Vaccination Decisions: part 3 of a series

A Parent's Personal Judgements on Specific Vaccines

opinion by Doug Collins

Health information in the WA Free Press should not be construed as medical advice. Always make your own choice regarding medical treatment by seeking multiple sources of information and consulting with your personal physician.

Most medical doctors rely on the federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC) for information on vaccinations. If you read CDC public information on vaccines, you will notice that it tends to emphasize the possible complications resulting from natural diseases, yet usually omits the complications that have been shown by many studies to be caused by the vaccines themselves. Pro-vaccination bias in CDC information should not be surprising, especially if you've read the UPI article in the last issue of the WA Free Press, which uncovered an abundance of financial interests between CDC officials and pharmaceutical companies, which profit greatly from mass-vaccination policies (www.wafreepress.org/67/theVaccineConflict.htm). In order to provide an alternative, personal view of vaccines, I've compiled below some under-reported information and ideas regarding various common vaccines, including some of my own decisions and views as a parent. The below should certainly not be considered medical advice. I am simply a parent who has researched the vaccination debate thoroughly. In this pursuit, I've found many MDs who are quite critical of mass-vaccinations, but the large majority of MDs, I've found, simply refer unquestioningly to the CDC policy regarding vaccines.

Before you read the following, let me emphasize that for all vaccines, it is impossible to accurately compare the statistical risks of vaccinating vs not vaccinating. The reasons for this have been explained in my previous articles in this series (see www.wafreepress.org/65/vaccinationDecisions.htm and www.wafreepress.org/66/herdImmunityOrHerdStupidity.htm). Unless otherwise cited, the factual information below is gleaned from two great sources, The Vaccine Guide, 2002, by Dr. Randall Neustaedter, and The Consumer's Guide to Childhood Vaccines, 1997, by Barbara Loe Fisher.

Hepatitis B

In Washington and many other states, hospitals try to give this genetically-engineered vaccine right after birth. This senseless practice was discontinued in France because of a spate of ill health complaints including death. Normally, the only good reason for vaccinating a newborn is if the mother is a hepatitis B carrier, which can easily be determined by a common clinical test (see related articles on the hep B vaccination at www.wafreepress.org/62/publicNeedsSensible.htm, www.wafreepress.org/60/swedenAndFranceQuit.htm).

Clearly it has been best to spare my child this vaccine, and if he ever has risk factors in later life, perhaps he should consider getting the vaccine at that time, because the duration of vaccinated immunity may not last for many years, and infants vaccinated now may lose their immunity by adulthood, when they are more likely to catch the disease.

Diphtheria

This serious disease is now practically nonexistent in the United States. There has not been a single case in Washington State since 1985 (see Washington State Department of Health's Annual Communicable Disease Report ). In recent years there have been from zero to four cases per year nationwide, even though the effectiveness of the vaccine is incomplete. As with most immunizable diseases, mortality from this disease declined dramatically in the early 20th century, prior to mass-vaccination, because of better public sanitation and health care. It can now be argued that the vaccine has done its job and should be made optional, because under current circumstances the risks posed by the vaccine itself are surely greater than the risks of catching the disease. Although the diphtheria vaccine alone is not as toxic as some other vaccines, it is typically combined in the DTaP (Diphtheria, Tetanus, acellular Pertussis) immunization, which is associated with a high rate of adverse reactions, mostly due to the pertussis element (see info under pertussis and tetanus below). If the number of diphtheria cases ever raises to a level of significant risk, the vaccine may be the safest route, but best not combined with other vaccines.

Tetanus

This is a serious but completely noncontagious disease. Tetanus is contracted typically via puncture wounds or wounds that are not cleaned properly. The source of infections is often animal manure. Tetanus was much more prevalent when many people lived on farms with mediocre access to sanitary water for cleansing wounds. There has not been a single case of tetanus in Washington's most urban county, King County, since October 1996, according to public health records, and in the whole of Washington State the average occurrence is less than one case per year, despite the fact that a large portion of the adult population is susceptible, having not regularly received the necessarty booster shots (for statistics, see Washington State Department of Health's Annual Communicable Disease Report). In 1994 the Institute of Medicine concluded that there is compelling evidence that the tetanus vaccine, as well as the commonly combined adult diptheria/tetanus vaccine, can cause Guillain-Barre syndrome, brachial neuritis, and death from anaphylactic shock. If I work on a farm, or if I'm an avid gardener who often works with or around manure, it might make sense to vaccinate. But I'm not, and I'm also wary of the side effects.

