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http://news.bmn.com/hmsbeagle/107/viewpts/letters
Below are selected Letters to the Editor received through
Feedback.
Updated July 20, 2001 B7 Issue 107
LYMErix vaccine
I read Pamela Weintraub’s article about the LYMErix
vaccine debate today with a fascinated horror because this article and all the
others like it, along with all the testimonials from my stricken peers, are my
nightmare come true. I was one of the test subjects for the vaccine back in the
fall and winter of 1994. I did not participate in the SmithKline Beecham study;
I was in the Connaught group, but the serum was the same and the testing situation
was also the same. The vaccine was advertised as harmless - I have the original
poster I responded to, to verify this. I volunteered because I was suffering
from an autoimmune disease that was scary and debilitating, but I was still
functional and wanted to stay that way.
I live in a highly endemic area and thought this would be
good not only for me, but for all those who were afraid to “live” because of
the fear of contracting Lyme. I was “screened” for Lyme approximately three
seconds before I received the vaccine. I became ill three days after the second
injection, and contacted the study people as they had required participants to
do. I was dismissed as having the flu without even being asked to return to the
hospital performing the research to be examined. This was in December 1994, and
I have never had a “well” day since. By the summer of 1995, I required knee
surgery and that was when the whole subject of Lyme came up again, by the
doctor who performed the surgery and informed me he found Lyme spirochetes in
my synovial fluid. This started me on a two-year odyssey to get treatment or
some sort of help from the medical profession. I was written off as a paranoid
lunatic who wanted to be sick. That was when my nightmare began - that this
vaccine would make it to the open market because no one would listen to me, and
thousands of others would wind up like me mentally and physically ill, unable
to work or have any sort of quality of life.
At my surgeon’s urging, I found a doctor willing to treat
me for Lyme and a lawyer willing to take on the drug company. I was not his
first client, just his latest one. I was on IV antibiotics for two years,
during which time I had surgery on my other knee and stopped working because I
was required to use a wheelchair. The New York City Board of Education, where I
was employed, did not want to accommodate me and I was too sick to fight them. My head cleared up from the IV, but my body
never felt better.
LYMErix hit the commercial market and I started getting
letters in droves from others suffering the same symptoms. The HLA-DR4 issue
arose and finally I got up the nerve to be tested for it. The test came back
positive. My lawsuit is stagnating because of the “causation” issue, and I
still get letters almost weekly from new vaccine sufferers asking me to give
them some encouragement. I have none. My last bone scan showed both ankles,
knees, shoulders, and wrists are completely destroyed by inflammatory disease.
An MRI of my back indicated I have the spine of a 80-year-old (I am 47), and now
my hips are starting to go.
If the test group had been studied honestly, with adverse
reactions being reported instead of brushed off, maybe LYMErix would not have
gotten FDA approval, which was reluctant at best. If I had not been written off
as a “psycho,” maybe more doctors would have considered that this vaccine might
not be something they wished to give to their patients. If the drug company was
not so big and rich, maybe they would spend less time trying to thwart the
lawyers suing on behalf of disabled clients and spend more of it searching for
an antidote to this crippling injection. I wouldn’t be lying in my bed making
wall hangings I have no room to hang; instead I would be back in the classroom,
where my students desperately are in need of dedicated people like me. Maybe if
my lawsuit were settled, I could afford to hire someone on my own to find an
antidote!
But the truth is that in this country, big companies rule
and people likeme
are just statistics, not living souls who are destined to a
life of hell
because of a vaccine that might or might not prevent Lyme disease.
The thing
that really slays me is Lyme is so downplayed anyway, why do
we even need a
preventative if we are to believe the “experts” who claim
there is only a 3 percent chance of contracting the disease in the first place,
and if one
does contract it, it is easily treated and “cured”?
Every time I hear of another victim, I feel personally
responsible. If I tell you I stopped sleeping in the summer of 1995 and haven’t
had a decent rest since, you can believe it. I am not nearly as crazy as the
experts would have you believe. There are at least 1,064 people who have had
the courage to come forward and attest to that.
·
Alison E. Schettini
July 8, 2001
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