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THE
MEDICAL TIME BOMB OF IMMUNIZATION AGAINST DISEASE
The greatest threat of childhood
diseases lies in the dangerous and ineffectual efforts made to prevent
them BY ROBERT S. MENDELSOHN, M.D.
I know, as I write about the dangers of mass immunisation, that it is a
concept that you may find difficult to accept. Immunizations have been so
artfully and aggressively marketed that most parents believe them to be the
"miracle" that has eliminated many once-feared diseases.
Consequently, for anyone to oppose them borders on the foolhardy. For a
pediatrician to attack what has become the "bread and butter" of
pediatric practice is equivalent to a priest's denying the infallibility of the
pope.
Knowing that, I can only hope that you will keep an open mind while I
present my case. Much of what you have been led to believe about immunizations
simply isn't true. I not only have grave misgivings about them; if I were to follow
my deep convictions in writing this chapter, I would urge you to reject all
inoculations for your child. I won't do that, because parents in about half the
states have lost the right to make that choice. Doctors, not politicians, have
successfully lobbied for laws that force parents to immunize their children as
a prerequisite for admission to school.
Even in those states, though, you may be able to persuade your pediatrician
to eliminate the pertussis (whooping cough) component from the DPT vaccine. This
immunization, which appears to be the most threatening of them all, is the
subject of so much controversy that many doctors are becoming nervous about
giving it, fearing malpractice suits. They should be nervous, because in a
recent Chicago case a child damaged by a pertussis inoculation received a $5.5
million settlement award. If your doctor is in that state of mind, exploit his
fear, be-cause your child's health is at stake.
Although I administered them my-self during my early years of practice, I have
become a steadfast opponent of mass inoculation because of the myriad hazards
they present. The subject is so vast and complex that it deserves a book of its
own. Consequently, I must be content here with summarizing my objections to the
fanatic zeal with which pediatricians blindly shoot foreign proteins into the
body of your child without knowing what eventual damage they may cause.
Here is the core of my concern:
I. There is no convincing scientific evidence that mass
inoculations can be credited with eliminating any childhood disease. While
it is true that some once common childhood diseases have diminished or
disappeared since inoculations were introduced, no one really knows why,
although improved living conditions may be the reason. If immunizations were
responsible for the diminishing or disappearance of these diseases in the
United States, one must ask why they disappeared simultaneously in Europe,
where mass immunizations did not take place.
2. It is commonly believed that the Salk vaccine was responsible for halting
the polio epidemics that plagued American children in the 19405 and 1950s. If
so, why did the epidemics also end in Europe, where polio vaccine was not so
extensively used? Of greater current relevance, why is the Sabin virus vaccine still
being administered to children when Dr. Jonas Salk, who pioneered the first
vaccine, points out that Sabin vaccine is now causing most of the polio cases
that appear. Continuing to force this vaccine on children is irrational medical
behaviour that simply confirms my contention that doctors consistently repeat
their mistakes. With the polio vaccine we are witnessing a rerun of the medical
reluctance to abandon the smallpox vaccination, which remained as the only
source of smallpox-related deaths for three decades after the disease had
disappeared.
Think of it! For thirty years kids died from smallpox vaccinations even
though no longer threatened by the disease.
3. There are significant risks associated with every immunization and
numerous contraindications that may make it dangerous for the Shots to be given
to your child. Yet doctors administer them routinely, usually without
warning parents of the hazards and without determining whether the immunization
is contraindicated for the child. No child should be immunized without making
that determination, yet small armies of children are routinely lined up in
clinics to receive a shot in the arm with no questions asked by their parents!
4 While the myriad short-term hazards of most immunizations are known (but
rarely explained), no one knows the long term consequences of injecting foreign
proteins into the body of your child. Even more shocking is the fact that
no one is making any structured effort to find out.
5. There is growing suspicion that immunization against relatively harm-less
childhood diseases may be responsible for the dramatic increase in auto-immune
diseases since mass inoculations were introduced. These are fearful diseases
such as cancer, leukemia. rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, Lou
Gehrig's disease, lupus erythematosus, and the Guillain-Barre syndrome. An
autoimmune disease can be explained simply as one in which the body's defense
mechanisms cannot distinguish between foreign invaders and ordinary body
tissues, with the consequence that the body begins to destroy itself. Have we
traded mumps and measles for cancer and leukemia?
