The issues

[Guest guest]

August 28, 2000

1. The Issues

[The current Congressional Quarterly Researcher has a collection of

material looking at current vaccine issues and controversies, one of which

is the alleged links to autism. It is significant that these topics are

being addressed in such a politically prestigious publication. We are

reprinting some of these reports in this newsletter.]

It's school immunization season, and parents like Suzy s, of

Friendsville, Tenn., give public health officials nightmares.

s (not real name) recently decided to discontinue vaccinations

for her boys, ages 10 and 6, even though they haven't reacted negatively to

earlier vaccines. " There's no way to know for sure whether they will have a

negative reaction to the next one, " she says.

Her fears were raised by reports about adverse vaccine reactions in

Parents magazine and on ABC's " Nightline " -- sources she trusts. " I've just

heard and read too many things about how kids can be harmed or develop

autism, " she says. " I think they're just cramming these kids full of too

many shots too early in life. "

s worries because the number of vaccines recommended for

children has been dramatically increasing. In 1960, children received 19

doses of four different vaccines before they reached school age. Today, an

American child receives up to 39 doses of 12 different vaccines, most given

during the first two years of life. And, unlike in previous decades, today's

youngsters often are given multiple inoculations on the same day.

But immunization experts like L. Katz, a pediatrics professor

emeritus at Duke University, say that parents like s threaten the

nation's health. " Unless we continue to achieve high levels of

immunization, " he says, " terrible diseases will return -- some in epidemic

form. "

That's what happened in the former Soviet Union, when vaccination

rates dropped in the early 1990s, public health officials say. A diphtheria

epidemic broke out, and diphtheria cases skyrocketed from 839 in 1989 to

nearly 50,000 cases in 1994 (including 1,700 deaths), the U.S. Centers for

Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports. [1]

The CDC is quick to point out that most parents do not share s'

fears. " Vaccination rates are as high as they've ever been, " says

Schwartz, acting director of epidemiology and surveillance for the CDC's

National Immunization Program (NIP). " The vast majority of Americans support

vaccinations. "

But for a growing number of parents, getting their children

vaccinated -- once a no-brainer -- has become an agonizing and confusing

decision. It pits parents against their child's pediatrician and school,

other parents and local health officials.

A mother in South Carolina recently found out just how hard it is to

buck the system. The federal government had compensated her after her first

daughter was left with severe brain injuries following a DPT

(diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus) vaccine. But when local health authorities

found out she was not planning to let her youngest daughter get the same

vaccine, they threatened to charge her with child abuse and take her child

away.

" We see cases like this all the time, " says Barbara Loe Fisher,

president of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), in Vienna, Va.

" She finally told them she had a gun and would leave the state to protect

her child from vaccine damage if they did not leave her alone. "

Fisher helped found the NVIC in 1982 after her own son suffered brain

damage after his fourth DPT shot. She later co-authored a book, A Shot in

the Dark, about the dangers of the pertussis shot and the politics

surrounding its continued use in the United States, 15 years after a safer

version was available in Japan.

Other parents around the country -- including lawyers, scientists and

even public officials -- who say their children have been injured or killed

by vaccines have followed in her footsteps, organizing lobbying groups and

Web sites advocating safer vaccines, more informed consent about potential

risks and more freedom to choose which vaccines their children receive.

" I'm not anti-vaccine, " s insists. " I just think the government

needs to do a better job of making sure they are as safe as possible. "

Vaccine reformers were somewhat vindicated in recent years after the

CDC agreed to replace the DPT and oral polio vaccines with safer versions,

eliminate mercury from childhood vaccines and recall the new, genetically

engineered rotavirus vaccine (for severe diarrhea) after it caused

potentially life-threatening illnesses in some children. [2]

But those actions just fueled the controversy and catapulted the

debate from Internet chat rooms to congressional hearing rooms. In the past

year, House committees have held hearings on the safety of a new hepatitis B

vaccine, conflicts of interest among federal vaccine policy-makers, possible

links between vaccines and autism, the safety of mercury in vaccines and

whether the federal program that compensates people injured by vaccines is

working.

And it's not just childhood vaccines that have come under fire.

Hundreds of men and women in the military have chosen early retirement or

court-martial rather than be vaccinated with a controversial anthrax

vaccine. Other soldiers claim multiple vaccines they received against

biological weapons are partly to blame for the mysterious Gulf War Syndrome

afflicting many veterans -- a claim the Defense Department has denied.

