used in 53 of these cases, of which 30 were fatal.

The Rolleston Committee reported 30 cases with 16 fatalities. Government vaccine was used in 18 of these with 8 deaths. This committee also reported the subsequent history of 10 non-fatal cases under 15 years, showing that 4 were permanently injured in some way–in mind, memory, temper, vigor, relapse.

Since vaccination was made compulsory in England and Wales one million infants have died of convulsions, tetanus, encephalitis, meningitis, and other nervous ailments. How many of these were due to vaccination there is now no means of knowing, but in the light of present facts, we are safe in assuming that a large proportion of them died from this cause.

“The Hygienic Care of Children“ by Herbert M. Shelton part 5: (bolding mine)

It declares that encephalo-myelitis following vaccination always exhibits more extensive lesions than those of sleeping sickness and that “histologically, the inflammation in ordinary cases of poliomyelitis (infantile paralysis) differs conspicuously from that following vaccination.

In 1923, 1924 and 1925 great efforts were made in England to have everybody vaccinated. Thousands of vaccinations were performed. There occurred a great increase in the cases of Encephalitis-Lethargica. In 1924, there were 6,296 cases of this and similar affections reported in England and Wales, with a population of 38,746,000; or 162 cases per million of population. In Liverpool, with a population of 836,000 there was reported 257 such cases; or 306 cases per million of population. Liverpool was fifty per cent better vaccinated than the average of England and Wales, and had almost 100% more Encephalitis. I presume this was due to an “intercurrent affection,” or a “latent infection,” or to a “secondary infection.”

“The Hygienic Care of Children” by Herbert M. Shelton part 7: (bolding mine)

The League of Nations in its Report of Aug. 27, 1928 mentions 139 cases and 41 deaths in Holland. This resulted in Holland stopping compulsory vaccination during 1920-29. The total number of vaccinations in Holland in the first half of 1928 was less than one- third of those for the first half of 1927 and the deaths from Encephalitis were reduced to less than one-third.

Germany is seeking a modification of her compulsory vaccination law. She is seeking an optional clause, such as the one England has. The International News Service, Feb. 27, 1930, informs us:

“The change of attitude of some medical experts towards vaccination in favor of a less rigid enforcement of the law has been brought about mainly through a considerable number of post-vaccinal diseases observed in Holland and England and in sporadic cases in Germany.

“Vaccinated people developed a sort of cerebral inflammation, (encephalitis post-vaccinalis) ### which resulted in a number of deaths and in several cases of a mild form of mental derangement.”

Here is part of an item which appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association for April 5, 1930: “Reisch reports that following the vaccination of 233 children aged between 5 and 10 years, several cases with encephahtlc symptoms were observed. Two were especially severe and ended fatally. The necropsy revealed the changes characteristic of encephalomyelitis. Six other children also developed encephalitic symptoms from six to twelve days after the vaccination.”

The Report of the Commission of Smallpox and Vaccination of the Health Organization of the League of Nations, Geneva, Aug. 27, I9z8, says: “The post- vaccinal encephalitis with which we are dealing has become a problem in itself mainly in consequence of the events of the last few years in the Netherlands and England and Wales. In each of these countries the cases which have occurred have been sufficiently numerous and similar to require them to be considered collectively. Their occurrence has led to the realization that a new, or at least a previously unsuspected or unrecognized, risk attaches to the practice of vaccination.”

 

While other countries took the necessary precautions, initiated investigations, and amended their mandates, the United States did nothing except lie, cover-up, and hide their heads in the sand.

 

This very year (1930) Julia Motley, age 12 of Irisburg, Va., died of acute infantile paralysis which “seized” her 3 weeks after she had been vaccinated. Her parents attributed her death to vaccination, whereupon the State Health Autherities came to the rescue of vaccination. The News Leader, Richmond, March 28, 1930 says: “While the parents gave vaccination as the cause of death, Dr. J. V. Shackleford, the physician, states that the death certificate (made out by him, of course), shows that the little girl died of acute infantile paralysis, with which she was seized three weeks after she had been vaccinated.”

And that’s that! The doctor who vaccinated the girl makes out the death certificate to shield himself and the vaccine and the matter in settled. The girl is now immune to smallpox and the smallpox goddess has been appeased.

 

“The Hygienic Care of Children“ book, by Herbert M. Shelton. Part 8:

…One British Physician said:  “In certificates given by us voluntarily and to which the public have access, it is scarcely to be expected that a medical man will give opinions which may tell against or reflect upon himself in any way, or which are likely to cause annoyance or injury to the survivors. In such cases he will most likely tell the truth, but not the whole truth, and assign some prominent symptom as the cause of death. As instances of cases which may tell against the medical man himself, I will mention erysipelas after vaccination and pueperal fever. A death from the first cause occurred not long ago in my practice, and although I had not vaccinated the child, yet in my desire to preserve vaccination from reproach, I omitted all mention of it from my certificate of death.”

Eleanor McBean also states: “The United States Public Health Bureau is extremely reticent about reporting diseases caused by vaccination but the report from 1922 to 1931 admitted that there had been 85 cases of post-vaccinal encephalitis, which DeKruif states “is the twin of infantile paralysis.”

Many of the mothers noticed that their children had a high-pitched cry soon after their vaccination or vaccinations. This is called the encephalitic cry, meaning that it is caused by an inflamed, swollen brain. It also explains the difficulty many mothers have in waking their children, the vomiting, passing out and irritability following vaccinations. These are all signs of an inflamed brain. The reason that pediatricians are telling these mothers that their children’s reactions to these vaccines are normal is based on at least two factors. One, most pediatricians, in my experience, know absolutely nothing about a child’s brain. When I was practicing, if anything happened to a pediatrician’s patient that in any way indicated something was wrong with the child’s brain, the doctor was on the phone with me in an instant. Most admitted they knew nothing about the brain. The second reason is that they are trying to avoid a lawsuit. If they can convince the mother that everything is well, they may avoid a trip to the courtroom. Most physicians are gun shy about lawsuits. It can also hurt their reputation. Vaccine Safety Manual  by Neil Z. Miller. Preface.

 

Pertussis Vaccination: Use of Acellular Pertussis Vaccines Among Infants and Young Children Recommendations of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) (1997)

Concerns about the safety of whole-cell pertussis vaccines prompted development of acellular vaccines that are less likely to provoke adverse events because they contain purified antigenic components of Bordetella pertussis. Two diphtheria and tetanus toxoids and acellular pertussis (DTaP) vaccines — ACEL-IMUNE{Registered} * and Tripedia{Registered} ** — have been licensed for several years, but (until recently) only for administration of the fourth and fifth doses in the series to children aged 15 months-6 years who previously had received three or more doses of diphtheria and tetanus toxoids and whole-cell pertussis (DTP) vaccine. Published reports indicate that, when administered to infants aged 2, 4, and 6 months, acellular pertussis vaccines are effective in preventing pertussis disease and associated with fewer local, systemic, and certain more serious adverse events than whole-cell pertussis vaccines. On the basis of these data, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has licensed three DTaP vaccines for use among children aged 6 weeks-6 years. Tripedia{Registered} is now licensed for the initial four doses, and ACEL-IMUNE{Registered} for all five doses of the diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis vaccination series. A third DTaP vaccine (Infanrix TM) *** was licensed in January 1997 for the initial four doses of the series. Tripedia{Registered}, ACEL-IMUNE{Registered}, and Infanrix TM are now recommended for routine vaccination of infants and young children, although whole-cell pertussis vaccines remain acceptable alternatives…

Efficacy:

The efficacy of three doses of acellular pertussis vaccines in preventing moderate to severe pertussis disease was within the range expected for most whole-cell DTP vaccines. Point estimates of efficacy ranged from 59% to 89%. Mild local and systemic adverse events occurred less frequently among infants vaccinated with acellular pertussis vaccines for the first three or four doses than among those vaccinated with whole-cell DTP. More serious adverse events (e.g., fever greater than or equal to 105 F {greater than or equal to 40.5 C}, persistent crying of greater than or equal to 3 hours duration, hypotonic hyporesponsive episodes, and seizures) generally occurred less frequently among infants who received acellular pertussis vaccines than among those vaccinated with whole-cell DTP. The number of subjects included in these studies was insufficient to estimate the risk for rare severe reactions (i.e., encephalopathy or anaphylactic shock). Surveillance for these rare adverse events will be needed as acellular pertussis vaccines are used more widely.

Cherry, J.D (1988)., Brunell, P.A., Golden, G.S., Karzon, D.T., (1988), Report of the task force on pertussis and pertussis immunization, Pediatrics 81:6 Part 11 (June 1988) Supplement pp 936-984.

