In my circle, I am often called by parents looking for information about immunization and vaccine safety. I'm the lady who knows stuff, who reads the articles. I'm the lady who has her ear to the ground. And it's true. I am a cautious customer when it comes to pharmaceuticals. Like all the great wonder drugs of western medicine, I believe vaccines have their place. But I think that place has been grossly exaggerated for the profit of companies who make those vaccines. We can all be grateful for the tetnus vaccine, HIB and even measles, mumps and rubella (though not in combination.) But when did we start putting all of those vaccines into one shot? When did we feel the need to find vaccines for illnesses that pose little threat to community or individual. When did we decide it was necessary to legislate their use?
Take polio for instance. Overwhelming evidence exists that the polio vaccine did nothing to irradicate the disease. It just so happened that the vaccine came on the scene as polio was running toward its natural end. Think "the plague." Nobody developed a vaccine that halted its progress. It ran its course and then disappeared. Polio was the same on a much smaller scale. Despite the fact that there have been no cases of polio in the US for three decades, children still receive this vaccine.
Then of course there is the chickenpox vaccine. Most everyone I know had chickenpox as a child and no one I know knows anyone who ever died from it. Yes, it was itchy, but I got to stay home from school and watch cartoons. That's a wash. Nowadays, chickenpox is a "public health risk which threatens our schools." So the government approves mandatory vaccination for chickenpox. What? Firstly, this vaccine is only about 60% effective in creating immunity which means that 40 out of 100 kids exposed to chickenpox or shingles will still have to fight off the infection. Beyond that, the vaccine does not appear to provide lifelong immunity when it works at all.
Why is short term immunity a problem when you can just go get another shot? Well it goes something like this. In the "normal world" a kid gets the chickenpox, may or may not have symptoms, and passes it on to the next kid. In the process the child becomes immune to the chickenpox because the virus (varicella zoster) does not leave the body. The immune system continues to respond by producing antibodies. A quality side effect of the child's infection is the exposure of the caregivers to the virus. The caregivers, who presumably had the chickenpox in childhood, get an immune system wake up call, which results in a sort of self-reimmunization. When an adult has not been exposed to chickenpox in childhood or when they have not been re-exposed for several decades (as the case often is with the elderly) they can contract the varicella virus which manifests as adult chickenpox or shingles, a very painful, localized skin eruption that usually travels along a single branch of nerves along the trunk of the body.
Because the vaccine reduces the number of children getting chickenpox, it is increasing the number of adults who are not being self-reimmunized by exposure. Since the introduction of the chickenpox vaccine the incidence of shingles has sky-rocketed(in the last three years I know of 2 in my general acquaintance.) And because the vaccine is not highly effective, there is no guarantee of irradication or that when you get the vaccine (especially as an adult booster) it will protect you from shingles which is infinitely more disagreeable than chickenpox. The best advice I was given about this vaccine is this: Don't give it to your kid. When you know someone with chickenpox, let your kid go play at their house. When your child reaches the age of 10 have them tested for the antibody even if you never saw a single chickenpock. If they are immune, no worries; if not, get them vaccinated. Of course they will have to remember to do it again and again, roughly every 10 years with still no guarantee of immunity.
If the chickenpox vaccine doesn't make sense, then the Hepatitis B vaccine mandate is a cruel joke. This vaccine is given to infants, often before they leave the hospital (another reason for home birth!) Hepatitis B is a sexually transmitted disease that can also be acquired by sharing needles or an exchange of blood with an infected person. Is your infant shooting up? Is your infant engaging in risky sexual behaviors? No? Then your child is NOT AT RISK! The only infants that should be vaccinated for HB are babies whose mothers are infected with HB. This information can be obtained from routine prenatal blood tests prior to giving birth. We do not require a mass vaccination effort.
In the United States, fewer than 11,000 new cases of Hepatitis B were reported in 1996 (less than 300 of those were children.) That number has been falling because the number of people using injectible drugs is on the decline. Of those who are infected only 0.1% ever die, ie. 259 people a year!) 95% of those infected completely recover and develop lifetime immunity. Additionally, HB is not easy to transmit. Even direct exposure may not result in disease acquisition.
To add insult to injury, the new version of the HB vaccine, RECOMBIVAX HB, is genetically engineered and was never adequately tested for saftey or for long term efficacy. Sadly, the number of people suffering from adverse reactions to HB vaccine is growing rapidly. Thousands of HB vaccinees have reactions that result in permanent disabilities including blindness, brain damage, mulitiple sclerosis, Guillian-Barre syndrome, and death primary in the form of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). (see Institue of Medicine Report 1994)
So why is the government pushing these new and out-dated vaccines like a street-side dealer? Moolah! Cashola! Money in the form of research funding from pharmaceutical companies puts the power to dictate Food and Drug Safety protocols into the hands of the drug makers themselves. An enormous percentage of the funding received by the CDC and the FDA comes from drug companies that manufacture vaccines. It is sick and incestuous. The CDC and FDA give recommendations to congress about what vaccines should be mandatory, then the federal government provides incentives to states based on the number of children in the state that are fully vaccinated. This promotes statewide efforts to vaccinate children, usually by legislating that children have to be fully vaccinated to attend public schools or daycare programs. Also, pressure is put on low-income families to vaccinate through government paid programs. For instance, a woman on WIC can choose to have her children fully vaccinated for free (i.e. using tax-payer dollars) or she can accept $25 less per month in WIC benefits. Hmmm.
Sounds like conspiracy theory, I know. But the reality is that the paper trail is there for all to see. You just have to look and ask questions. "Who funded this study? Where did this information come from?" I got curious, and being a researcher at heart, found more than I ever wanted to know. Do I believe that some vaccines are useful? Yes, of course I do, but not all of them. Even HB vaccine might be a good choice if you work in a criminal facility or spend a lot of time in Africa or the Far East where HB infection rates are high. (compare 5-20% of the population vs. 0.1% of the population in the US) But I do not trust the FDA which brought us such delights as Olean which depletes the body of fat-soluble vitamins and causes anal leakage, or Aspartame which was proven to cause brain tumors in clinical trials and was still "pushed through." Or for that matter an FDA that has banned Estriol, a natural estrogen replacement treatment for menopause that has been used safely in Europe for over 3 decades. The FDA banned it because the makers of Premarin, the leading HRT drug, filed a citizen's complaint that it was being marketed as a menopause treatment by compounding pharmacies. Of course no one had the money to stand in the way of that decision since natural substances like estriol are unpatentable. (By the way the name Premarin is a contraction of Pregnant Mare's Urine, the source of the drug. This drug has been proven to cause blood clots and stroke, among other deadly conditions, in the women who use it because horse estrogens are 100 times stronger than human estrogens. No thank you.)
So the more I know, the more careful I am about what I put into my body and the bodies of my children. The newest vaccine craze is the HPV vaccine Gardasil. They even ADVERTISE it on television. "I'm One Less." One less what? One less informed consumer. I have read a library's worth of books and articles about HPV and cervical cancer, so I was ready when this one came around. The phone has already started ringing. More on that one in Part II.
No comments:
Post a Comment