Shot or Not?

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Shot or Not?

Issue Date: February 16, 2004

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Vol. 15 •Issue 5 • Page 56

Shot or Not?

Increasing numbers of parents are questioning the safety of childhood

vaccines

By Jill Glomstad

Callahan firmly believes that vaccinations are dangerous.

When her daughter, Leah, was two months old, Callahan took her to receive

the recommended vaccinations. As she carried her child out of the facility,

her daughter stopped breathing.

Seven days after her son, Chase, received MMR, DTaP, HiB and pneumococcal

vaccinations at 15 months, he started seizing. He continued to suffer six to

eight seizures a day for three months. It wasn't until she administered a

remedy she had received from a homeopathic physician that he finally

stopped.

" I feel so guilty that I let it happen, " said Callahan, whose children are

now five and twelve. " I took a two-hour class on how to put a car seat in my

car, but I didn't stop to think for five minutes about what I was injecting

him with when he got vaccinated. "

Mercury Rising

Callahan is not alone. Many others, often parents of a child with a

disability they believe was caused by vaccinations, have spoken out against

the practice. A major target in all their claims: a vaccine additive called

thimerosal, a preservative compound composed of roughly 50-percent mercury.

" I asked [a doctor from the Centers for Disease Control] how many micrograms

[of mercury] are safe, " recalled Callahan. " He said 5 micrograms [per day]

in someone 110 pounds [was the most conservative guideline]. In all of my

kid's vaccines, it was a total of over 200 micrograms. "

According to Callahan's website, www.vaccinetruth.org, a child receives 237

micrograms of mercury over the course of 20 shots between birth and two

years of age. In contrast, a can of tuna fish contains 17 micrograms of

mercury.

Thimerosal has been used as an additive in vaccines since they were first

developed. " Thimerosal is a mercury-containing preservative which prevents

vaccines from becoming contaminated with other bacteria, " explained

Freed, MD, MPH, director of pediatrics at the University of Michigan Medical

Center. The preservative allows vaccine manufacturers to save money, up to a

dollar per dose, because it alleviates the need to manufacture the vaccine

in a sterile environment. It also gives the vaccines a longer shelf life.

Mercury, however, is a highly toxic substance. When thimerosal is

metabolized it breaks down into ethyl mercury, a compound similar to methyl

mercury. Methyl mercury is the compound found in fish that caused industrial

poisonings in Japan that resulted in developmental deficits in children born

to mothers exposed to the chemical. As a result, the FDA issued

recommendations that pregnant women limit their fish consumption.

These established neurotoxic effects of a similar chemical have led many

parents of children with developmental disabilities to believe that

thimerosal has caused those conditions in their children. They point to

sharp increases in the rates of autism spectrum disorders as the number of

vaccines on the Childhood Immunization Schedule has increased.

Twenty years ago children received up to five shots by two years of age;

today they receive up to 20. Meanwhile, according to the CDC, autism rates

according to 1985 data were approximately 4 to 6 in 10,000. Recent data

estimates the rate at 20 to 50 per 10,000. However, the CDC cautions, the

increase may be linked to both changing definitions of autism and wider

recognition and diagnosis of the condition.

The Research Debate

Dr. Freed contended that " there is no evidence that the small amount of

mercury contained in [individual] vaccines has ever had any effect on any

child, " said Dr. Freed. " It is a theoretical relationship with no proof. "

Any evidence that exists, he contends, merely establishes a correlation:

that some children who receive vaccinations wind up developing autism. This

is inevitable. If nearly every child is vaccinated, of course some are going

to develop autism. But there is no evidence to show a cause-effect

relationship.

Callahan and other anti-vaccine or anti-thimerosal advocates disagree. They

say that government and health leaders are ignoring the evidence. Callahan's

Web site lists several studies that indicate a link between the adult

hepatitis B vaccine and adverse reactions such as neuropathy and myelitis.

Think Twice (www.thinktwice.com), an organization offering " uncensored "

information about vaccines, also lists a large number of studies linking

different vaccines with adverse outcomes.