Extract: For more than 25 years, it has been known that pertussis vaccine is a reliable adjuvant for the production of experimental allergic encephalitis.⁷⁴‘⁹⁹“⁸ This experimental allergic encephalomyelitis is mediated by sensitized lymphocytes rather than serum antibody mechanisms.⁵² Pertussis vaccine has also been used as an adjuvant in the following experimental autoimmune diseases: thyroiditis, myocarditis, glomerulonephritis, uveoretinitis, and hemolytic anemia.⁴⁹“⁹ Except for the adjuvant effect upon antibody responses to specific vaccines, there is no evidence that any of the experimental adjuvant activities of pertussis vaccine, and specifically LPF, occur in vaccinated children.

National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program Vaccine Injury Table http://www.hrsa.dhhs.gov/bhpr/vicp/table.htm#

 

Au-Jensen M, et al.    Is the acute encephalopathy test in mice suited for control of pertussis vaccines? Dev Biol Stand. 1985;61:447-51. PMID: 3835081; UI: 86221312.

 Animal models to control the serious neurological complications after vaccination against whooping cough are not available. In a recent paper pertussis vaccine induced acute encephalopathy in certain mouse strains (1). Healthy BALB/c mice died with shock-like symptoms after immunization with bovine serum albumin (BSA) and heat-killed pertussis. Mice not sensitized with BSA survived, and mice of strains with another H-2 type than H-2d were not susceptible. The authors concluded that the susceptibility to side effects to pertussis vaccine in mice and possibly in human is linked to the MHC. We tried to repeat the experiments reported by Steinman et al. in the hope that the murine encephalopathy model would be useful to evaluate possible neurological complications. In spite of having the same H-2d genotype, the BALB/c mice of two breeding stocks did not develop shock-like symptoms with fatal consequences after the last injection with BSA. This fact corresponds possibly with the author’s observation that the pertussis vaccine encephalopathy is not under the control of H-2 genes alone. As shown in our tests the sudden deaths and encephalopathy in mice are not linked to BSA-sensitization because mice who received pertussis vaccine only showed the same symptoms as mice injected with BSA and vaccine. Histology did not indicate brain damage. It seems obvious that the deaths in our experiments were caused by the pertussis toxins present in the large numbers of bacteria given.

 

DTP and DTaP vaccines are not the only vaccines that have raised red flags.

Early fears about MMR in secret papers (2007)

Crowley S, et al.  Mumps, measles, and rubella vaccination and encephalitis. Also note comment.

 

Measles-Mumps-Rubella (MMR) Vaccine as a Potential Cause of Encephalitis (Brain Inflammation) in Children—–Harold E. Buttram, MD

Bolukbasi O, et al.    Acute disseminated encephalomyelitis associated with tetanus vaccination. Eur Neurol. 1999;41(4):231-2. No abstract available.PMID: 10343155; UI: 99276501.   

Hemachudha T, et al. Myelin basic protein as an encephalitogen in encephalomyelitis and polyneuritis following rabies vaccination. N Engl J Med. 1987 Feb 12;316(7):369-74. PMID: 2433582; UI: 87115665.

 Polyneuritis cranialis? Brain stem encephalitis and myelitis following preventive influenza vaccination. Buchner H, et al.  1988 Nov;59(11):679-82.  German. No abstract available. PMID: 3211251; UI: 89097428   

Morphological changes in the central nervous system in post-vaccinal encephalomyelitis developing after chickenpox vaccination in children. Ravkina LI, et al. 1970; 70(10):1465-71. Russian. PMID: 4395233; UI: 71064831. 

 Acute disseminated encephalomyelitis and meningococcal A and C vaccine: case report.

A 25-year-old women developed acute disseminated post-vaccinal encephalomyelitis (ADEM) following vaccination with A plus C meningococcal vaccine (Pasteur-Merieux). Fast disappearance of symptoms and gradual resolution of MRI demyelinating lesions occurred after steroid treatment with high doses of intravenous methylprednisolone. To our knowledge, ADEM has not been previously described in association with meningococcal vaccine. Although most cases of ADEM occur following viral infections and vaccination, the syndrome has previously been related to leptospirosis and Mycoplasma pneumoniae infections. This suggests that it may also be related to exposure to polysaccharide-protein vaccines such as the Group A plus Group C meningococcal vaccine.

 

An Italian Study Finding Biochemical Markers of Vaccine Damage (1996)

Comment by Harris L. Coulter: This is, to my knowledge, the first investigation to find biochemical markers of vaccine damage. It has not yet been published but deserves publication. My translation omits the tables and part of the bibliography, but the text is complete. This study should also have an impact on HLA typing, since it shows that vaccinations can have an effect on the individual’s HLA type (i.e., that it is not necessarily congenital).

Resume
This study involves observations of 30 patients with post-vaccinal pathology of the central nervous system and other systems where the first symptoms appeared concomitantly with, or immediately after, administration of a vaccine. All patients were subjected to serologic testing for herpes virus (IgG and IgM) and to HLA (A, B, C) and HLA-DR-DQ tissue typing to see if there was any correlation between the emergence of CNS pathology and these various antigens, thus to show a possible autoimmune-type immunogenetic basis for demyelination processes. Statistical comparison with the Italian population used as controls revealed an increase in the HLA-A3 and HLA-DR7 antigens. The presence of A3 and/or DR-7 was observed in 22/30 (73.3%) of the patients.

…This allowed us to relate these data to specific clinical pictures — patients who had earlier been diagnosed with epilepsy, myoclonic epilepsy, evoving epilepsy, epileptigenic encephalopathy, autism, West Syndrome, and Angelman’s Syndrome. All the patients had presented with the first symptoms shortly after receiving the prophylactic vaccination or somewhat later.

The first symptoms were convulsions, very high fever, or diarrhoea immediately following a compulsory vaccination. The parents had told their physicians about this; then, after taking EEGs and visiting neuropsychiatric specialists or pediatricians without getting any satisfaction, the physicians had administered the recall shots of the vaccines leading very shortly to stabilization of the condition with progressive clinical deterioration.

These children were mostly from 3 to 9 months old. All patients were studied for the presence of metabolic diseases with negative results; then chromosomal mapping was done, also with negative results; encephalic TAC and RMN were performed at first appearance of the symptomatology, also with negative results.

Conclusion
All the patients observed presented various physical problems. The various types of CNS pathology could be due to a delatentization of preexisting autoimme damage by viral DNA. It has been observed that the “cleaner” the species, from the virologic or microbiologic point of view, the more likely it is to present autoimmune conditions of the CNS and other apparatuses. The results indicate that autoimmune pathology is more frequent in countries where vaccination is more widespread, i.e., in countries defined as “clean.” With this study, and with the individualization of alleles such as A3 and DR7, in the presence of viral DNA, it would be possible to define the subjects at risk of an autoimmune pathology from vaccination. The action of thimerosal used as an excipient in vaccines, and whose toxicity is independent of thedose administered, could demonstrate the possibility of changes in the aminoacids of the molecules which preserve the antigen.

Clinical suppression of experimental allergic encephalomyelitis by muramyl dipeptide “adjuvant”. Root-Bernstein RS, et al. Brain Res Bull. 1986 Oct; 17(4):473-6.  PMID: 3779448; UI: 87050859.

Abstract :Experimental allergic encephalomyelitis (EAE) is a model for several human diseases including multiple sclerosis and post-vaccinal encephalopathies. EAE is generally thought to be an autoimmune response to the antigen myelin basic protein (MBP). Oddly, MBP can also suppress EAE, and many observations suggest that an independent immune response to so-called “adjuvant” material is also necessary to EAE induction. Thus, EAE may be a result of a pair of interactive immune responses, one against MBP, and one against adjuvant. If so, the adjuvant should, like MBP, suppress EAE. We present data from experiments on strain 13 guinea pigs demonstrating EAE suppression by muramyl dipeptide, an active component of complete Freund’s adjuvant. These results are striking because classically adjuvants are defined as immunopotentiators, not immunosuppressants. Our results, therefore, suggest that a revaluation of the role of adjuvants in inducing autoimmune diseases may be necessary.

 

SICK MONKEYS: RESEARCH LINKS VACCINE LOAD, AUTISM SIGNS. 

The first research project to examine effects of the total vaccine load received by children in the 1990s has found autism-like signs and symptoms in infant monkeys vaccinated the same way. The study’s principal investigator, Laura Hewitson from the University of Pittsburgh, reports developmental delays, behavior problems and brain changes in macaque monkeys that mimic “certain neurological abnormalities of autism.”