Polio

Polio has been eradicated from the Western Hemisphere. Let me repeat: eradicated. The last single case of natural "wild" polio in the Americas was in 1991 in Peru, despite the fact that many people are unvaccinated. There are still outbreaks of the disease in vaccinated populations in some developing countries, suggesting that sanitation, especially access to clean water, is the biggest factor. So why does the health system continue to give the vaccine? Good question! Especially since the current injected version of the vaccine has been associated with hundreds of adverse reaction reports during recent years, including 83 deaths in the US from 1991-98 (Wattigney et al., Pediatrics May 2001, p. e83). I'm not dumb. Based on the information I have, I see the risk of the vaccine for my child as far greater than the risk of catching the disease. If polio ever comes back in significant numbers, I'll consider vaccinating my child. Till then, I prefer not to generate unnecessary profits for the pharmaceutical companies.

Pertussis

Otherwise known as "whooping cough", pertussis is simply not the killer disease it once was, due to improvements in sanitation and medical care and the possible adaptation of the human body due to generations of exposure (see Vaccination: l00 Years of Orthodox Research Shows that Vaccines Represent a Medical Assault on the Immune System, by Vera Scheibner, Ph.D., l993, pp33-46). Though this disease can result in a truly frightening cough in small children, pertussis rarely results in death or complications nowadays, and usually passes undiagnosed in adults and older children. In fact, probably most people have had pertussis and are unaware of it. About a quarter of college students complaining of "persistent cough" were found to have active pertussis, according to one study (C.M. Morgan et al., Clinical Infectious Diseases 1992, vol 14, pp464-471).

The safety and effectiveness of the pertussis vaccine has come under intense crticism. Vaccine critics generally consider the pertussis to be the most harmful of vaccines in terms of side-effects. Swedish authorities withdrew the licensure for both old and new versions of the vaccine, based on safety studies in that country, and they did not experience a rise in infection after quitting the vaccine (see www.wafreepress.org/60/swedenAndFranceQuit.htm).

Additional problems with the vaccine are that it is rather ineffective and of short duration. About half of all child pertussis cases have been fully vaccinated. The effective duration of the vaccine can last as long as ten years, but boosters are useless due the lack of danger for older children.

The routine of the vaccine itself is not complete until 18 months of age, so children who undertake the vaccination routine starting at two months are largely still at risk anyway during the first year of life, when the disease is more dangerous.

Personally, I took greater care to keep my child away from anyone with a cough until he turned one year old. Some doctors suggest a homeopathic routine that can perhaps lessen the severity of the disease if a child catches it. Certainly two good safeguards are to make sure my toddler eats well and gets exercise, to strengthen the overall immune system.

Measles

This was once widely called a "minor childhood illness" along with rubella, mumps, and chicken pox. But pharmaceutical companies would now have us believe that it is a deadly scourge. True, measles can occasionally result in complications leading to death, but even the CDC admits that the MMR (Measles, Mumps, Rubella) immunization itself can result in death. The combined MMR shot has come under the most scrutiny as a potential cause of skyrocketing rates of autism and Crohn's disease (see www.wafreepress.org/60/vaccinesThinkAgain.htm). However, many vaccine critics blame autism on the high mercury content of childhood vaccinations, which was finally removed by manufacturers only a couple years ago (www.wafreepress.org/67/theVaccineConflict.htm).

The measles vaccine, like the pertussis vaccine, is fairly ineffective. During recent measles outbreaks, a majority of those who contracted measles have been fully vaccinated.