Dr. Freed argues that there is " tons of research " showing that vaccines are

not harmful and are effective in preventing a host of illnesses. Most

recently, an article in the December 2003 issue of Pediatrics found that

none of the additives, adjuvants, preservatives or residuals found in

vaccines present a danger to vaccine recipients.

Of the researchers who have published pro-vaccine studies, Callahan says,

" everyone is in bed with everyone. " Offit, for example, one of the

researchers on the study in Pediatrics, is a co-holder of the patent for a

new rotavirus vaccine being developed by Merck. The study acknowledges this

and asserts that Offit receives no support and has no financial interest in

the company.

Additionally, many anti-vaccine or anti-thimerosal activists accuse

researchers of cooking the books. In a November Pediatrics study concluding

that thimerosal-containing vaccine are safe, activists say the researchers

manipulated the cohort by removing a number of children age 4 and older.

Children are much more likely to be diagnosed with autism after age four.

According to the Contra Costa Times, the Institute of Medicine will hear

testimony this month on the issue of thimerosal, the MMR (measles mumps

rubella) vaccine and a possible link to autism. The hearing, to be held at

the request of the CDC, comes after the IOM released two vaccine reports in

2001: one asserting there was no connection between autism and the MMR

vaccine, and another which called for additional studies to investigate the

thimerosal-autism connection. Anti-thimerosal advocates say that the CDC is

refusing to push the hearing back to wait for additional research on the

topic due out later this year.

The CDC's inquiry, however, is largely a retroactive one; since

recommendations by the Public Health Service and the American Academy of

Pediatrics in 1999, vaccine manufacturers have begun voluntarily removing or

significantly reducing the amount of thimerosal in vaccines. According to

the CDC, the vaccines now produced to protect preschool children against 11

infectious diseases contain no thimerosal.

The Right to Know

" We know from other countries who have taken mercury out of vaccines before

we did, that there have been no decreases in the incidence of autism in

those countries, " said Dr. Freed. " We want to understand the cause of

autism, but blaming it on something that is not accurate does more harm than

good.

" Families who may have a child with autism or some other developmental

disability want a reason for what caused their child to have their

condition, " he continued. " It is a natural part of human nature. The problem

is when we start to ascribe causes that may be associated but [don't] have

any causal link. "

That said, Dr. Freed is a strong advocate of giving parents as much

information as possible. He recently conducted a study on the experiences of

physicians who encounter parents with vaccine safety concerns (American

Journal of Preventive Medicine, January 2004). He and his colleagues found

that physicians are seeing an increasing number of vaccine refusals.

" Parents have a right to know as much information as possible about anything

to do with their children, " said Dr. Freed in regards to his findings.

" Physicians and any health care workers need to be as well informed as

possible about vaccinations and the safety of immunizing children. We have

to help them understand the true risks, not the hyperbole that often gets

passed off as accurate. We need to talk about the risks of not vaccinating a

child. "

Without vaccinations, you run the risk of acquiring any of the diseases you

are vaccinated against. The prognoses for those diseases include liver

failure, deafness, heart and nerve damage, paralysis, muscle spasms and

seizures, cataracts, mental retardation and death.

While many activists simply argue against the use of thimerosal in vaccines,

some, like Callahan, categorically reject the use of all vaccines.

" You couldn't pay me enough to inject my child with anything ever again, "

she told ADVANCE. The viruses and chemicals in vaccines " set your children

up for disease forever. It is a poisoning of our children. I'd take measles

over seizures any day. "

And while Callahan may be used to being called " crazy, " it is thanks in part

to activists like her that government and professional organizations

recommended the removal of thimerosal from vaccines.

Researchers hope more investigation should conclusively show whether there

is any causal link between the compound and autism. But for now, parents

taking their children for vaccinations may want to play it safe and ask

their health care professional to make sure there is no thimerosal in the

vaccines their children are receiving. While manufacturers are now making

thimerosal-free vaccines, there may still be some doses on the shelf that

contain it.

For more information, visit the National Immunization Program on the web at

www.cdc.gov/nip/default.htm.

Jill Glomstad is on staff at ADVANCE. She can be reached at

jglomstad@...

*******************************************************

Lilian

" Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it.

Whatever we do to the web we do to ourselves. All things are bound together.

All things connect. "

-Chief Seattle

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