I have emphasized these concerns because it is probable that your
pediatrician will not advise you about them. At the 1982 Forum of the American
Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), a resolution was proposed that would have helped
insure that parents would be informed about the risks and benefits of
immunizations. The resolution urged that the "ALA? make available in
clear, concise language information which a reasonable parent would want to
know about the benefits and risks of routine immunizations, the risks of
vaccine preventable diseases and the management of common adverse reactions to
immunizations." Apparently the doctors assembled did not believe that "reasonable
parents" were entitled to this kind of in-formation because they
rejected the resolution!
The bitter controversy over immunizations that is now raging within the
medical profession has not escaped the attention of the media. Increasing
numbers of parents are rejecting immunizations for their children and facing
the legal consequences of doing so. Parents whose children have been
permanently damaged by vaccines are no longer accepting this as fate but are
filing malpractice suits against the manufacturers and the doctors who
administered the vaccine. Some manufacturers have actually stopped making
vaccines, and the lists of contraindications to their use are being expanded by
the remaining manufacturers, year by year. Meanwhile, because routine immunizations
that bring patients back for repeated office calls, are the bread and butter of
their specialty, pediatricians continue to defend them to the death.
The question parents should be asking is: Whose death?
As a parent, only you can decide whether to reject
immunizations or risk accepting them for your child. Let me urge you,
though-before your child is immunized-to arm yourself with the facts about the
potential risks and benefits and demand that your pediatrician defend the
immunizations that he recommends. If you decide that you don't want to have
your child immunized, but your state laws say you must, write to me, and I may
be able to offer suggestions on how you can regain your freedom of choice.
MUMPS
Mumps is a relatively innocuous viral disease, usually experienced in
childhood, which causes swelling of one or both salivary glands (parotids),
located just below and in front of the ears. Typical symptoms are a temperature
of 100-l04 degrees, appetite loss, headache, and back pain. The gland swelling
usually begins to diminish after two or three days and is gone by the sixth or
seventh day. However, one gland may become affected first, and the second as
much as 10-l2 days later. The infection of either side confers life-time
immunity.
Mumps does not require medical treatment. If your child contracts the
disease, encourage him to stay in bed for two or three days, feed him a soft
diet and a lot of fluids, and use ice packs to reduce the swelling. If his
headache is severe, administer modest quantities of whiskey or acetaminophen.
Give ten drops of whiskey to a small baby and up to one-half teaspoon to a
larger one. The dose can be repeated in one hour and again in another hour, if
needed.
Most children are immunized against mumps along with measles and rubella in
the MMR shot that is administered at about fifteen months of age. Pediatricians
defend this immunization with the argument that, although mumps is not a
serious disease in children, if they do not gain immunity as children they may
contract mumps as adults. In that event there is a possibility that adult males
may contract orchitis, a condition in which the disease affects the testicles.
In rare instances this can produce sterility.
If total sterility as a consequence of orchitis were a significant threat,
and if the mumps immunizations assured adult males that they would not contract
it, I would be among those doctors who urge immunization. I'm not, because
their argument makes no sense. Orchitis rarely causes sterility, and when it
does, because only one testicle is usually affected, the sperm production
capacity of the unaffected testicle could repopulate the world! And that's not
all. No one knows whether the mumps vaccination confers an immunity that lasts
into the adult years. Consequently, there is an open question whether, when
your child is immunized against mumps at fifteen months arid escapes this
disease in childhood, he may suffer more serious consequences when he contracts
it as an adult.
You won't find pediatricians advertising them, but the side effects of the
mumps vaccine can be severe. In some children it causes allergic reactions such
as rash, itching, and bruising. It may also expose them to the effects of
central nervous system involvement, including febrile seizures, unilateral nerve
deafness, and encephalitis. These risks are minimal, true, but why should your
child endure them at all to avoid an innocuous diseaze in childhood at the risk
of contracting a more serious one as an adult?