 

 “…For every vaccination, minimal encephalopathy destroys brain cells. As a result, in Germany, there are 1.2 million children who have contracted hyperkinetic syndrome who are then treated with Psychopharmeca (a drug similar to Ritalin) used to calm them down… We have hundreds of thousands of so-called minimal cerebral dysfunction cases and millions of neurodermatitis patients. In Germany, there are millions of people with allergies. We don’t just produce minimal encephalopathies in the brain, but we also produce modifications of the genetic code.”–Dr Buchwald MD[Media Sept 2002] Bosnia halts using Unicef-donated DTP vaccines after baby contracts encephalitis

 

Workshop on Neurologic Complications of Pertussis and Pertussis Vaccination. Menkes, J.H (1990). and Kinsbourne, M., Neuropediatrics 21 (1990) 171-176.

 In evaluating side-reactions to the vaccine, the following must be kept in mind:

Vaccines are not standardized between manufacturers.

For a given manufacturer, vaccines are not standard from one batch to the next.

Unless the vaccine is properly prepared and refrigerated, its potency and reactivity varies with shelf life.

In fact, the whole question of vaccine detoxification has never been systematically investigated.

Listed in order of increasing severity, observed adverse reactions include irritability, persistent, unusually high-pitched crying, somnolence, seizures, a shock-like “hypotensive, hyporesponsive” state, and an encephalopathy. Since the neurologic picture is not specific for pertussis vaccination, its temporal relationship to the vaccination is the critical variable for determining causation.

Although the majority of seizures following pertussis vaccination are associated with fever, it was the consensus of the neurologists attending the workshop, that these do not represent febrile convulsions, but are non-benign convulsions.

The incidence of post-vaccine encephalopathy is difficult to ascertain. The most carefully conducted retrospective case-control study reported that the relative risk of a previously normal infant for the onset of an illness leading to encephalopathy with permanent subsequent disability was 4.2 time greater during the first 72 hours following DPT vaccination than in controls. From this study, the risk for permanent brain damage following DPT has been calculated as 1:310,000 doses. (my note – 1:310,000 doses translates to an actual risk of 1:62,000 – this figure is from the National Childhood Encephalopathy Study which excluded any child whose seizure lasted for less than 30 minutes and who was not hospitalised as a result of their seizure. )

 

There are hundreds of articles like these in the medical literature so you get the picture.

 

Encephalitis Redefined. Why?

“Under the 1986 law, DHHS was supposed to produce information brochures describing each vaccine’s benefits and risks so doctors could educate parents before vaccination of their children took place.  We worked for several years with DHHS on these brochures but DHHS eventually got an amendment to the law to reduce the brochures to a one page information sheet that does not contain enough information to adequately inform parents about vaccine risks or how to monitor their child following vaccination for signs that a reaction is occurring………Today, the bitter truth is that, although more than one billion dollars has been paid out to some 1,000 families whose loved ones have been harmed by vaccines, three out of four vaccine victims are turned away……….And to make it easier for compensation to be denied to vaccine injured children, under rule making authority these federal agencies gutted the Table of Compensable Events in 1995 and arbitrarily rewrote the definition of encephalopathy (brain dysfunction) that had been used by medicine decades……   We tried to stop the destruction of the Table of Compensable Events by bringing suit in federal court, but we lost. So, today, almost no cases of brain damage following DPT vaccination are presumed to be caused by the vaccine. The vaccine injury compensation program has been turned into the trial we were promised it would not be, where causation in fact must be proven in almost every case and vaccine victims and their lawyers are left begging for compensation from federal health agencies holding all the cards. The federal compensation system that we were told would be “simple justice for children,” has become a cruel joke, a sad commentary on a national health policy that forces children to take the risk and then leaves many families to cope with the catastrophic consequences on their own when the risk turns out to be 100 percent.”–Barbara Loe Fisher   Also: National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP)

“Encephalopathy was redefined so that the diagnosis requires as a sine qua non in excess of 24 hours of a diminished level of consciousness, a criterion which is far more restrictive than that of the leading epidemiological study of pertussis vaccine injury, the British National Childhood Encephalopathy Study (NCES). Moreover, seizures have been removed from the Table, although that the pertussis vaccine can cause seizures is uncontested (and warned in the manufacturer’s package insert).”–Marcel Kingsbourne

 

Somewhat 35 years ago, when I worked in Gamaleya Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, a leading Russian center for vaccines development and immunology research, a tragedy happened: our measles vaccine caused an epidemics of encephalitis among vaccinated. Our senior immunologist and virologist, prof. Svet-Moldavsky, was sent to investigate. It turned out that at producing facility they slightly modified protocol, using overgrown rats instead of very young, as was required. Live virus vaccines are made nowadays essentially as in days of Pasteur, by multiple passage on animals brains. So these vaccines can induce antibody production not only to virus antigenes, but to components of brain tissue as well. While antigene composition of human and animals tissues is different, some overlapping exists, so autoimmune response against brain tissue of vaccinated children is possible. This happened in this case. The story never leaked into press, of course, due to Soviet era secrecy, but everybody in Institute knew it.
    

Measles lethality drastically plummeted in last few decades, from several procents to one case in thousand infected. Most of it was due to concurrent bacterial infection pneumonia, which now effectively treated by antibiotics; these 1/1000 deaths are also caused not by virus itself, but autoimmune reaction on this virus targeting brain tissue. But there are sound reasons to fear that attenuated vaccine virus can induce analogic reactions. Many parents reported onset of autism symptoms immediately (several hours after) vaccination. Too early for viremia, but timing is exact for autoimmune reaction. The Wakefield witch-hunt–Melanie Phillips

 

…Encephalitis (whether from vaccination or from some other cause) can range from severe to moderate, even subclinical. It is also possible to have encephalitis in which the acute symptoms are extremely mild but which still does much long-term damage. The “less serious” long-term sequelae resemble the more severe cases but are milder. Instead of having epilepsy or seizures, the children suffer from what are called “staring spells” or “absence seizures.” Instead of being mentally retarded to the point of incapacity to function in society, they suffer loss of IQ: many function at the 80 or 90 IQ level — just above subnormality. Instead of paralysis or cerebral palsy, they may lose a degree of muscular control — “atony” — especially of the hands. The parents will say that the baby doesn’t use his hands for crawling, or that he picks up objects with his feet instead of his hands. They manifest all the cranial nerve palsies, but in a less severe form. Instead of being blind, they have astigmatisms and nystagmus (involuntary and jerky repetitive movements of the eyeballs). They can be cross-eyed. They may have trouble moving their eyes from side to side. Or they are dyslexic, cannot read letters, cannot spell, cannot understand numbers, and the like. A peculiar feature is that they sometimes have obsessions about people’s eyes, are afraid to look others in the eyes, etc.. Instead of being totally deaf, they have mild loss of hearing. Or they have chronic earaches — otitis media…

… Another long-term effect of this vaccine is tendency to allergies, especially allergy to milk. Needless to say, a large proportion of the population in all of the industrialized countries of the world today suffer from allergies. We found that newborn infants with colic — meaning an allergy to milk– tend to react more strongly to the vaccine. Undoubtedly colic should be considered a counter indication to vaccination.

Another long-term effect is disturbance of sleep rhythm; the child turns night into day and day into night. They are often hyperactive. They have an extremely short attention span. Their behavior is dominated by impulses. They have lowered resistance to infection — due, presumably, to defective operation of the immune system. Other serious disorders are: seizures and epilepsy, blindness or loss of speech, paralysis or palsy of one or several limbs, and mental retardation. These are all possible effects of the vaccine. So one finds the same kinds of physical disabilities as in the more profoundly affected children, but everything is somewhat milder. “Mild” here is a relative term. After all, hyperactivity, dyslexia, and short attention span are very serious social problems — leading, in fact, to the collapse of the American educational system today. Indeed, the physical disabilities are only part of the picture. Harris L. Coulter, Ph.D. Vaccination Social Violence and Criminality.

 

To be continued…

The Pentagon — A Voice of Reason on Vaccines and Autism?

The Pentagon — A Voice of Reason on Vaccines and Autism?

David Kirby

…

Recently, several documents have been brought to my attention which, when viewed together, suggest that the Department of Defense has legitimate concerns about vaccine injuries and their possible connection to autism, perhaps more so than other branches of the Federal Government.

These documents raise several questions that I am currently trying to get answered from DOD officials:

1) Autism may be an “adverse event” of Tripedia (DTaP) use

According to the website of the Vaccine Healthcare Centers Network, run by DOD and CDC, autism is listed as an “adverse event” associated with use of the Tripedia triple vaccine for diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis.

My questions are: Why does autism appear here? Does VHC consider autism to be a possible adverse event of DTaP use, or has it simply been reported that way by parents?

2) Patients who have bad vaccine reactions should avoid multiple vaccines in the future

According to this VHC slide, any patient who has a “Systemic Event” following immunization – defined as “symptoms and signs of illness after vaccination” and “any reaction that does not involve the injection site” – should avoid multiple vaccines in the future, if possible.