Ironically, the vaccine debate is partly the result of the success of

mass immunizations. Childhood immunization rates are at an all-time high,

except for pockets in some inner cities. And once-dreaded childhood

diseases, such as measles, diphtheria, mumps and whooping cough, are at or

near record lows. Smallpox has been wiped off the Earth, and polio has been

eradicated from the Western Hemisphere.

" Vaccines have prevented thousands of deaths, " says the CDC's

Schwartz.

But as vaccination rates climb, chronic diseases and conditions, like

asthma, allergies, diabetes, autism and learning disorders, are increasing

nationwide among children, often at alarming rates. Some parents and doctors

are questioning whether the rise in chronic disease may be a long-term

effect of childhood vaccinations.

" Are we living in a different society where people have fewer

infections because of immunizations and we have somehow changed our immune

systems? " asked , medical director of the Springfield, Mass.,

school system. [3]

Critics say much of their concern stems from the fact that today's new

vaccines are not for diseases that occur in epidemic proportions, at least

not in the industrialized world. In the 1990s, for instance, the four new

vaccines added to state mandatory-immunization schedules were for hepatitis

B, rotavirus, Haemophilus influenzae (Hib) and pneumococcal disease --

infections that don't sweep through populations, wiping out victims by the

thousands.

Today's vaccines are different in another way. With the advent of new

technologies and years of heavy investment and research in DNA-based

vaccines, dozens of biotech companies are now competing with traditional

manufacturers to produce genetically engineered vaccines for all kinds of

conditions. Parents who think their kids are already getting too many

vaccines might be shocked to learn that more than 200 new vaccines are in

the pipeline, to treat everything from cocaine addiction to herpes.

Just because a new childhood vaccine is available, critics say, it

shouldn't automatically be included on the mandatory-immunization schedule.

That question was raised after the CDC recommended a vaccine for the

relatively innocuous chickenpox and one for hepatitis B -- a disease

primarily found among prostitutes, gay men and drug abusers.

" We are not discriminating as to which are the appropriate vaccines

for the appropriate populations, taking into account what the reasonable

risk for that population is, " says Kennedy, professor of microbiology

and immunology at the University of Oklahoma.

Vaccine-policy critics also note that once a new vaccine is added to

the federal childhood immunization schedule, manufacturers have a guaranteed

market because every child in America is generally required to receive it

before entering school. The recommendations are also taken into

consideration when the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends vaccines

for use in Third World countries.

Yet those same manufacturers, as well as pediatricians who administer

the shots, are largely exempt from lawsuits by parents of injured children,

thanks to a 1986 law that made the government, not the vaccine producers,

liable for damages caused by mandatory vaccinations. The fund is financed

with taxes on vaccines. As a result, activists argue, both the government

and the billion-dollar vaccine industry have powerful stakes in downplaying

vaccine problems.

As the debate over vaccines continues, here are some of the key

questions being asked:

Are vaccines safe?

Vaccines are among the " safest pharmacological interventions for

disease prevention available, " says epidemiologist Bernier, associate

director for science at the CDC's National Immunization Program.

Health officials are quick to point out that the odds a child will die

or become disabled from the diseases targeted by vaccines are far greater

than being harmed by the vaccine. Without the diphtheria vaccine, Bernier

says, 6 million people would have died during the 20th century.

" The real question, " says Offit, chief of infectious diseases at

Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, " is, Do the benefits of vaccines

definitively outweigh the risks? For all children's vaccines, that is

clearly the case. "

That was even true for the rotavirus vaccine, he contends. " A million

children got the vaccine, and 100 got sick and one died. Yet now that it's

off the market, if a million children don't get the vaccine, 16,000 will be

hospitalized and 10 will die. It's still safer to get the vaccine. "

Still, Offit adds, vaccines are not completely harmless. Of the 3

million children who receive vaccines each year, " a small percentage will

have a severe allergic reaction, such as hives, difficulty breathing and low

blood pressure, " he says.

Such statements enrage parents like Helms, whose son Zachary

died 33 hours after receiving his childhood vaccinations.