MEASLES
Measles, also called rubeola or 'English measles," is a contagious
viral disease that can 'be contracted by touching an object used by an infected
person. At the onset the victim feels tired, has a slight fever and pain in the
head and back. His eyes redden and he may be sensitive to light. The fever
rises until about the third or fourth day, when it reaches 103-104 degrees.
Sometimes small white spots can be seen inside the mouth, and a rash of small
pink spots appears below the hair line and behind the ears. This rash spreads
downward to cover the body in about 36 hours. The pink spots may run together
but fade away in about three or four days. Measles is contagious for seven or
eight days, beginning three or four days be-fore the rash appears. Consequently,
if one of your children contracts the disease, the others probably will have
been exposed to it before you know the first I child is sick.
No treatment is required for measles other than bed rest, fluids to combat
possible dehydration from fever, and calamine lotion or cornstarch baths to
relieve the itching. If the child suffers from photophobia, the blinds in his
bedroom should be lowered to darken the room. However, contrary to the popular
myth, there is no danger of permanent blindness from this disease.
A vaccine to prevent measles is an-other element of the MMR inoculation
given in early childhood. Doctors maintain that the inoculation is necessary to
prevent measles encephalitis, which they say occurs about once in 1,000 cases.
After decades of experience with measles, I question this statistic, and so do
many other pediatricians. The incidence of 1/1,000 may be accurate for children
who live in conditions of poverty and malnutrition, but in the middle-and
upper-income brackets, if one excludes simple sleepiness from the measles
itself, the incidence of true encephalitis is probably more like 1/10,900 or
1/100,000.
After frightening you with the unlikely possibility of measles encephalitis,
your doctor can rarely be counted on to tell you of the dangers associated with
the vaccine he uses to prevent it. The measles vaccine is associated with
encephalopathy and with a series of other complications such as SSPE (subacute
sclerosing panencephalitis), which causes hardening of the brain and is
in-variably fatal.
Other neurologic and sometimes fatal conditions associated with the measles
vaccine include ataxia (inability to coordinate muscle movements), mental
retardation, aseptic meningitis, seizure disorders, and hemiparesis (paralysis
affecting one side of the body). Secondary complications associated with the
vaccine may be even more frightening. They include encephalitis, juvenile-onset
diabetes, Reye's syndrome, and multiple sclerosis.
I would consider the risks associated with measles vaccination unacceptable
even if there were convincing evidence that the vaccine works. There isn't.
While there has been a decline in the incidence of the disease, it began long
before the vaccine was introduced. In 1958 there were about 800,000 cases of
measles in the United States, but by 1962-the year before a vaccine
appeared-the number of cases had dropped by 300,000. During the next four
years, while children were being vaccinated with an ineffective and now
abandoned "killed virus" vaccine, the number of cases dropped another
300,000. In 1900 there were 13.3 measles deaths per 100,000 population. By
1955, before the first measles shot, the death rate had declined 97.7 percent
to only 0.03 deaths per 100,000.
Those numbers alone are dramatic evidence that measles was disappearing
before the vaccine was introduced. If you fail to find them sufficiently
convincing, consider this: in a 1978 survey of thirty states, more than half of
the children who contracted measles had been adequately vaccinated. Moreover,
according to the World Health Organization, the chances are about fifteen times
greater that measles will be contracted by those vaccinated for them than by
those who are not.
"Why," you may ask, "in the face of these facts, do doctors
continue to give the shots?" The answer may lie in an episode that
occurred in California fourteen years after the measles vaccine was introduced.
Los Angeles suffered a severe measles epidemic during that year, and parents
were urged to vaccinate all children six months of age and older-despite a
Public Health Service warning that vaccinating children below the age of one
year was useless and potentially harmful.
Although Los Angeles doctors responded by routinely shooting measles vaccine
into very kid they could get their hands on, several local physicians familiar
with the suspected problems of immunologic failure and "slow virus"
dangers chose not to vaccinate their own infant children. Unlike their
patients, who weren't told, they realized that "slow viruses" found
in all live vaccines, and particularly in the measles vaccine, can hide in
human tissue for years. They may emerge later in the form of encephalitis,
multiple sclerosis, and as potential seeds for the development and growth of
cancer.