My questions are: Is that standard DOD policy? Is there an alternative schedule for these patients? Does this advice apply to children of service members as well? Why is this information not shared with civilian doctors and pediatricians?

3) Patients who develop serious neurological diseases might need vaccine exemptions in the future

This VHC slide says that a patient who develops a severe neurologic disease following vaccination might need temporary or permanent exemption from future vaccines. Such diseases include peripheral neuropathy, encephalopathy (including autism, presumably) Guillain-Barré syndrome and progressive focal neurologic disease. Such patients should be given temporary exemptions from future vaccinations.

Meanwhile, risks for recurrent reactions should be assessed before additional doses are given, and “permanent vaccine exemption may be required.”

Again, is this DOD policy? Are such exemptions given? Because autism is listed as a “severe neurological disease,” would those patients (ie, children of service members) also be exempt from future vaccinations? And, on a related note, does VHC consider autism to be a “neurological disease,” as opposed to a developmental/behavioral disorder?

4) Mercury, and possibly thimerosal may cause autism and dementia

According this slide (#22) on the vaccine preservative thimerosal, from the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP), “exposure to mercury in utero and children may cause mild to severe mental retardation and mild to severe motor coordination impairment.” The slide also seems to indicate that autism and dementia might questionably be “health effects” of mercury or thimerosal exposure.

My question is: Why does autism appear on a list of health effects on a slide about thimerosal, even if it is followed by a question mark?

5) Alternative biomedical treatments may be prescribed for thimerosal exposure

The same slide says that “treatments” for thimerosal exposure include: “Methyl-B12, ointment DMPS, & glutathione (GSH).” These are all alternative (some would say fringe, radical and dangerous) treatments being used today by thousands of autism parents and their children’s physicians, with varying degrees of success (including reports of full recovery).

Methyl-B12 – has been shown to repair damage to the process of methylation, and to restore methionine and glutathione levels in patients with autism to within normal ranges.

DMPS – is a sulfur-based amino acid used in the process of chelation – in which sulfur molecules bind with heavy metals such as mercury, and eliminate them from the system.

Glutathione – is a sulfur-based protein that binds with heavy metals and eliminates them from the system. It is also a powerful anti-oxidant. Many children with autism show signs of glutathione depletion, heavy metal accumulation and oxidative stress.

My questions are: Was the speaker simply refering to treatments that some people have tried, or is the AFID endorsing these treatments for thimerosal toxicity and/or autism? On what evidence is this based? Are Methyl B-12 and GSH, like chelation, considered standard of care in the military for mercury toxicity? Can you explain why autism families in the military have these treatments covered, (at thousands of dollars a year), even if they also have an autism diagnosis? Is this why military insurance will pay for visits to doctors in the Defeat Autism Now network, which advocates the use of these non-traditional treatments?

I eagerly await the replies from VHC and AFID officials, and will update this blog as soon as I hear anything.

Meanwhile, regardless of the Pentagon’s positions on the above questions, we know for certain that DOD is concerned about the risk of injury from multiple vaccines.

In fact, it may even need to reconsider the practice.

“We have preliminary findings from one of our many on-going research studies that suggest a relationship between adverse events and multiple vaccinations exist,” US Army Colonel Renata J. M. Engler, MD, director of the VHC, (a “collaborative network” of the Defense Department and the CDC), wrote to Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY). “These findings will require validation, but heighten our concern for the current clinical practice of multiple vaccinations.”

“The more drugs one is exposed to, the greater the likelihood of having an adverse event so as vaccine numbers increase, and (sic) we will see more people who have efficacy or safety issues,” Col. Engler said. “The standard of care (ie, in the context of mixing vaccines) is to minimize drug exposures because of the recognition that the more drugs being used, the greater the chance of a reaction and potentially a serious adverse event.”

I wonder when the CDC and America’s pediatricians will issue an equally thoughtful and cautionary statement, instead of their usual reassurance that small children can easily get 100,000 shots at once, without a single “serious adverse event” among them.

*update:

Age of Autism

VHCN  _the page that is now under revision you can view here.

Encephalitis and Encephalopathy (part 1)

Encephalitis

Vaccines containing Pertussis and Measles can cause encephalitis. Per the VICP guidelines; onset of encephalitis from Pertussis-containing vaccines is 24-48 hours, and between day five and fifteen for the MMR, M, MR and R vaccines.  
 
 
This is what the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program stated in the late 1980’s: 
 
The neurologic signs and symptoms of encephalopathy may be temporary with complete recovery or may result in various degrees of permanent impairment.  
 
Signs and symptoms such as high-pitched and unusual screaming, persistent inconsolable crying, and bulging fontanel are compatible with an encephalopathy, but in and of themselves are not conclusive evidence of encephalopathy. Encephalopathy usually can be documented by slow wave activity on an electroencephalogram. 
 
Today it states: 
 
The following clinical features alone, or in combination, do not demonstrate an acute encephalopathy or a significant change in either mental status or level of consciousness as described above: Sleepiness, irritability (fussiness), high-pitched and unusual screaming, persistent inconsolable crying, and bulging fontanelle. Seizures in themselves are not sufficient to constitute a diagnosis of encephalopathy. In the absence of other evidence of an acute encephalopathy, seizures shall not be viewed as the first symptom or manifestation of the onset of an acute encephalopathy.  

 

 

*This means it is no longer considered a contradiction to further vaccination.
 

An adverse reaction association does have a name and it is called: Crying Syndrome or Screaming Syndrome.  The scream is also known as cry-encephalitis. The cause is infection of the brain from the vaccine virus/bacteria. When the body is injected with virus/bacteria it can travel to the brain and cause encephalitis. Encephalitis can be a reaction to any vaccine but the DTP and DTaP is the most common.
 

What is interesting to note is that when encephalitis occurs following an illness, a doctor will treat it correctly. However, following a vaccination, a doctor will tell you it is a normal reaction to the vaccine and do nothing.

 

Workshop on neurologic complications of pertussis and pertussis vaccination
  

A multidisciplinary workshop held from September 29 to October 1, 1989, at Airlie House, Warrenton, Virginia, considered the neurologic complications of whooping cough and pertussis vaccine. Pertussis mortality in the U.S. in 2-3/1000 cases. Seizures occur in 1.9% of cases, and encephalopathy in 0.3%. Reviewing all data, it appears likely that a combination of one or more bacterial toxins, asphyxia, CO2 retention and loss of cerebral vascular autoregulation is responsible for neurologic symptoms. The timing of the encephalopathy suggests that it results from increased lysis of bacteria, and release of endotoxin. The encephalopathy is not confined to the paroxysmal phase. In evaluating side-reactions to the vaccine, the following must be kept in mind: 1. Vaccines are not standardized between manufacturers. 2. For a given manufacturer, vaccines are not standard from one batch to the next. 3. Unless the vaccine is properly prepared and refrigerated, its potency and reactivity varies with shelf life. In fact, the whole question of vaccine detoxification has never been systematically investigated. Listed in order of increasing severity, observed adverse reactions include irritability, persistent, unusually high pitched crying, somnolence, seizures, a shock-like “hypotensive, hyporesponsive” state, and an encephalopathy. Since the neurologic picture is not specific for pertussis vaccination, its temporal relationship to the vaccination is the critical variable for determining causation. Although the majority of seizures following pertussis vaccination are associated with fever, it was the consensus of the neurologists attending the workshop, that these do not represent febrile convulsions, but are non-benign convulsions. The incidence of post-vaccine encephalopathy is difficult to ascertain.

 

 Basically, the screaming is caused by the pain of the endotoxin in the vaccine getting into his brain. The screaming then causes a release of cortisol through the body which disrupts the immune system. It also causes the body temperature to rise. The intestines ph or acidity of changes, and bacteria called e-coli increases. If the amount gets high, that is when it can cause problems. The DTP is known to slow the function of the liver but it is not known which babies will be affected. Therefore, it becomes important to neutralize the curlin and take strain off the liver.

 

According to Drugs.com:

 

Diphtheria / Tetanus Toxoids / Acellular Pertussis Vaccine

( DTaP/Tdap ) Pronouncation: (diff-THEER-ee-uh/TET-ah-nus/ay-SELL-yoo-ler per-TUSS-uss vaccine) Class: Toxoid

 

Trade Names: 
Adacel(Tdap)

Active booster immunization against diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis as a single dose in persons 11 to 64 yr of age.
– Injection 2 Lf units diphtheria toxoid, 5 Lf units tetanus toxoid, 3 mcg pertactin, 5 mcg filamentous hemagglutinin (FHA), 2.5 mcg detoxified pertussis toxins, 5 mcg fimbriae types 2 and 3 per mL.