" Why aren't parents told about the real dangers these vaccines pose? "

she asks on the Web site for the Global Vaccine Awareness League, the

advocacy group she co-founded after Zachary's death. " Knowing that, I could

have seen the tell-tale signs of a vaccine reaction and done something to

save his life. " [4]

Public trust in official reassurances about vaccine safety began

eroding in 1976, when many people reportedly contracted Guillain-Barr~

Syndrome after being vaccinated against the swine flu, an epidemic that

never materialized. In the 1980s, a television documentary about the dangers

of the DPT shot spurred a flurry of lawsuits against DPT manufacturers. Then

in the early 1990s, Persian Gulf War veterans began questioning the safety

of the many vaccinations they received before shipping out.

Other incidents and revelations have spurred skepticism about vaccine

safety, including:

Studies linking the DPT vaccine to seizures and brain damage in rare

cases. The U.S. government finally licensed a safer, but less profitable,

version of the vaccine (DTaP) in 1996 -- 15 years after the Japanese had

begun using it. [5]

In another series of studies, the Institute of Medicine (IOM)

concluded that the diphtheria-tetanus vaccine could cause Guillain-Barr~

Syndrome and death, the rubella vaccine could cause acute and chronic

arthritis and the live measles and oral polio vaccines could cause viral

infection and death. [6]

A French court ruled in 1998 that Kline Beecham's hepatitis B

vaccine had caused a child to get multiple sclerosis, prompting France to

suspend compulsory hepatitis B vaccinations for schoolchildren. U.S. public

health officials say there is no proof that the vaccine, the first

genetically engineered vaccine to be mandated, causes multiple sclerosis or

any other chronic or autoimmune disease.

Mandatory inoculations with the new rotavirus vaccine, genetically

engineered from a monkey-human hybrid virus and widely hailed as a

breakthrough in the prevention of dehydrating diarrhea, were suspended in

1999 after a significant number of inoculated infants suffered from

life-threatening bowel blockages.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) acknowledged in 1999 that

vaccines expose infants in the first six months of life to levels of the

neurotoxin mercury considered unsafe by the Environmental Protection Agency

(EPA). The CDC recommended a voluntary transition to mercury-free vaccines

by next spring, despite urgings from some scientists and parent groups that

it should be phased out faster.

The CDC recommended in January that live, oral polio vaccines be

replaced by the inactivated, injectable version because the live vaccine

caused up to 10 cases of polio a year among children and their caretakers.

Scientists are studying whether vaccines produced from animal tissue,

like monkey and bovine cells, can transfer previously undetected viruses

that can cause cancer or other diseases in humans.

Notes

[1] See CDC report " Six Common Misconceptions about Vaccination, " at

www.cdc.gov/nip/publications/6mishome.htm.

[2] For background, see Craig Donegan, " Gene Therapy's Future, " The CQ

Researcher, Dec. 8, 1995, pp. 1089-1112.

[3] Quoted in Fenelon Kerr, " Poor health among children

confounds parents, doctors, " Union News, Sunday Republican, July 30, 2000.

[4] The Web site is: www.gval.com

[5] For details on the DPT vaccine controversy, see Rock, " The

Lethal Dangers of the Billion-Dollar Vaccine Business, " Money, December

1996.

[6] Kathleen R. Stratton et al, " DPT Vaccine and Chronic Nervous

System Dysfunction: A New Analysis " (1994).

From the CQ Researcher of Aug 25, 2000

© 2000 Congressional Quarterly Inc. .

[Guest guest]

On Mon, 28 Aug 2000 18:52:51 -0600, you wrote:

>August 28, 2000

>

>1. The Issues

>

> [The current Congressional Quarterly Researcher has a collection of

>material looking at current vaccine issues and controversies, one of which

>is the alleged links to autism. It is significant that these topics are

>being addressed in such a politically prestigious publication. We are

>reprinting some of these reports in this newsletter.]

>

> It's school immunization season, and parents like Suzy s, of

>Friendsville, Tenn., give public health officials nightmares.

> s (not real name) recently decided to discontinue vaccinations

>for her boys, ages 10 and 6, even though they haven't reacted negatively to

>earlier vaccines. " There's no way to know for sure whether they will have a

>negative reaction to the next one, " she says.

> Her fears were raised by reports about adverse vaccine reactions in

>Parents magazine and on ABC's " Nightline " -- sources she trusts. " I've just

>heard and read too many things about how kids can be harmed or develop

>autism, " she says. " I think they're just cramming these kids full of too

>many shots too early in life. "

> s worries because the number of vaccines recommended for

>children has been dramatically increasing. In 1960, children received 19

>doses of four different vaccines before they reached school age. Today, an

>American child receives up to 39 doses of 12 different vaccines, most given

>during the first two years of life. And, unlike in previous decades, today's

>youngsters often are given multiple inoculations on the same day.