One Los Angeles physician who refused to vaccinate his own seven-month-old
baby said: "I'm worried about what happens when the vaccine virus may not
only offer little protection against measles but may also stay around in the
body, working in a way we don't know much about." His concern about the
possibility of these consequences for his own child, however, did not cause him
to stop vaccinating his infant patients. He rationalized this contradictory
behaviour with the comment that "As a parent, I have the luxury of
making a choice .for my child. As a physician... legally and professionally I
have to accept the recommendations of the profession, which is what we also had
to do with the whole Swine flu business."
Perhaps it is time that lay parents and their children are granted the same
luxury that doctors and their children enjoy.
RUBELLA
Commonly known as "German measles," rubella is a non-threatening
disease in children that does not require medical treatment.
The initial symptoms are fever and a. slight cold, accompanied by a sore
throat. You know it is something more when a rash appears on the face and scalp
and spreads to the arms and body. The spots do not run together as they do with
measles, and they usually fade away after two or three days. The victim should
be encouraged to rest, and be given adequate fluids, but no other treatment is
needed.
The threat posed by rubella is the possibility that it may cause damage to
the fetus if a woman contracts the disease during the first trimester of her
pregnancy. This fear is used to justify the immunization of all children, boys
and girls, as part of the MMR inoculation. The merits of this vaccine are
questionable for essentially the same reasons that apply to mumps inoculations.
There is no need to protect children from this harmless disease, so the adverse
reactions to the vaccine are unacceptable in terms of benefit to the child.
They can include arthritis, arthralgia (painful joints), and polyneuritis,
which produces pain, numbness, or tingling in the peripheral nerves. While
these symptoms are usually temporary, they may last for several months and may
not occur until as long as two months after the vaccination. Because of that
time lapse, parents may not identify the cause when these symptoms reappear in
their vaccinated child.
The greater danger of rubella vaccination is the possibility that it may
deny expectant mothers the protection of natural immunity from the disease. By
preventing rubella in childhood, immunization may actually increase the threat
that women will contract rubella during their childbearing years. My concern on
this score is shared by many doctors. In Connecticut a group of doctors, led by
two eminent epidemiologists, have actually succeeded in getting rubella
stricken from the list of legally required immunizations.
Study after study has demonstrated that many women immunized against rubella
as children lack evidence of immunity in blood tests given during their
adolescent years. Other tests have shown a high vaccine failure rate in
children given rubella, measles, and mumps shots, either separately or in
combined form. Finally, the crucial question yet to be answered is whether
vaccine-induced immunity is as effective and long lasting as immunity from the
natural disease of rubella. A large proportion of children show no evidence of
immunity in blood tests given only four or five years after rubella
vaccination.
The significance of this is both obvious and frightening. Rubella is a non
threatening disease in childhood, and it confers natural immunity to those who
contract it so they will not get it again as adults. Prior to the time that
doctors began giving rubella vaccinations an estimated 85 percent of adults
were naturally immune to the disease.
Today, because of immunization, the vast majority of women never acquire
natural immunity. If their vaccine-induced immunity wears off, they may
contract rubella while they are pregnant, with resulting damage to their unborn
children.
Being a skeptical soul, I have always believed that the most reliable way to
determine what people really believe is to observe what they do, not what they
say. If the greatest threat of rubella is not to children, but to the fetus yet
unborn, pregnant women should be protected against rubella by making certain
that their obstetricians won't give them the disease. Yet, in a California
survey reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association, more
than 90 percent of the obstetrician-gynecologists refused to be
vaccinated. If doctors themselves are afraid of the vaccine, why on earth
should the law require that you and other parents allow them to administer it
to your kids?
WHOOPING COUGH
Whooping cough (pertussis) is an extremely contagious bacterial disease that
is usually transmitted through the air by an infected peson.
The incubation period is seven to fourteen days. The initial symptoms are
indistinguishable from those of a common cold: a runny nose, sneezing,
listlessness and loss of appetite, some tearing in the eyes, and sometimes a
mild fever.
As the disease progresses, the victim develops a severe cough at night.
Later it appears during the day as well. Within a week to ten days after the
first symptoms appear the cough will become paroxysmal. The child may cough a
dozen times with each breath, and his face may darken to a bluish or purple
hue. Each coughing bout ends with a whopping intake of breath, which accounts
for the popular name for the disease. Vomiting is often an additional symptom
of the disease.
