" A growing grassroots movement is pushing for more states to require the shot. Currently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends Menactra for kids ages 11 to 18, but only 12 percent of teenagers got the vaccine in 2006. Many of those advocating for mandatory vaccinations are parents, including Frankie Milley, who have lost children to meningitis. Nine years ago, her 18-year-old son, Ryan, died of the disease, and since then, she has worked in her home state of Texas to make meningitis education available to all families. She also supported a bill currently being considered by the Texas Legislature that would require college students to get the vaccine.....Others believe parents should be able to choose which vaccinations they - or their children - receive. Education about the vaccination is vital, but families should know the risks and be able to make their own decisions, says Dr. John Dorman, a committee member of that same American College Health Association (ACHA) committee and a clinical professor of medicine at Stanford University…..Barbara Loe Fisher, president and co-founder of the National Vaccine Information Center, believes more attention should be drawn to potential hazards. Her Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit works on the prevention of injuries and deaths caused by vaccinations. "I just I don't understand why we have to force people," Fisher says. "We should make [vaccinations] available at low or no cost, but forcing people is another issue." - Melissa Dahl, MSNBC (September 26, 2007)
" We need to get our priorities straight when it comes to mandating or requiring vaccines. When there is a fatal disease that is easily prevented by a safe vaccine, the shot ought to win out every time over our dislike of being told what to do.....The Centers for Disease Control recommends that everyone ages 11 to 18 should get [Menactra], as well as those headed off to live in college dorms or going into the military. But in 2006, only 12 percent of teenagers got the vaccine. So why isn't everyone in this age group getting vaccinated? The answers are the same ones that continue to haunt vaccines - unjustified safety concerns, resistance to mandates and cost.....Americans are generally leery of requiring or mandating vaccines. They value informed choice. But do you really want to leave an issue as important as vaccination left up to busy college freshmen to think about? Menectra is safe, so it's hard to know why anyone living in a dorm or close quarters would not want to get vaccinated.....If you don't mandate vaccines then insurers often won't pay for them. In our screwy world of health care, mandates have more to do with reimbursement then they do the police blocking access to the dorm until you show your vaccination card....Sometimes choice ought to yield to common sense and evidence….- Arthur Caplan, Ph.D., MSNBC (September 6, 2007)
"According to a survey of 650 patients published last week in Drug Safety, a peer-reviewed journal, doctors frequently ignored or dismissed patients' concerns about [statin] side effects. The study suggests this pattern of reaction goes beyond statins to other drugs. When doctors fail to recognize a patient's symptoms as drug side effects, more than that patient's care is put at risk. Because the doctor makes no "adverse event report" to the Food and Drug Administration, the regulatory agency may underestimate the problem, and other doctors and patients may assume the drug is safer than it is....patients surveyed said their doctors rarely linked their symptoms to statins -- even when the symptoms were well-documented as side effects. "Overwhelmingly, it was the patient that initiated that conversation" making the connection between the statin and their symptoms, [survey author] Golomb said. Many doctors instead attributed the symptoms to the normal aging process, denied their connection to statins or dismissed the symptoms altogether -- missing opportunities to switch their patients' prescriptions or otherwise mitigate the side effects, Golomb said....The findings raise important concerns about American drug safety monitoring, said Harvard Medical School professor Jerry Avorn…." - Ishani Ganguli, The Washington Post (August 28, 2007)
"The number of serious adverse drug events reported to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) more than doubled between 1998 and 2005, as did deaths associated with adverse drug events, according to a report in the September 10 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine .....The overall relative increase was four times faster than the growth in total U.S. outpatient prescriptions, which grew in the same period from 2.7 billion to 3.8 billion," the authors write. A total of 1,489 drugs were associated with adverse events, but a subset of 51 drugs that each had 500 or more reports in any year accounted for 203,957 or 43.6 percent of the total adverse event reports in the study....."Contrary to our expectations, drugs related to safety withdrawals were a modest share of all reported events and declined in importance over time," the authors write....."Among the most frequently reported drugs associated with fatal events, we observed a disproportionate contribution of pain medications and drugs that modify the immune system." ......These data show a marked increase in reported deaths and serious injuries associated with drug therapy over the study period," they conclude. "The results highlight the importance of this public health problem and illustrate the need for improved systems to manage the risks of prescription drugs." - Science Daily (September 10, 2007)
Barbara Loe Fisher Commentary:
After 25 years, the public debate about forced vaccination has become a passionate dialogue about children who have been hurt or died from infectious diseases and children who have been hurt or died from reactions to mandated vaccines. Mothers and fathers, armed with a memory of watching a beloved child regress into poor health after complications from an infectious disease or complications from a vaccination, describe how their children died or became crippled mentally and physically.
