Adverse Reactions : vaccine

A fate worse than death

Bryan Hubbard — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 13:50:00 GMT

My father was fond of the expression 'A fate worse than death'. I think it was something to do with the way we Brits would have been treated had the Nazi hordes invaded in the Second World War.

I was wondering if similar thoughts have been going through the minds of devout parents in the UK who have refused to have their teenage daughters vaccinated against cervical cancer. Like their counterparts in the States, these parents apparently see the new HPV vaccine as a licence for licentious behaviour, although it presumably doesn't also protect against an unwanted pregnancy.

A new study reveals that 20 per cent of Christian families have refused to have their daughers vaccinated against HPV, a sexually-transmitted infection that may lead to cervical cancer. At the moment in the UK, the vaccine - marketed as Gardasil - is still in the trial phase, but it's planned to introduce it nationwide in September.

It is already part of the vaccination programme in the States - and early reports suggest that the religious families may have been wise to avoid the vaccine, even if it's for the wrong reasons.

As of March, more than 7000 incidents relating to the vaccine have been reported to the US's Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, including 13 deaths, 204 hospitalizations, and, out of which, 124 young girls have been left disabled. Commentators agree that this is merely the tip of the iceberg as it's reckoned just 10 per cent of adverse reactions ever get reported, especially if they are transitory.

Worse, there isn't even a shred of evidence to demonstrate the vaccine can prevent cancer. One study published last year concluded that the vaccine couldn't protect against the lesions that are more likely to lead to cancer. The latest studies also suggest that protecting women against HPV strains 16 and 18 can increase the likelihood of other forms that are more closely related to cancer.

A fate worse than death. That would be the Gardasil vaccine, then.

* A FULL REPORT on the Gardasil vaccine is contained in the May, 2008 issue of 'What Doctors Don't Tell You', which is being despatched to subscribers this week. If you would like to subscribe, and so read the full report, please go to: http://www.wddtyhealthshop.com/products.asp?recnumber=246

Mumps: The second sequel

Bryan Hubbard — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 12:13:00 GMT

Is anybody noticing a pattern here?

In 1977, children started receiving a one-dose mumps vaccine. Initially, rates of mumps fell dramatically, and health officials were congratulating themselves that they were on the road to eradicating another disease.

Then, in the late 1980s, there were unexpected outbreaks of mumps among adolescents and young adults who had been vaccinated. And so, in 1990, our health officals introduced the two-dose vaccine. Almost immediately, mumps cases fell so dramatically that everyone was predicting that mumps would be wiped out by 2010.

Then, in 2006, there was an unexpected outbreak of mumps among adolescents and young adults who had been vaccinated twice. A total of 6,584 cases among college-age kids was reported, which suggests there were many more that were never reported.

And so officials from America's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are suggesting the introduction of a triple vaccine "to avert outbreaks and achieve the elimination of mumps".

I think you can guess the rest.

MMR: It's safe when you remove the damaged kids

Bryan Hubbard — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 13:36:00 GMT

Around 7,000 American families have joined a very long queue to try and win a cash settlement after their children suffered permanent, or longterm, damage from one of the 'safe' vaccines such as the MMR. To win their case with the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VCIP), the families must prove a direct causal link between the damage done to their child and the vaccine.

For this, they must locate good scientific evidence which would be recognised and accepted by the VCIP board.

Unfortunately, as we're always reminded, scientific studies have consistently proven that the vaccines are absolutely safe. Even Dr Andrew Wakefield's infamous claim of a possible link to autism has been discredited by medical research.

And, as luck would have it, in the very week when the VCIP started reviewing the merit of the parents' claims, the august New England Journal of Medicine published another study that suggested that the vaccines - and especially the thimerosal preservative used in the vaccines - didn't affect neuro-psychological functioning.

To discover the safety of the vaccines, the researchers looked at the health records of 1,047 children aged between 7 and 10 years who had been given their first thimerosal-loaded vaccine as a baby. They couldn't find anything out of the ordinary among the children.

However, in making their selection, the researchers took out any children who had existing neuro-psychological problems, such as encephalitis, meningitis or hydrocephalus, as this might have caused 'bias' to the results.

So let's get this straight. The children who were removed from the study had been vaccinated, and they were displaying neuro-psychological problems. Once removed, the researchers were left with a group of healthy children, whose very well-being 'proves' the vaccine is safe.

Don't expect any pay-outs any time soon from the VCIP.

MMR: The myth of the herd

Bryan Hubbard — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 12:16:00 GMT

Health experts are concerned that the uptake of the MMR vaccine is still far too low to provide ‘herd immunity’ for the population. Vaccination levels have risen to 85 per cent overall following the autism scare - but they are still well below the 95 per cent recommended by the World Health Organization in order to achieve global protection from the disease.

The premise that supports the herd immunity theory is, of course, that the vaccine works, and offers years of protection.

But, at best, it works for some of the people some of the time – a fact that governments and health officials are loathe to reveal.

For instance, more than three-quarters of all measles cases in the UK that were diagnosed between 1985 and 1986 had been properly vaccinated. A similar pattern can be found in the USA. In one outbreak in 1986 in Corpus Christi, Texas, 99 per cent of affected children had been vaccinated. It’s a picture that applies across the whole of the USA where 80 per cent of all cases of measles occur in vaccinated children.

Even if the MMR provides some kind of protection at the time, it also seems to transfer the problem to later years. Before vaccinations became a national pursuit, 90 per cent of all cases of measles occurred in children aged between five and nine.

Now up to 64 per cent of measles cases are among the over-10s.