 
Boostrix(Tdap)

Active booster immunization against diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis as a single dose in persons 10 to 18 yr of age.
– Injection 2.5 Lf units diphtheria toxoid, 5 Lf units tetanus toxoid, 2.5 mcg pertactin, 8 mcg FHA, 8 mcg inactivated pertussis toxins per 0.5 mL
Daptacel
– Injection 15 Lf units diphtheria toxoid, 5 Lf units tetanus toxoid, 10 mcg pertussis toxoid, 5 mcg FHA, 3 mcg pertactin, 5 mcg fimbriae types 2 and 3 per 0.5 mL

 

Infanrix
– Injection 25 Lf units diphtheria, 10 Lf units tetanus toxoid, 25 mcg pertussis toxin, 25 mcg FHA, 8 mcg pertactin per 0.5 mL

 

Tripedia
– Injection 6.7 Lf units diphtheria toxoid, 5 Lf units tetanus toxoid, 46.8 mcg pertussis antigens (approximately 23.4 mcg each of inactivated pertussis toxin and FHA) per 0.5 mL

Daptacel , Infanrix , Tripedia (DTaP)

Active immunization against diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis in infants and children 6 wk to 6 yr of age (prior to seventh birthday).

 

Per CDC, Tdap is for use in adults and children 10 yr of age and older, and DTaP is for use in infants and children younger than 7 yr of age.

Contraindications

Encephalopathy within 7 days of previous administration of DTP, Tdap, or DTaP that is not attributable to another cause; progressive neurologic disorders (eg, infantile spasms, uncontrolled epilepsy, progressive encephalopathy), in addition, pertussis vaccine should not be administered to persons with these conditions until a treatment regimen has been established and condition has stabilized; hypersensitivity to any component of the vaccine; history of serious allergic reaction temporarily associated with a previous dose of vaccine or any component of the vaccine.

 

Daptacel , Infanrix , Tripedia

Use in adults or children 7 yr of age and older; if contraindication to pertussis vaccine component occurs, substitute diphtheria and tetanus toxoids for pediatric use (DT) for each remaining dose; defer elective immunization procedures during outbreak of poliomyelitis because of risk of provoking paralysis.

 

It is recommended that the same brand of DTaP ( Daptacel , Infanrix , Tripedia ) be given for all doses in the immunization series because no data exist on the interchangeability of DTaP vaccines. Tdap vaccines ( Adacel , Boostrix ) are not interchangeable with DTaP vaccines.

 

 

Anticoagulants

Give DTaP/Tdap with caution to patients on anticoagulant therapy.

 

Immunosuppressants

May reduce vaccine’s efficacy.

 Influenza vaccine

To attribute causality of adverse reactions, do not give influenza vaccine within 3 days of pertussis vaccination.

Laboratory Test Interactions

None well documented.

 

Adverse Reactions

Cardiovascular

Boostrix

Myocarditis (postmarketing).

Daptacel

Cyanosis (postmarketing).

Infanrix

Cyanosis (postmarketing).

CNS

Adacel

Headache (44%); tiredness (30%); hyposthesia, paresthesia, vasovagal syncope (postmarketing).

 

Boostrix

Headache (43%); fatigue (37%); convulsion, encephalitis, facial palsy, paresthesia (postmarketing).

 

Daptacel

Fussines (76%); fretfulness (40%); drowsiness (33%); anorexia (11%); convulsions, febrile convulsion, grand mal convulsion, hypotonia, hypotonic-hyporesponsive episode, partial seizures, somnolence, screaming (postmarketing).

 

Infanrix

Drowsiness (38%); anorexia (12%); fussiness (9%); convulsions, crying, encephalopathy, hypotonia, hypotonic-hyporesponsive episode, irritability, somnolence (postmarketing).

 

Tripedia

Drowsiness (29%); irritability (25%); anorexia (10%); fussiness (6%); autism, convulsion, encephalopathy, grand mal convulsion, hypotonia, neuropathy, somnolence (postmarketing).

Dermatologic

Adacel

Rash (3%); pruritus, urticaria (postmarketing).

 

Boostrix

Exanthem, Henoch-Schonlein purpura, rash (postmarketing).

 Infanrix

Erythema, pruritus, rash, urticaria (postmarketing).

GI

Adacel

Nausea (13%); diarrhea (10%); vomiting (5%).

 Boostrix

GI symptoms including abdominal pain, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting (26%).

 Daptacel

Vomiting (7%); diarrhea, nausea (postmarketing).

 Infanrix

Vomiting (7%); diarrhea, intussusception (postmarketing).

 Tripedia

Vomiting (5%).

Hematologic-Lymphatic

Adacel

Lymph node swelling (7%).

 

Boostrix

Lymphadenitis, lymphadenopathy (postmarketing).

 

Infanrix

Idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura, lymphadenopathy, thrombocytopenia (postmarketing).

 

Tripedia

Idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura (postmarketing).

Hypersensitivity

Boostrix

Anaphylactic reaction, arthus-type hypersensitivity.

 

Daptacel

Allergic reaction, anaphylactic reaction (edema, face edema, face swelling, generalized rash and other types of rash, pruritus), hypersensitivity (postmarketing).

 

Infanrix

Anaphylactic reaction, hypersensitivity (postmarketing).

 

Tripedia

Anaphylactic reaction (postmarketing).

Local

Adacel

Pain (78%); erythema (25%); swelling (21%); injection-site bruising, sterile abscess

(postmarketing).

 

Boostrix

Pain (75%); redness (48%); swelling (39%); increase in arm circumference (28%); induration, inflammation, local reaction, mass, nodule, warmth (postmarketing).

 

Daptacel

Tenderness (50%); increased arm circumference (30%); redness (17%); swelling (12%); cellulitis, injection-site abscess, injection-site mass, injection-site nodule, injection-site pain, injection-site rash.

 

Infanrix

Redness (59%); swelling (50%); pain (27%); injection-site reactions (postmarketing).

 

Tripedia

Redness (33%); swelling (28%); pain (21%).

Musculoskeletal

Adacel

Body ache or muscle weakness (30%); sore and swollen joints (11%); muscle spasms, myelitis, myositis (postmarketing).

 

Boostrix

Arthralgia, back pain, myalgia (postmarketing).

 

Infanrix

Limb swelling (postmarketing).

Miscellaneous

Adacel

Chills (15%); fever (5%).

 

Boostrix

Fever (14%); insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (postmarketing).

 

Daptacel

Crying (59%); decreased activity (51%); fever (24%).

 

Infanrix

Fever (7%); cellulitis, ear pain, respiratory tract infection, sudden infant death syndrome (postmarketing).

 

Tripedia

Fever (25%); apnea, sudden infant death syndrome (postmarketing).

 

Pregnancy

Category C .

Lactation

Undetermined.

Children

Adacel

Safety and efficacy not established in children younger than 11 yr of age.

 Boostrix

Not indicated for use in patients younger than 10 yr of age or older than 18 yr of age.

 

Daptacel , Infanrix , Tripedia

Safety and efficacy in infants younger than 6 wk of age not established; contraindicated for persons 7 yr of age and older.

Elderly

Adacel

Safety and efficacy not established in individuals 65 yr of age and older.

Special Risk Patients

If any of the following occurs in temporal relation with receipt of either whole-cell pertussis DTP or DTaP, carefully consider decision to administer subsequent doses of vaccine containing pertussis component: temperature of at least 105°F within 48 h not caused by another identifiable cause; collapse or shock-like state (hypotonic-hyporesponsive episode) within 48 h; persistent inconsolable crying lasting at least 3 h occurring within 48 h; or convulsions, with or without fever, occurring within 3 days. If the decision is made to withhold pertussis component, continue immunization with DT (Td if 7 yr of age and older). If Guillain-Barré syndrome occurs within 6 wk of receipt of prior vaccine containing tetanus toxoids, base decision to give subsequent doses of DTaP or any vaccine containing tetanus toxoids on potential benefits versus risks. Patients who experience serious Arthus-type hypersensitivity reactions following a prior dose of tetanus toxoids usually have high serum tetanus antitoxin levels and should not be given Td or DTaP vaccines or even emergency doses of Td more frequently than every 10 yr, even if wound is neither clean nor minor.

Bleeding disorders

Use with caution in patients with bleeding disorders (eg, thrombocytopenia, hemophilia) or receiving anticoagulant therapy.

Convulsions/CNS disorders

Family history of seizures or other CNS disorders is not a contraindication to pertussis vaccine.

Febrile illness or acute infection

Defer immunization during course of illness. Minor respiratory illness, such as mild upper respiratory tract infection, is usually not a reason to defer immunization.

Immunodeficiency

May have diminished antibody response; defer immunization, if possible, until immunocompetency is restored.