The only difference between them is that parents of children, whose injuries or deaths were due to infectious disease complications, are supported in their grief by influential leaders in academic medicine, government health agencies and the pharmaceutical industry while parents of children, whose injuries or deaths were due to vaccine complications, are ignored or criticized by opinion makers in society for speaking out about their grief. An injury or death, whether it is caused by a disease or a vaccine, is tragic and yet the response by society is different in large part because those who promote mandatory use of vaccines refuse to acknowledge or take any responsibility for the reality of vaccine induced injuries and deaths.
Doctors In Denial About Pharmaceutical Product Reactions
It is not new for doctors to stubbornly deny that medical interventions they prescribe for people cause harm. Blood letting, treating syphilis with arsenic and mercury, lobotomies, and prescribing thalidomide for morning sickness are just a few examples of medical treatments recommended by doctors over the centuries which have ended up crippling and killing people. As more prescription drugs and vaccines are produced by industry for doctors to routinely prescribe – or mandate - there are more drug and vaccine reactions being experienced by the people who follow their doctors’ orders. And the more people are being hurt, the deeper doctors retreat into denial.
Last month, a patient survey published in the journal, Drug Safety, found that doctors frequently ignored or dismissed concerns about side effects of prescribed statin drugs, which are supposed to lower cholesterol. The survey authors remarked “Person after person spontaneously [told] us that their doctors told them that symptoms like muscle pain couldn’t have come from the drug. We were surprised at how prevalent that experience was.”
Instead of investigating and taking their patient’s reports of statin-related illness seriously, the prescribing doctors either dismissed as unimportant the complaints by patients that they were suffering pain and “problems with memory or attention, or tingling or numbness in their hands and feet” or attributed these symptoms to “the normal aging process.” One Harvard Medical School professor observed “We already know that there is horrendous underreporting of [prescription drug] side effects. Ninety to 99 percent of serious side effects are not reported by doctors.”
The notorious underreporting by doctors of negative patient health outcomes after prescription drug use was highlighted by a report this week from the Institute for Safe Medication Practices, which revealed that the number of serious adverse drug events and deaths reported to the FDA more than doubled between 1998 and 2005. Most of the reaction reports were associated with drugs that remained on the market and were not withdrawn for safety reasons. The authors concluded that “The results highlight the importance of this public health problem and illustrate the need for improved systems to manage the risk of prescription drugs.” If less than 10 percent of all doctors do report prescription drug-associated health problems, then this recent doubling of reaction reports indicates a real problem, with many doctors denying the real risks of prescription drugs.
Doctors in Denial About Vaccine Reactions
Most doctors also fail to report serious health problems following vaccination to the federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). The VAERS functions as a voluntary reporting system even though the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 mandated that doctors report hospitalizations, injuries and deaths (there were no legal sanctions attached to failing to report). Because vaccines are given to healthy people, the psychological and emotional barriers for doctors to admit that government mandated vaccines are causing harm is even greater than the reluctance of doctors to admit that drugs they prescribe for sick people are causing harm.
There have been estimates that fewer than 10 percent, even as low as 1 to 4 percent, of adverse events which occur after vaccine use are ever reported to VAERS by doctors giving vaccines. Because doctors have advocated that vaccines be mandated, the numbers of doctors who report reactions to mandated vaccines is probably even less than the numbers of doctors who report prescription drug reactions. (The reporting sensitivities of two passive surveillance systems for vaccine adverse events. Am J Public Health 1995; 85:1706-9.; Braun M. Vaccine adverse event reporting system (VAERS): usefulness and limitations. John’s Hopkins Bloomburg School of Public Health. Food and Drug Administration, Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. The clinical impact of adverse event reporting. MedWatch. October 1996.)
Doctors denying the reality of pharmaceutical product risks is a big problem when a newly licensed vaccine is promoted by federal health officials for mass use. Immediately other “experts” in academia, government and industry start beating the drums for states to mandate use of the new vaccine. Most frequently, the strategy used is to talk about serious complications of the disease while denying the vaccine has any serious complications.
Case in point: meningococcal disease and Menactra vaccine.
Meningococcal Disease
Meningococcal disease, which involves inflammation of the covering of the brain or spinal cord, is a serious bacterial infection that occurs rarely in the US. Out of our population of 300 million people, it is estimated to affect between 1400 and 2800 American children and adults (.05-1.1 per 100,000) per year. Death is estimated to occur in 10-14 percent of victims and leave 11-19 percent with chronic disability, including brain damage and loss of limbs. There are 13 meningococcal organism subgroups and five serotypes are responsible for nearly all cases of the disease worldwide: A, B, C, Y and W-135. Serotypes B, C and Y cause the majority of all cases in America. (http://0www.cdc.gov.mill1.sjlibrary.org/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5407a1.htm)
As many as 20 percent of all people carry the bacteria in the back of the nose and throat at any given time, especially in the winter, but remain healthy and asymptomatic. Transmission of the bacteria requires exchange of saliva or nasal secretions between people and so kissing, sharing eating utensils and other close personal contact is required.