There is also an upside to catching natural measles. First, someone who has caught measles as a child will never be in danger of catching it as an adult: the immunity is lifelong. Furthermore, at least three studies have shown that people who have contracted natural measles are more resistant to chronic conditions such as asthma, compared with those who have received the vaccination (www.wafreepress.org/60/vaccinesThinkAgain.htm).

Another advantage of acquiring natural measles is that temporary immunity can be passed on from mother to infant via maternal antibodies. This is also true for some other diseases as well, such as mumps and chickenpox. The maternal antibodies protect the infant for about a year, during the time when the infant otherwise would be more susceptible to complications from the disease. Because vaccinated mothers do not pass on such immunity to infants, and because children who are vaccinated frequently do not have lifelong immunity, our modern vaccination practices are ironically making the two most vulnerable age groups--infants and elderly adults--more susceptible to the diseases (www.wafreepress.org/65/vaccinationDecisions.htm).

A superior strategy for measles might be to let my child develop natural measles in childhood, but if this does not occur, to consider immunization in late childhood (but hopefully not in the combined MMR vaccine). Still, as with other vaccines, there is a concern of waning immunity. Immunizing in later childhood may simply shift one's vulnerability to an older age. One alternative to consider: homeopaths offer routines which they say lighten the severity of measles and other diseases at any age.

Rubella

Rubella is an extremely mild disease which grants lifelong immunity to re-infection. The only practical danger it poses is for women who catch it during their first three months of a pregnancy, who have a roughly 30 percent chance of having a baby with a birth defect. Yet standard practice is to vaccinate all children--girls and boys--even when there is a good chance that the vaccinated immunity will wane by the time the girls reach childbearing age.

The vaccine itself can cause side effects including meningitis and Guillane-Barre syndrome (these are associated with some of the other vaccines as well). One notable study found that between 12 and 20 percent of women receiving the rubella vaccine develop temporary or permanent arthritis within several weeks of the injection. (Dr. V.A. Fulginiti, Current Problems in Pediatrics 1976 vol 6, pp6-16). Based on the normal harmlessness of rubella and the risks of the vaccine, a number of vaccine experts (including Dr. Fulginiti, above) have argued against mass vaccination and for selective vaccination of women of childbearing age. Their alternative strategy is that routine clinical blood tests can be used to show if a woman has had natural rubella. If she hasn't, she may consider getting the vaccine before getting pregnant.

One important note: mothers should be very cautious about vaccinations during pregnancy as well as during breastfeeding. Researcher F. Edward Yazbak, MD, found an extraordinarily high incidence of autism in children whose mothers had received vaccinations during pregnancy or soon after giving birth (see www.garynull.com/Documents/autism99b.htm).

Mumps

Mumps, if contracted as a child, is generally a very mild disease and often goes unnoticed and unreported. The most notable complication of mumps is a possible testicular infection in adolescent or adult males, which rarely results in sterility. There is a small risk of encephalitis and meningitis from both the natural disease as well as from vaccination. Numerous studies have shown a statistical link between the mumps vaccine and juvenile diabetes. There has been a disturbing rise in mumps cases among adults who were fully-vaccinated as children. As with measles and chickenpox, the waning immunity of the vaccination could leave many Americans vulnerable as older adults, when complications can be more severe. The best route may indeed be to acquire the natural disease as a child, thereby eliminating any risk of catching it as an adult.

Chickenpox

This disease, also known as varicella, has until recently been universally considered to be a mild childhood disease. Serious complications as a result of chickenpox are extremely rare in normal children. Vaccine advocates recently have emphasized the rare complications of the disease, which in fact mostly occur in children who are immuno-suppressed, such as those who are undergoing chemotherapy for cancer or steroid treatment for asthma. Such children may perhaps benefit from the vaccine. Complications for adults are more likely, and the waning immunity of the childhood vaccination could make the adult disease more likely in adults in future years.