Latex sensitivity

Stoppers for Daptacel and Tripedia vials, and tip cap and rubber plunger of Infanrix and Boostrix needleless prefilled syringes contain dry natural latex rubber that may cause allergic reactions in latex-sensitive individuals.

 

Measles, Mumps, and Rubella (MMR) vaccine

Brand Names: M-M-R II

 

What should I discuss with my healthcare provider before receiving this vaccine?

You should not receive this vaccine if you are allergic to:

• eggs;
• gelatin;
• neomycin (Mycifradin, Neo-Fradin, Neo-Tab); or
• if you have ever had a life-threatening allergic reaction to any vaccine containing measles, mumps, or rubella.
•  

You should also not receive this vaccine if you have:

• a chronic disease such as asthma or other breathing disorder, diabetes, kidney disease, or blood cell disorders such as anemia;
• severe immune suppression caused by disease (such as cancer, HIV, or AIDS), or by receiving certain medicines such as steroids, chemotherapy or radiation; or
• if you are pregnant.
•  

Before receiving this vaccine, tell the doctor if you have:

• thrombocytopenia purpura (easy bruising or bleeding);
• active tuberculosis infection;
• a history of seizures;
• a neurologic disorder or disease affecting the brain (or if this was a reaction to a previous vaccine);
• a weak immune system caused by disease, bone marrow transplant, or by using certain medicines or receiving cancer treatments;
• if you have received an immune globulin or other blood product within the past year; or
• if you have received a previous MMR vaccine within the past 28 days (4 weeks).
•  

You can still receive a vaccine if you have a cold or fever. In the case of a more severe illness with a fever or any type of infection, wait until you get better before receiving this vaccine.

You should not receive a measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine if you are pregnant. Wait until after your child is born to receive the vaccine.

Avoid becoming pregnant for at least 3 months after receiving a measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine.

Do no not receive this vaccine without telling your doctor if you are breast-feeding a baby.

What should I avoid before or after receiving this vaccine?

Do not receive another “live” vaccine such as oral polio, yellow fever, or varicella (chickenpox) for at least 4 weeks after you have received the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine. The other live vaccine may not work as well during this time, and may not fully protect you from disease.

Measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines side effects

You should not receive a booster vaccine if you had a life-threatening allergic reaction after the first shot. Keep track of any and all side effects you have after receiving this vaccine. When you receive a booster dose, you will need to tell the doctor if the previous shots caused any side effects.

Becoming infected with measles, mumps, or rubella is much more dangerous to your health than receiving the vaccine to protect against these diseases. Like any medicine, this vaccine can cause side effects, but the risk of serious side effects is extremely low.

 

Get emergency medical help if you have any of these signs of an allergic reaction: hives; difficulty breathing; swelling of your face, lips, tongue, or throat.

Call your doctor at once if you have any of these serious side effects:

• problems with hearing or vision;
• extreme drowsiness, fainting;
• easy bruising or bleeding, unusual weakness;
• seizure (black-out or convulsions); or
• high fever (within a few hours or a few days after the vaccine).
•  

Less serious side effects include:

• redness, pain, swelling, or a lump where the shot was given;
• headache, dizziness;
• low fever;
• joint or muscle pain; or
• nausea, vomiting, diarrhea.
•  

Side effects other than those listed here may also occur. Contact your doctor about any side effect that seems unusual or that is especially bothersome.

What other drugs will affect measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine?

Before receiving this vaccine, tell the doctor about all other vaccines you have recently received.

Also tell the doctor if you have recently received drugs or treatments that can weaken the immune system, including:

• an oral, nasal, inhaled, or injectable steroid medicine;
• medications to treat psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, or other autoimmune disorders, such as azathioprine (Imuran), efalizumab (Raptiva), etanercept (Enbrel), leflunomide (Arava), and others; or
• medicines to treat or prevent organ transplant rejection, such as basiliximab (Simulect), cyclosporine (Sandimmune, Neoral, Gengraf), muromonab-CD3 (Orthoclone), mycophenolate mofetil (CellCept), sirolimus (Rapamune), or tacrolimus (Prograf).
•  

If you are using any of these medications, you may not be able to receive the vaccine, or may need to wait until the other treatments are finished.

There may be other drugs that can affect this vaccine. Tell your doctor about all the prescription and over-the-counter medications you have received. This includes vitamins, minerals, herbal products, and drugs prescribed by other doctors. Do not start using a new medication without telling your doctor.

 

ProQuad -Measles, Mumps, Rubella, and Varicella Vaccine

Do NOT use ProQuad if:

• you are allergic to any ingredient in ProQuad , including gelatin
• you have had a severe allergic reaction (eg, severe rash, hives, difficulty breathing, dizziness) to neomycin
• you have a weakened immune system (eg, advanced HIV, AIDS, decreased gamma globulin levels, decreased white blood cell levels), blood problems, cancer affecting the blood or bone marrow (eg, leukemia), fever, or active or untreated tuberculosis (TB)
• you are pregnant
• you are taking an immunosuppressant (eg, cyclosporine) or a salicylate (eg, aspirin)

Contact your doctor or health care provider right away if any of these apply to you.

Before using ProQuad :

Some medical conditions may interact with ProQuad . Tell your doctor or pharmacist if you have any medical conditions, especially if any of the following apply to you:

• if you are planning to become pregnant or are breast-feeding
• if you are taking any prescription or nonprescription medicine, herbal preparation, or dietary supplement
• if you have allergies to medicines, foods, or other substances
• if you are allergic to eggs
• if you have an infection, a tumor, HIV, low blood platelet levels, a history of seizures or head injury, or a family history of seizures or immune system weakness
• if you have had a recent blood or plasma transfusion or have received immune globulin or a tuberculin test
• if you have been exposed to measles, mumps, rubella, or chickenpox
• if you have a history of tuberculosis

Some MEDICINES MAY INTERACT with ProQuad . Tell your health care provider if you are taking any other medicines, especially any of the following:

• Corticosteroids (eg, prednisone) or immunosuppressants (eg, cyclosporine) because the effectiveness of ProQuad may be decreased
• Salicylates (eg, aspirin) because the risk of side effects may be increased

This may not be a complete list of all interactions that may occur. Ask your health care provider if ProQuad may interact with other medicines that you take. Check with your health care provider before you start, stop, or change the dose of any medicine.

Important safety information:

• ProQuad may cause drowsiness or dizziness. Do not drive, operate machinery, or do anything else that could be dangerous until you know how you react to ProQuad . Using ProQuad alone, with certain other medicines, or with alcohol may lessen your ability to drive or perform other potentially dangerous tasks.
• This medicine may decrease the effectiveness of tuberculin tests. If you are scheduled to have a tuberculin test within 6 weeks after receiving this vaccination, contact your doctor. You may need to reschedule your tuberculin test.
• Avoid contact with individuals with weakened immune systems, pregnant women who have not had chickenpox, and newborns whose mothers have not had chickenpox for 6 weeks after receiving this vaccination.
• Avoid use of salicylates (eg, aspirin) for 6 weeks after receiving this vaccination.
• Keep written documentation of all vaccinations received to help avoid unnecessary doses. Be sure that your doctor knows the dates that you have received other vaccinations.
• This vaccine may not guarantee protection against measles, mumps, rubella, or chickenpox. Discuss any questions or concerns with your doctor.
• Adult women may experience joint pain 2 to 4 weeks after receiving this injection. This usually lasts only a short time. However, these symptoms have persisted for months or, rarely, years.
• ProQuad contains albumin, which comes from human blood. There is an extremely rare risk of developing a viral disease, or a central nervous system disease called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. No cases of viral diseases or Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease from albumin have been identified.
• Use ProQuad with extreme caution in CHILDREN younger than 12 months of age. Safety and effectiveness in this age group have not been confirmed.
• PREGNANCY and BREAST-FEEDING: Do not use ProQuad if you are pregnant. If you suspect that you could be pregnant, contact your doctor immediately. After receiving ProQuad , do not become pregnant for at least 3 months without checking with your doctor. It is unknown if ProQuad is excreted in breast milk. Do not breast-feed while using ProQuad .

Possible side effects of ProQuad :

All medicines may cause side effects, but many people have no, or minor, side effects. Check with your doctor if any of these most COMMON side effects persist or become bothersome:

Diarrhea; dizziness; fever; general unwell feeling; headache; irritability; mild rash; muscle or joint ache or pain; nausea; pain, tenderness, soreness, or swelling at the injection site; tiredness; vomiting.

Seek medical attention right away if any of these SEVERE side effects occur:

Severe allergic reactions (rash; hives; itching; difficulty breathing; tightness in the chest; swelling of the mouth, face, lips, or tongue); fainting; loss of coordination; mental or mood changes; numbness or tingling in the fingers or toes; red, swollen, blistered, or peeling skin; seizures; unusual bruising or bleeding; vision or hearing changes.