> But immunization experts like L. Katz, a pediatrics professor

>emeritus at Duke University, say that parents like s threaten the

>nation's health. " Unless we continue to achieve high levels of

>immunization, " he says, " terrible diseases will return -- some in epidemic

>form. "

> That's what happened in the former Soviet Union, when vaccination

>rates dropped in the early 1990s, public health officials say. A diphtheria

>epidemic broke out, and diphtheria cases skyrocketed from 839 in 1989 to

>nearly 50,000 cases in 1994 (including 1,700 deaths), the U.S. Centers for

>Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports. [1]

Hello All,

In 1989, Gorbachev dissolved the Soviet Union. It must have been a traumatic

experience for a lot of Russians. At the same time, he admitted that the

infamous Katyn Forest Massacre was carried out by the forerunner of the KGB (the

old NKVD). This too must have been a bitter pill for the Russians, who were

always told that the Nazi's did it. I would say the break-up of the Soviet

Union would create enough stress to trigger a disease/epidemic. Lot's of

economic uncertainty in the years following the break up too.

Katz is welcome to advocate immunization. I just hope he won't advocate

MANDATORY immunization. But I would bet I hope in vain. When these guys

invoke " ...the nation's health " , legislative proposals are sure to follow.

db

>

[ remainder snipped]

[Guest guest]

I am, in a certain sense, a politician -- not the sleazy, backroom

kind; trying not to be, anyway. Not all politicians are creeps.

Gandhi and King were politicians. Politicians are simply people who

identify social issues -- hopefully with the help of their

constituents -- and deal with those issues -- hopefully with the help

of their constituents.

I need room to interact with people who bring up the critical issues.

So if we let somebody else's e-mail through, and not yours, it doesn't

mean the other one was " better " than yours; quite the contrary, it may

actually mean that you're commenting on an extremely important issue

that has perhaps been developed, or at least resolved, or at least

developed, to my satisfaction for the moment, or for awhile. And so

much e-mail comes in here good that we can't let everything that we

want through. So many subscribers just hate getting a lot of e-mail.

Write another e-mail about the next thing. We'll probably let that

through.

You've all been doing a real bang-up job of helping me identify what

the issues are, and of resolving them. You don't just help me resolve

them; you actually do it. You cure the stuff, tell the people, teach,

and do the thousands of other mitzvahs necessary to eradicate disease

from the planet, which is the common ground of our " society. " The

world you and I share is the world of disease eradication, and its

geography, or topography as it were, is all the politics, attitudes,

beliefs, and everything else about disease. It's the environment that

the people who we're trying to help live in. You and I together are

addressing, and resolving, the issues of that environment.

So this Cure Drive, or any Cure Drive that we create, will only

eradicate disease by resolving those issues. There's no point in my

trying to tell you what the critical issues are, because you'll see me

discussing them. But I will say that they shift; what was a critical

issue six months ago may very well not be this month. So it's

actually impossible for me to tell you, or predict, what they are or

will be. One of them, though, which won't go away, obviously, is

curing things, and how you do it.

Curing stuff and posting it statistically is not enough to resolve

issues. Anyway, when we cure stuff and post it statistically we are

resolving a plethora of issues. Nothing handles issues as effectively

as a good statistic.

Or a good statement. That's where I come in. I try my best to poll

all of you to find statements. I do this by listening to, and

creating, discussions among us.

Have you ever had the idea that the moderators and I are awfully

controlling of this Cure Drive?

Perceptive of you, that was. We actually INSTIGATE DISCUSSION about

what our best guess tells us is right then the most critical thing to

be discussing.

I'll tell you what: You create the statistics, and talk about how you

did it; I'll abstract the statements, with the help of my brilliant

team, and get you started repeating them; you repeat them, which will

bring in more nice statistics; and some of those statistics will be

from you, because when you repeat the statements, they affect you too;

and the results that people get from hearing you say these things will

also affect you.

In a certain sense, we can't cure the world until we cure ourselves;

I've just told you what the process of curing ourselves will look like.

Happy curing!

Your political friend,

Bayard

A Not For Profit Yoga Of Immunity

www.immunics.org

Listen to

www.TheCureShow.org

Hear immunics working

Join

www.TheCureDrive.org

Sweep disease off the earth