[NVIC] AAP Tells Peds Vaccines Don't Cause Harm

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E-NEWS FROM THE NATIONAL VACCINE INFORMATION CENTER

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" Protecting the health and informed consent rights of children since 1982. "

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BL Fisher Note:

America's pediatricians are constantly being reassured by those leading

the American Academy of Pediatrics and present and former CDC health

officials that vaccines do not cause brain and immune system disorders in

children. But the personal experience of parents, whose children are being

given dozens of doses of vaccines before age five by pediatricians directly

contradicts those denials by AAP and CDC officials. The experience of the

parents is that they take a healthy child in to be vaccinated and watch that

child regress physically, mentally and emotionally and stay chronically ill.

Until pediatricians and public health officials stop playing the numbers

game with bogus epidemiological studies and start getting out their

microscopes and looking at what is happening at the cellular and molecular

level in the bodies of these children after vaccination, the whole truth

about vaccine-associated brain and immune system dysfunction will never be

known. But AAP and CDC officials are afraid to do the real science. They

would rather rely on junk science and continue to encourage everyone to stay

in fantasyland pretending there is no problem.

http://www.medpagetoday.com/Pediatrics/Vaccines/tb/1911

MedPageToday

AAP: Vaccine Researchers Preach to Pediatrician Choir

By Neil Osterweil, Senior Associate Editor, MedPage Today

Reviewed by Zalman S. Agus, MD; Emeritus Professor at the University of

Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

October 11, 2005

Review

WASHINGTON, Oct. 11 - Vaccine-safety researchers picked a friendly crowd to

pronounce that there is no scientific evidence linking thimerosal-containing

vaccines or the mumps-measles-rubella (MMR) vaccine with autism or

autoimmune disorders.

In a plenary session at the American Academy of Pediatrics meeting here,

they emphasized the word " scientific. " There's plenty of evidence to go

around, they noted, but little if any of the evidence linking childhood

vaccinations to autism or other conditions stands up to scientific scrutiny.

" Ever since Ed Jenner started smallpox vaccinations [in 1796] there have

been public groups trying to link vaccines to morbidity, " said Carden

ston, M.D., of Children's Hospital in Birmingham, Ala., past president

of the American Academy of Pediatrics, in an interview.

" But because we give vaccines to healthy children, we have a special

obligation to assure they are safe and that they are used in a safe manner, "

said Walter A. Orenstein, M.D., director of vaccine and policy development

at Emory. " Maintaining public credibility means we have to take vaccine

safety concerns seriously, evaluate them scientifically, and disseminate our

best assessments of the causal role of vaccines in illnesses and syndromes

linked to vaccine in time. "

During the session, Dr. Orenstein reviewed the evidence -- strong, shaky,

and poor -- for links between childhood immunizations and developmental

disorders or diseases.

A 2004 survey of physicians in the United States found that 92% of

pediatricians and 60% of family physicians had patients whose parents

refused at least one recommended vaccine, he noted.

Among the primary concerns expressed by parents and anti-vaccine crusaders

are putative links between autism and the presence of thimerosal; autism in

association with MMR vaccine; and multiple immunizations in childhood and

their alleged link to diabetes, asthma, and heterologous infections.

" Mercury is a known neurotoxin, and in 1999 it was recognized that

thimerosal in the immunization schedule, an ethyl-mercury-containing

preservative, might exceed some federal safety guidelines although not

others, " Dr. Orenstein said.

Evidence to support the link between thimerosal and mercury comes in part

from ecologic studies, such as one from California showing an apparent

correlation between the number of children seeking special educational

services for autism and the estimated mercury exposure from vaccines.

But such studies are subject to biases such as changes in diagnostic codes

and criteria, and educational services offered, Dr. Orenstein noted.

He also pointed to a study from NIH and Harvard researchers comparing

typical features of children with autism and those with mercury poisoning,

and found few similarities between the groups in terms of motor function,

vision, speech, sensory function, psychiatric issues, or head size.

Moreover, the form of mercury that causes major toxicities is methyl

mercury, not the ethyl mercury contained in thimerosal. Ethyl mercury has a

shorter half-life and is less frequently associated with neurologic

toxicities than methyl mercury, he noted.

Further evidence suggesting the lack of a thimerosal-autism link comes from

Scandinavia. When thimerosal was removed from vaccines in Sweden and

Denmark, there was no corresponding change in rates of autism reported in

those countries.

There is also evidence to show that at least three studies purporting to

find a link between thimerosal and autism met none of eight epidemiologic

study quality criteria, compared with four other studies finding no

causality link, which met between five and seven or eight quality measures,

he noted.

As for charges that MMR vaccine may cause autism, " this was started by the

report of Wakefield of 12 cases of autism and bowel disease, eight

following shortly after MMR, " Dr. Orenstein said. " They did an endoscopy and

found ileal lymphonodular hyperplasia in the bowel, a non-specific

abnormality. They speculated the measles virus can cause bowel disease, and

then there was a leak of toxins that then lead to autism. "

There has been no evidence of autism onset clustering around MMR

vaccinations, however, and in studies in Denmark where all children are

tracked, there was no evidence of a link between MMR vaccination and autism

in regard to age at vaccination, time of vaccination, or years of

vaccination, Dr. Orenstein said.

He also cited the findings of an Institute of Medicine committee on vaccine

safety, which in 2004 concluded that " the evidence favors rejection of a

causal relationship between 1) thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism,

and 2) MMR vaccine and autism. "

Regarding claims that multiple immunizations could overwhelm the infant

immune system and lead to autoimmune conditions or opportunistic diseases,

the investigator noted that neonates are capable at birth of generating

humoral and cellular immune responses. In addition, they are exposed at

birth to a rich microbial environment, and their B-cell responses to T-cell

independent antigens is limited until about age two.

Today's vaccines are also highly purified and contain many fewer antigenic

proteins and polysaccharides than those produced in earlier decades. In

1980, seven recommended vaccines contained about 3,041 total immunogenic

proteins, compared with about 125 total immunogenic proteins in 11 currently

recommended vaccines.

" There have been enough studies done trying to link autism to vaccines, " Dr.

ston commented. " To find the cause of autism, research funds should be

spent on more productive areas. "

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