This is not a complete list of all side effects that may occur. If you have questions or need medical advice about side effects, contact your doctor or health care provider. You may report side effects to the FDA at 1-800-FDA-1088 (1-800-332-1088) or at http://www.fda.gov/medwatch.

 

Encephalitis and Encephalopathy

 

 

Encephalitis is inflammation of the brain. The inflammation is caused either by an infection invading the brain (infectious); or through the immune system attacking the brain in error (post-infectious / autoimmune encephalitis).

Encephalitis is different from meningitis. Meningitis means inflammation of the protective layers that cover the brain. Sometimes patients have both meningitis and encephalitis and this is called meningoencephalitis.

 

Encephalopathy is a term for any diffuse disease of the brain that alters brain function or structure. Encephalopathy may be caused by infectious agent (bacteria, virus, or prion), metabolic or mitochondrial dysfunction, brain tumor or increased pressure in the skull, prolonged exposure to toxic elements (including solvents, drugs, radiation, paints, industrial chemicals, and certain metals), chronic progressive trauma, poor nutrition, or lack of oxygen or blood flow to the brain. The hallmark of encephalopathy is an altered mental state. Depending on the type and severity of encephalopathy, common neurological symptoms are progressive loss of memory and cognitive ability, subtle personality changes, inability to concentrate, lethargy, and progressive loss of consciousness. Other neurological symptoms may include myoclonus (involuntary twitching of a muscle or group of muscles), nystagmus (rapid, involuntary eye movement), tremor, muscle atrophy and weakness, dementia, seizures, and loss of ability to swallow or speak. Blood tests, spinal fluid examination, imaging studies, electroencephalograms, and similar diagnostic studies may be used to differentiate the various causes of encephalopathy.

 

 

  Pertussis vaccination and epilepsy–an erratic history, new research and the mismatch between science and social policy.

 

For over 50 years, concerns have been raised about the risk of pertussis vaccine-induced childhood encephalopathy and epilepsy. This article reviews the scientific literature, and the social and historical context in which the scientific, public health and societal views have not always been aligned. Large-scale studies of this issue have produced conflicting results, although the recent consensus is that the risk of vaccine-induced encephalopathy and/or epilepsy, if it exists at all, is extremely low. Risk estimates in the literature have included: risk of a febrile seizure 1 per 19,496 vaccinations; risk of an afebrile seizure 1 per 76,133 vaccinations; risk of encephalopathy after pertussis infection nil-3 cases per million vaccinations. A recent study showed that encephalopathy in 11 out of the 14 children studied, although previously attributed to vaccination, was in fact due an inherited genetic defect of the SCNIA gene that codes for the voltage gated neuronal sodium channel. This study is important because it provides a solid alternative explanation for the perceived pertussis vaccine-encephalopathy association. The interesting possibility is raised that the encephalopathy apparently due to pertussis itself may, in some cases, be due to an SCNIA mutation. It may also, by analogy, shed some light on the continuing debate about other serious long-term adverse effects of vaccination in general.

 

 To be continued…the autism connection, post-vaccinal encephalomyelitis, the rise in neurological disorders…

How Vaccinations Work

How Vaccinations Work

 

PHILIP F. INCAO, M.D. May 5, 1999

In order to use vaccinations wisely, we need to understand exactly how they work. Until recently, the “mechanism of action” of vaccinations was always understood to be simply that they cause an increase in antibody levels (titers) against a specific disease antigen (bacterium or virus), thus preventing “infection” with that bacterial or viral antigen.

In recent years science has learned that the human immune system is much more complicated than we thought. It is composed of two functional branches or compartments which may work together in a mutually cooperative way or in a mutually antagonistic way depending on the health of the individual.

One branch is the humoral immune system (or Th2 function) which primarily produces antibodies in the blood circulation as a sensing or recognizing function of the immune system to the presence of foreign antigens in the body. The other branch is the cellular or cell-mediated immune system (or Th1 function) which primarily destroys, digests and expels foreign antigens out of the body through the activity of its cells found in the thymus, tonsils, adenoids, spleen, lymph nodes and lymph system throughout the body. This process of destroying, digesting and discharging foreign antigens from the body is known as “the acute inflammatory response” and is often accompanied by the classic signs of inflammation: fever, pain, malaise and discharge of mucus, pus, skin rash or diarrhea.

These two functional branches of the immune system may be compared to the two functions in eating: tasting and recognizing the food on the one hand, and digesting the food and eliminating the food waste on the other hand. In the same way, the humoral or Th2 branch of the immune system “tastes” and recognizes and even remembers foreign antigens and the cellular or Th1 branch of the immune system digests and eliminates the foreign antigens from the body. But just as too much repeated tasting of food will ruin the appetite, so also too much repeated stimulation of the “tasting” humoral immune system by an antigen will inhibit and suppress the digesting and eliminating function of the cellular immune system. In other words, overstimulating antibody production can suppress the acute inflammatory response of the cellular immune system! ¹

This explains the polar opposite relationship between acute discharging inflammations on the one hand and allergies and auto-immune inflammations on the other hand. The more a person has of one, the less he or she will have of the other!

A growing number of scientists believe that the increase in America, Europe, Australia and Japan in allergic and auto-immune diseases (which stimulate the humoral or Th2 branch of the immune system) is caused by the lack of stimulation of the cellular or the Th1 branch of the immune system from the lack of acute inflammatory responses and discharges in childhood. ^{2 3 4 5} We need to identify the factors which cause this shift in the function of the immune system or which cause allergies and auto-immune diseases in childhood to increase!

If we now return to the original question of the mechanism of action of vaccinations, we find what I believe is the key to the puzzle. A vaccination consists of introducing a disease agent or disease antigen into an individual’s body without causing the disease. If the disease agent provoked the whole immune system into action it would cause all the symptoms of the disease! The symptoms of a disease are primarily the symptoms (fever, pain, malaise, loss of function) of the acute inflammatory response to the disease.

So the trick of a vaccination is to stimulate the immune system just enough so that it makes antibodies and “remembers” the disease antigen but not so much that it provokes an acute inflammatory response by the cellular immune system and makes us sick with the disease we’re trying to prevent! Thus a vaccination works by stimulating very much the antibody production (Th2) and by stimulating very little or not at all the digesting and discharging function of the cellular immune system (Th1).

Vaccine antigens are designed to be “unprovocative” or “indigestible” for the cellular immune system (Th1) and highly stimulating for the antibody-mediated humoral immune system (Th2).

Perhaps it is not difficult to see then why the repeated use of vaccinations would tend to shift the functional balance of the immune system toward the antibody-producing side (Th2) and away from the acute inflammatory discharging side (the cell-mediated side or Th1). This has been confirmed by observation especially in the case of Gulf War Illness: most vaccinations cause a shift in immune function from the Th1 side (acute inflammatory discharging response) to the Th2 side (chronic auto-immune or allergic response). ⁶

The outcome of this line of thought is that, contrary to previous belief, vaccinations do not strengthen or “boost” the whole immune system. Instead vaccinations overstimulate the “tasting and remembering” function of the antibody-mediated branch of the immune system (Th2) which simultaneously suppresses the cellular immune system (Th1) thus “preventing” the disease in question.

What in reality is prevented is not the disease but the ability of our cellular immune system to manifest, to respond to and to overcome the disease!

There is no system of the human being, from mind to muscles to immune system, which gets stronger through avoiding challenges, but only through overcoming challenges. The wise use of vaccinations would be to use them selectively, and not on a mass scale. In order for vaccinations to be helpful and not harmful, we must know beforehand in each individual to be vaccinated whether the Th1 function or the Th2 function of the immune system predominates.

In individuals in whom the Th1 function predominates, causing many acute inflammations because the cellular immune system is overreactive, a vaccination could have a balancing effect on the immune system and be helpful for that individual.

In individuals in whom the Th2 function predominates, causing few acute inflammations but rather the tendency to chronic allergic or autoimmune inflammations, a vaccination would cause the Th2 function to predominate even more, aggravating the imbalance of the immune system and harming the health of that individual. This is what happened in Gulf War Illness.

The current use of vaccinations in medicine today is essentially a “shotgun” approach which ignores differences among individuals. In such an approach some individuals may be helped and others may be harmed.

If medicine is to evolve in a healthy direction, we must learn to understand the particular characteristics of each individual and we must learn how to individualize our treatments to be able to heal each unique human being in our care.

Based on the preceding explanation of how vaccinations work, here are my answers to your questions:

Vaccinations are usually effective in preventing an individual from manifesting a particular illness, but they do not improve the overall strength or health of the individual nor of the immune system. Instead, vaccinations modify the reactivity of the immune system, decreasing acute discharging inflammatory reactions and increasing the tendency to chronic allergic and auto-immune reactions.