It is unknown why only a very small number of people, who carry or come into contact with meningococcal bacteria, develop serious disease. Factors that affect the immune system’s ability to fight off infection are important and people at increased risk for the disease are those living in crowded and unsanitary conditions such as prisons; those with chronic illness or who have had recent respiratory infections; and those who drink alcohol and smoke or are exposed to smoke.
Symptoms of meningococcal disease can develop and move quickly: high fever, severe headache; neck stiffness and pain, especially when attempting to touch chin to chest; nausea and vomiting; extreme fatigue; unconsciousness; confusion and irritability; inability to look at bright lights; convulsions. In babies, symptoms of meningococcal disease are very similar to symptoms of brain inflammation complications after vaccination: high pitched screaming with arching back; staring expression; cold hands and feet; bulging fontanel, and unresponsiveness/inability to wake the baby.
Early diagnosis and antibiotic treatment of meningococcal disease are key to preventing severe complications that end in death and disability.
Menactra Vaccine
Menactra vaccine marketed by Sanofi was licensed in 2005 and immediately the CDC recommended it for universal use by 11 year old children entering sixth grade and 18 year olds entering college. This year, in an effort to increase vaccine uptake, the CDC directed doctors to give 40 million children between the ages of 11 and 18 a dose of Menactra, which costs between $85 and $100 per shot.
Menactra protects against serotypes A, C, Y and W-135. However, the vaccine does not contain serotype B, which causes about one-third of all cases of meningococcal disease in the US. and more than 50 percent of cases in young infants. Therefore, in terms of preventing meningococcal disease in America, Menactra is ineffective 30 to 50 percent of the time, depending upon age.
Menactra was evaluated by Sanofi in about 7,600 individuals aged 11-55 years in clinical trials comparing Menommune and Menactra vaccines and were followed up for 7 days; 28 days and 6 months. Vaccine adverse reactions among 11-18 year olds in clinical trials cited in the product manufacturer insert include local pain, swelling and redness (10-59%); headache (35%); fatigue (30%); aching joints (17%); diarrhea (12%); loss of appetite (10%); chills and fever (5-7%); vomiting (2%); and rash (1%). There have also been reports of vasovagal syncope (collapse); facial palsy; transverse myelitis; urticaria, and musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders, including myalgia. (http://www.blogger.com/(http://www.fda.gov/cber/label/mpdtsan033007LB.pdf).). Two deaths have been reported to VAERS after receipt of Menactra.
After five cases of Guillain Barre Syndrome were reported to VAERS in 2005, the FDA issued a warning for parents and doctors monitoring of vaccine recipients for signs of GBS. (http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2005/NEW01238.html) By October 2006, 15 cases of GBS had been reported. (http://www.fda.gov/cber/safety/gbs102006.htm). While federal health officials suggested the possibility of “a small increased risk of GBS” following receipt of Menactra, the implication was that most of the GBS cases occurring after Menactra were unrelated to the vaccine.
On August 15, 2007, the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) issued a report analyzing reports of GBS and other serious adverse events to VAERS after individuals received HPV (Gardasil) vaccine alone or administered simultaneously with Menactra. (http://www.nvic.org/Diseases/HPV/HPV_Vaccine_Safety_Report_-_Part_III_(081507_revised)[1].pdf) NVIC found a more than 1,000 percent statistically significant increased risk of reports of GBS to VAERS when Gardasil was administered simultaneously with Menactra. When Menactra was given simultaneously with Gardasil, NVIC also found a statistically significant increased risk of reports of other serious adverse events to VAERS:
· Respiratory problem reports increased by 114 percent;
· cardiac problem reports increased by 118 percent;
· neuromuscular and coordination problem reports increased by 234 percent;
· convulsions and central nervous system problem reports increased by 301 percent;
· reports of injuries from falls after unconsciousness (vasovagal syncope) increased by 674 percent;
Menactra and Gardasil were never studied in clinical trials to evaluate safety when both vaccines were given simultaneously.
The Bottom Line: The Disease and the Vaccine Have Risks
Both meningococcal disease and Menactra vaccine pose serious health risks. Your risk of contracting an infectious disease and dying or suffering long term health consequences depends upon the risk of exposure to the organism causing the disease, your genetic susceptibility and your general health that affects the ability of your immune system to deal with the challenge. You take a risk of suffering a vaccine reaction when you get vaccinated and that risk can be lesser or greater depending upon the vaccine(s) involved, your genetic susceptibility and your general health that affects the ability of your immune system to deal with the challenge.