Because contracting the natural disease confers permanent immunity, it seems that most people would be far better off to contract it as a child, especially because vaccinees have sometimes reported neurological and auto-immune side effects, as well as a host of lesser side effects. This vaccine has been crassly marketed not for health reasons, but for the purpose of relieving parents of the duty of taking off work to stay home with a chicken-pox child. Samuel Katz, chair of Duke University's pediatrics department aptly predicted in 1985 that "[Vaccine producer] Merck isn't going to make back its investment in that vaccine by just distributing it to kids with cancer. They're going to be interested in pushing for use in the normal population." (Wall Street Journal 1-16-85, p1)

The beneficial tradition of parents having "chickenpox parties" has been returning lately, as I have noticed a number of internet references to these in recent months. At such parties, tots play or take a bath with an infected friend in order to spread the natural disease.

Hib (haemophilus influenzae type b)

Although haemophilus influenzae is a group of common and usually mild bacteria, one strain--Hib--can cause meningitis and pneumonia, with a mortality rate of 3 to 8 percent as well as serious possible complications. The CDC will be quick to tell you that prior to routine vaccination, there were some 20,000 serious cases of Hib per year in the US, and that this has been cut to about 1,000 per year since mass vaccination. What the CDC will not tell you is that there are possible long-term effects of the vaccine that may strongly outweigh its benefits.

J. Barthelow Classen, MD, has in the past decade statistically analyzed large clinical trials of the Hib vaccine on children in Finland. After each trial, increases in juvenile diabetes appeared in statistically significant clusters three to four years after the trial vaccinations. The vaccine is aimed at preventing Hib causing approximately 7 deaths and 7 to 26 cases of brain damage per 100,000 children vaccinated, but after the first round of vaccinations in Finland, there were an extra 58 cases of diabetes per 100,000 children. When a stronger version of the vaccine was administered, there were an extra 75 cases of diabetes per 100,000 children vaccinated.

According to Classen, as reported by Mothering.com, "The long-term complications of diabetes make it a fatal disease.... We are killing about three kids for every one kid that would benefit from the vaccine...." Classen's international research shows that 79 percent of insulin-dependent diabetes in children under the age of ten is due to vaccines (www.mothering.com/10-0-0/html/10-8-0/10-8-vaccinereport105.shtml).

In contrast, a recent manufacturer's safety data sheet on the Hib vaccination--which I received by asking at a hospital--justifies the safety of the vaccine by tracking side-effects for only a 48-hour period after the vaccination of trial groups.

As a parent, should I believe the long-term studies of Classen, or the extremely short-term studies sanctioned by US public health officials? The choice is mine, and I'll go with Classen.

Still, Hib is a serious illness, and a strategy for minimizing risk would be good. According to a number of studies, kids who are more at risk are those under 18 months of age, those of lower socio-economic status, those with immuno-suppressive disease, those under five years old who attend day-care centers, and those who do not breastfeed. (Native Americans in general also seem to be at higher risk.) If you are a parent, maximizing breastfeeding, avoiding daycare (either completely or at least until the child is 18 months old), and providing good nutrition in infancy may be better strategies than vaccinating.

Pneumococcus

The pneumococcal bacteria can, like the Hib bacteria, cause meningitis and pneumonia. Most strains of pneumococcus produce only routine ear infections, but some strains can become invasive, with a mortality of some 2,000-3,000 children per year in the US. Serious complications and death occur more often in children under two years old or elderly adults. Cigarette smoking significantly increases the risk of pneumococcus.

This immunization includes multiple vaccines for various strains of pneumococcus. It has been marketed as helping to prevent ear infections, but a number of studies have shown it to be relatively useless in this area. Some medical researchers criticize this immunization, saying that--similar to the overuse of antibiotics--it will result in more treatment-resistant infections in the future (www.mothering.com/10-0-0/html/10-8-0/10-8-vaccinereport105.shtml). The vaccine has been shown to be effective in preventing the more serious invasive diseases in children, but not in adults. Critics point out that this vaccine is a relatively new one, and any long-term effects have been impossible to track. A large study in California found a higher incidence of seizures, asthma, and gastritis soon after vaccination (Rennels, et al., Pediatrics, 1998 Vol 101, pp 604-11). Considering the track record of other vaccines, there is certainly reason to be careful about the long-term risks of any vaccine.