Epidemiologic studies ^{7 8 9} have shown that as families improve their living conditions, hygiene, nutrition, literacy and education, the risk of life-threatening acute infectious , inflammatory diseases very much decreases. Families with poor living conditions, hygiene, nutrition and literacy would generally be most likely to benefit from vaccinations. Families with good living conditions, hygiene, nutrition and education probably would benefit from vaccinations very little or not at all. Individuals with a tendency to allergic or auto-immune diseases are likely to be harmed by vaccinations.

Side effects of vaccination are usually allergic or auto-immune inflammatory reactions caused by the shift of the immune system’s reactivity from the Th1 side to the Th2 side. Modern medicine is just beginning to recognize this. ¹⁰

Modern medicine has not scientifically measured the risk/benefit ratio of any vaccine. ¹¹ Research into the risks of vaccines is very inadequate, according to two comprehensive reports on vaccines by the U.S. Institute of Medicine in 1991 and 1994.

My preceding explanation of how vaccinations affect the immune system is true also in animals. Vaccinations cannot make animals healthier, but only good handling, environment and nutrition can make animals healthy and resistant to disease. Vaccinating pigs may prevent them from having illness from one particular strain of virus but will not improve their overall resistance to other illnesses nor even to other strains of the same virus.

It is important to remember that an infection with a particular virus or bacterium does not necessarily cause illness unless the resistance of the individual is low. In the case of Japanese Encephalitis Virus (JEV), most infections cause no symptoms and fewer than 0.1% of infected individuals develop severe encephalitis. ¹² Individuals living in poor conditions, with poor hygiene, nutrition and education are at higher risk of serious illnesses from JEV or any other infection. In such individuals a vaccination would most likely be helpful.

Each individual should inform himself or herself: just how widespread is the disease outbreak? How many have become seriously ill or died? Does the outbreak affect all levels of society or mainly those in poor living conditions?

Very often the media exaggerate the extent of such outbreaks. Each individual should freely decide, based on knowledge and not on fear and hearsay, whether he or she or a child would benefit from a vaccination.

 

¹ Parish, C.R. “The Relationship Between Humoral and Cell-Mediated Immunity.” Transplant. Rev. 13 (1972):3.

² Ronne, T. “Measles Virus Infection without Rash in Childhood is Related to Disease in Adult Life.” The Lancet Ltd. (1985):1-5.

³ Odent, M.R., Culpin, E.E., Kimmel, T. “Pertussis Vaccination and Asthma: Is There a Link The Journal of the American Medical Association 272(1994):588.

⁴ Cookson, W.O.C.M., and Moffatt, M.F. “Asthma: An Epidemic in the Absence of Infection?” Science 275(1997):41-42.

⁵ Martinez, F.D. Role of viral infections in the inception of asthma and allergies during childhood: could they be protective? Thorax 1994;49: 1189-91.

⁶ Rook, G.A.W., Zumla, A. “Gulf War Syndrome: Is It Due to a Systemic Shift in Cytokine Balance Towards a Th2 Profile?” The Lancet 349 (1997): 1831-1833.

⁷ McKeown, T. The Modern Rise of Population. New York: Academic Press, 1976.

⁸ McKeown, T. The Role Of Medicine: Dream, Mirage, or Nemesis? New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1979.

⁹ Sagan, L.A. The Health of Nations. New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1987.

¹⁰ Rook, G.A.W., Zumla, A. “Gulf War Syndrome: Is It Due to a Systemic Shift in Cytokine Balance Towards a Th2 Profile?” The Lancet 349 (1997): 1831-1833.

¹¹ Robin, Eugene, M.D. “Some Hidden Dimensions of the Risk/Benefit Value of Vaccine” from the First International Public Conference on Vaccination. Alexandria, Virginia September 1997.

¹² Solomon, T., Kneen, R., Dung, N.G., Khanh, V.C., Thuy, T.T.N., Ha, D.Q., Day, N.P.J., Nisalak, A., Vaughn, D.W., White, N.J. “Poliomyelitis-like illness due to Japanese encephalitis virus” Lancet 1998; 351: 1094-97

Immunizations and Alzheimers

The Immunization-Alzheimer´s Controversy

The adjuvants used in vaccines (putting the mercury issue aside) are intentionally highly inflammatory so as to provoke a more active immune response to the weakened pathogen. The fact that American children are the most vaccinated in the world at such an early age, when their brains are setting up shop, runs the high risk that vaccinations will “train” nerves to become more hyper-active to future inflammatory stress of any kind. Such issues would be magnified if a child had a history of stress in the womb, stress as an infant (unstable environment), poor nutrition in the womb or early life, other health problems as an infant, or has family-related gene weaknesses predisposing to Alzheimer´s (or any other nerve-related disease for that matter). These massive numbers of early vaccinations could easily set the stage for early onset Alzheimer´s. At this point there is absolutely no science that refutes this theory, and plenty of science to predict it.

More…

Th1 and Th2 Response

Vaccines – The Great Debate

In addition to their toxic composition, the second problem with vaccinations is that they stimulate the wrong immune system. In my opinion, this is the greatest threat to our immune system that we have ever faced. You see, when a virus, parasites, or cancer cells threaten your body, they will activate an immune response called a Th1 (cell-mediated) response. This is your body’s first line of defense, which will then stimulate a Th2 response (humoral). The Th2 is an emergency response which produces antibodies that resolve inflammation so that healing can continue. The problem is that childhood vaccinations or flu shots stimulate the Th2 resonse, not the Th1, thus violating the natural sequence. This violation has serious consequences. First, when you stimulate a Th1 response, you produce a lifetime immunity; however, when you vaccinate, you need boosters every 3 to 5 years because the Th2 is stimulated first. In other words, you do not have a lifetime immunity.

Another danger in violating the Th2 response sequence is that it teaches your immune system to over-react with the wrong defenses, thus producing a high antibody count which then leads to temporary immunity. When the over reaction (the emergency responses) is repeated again and again, the immune system is now educated to respond in this way. This only confuses the body and drives the diseases internally deeper, thereby causing chronic diseases later in life. Top scientists have said that we are exchanging childhood diseases, which actually strengthen our immune system, for diseases like cancer and autoimmune problems.

Today, 206,000 Americans under the age of 20 have type 1 diabetes, a well-known autoimmune disorder. The CDC reports that 1 out of 400 children and adolescents are now diabetic. In 1945 and 1969, only 1 out of 7,100 faced this disease. J. Barthelow Classen, M.D., a former researcher at the National Institute of Health (NIH) and founder and CEO of Classen Immunotherapies, reported in the May 1996 New Zealand Medical Journal that juvenile diabetes increased 60% following a massive hepatitus B vaccination campaign (1988-1991) for New Zealand babies 6 weeks and older. Along with that, 1 out of 3 Americans has arthritis, and juvenile arthritis is likewise on the rise. Tragically, childhood cancer is also increasing, especially in highly vaccinated communities. We cannot even begin to follow the rise in asthma and allergies because of the great inconsistencies.

continued…

Bias, Spin, and Misreporting: Time for Full Access to Trial Protocols and Results

An-Wen Chan

Although randomized trials provide key guidance for how we practice medicine, trust in their published results has been eroded in recent years due to several high-profile cases of alleged data suppression, misrepresentation, and manipulation [1–5, 39]. While most publicized cases have involved pharmaceutical industry trials, accumulating empiric evidence has shown that selective reporting of results is a systemic problem afflicting all types of trials, including those with no commercial input [6]. These examples highlight the harmful potential impact of biased reporting on patient care, and the violation of ethical responsibilities of researchers and sponsors to disseminate results accurately and comprehensively.

Biased reporting arises when two main decisions are made based on the direction and statistical significance of the data—whether to publish the trial at all, and if so, which analyses and results to report in the publication. Strong evidence for the selective publication of positive trials has been available for decades [7,8]. More recent cohort studies have focused on the misreporting of trials within publications by comparing journal articles either with documents from regulatory agencies [9–12] or with trial protocols from research ethics committees [13–16], funding agencies [17], research groups [18,19], and journals [20]. These cohort studies identified major discrepancies—favorable results were often highlighted while unfavorable data were suppressed; definitions of primary outcomes were changed; and methods of statistical analysis were modified without explanation in the journal article.

…Overall, a substantial amount of primary outcome data submitted to the FDA was found to be missing from the literature. One quarter of trials in their sample were unpublished—predominantly those with unfavorable results. Not only were data suppressed for the unpublished trials, but an additional quarter of primary outcomes were omitted from journal articles of published trials. These findings are consistent with two recent reviews of FDA documents and journal articles [10,21], one of which was published in PLoS Medicine in September 2008 [21].

Continued…