Whooping cough can strike within any age group, but more than half of all
victims are below two years of age. It can be serious and even
life-threatening, particularly in infants. Infected persons can transmit the
disease to others for about a month after the appearance of the initial
symptoms, so it is important that they be isolated, especially from other
children.
If your child contracts whooping cough, there is no specific treatment that
your doctor can provide, nor is there any you can apply at home, other than to
encourage your child to rest and to provide comfort and consolation. Cough
suppressants are sometimes used, but they rarely help very much and I don't
recommend them. However, if an infant contracts the disease, you should consult
a doctor because hospital care may be required. The primary threats to babies
are exhaustion from coughing and pneumonia. Very young infants have even been
known to suffer cracked ribs from the severe coughing bouts.
Immunisation against pertussis is given along with vaccines for
diphtheria and tetanus in the DPT inoculation. Athough the vaccine has been
used for decades, it is one of the most controversial of immunizations. Doubts
persist about its effectiveness, and many doctors share my concern that the
potentially damaging side effects of the vaccine may outweigh the alleged
benefits.
Dr. Gordon T. Stewart, head of the department of community medicine at the
University of Glasgow, Scotland, is one of the most vigorous critics of the
pertussis vaccine. He says he supported the inoculation before 1974 but then
began to observe outbreaks of pertussis in children who had been vaccinated.
"Now, in Glasgow," he says, "30 per-cent of our whooping cough
cases are occurring in vaccinated patients. This leads me to believe that the
vaccine is not alt that protective."
As is the case with other infectious diseases, mortality had begun to
decline before the vaccine became available. The vaccine was not introduced
until about 1936, but mortality from the disease had already been declining
steadily since 1900 or earlier. According to Stewart, "the decline in
pertussis mortality was 80 percent before the vaccine was ever used." He
shares my view that the key factor in controlling whooping cough is probably
not the vaccine but improvement in the living conditions of potential victims.
The common side effects of the pertussis vaccine, acknowledged by JAMA, are
fever, crying bouts, a shock-like state, and local skin effects such as
swelling, redness, and pain. Less frequent but more serious side effects
include convulsions and permanent brain damage resulting in mental retardation.
The vaccine has also been linked to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). In
1978-79, during an expansion of the Tennessee childhood immunization program,
eight cases of SIDS were reported immediately following routine DPT
immunization.
Estimates of the number of those vaccinated with the pertussis vaccine who
are protected from the disease range from 50 percent to 80 percent. According
to JAMA. reported cases of whooping cough in the United States total an
average of 1,000--3,000 per year and deaths five to twenty per year.
DIPHTHERIA
Athough it was one of the most feared of childhood diseases in Grandma's
day, diphtheria has now almost disappearead. Only 5 cases were reported in the
United States in 1980. Most doctors insist that the decline is due to
immunization with the DPT vaccine, but there is ample evidence that the
incidence of diphtheria was already diminishing before a vaccine became
available.
Diphtheria is a highly contagious bacterial disease that is spread by the
coughing and sneezing of infected persons or by handling items that they have
touched. The incubation period f6r the disease is two to five days, and the
first symptoms are a sore throat, headache, nausea, coughing, and a fever of
l00-l04 degrees. As the disease progresses, dirty-white patches can be observed
on the tonsils and in the throat. They cause swelling in the throat and larynx
that makes swallowing difficult and, in severe cases, may obstruct breathing to
the point that the victim chokes to death. The disease requires medical
attention and can be treated with antibiotics such as penicillin or
erythromycin.
Today your child has about as much chance of contracting diphtheria as she
does of being bitten by a cobra. Yet millions of children are immunized against
it with repeated injections at two, four, six, and eighteen months and then
given a booster shot when they enter school. This despite evidence over more
than a dozen years from rare outbreaks of the disease that children who have
been immunized fare no better than those who have not. During a 1969 outbreak
of diphtheria in Chicago the city board of health reported that four of the
sixteen victims had been fully immunized against the disease and five others had
received one or more doses of the vaccine. Two of the latter showed evidence of
full immunity. A report on another outbreak in which three people died revealed
that one of the fatal cases and fourteen of twenty-three carriers had been
fully immunized.