Flu

The content of the flu vaccine changes each year. Vaccine developers attempt to predict in advance what the most common strains of flu will be next flu season, and design the next vaccine accordingly. Their predictions have historically been only about 20 to 30 percent accurate. Canadian national news in January reported that the CDC's own recent tests on this season's vaccine, concluded in November, have cast doubts on whether the vaccine had any effect at all in preventing the flu (www.cbc.ca/stories/2004/01/15/flu_cdc040115).

The irony of this is that the largely ineffective vaccine was sold out in December, probably because this flu season was hyped by the US mainstream media (with a few exceptions: for example, David Wahlberg of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that there is no good statistical case that this flu season's fatalities were any worse than average: www.ajc.com/health/content/health/special/1203/21flu.html). Largely missing from US media reports is the fact that for the vast majority of people, flu is a mild ailment. The marketing and media hype surrounding the flu vaccine would be relatively harmless were it not for the unhealthy side effects of the vaccine, the most serious of which is Guillain-Barre syndrome, a chronic auto-immune nervous system disorder. Another problem with the flu vaccine is that it can contain thimerosal, a toxic mercury preservative. Thimerosal has recently been removed from newly manufactured childhood vaccines, but remains in some vaccines intended chiefly for adults, including the flu vaccine. (For a more complete discussion of the flu vaccine and thimerosal, see Nature Doc column in the Jan 2004 WA Free Press, www.wafreepress.org/67/natureDoc.htm.)

The flu vaccine can also give you the flu. The most common side-effect of the flu shot, according to the CDC, is "fever, fatigue, muscle aches, and headache."

The CDC currently recommends the flu vaccine to women in middle or late pregnancy, apparently to reduce risk of high fever, which could possibly cause damage to the fetus. This is a questionable practice for a few reasons. First, the manufacturer's data sheet for the flu vaccine clearly states that it is a category C drug, which means it is of unknown risk for pregnancy. Second, the major danger of complications from high maternal fever is only during the first six weeks of pregnancy, when the vaccine is not recommended by the CDC anyway. Finally, because of the findings of Yazbak concerning the potential bad effects of vaccines during pregnancy (see the section on Rubella above), if I were a pregnant woman, I would steer clear of the flu shot.

The recently marketed "flu mist" vaccine, which is sprayed into the nose rather than injected, is a new technology which has been tested for only a short time. The potential advantage of such inhaled vaccines is that they might help develop mucousal immunity. One shortcoming of current injected vaccines is that they go directly to the bloodstream and may not sufficiently build strength in the mucous system. On the other hand, some health experts fear that mist vaccines could introduce new potentially harmful viral or bacterial infections, as well as contagion.

CONCLUSION

Vaccines have certainly contributed to the reduction of diseases in modern society, but the problem is that they may also be causing a variety of chronic diseases, a possibility that continues to be completely unexamined by our national licensing system. For serious diseases that have been eradicated or nearly eradicated, such as polio, tetanus, and diphtheria, it therefore seems very questionable that we are continuing to vaccinate the vast majority of children. If such diseases become a large threat again, vaccination may be the best route. Measles, mumps, rubella, and chickenpox have traditionally been considered minor childhood diseases, and may actually offer immune benefits if a normally healthy child catches the natural forms.

Therefore, a policy of vaccinating all kids is questionable for a different reason: it's conceivable that public health might actually be improved by restoring these diseases in their common natural forms. The pertussis vaccine is widely considered the most dangerous in terms of side-effects, and is also largely ineffective. The Hib vaccine similarly seems to come with long-term risks that are greater than its short-term benefits. For these diseases, it may be best for parents simply to shelter their infants and young toddlers from risk factors, and be sure to breastfeed and otherwise uphold the child's immune system.

The hepatitis B vaccine for infants seems completely nonsensical, unless the infant has a risk factor for catching the disease. New vaccines, like the pneumococcal vaccine and the flu mist, are sure to be marketed in the future, and should be subject to much greater and longer scrutiny before they are prescribed for the masses.

Finally, because a realistic risk/benefit calculation for the above vaccines is at present impossible, the only ethical option is to allow individual and parental choice regarding vaccines, and never to mandate vaccination, as unfortunately happens in most states in the US.