Episodes such as these shatter the argument that immunization can be
credited with eliminating diphtheria or any of the other once common childhood
diseases. If immunization deserved the credit, how do its defenders explain
this? Only about half the states have legal requirements for immunization
against infectious diseases, and the percentage of children immunized varies
from state to state. As a consequence, tens of thousands-perhaps millions-of
children in areas where medical services are limited and pediatricians almost
nonexistent were never immunized against infectious diseases and therefore
should be vulnerable to them. Yet the incidence of infectious diseases does not
correlate in any respect with whether a state has legally mandated mass
immunization or not.
In view of the rarity of the disease, the effective antibiotic treatment now
available, the questionable effectiveness of the vaccine, the multimillion
dollar annual cost of administering it, and the ever-present potential for
harmful, long-term effects from this or any other vaccine, I consider continued
mass immunization against diphtheria indefensible. I grant that no significant
harmful effects from the vaccine have been identified, but that doesn't mean
they aren't there. In the half century that the vaccine has been used no
research has ever been undertaken to determine what the long-term effects of
the vaccine may be!
CHICKEN POX
This is my favorite childhood disease, first because it is relatively
innocuous and second because it is one of the few for which no pharmaceutical
manufacturer has yet marketed a vaccine. That second reason may be short-lived,
though, because as this is written there are reports that a chicken pox vaccine
soon may appear.
Chicken pox is a communicable viral infection that is very common in
children. The first signs of the disease are usually a slight fever, headache,
backache, and loss of appetite.
After a day or two, small red spots appear, and within a few hours they
enlarge and become blisters. Ultimately a scab forms that peels off, usually
within a week or two. This process is accompanied by severe itching, and the
child should be encouraged not to scratch the sores. Calamine lotion may be
applied, or cornstarch baths given, to relieve the itching.
It is not necessary to seek medical treatment for chicken pox. The patient
should be encouraged to rest and to drink a lot of fluids to prevent
dehydration from the fever.
The incubation period for chicken pox is from two to three weeks, and the
disease is contagious for about two weeks, beginning two days after the rash
appears. The child should be isolated during this period to avoid spreading the
disease to others.
TUBERCULOSIS
Parents should have the right to assume, and most do assume, that the tests
their doctor gives their child will I produce an accurate result.
The tuberculin skin test is but one example of a medical test procedure in
which that is definitely not the case. Even the American Academy of Pediatrics,
which rarely has anything negative to say about procedures that its
members routinely employ, has issued a policy statement that is critical of
this test. According to that statement,
Several recent studies have cast doubt on the sensitivity of some
screening tests for tuberculosis. Indeed a panel assembled by the Bureau of
Biologics has recommended to manufacturers that each lot be tested in fifty
known positive patients to assure that preparations that are marketed are
potent enough to identify everyone with active tuberculosis. However, since
many of these studies have not been conducted in a randomized, double-blind
fashion and/or have included many simultaneously administered skin tests (thus
the possibility of suppression of reactions), interpretation of the tests is
difficult.
That statement concludes, "Screening tests for tuberculosis are not
perfect, and physicians must be aware of the possibility that some false
negative as well as positive reactions may be obtained."
In short, your child may have tuberculosis even though there is a negative
reading on his tuberculin test. Or he may not have it but display a positive
skin test that says he does. With many doctors, this can lead to some
devastating consequences. Almost certainly, if this happens to your child, he
will be exposed to needless hazardous radiation from one or more x-rays of his
chest. The doctor may then place him on dangerous drugs such as isoniazid for
months or years "to prevent the development of tuberculosis." Even
the AMA has recognized that doctors have indiscriminately over prescribed
isoniazid. That's shameful, because of the drug's long list of side effects on
the nervous system, gastrointestinal system, blood, bone marrow, skin, and
endocrine glands. Also not to be overlooked is the danger that your child may
become a pariah in your neighborhood because of the lingering fear of this
infectious disease.
I am convinced that the potential consequences of a positive tuberculin skin
test are more dangerous than the threat of the disease. I believe parents
should reject the test unless they have specific knowledge that their child has
been in contact with someone who has the disease.
SUDDEN INFANT DEATH SYNDROME(SIDS)
The dreadful possibility that they may awaken some morning to find their
baby dead in his crib is a fear that lurks in the mind of many parents. Medical
science has yet to pinpoint the cause of SIDS, but the most popular explanation
among researchers appears to be that the central nervous system is affected so
that the involuntary act of breathing is suppressed.
That is a logical explanation, but it leaves unanswered the question: What
caused the malfunction in the central nervous system? My suspicion, which is
shared by others in my profession, is that the nearly 10,000 SIDS deaths that
occur in the United States each year are related to one or more of the vaccines
that are routinely given children. The pertussis vaccine is the most likely
villain, but it could also be one or more of the others.
Dr. William Torch, of the University of Nevada School of Medicine at Reno,
has issued a report suggesting that the DPT shot may be responsible for SIDS
cases. He found that two-thirds of 103 children who died of SIDS had been
immunized with DPT vaccine in the three weeks before their deaths, many dying
within a day after getting the shot. He asserts that this was not mere
coincidence, concluding that a "causal relationship is suggested" in
at least some cases of DIPT vaccine and crib death. Also on record are the
Tennessee deaths, referred to earlier. In that case the manufacturers of the vaccine,
following intervention by the U.S. surgeon general, recalled all unused doses
of this batch of vaccine.
Expectant mothers who are concerned about SIDS should bear in mind the
importance of breastfeeding to avoid this and other serious ailments. There is
evidence that breastfed babies are less susceptible to allergies, respiratory
disease, gastroenteritis, hypocalcemia, obesity, multiple sclerosis, and SIDS.
One study of the scientific literature about SIDS concluded that
"Breast-feeding can be seen as a common block to the myriad pathways to
SIDS."
POLIOMYELITIS
No one who lived through the 1940s and saw photos of children in iron lungs,
saw a 'President of the United States confined to his wheel-chair by this dread
disease, and was for fobidden to use public beaches for fear of catching polio
can forget the fear that prevailed at the time. Polio is virtually nonexistent
today, but much of that fear persists, and there is a popular belief that
immunization can be credited with eliminating the disease. That's not
surprising, considering the high-powered campaign that promoted the vaccine,
but the fact is that no credible scientific evidence exists that the vaccine
caused polio to disappear. As noted earlier, it also disappeared in other parts
of the world where the vaccine was not so extensively used.
What is important to parents of this generation is the evidence that points
to mass inoculation against polio as the cause of most remaining cases of the
disease. In September 1977 Jonas Salk, the developer of the killed polio virus
vaccine, testified along with other scientists to that effect. He said that
most of the handful of polio cases which had occurred in the US since the 197Os
probably were the by-product of the live polio vaccine that is in standard use
in the United States.
Meanwhile, there is an ongoing debate among the immunologists regarding the
relative risks of killed virus vs. live virus vaccine. Supporters of the killed
virus vaccine maintain that it is the presence of live virus organisms in the
other product that is responsible for the polio cases that occasionally appear.
Supporters of the live virus type argue that the killed virus vaccine offers
inadequate protections and actually increases the susceptibility of those
vaccinated.
This offers me a rare opportunity to be comfortably neutral. .I believe that
both factions are right and that use of either of the vaccines will increase,
not diminish, the possibility that your child will contract the disease.
In short, it appears that the most effective way to protect your child from
polio is to make sure that he doesn't get the vaccine!
East West Journal November 1984.
ALL
INFORMATION, DATA, AND MATERIAL CONTAINED, PRESENTED, OR PROVIDED HERE IS FOR
GENERAL INFORMATION PURPOSES ONLY AND IS NOT TO BE CONSTRUED AS REFLECTING THE KNOWLEDGE
OR OPINIONS OF THE PUBLISHER, AND IS NOT TO BE CONSTRUED OR INTENDED AS
PROVIDING MEDICAL OR LEGAL ADVICE. THE DECISION WHETHER OR NOT TO
VACCINATE IS AN IMPORTANT AND COMPLEX ISSUE AND SHOULD BE MADE BY YOU, AND YOU
ALONE, IN CONSULTATION WITH YOUR HEALTH CARE PROVIDER.