Calls for Mandatory Vaccination with Menactra
In America, there are M.D.’s and Ph.D.’s who have placed themselves in positions of influence in academic and medical institutions, industry and government and who serve as advocates for mandatory vaccination. Some of these pro-forced vaccination proponents are vaccine developers and patent holders or consultants for drug companies that make and sell vaccines. Others are simply ideologically opposed to the concept that individuals have a right to informed consent to medical interventions, such as vaccination, which carry a risk of injury or death. These pro-forced vaccinators favor empowering government officials to use the heel of the boot of the State to compel citizens against their will to take vaccine risks with their lives and the lives of their children.
A common tactic used to advocate for mandatory vaccination is to deny that vaccines carry risks or, if they do, they are so minimal they are unworthy of anyone’s concern. If pro-forced vaccinators ever do acknowledge that “rare” injuries or deaths occur after vaccination, they usually invoke the utilitarian “greater good” defense to justify the “rare” casualties of forced vaccination policies.
This ignorant a priori denial of vaccine risks in order to justify forced vaccination makes it impossible, of course, for pro-forced vaccinators to ever admit vaccines carry significant risks. It is even harder for them to admit that genetic factors may play a role in making the vaccine risk greater for some than others because that would mean that mandatory vaccination is a de facto selection of the genetically vulnerable for sacrifice. And we don’t have to look too far back in history to realize what happens when the State gets into the business of deciding whose DNA is worthy of survival.
Which is it, Arthur? Informed Consent or Violating Human Rights?
Arthur Caplan got his Ph.D. in the history and philosophy of science at Columbia University and serves as a professor of bioethics for University of Pennsylvania. He is also a consultant for GlaxoSmithKline and commentator for MSNBC.
In 1992 Caplan wrote about forced medical experimentation by doctors on captive people in concentration camps during World War II, including typhus vaccine experiments. At the time, Caplan defended the Nuremberg Code, which was created by the judges of the Nuremberg Tribunal who presided over The Doctor’s Trial at which doctors were charged with crimes against humanity. The doctors on trial used a “greater good” utilitarian defense to justify the biomedical experiments they performed without the informed consent of their captives, saying they did it to further scientific knowledge and “benefit humanity.”
Caplan said “Those who created the [Nuremberg] Code realized that they had to find a powerful moral foundation for rejecting the crass utilitarianism so much in evidence in the arguments used by those on trial to justify their actions.The Nuremberg Code explicitly rejects the moral argument that the creation of benefits for many justifies the sacrifice of the few. Every experiment, no matter how important or valuable, requires the express voluntary consent of the individual. The right of individuals to control their bodies trumps the interest of others in obtaining knowledge or benefits from them,” said Caplan. (Caplan AL. The Doctor's Trial and Analogies to the Holocaust in Contemporary Bioethical Debates. In: Annas GJ, Grodin MA, eds. The Nazi Doctors and the Nuremberg Code. New York, NY: Oxford University Press; 1992: 258-275).
It was a ringing endorsement for the human right to informed consent by subjects participating in medical experiments. And although Caplan’s remarks addressed horrific medical experimentation performed on unconsenting individuals during the Holocaust, his statement appropriately suggests a broader rejection of the “argument that the creation of benefits for many justifies the sacrifice of the few” when it comes to forced medical risk taking.
In March 2005, Caplan advocated that Terri Sclavo’s husband be allowed to disconnect her feeding tube, which would lead to the death of his severely brain damaged wife. Defending the right of legal guardians to exercise informed consent for those who cannot exercise it themselves, Caplan said “We have had a consensus in this country that you have a right to refuse any and all medical care that you might not want. Christian Scientists do not have to accept medical care, nor do Jehovah’s Witnesses need to accept blood transfusions, or fundamentalist Protestants who would rather pray than get chemotherapy. Those who are disabled and cannot communicate have the exact same rights. Their closest family members have the power to speak for them.” (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7231440/page/2)
Despite his earlier endorsement of the right for individuals or their guardians to exercise informed consent to medical interventions, lately Caplan has joined his University of Pennsylvania colleague, rotavirus vaccine patent holder Paul Offit, M.D., and become a vocal advocate of forced vaccination. Last week, in an MSNBC opinion piece Caplan sneered “We need to get our priorities straight when it comes to mandating or requiring vaccines. When there is a fatal disease that is easily prevented by a safe vaccine, the shot ought to win out every time over our dislike of being told what to do.”
Then Caplan went one step further. In an article in a recent Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, he said “States should encourage parents to get their homeschooled students vaccinated through enacting the same laws as those for public school students. This could be done by enforcing current laws through neglect petitions or by requiring that children be immunized before participating in school sponsored programs.” (Donna Khalili, Arthur Caplan (2007). Off the Grid: Vaccinations Among Homeschooled Children. The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics 35 (3), 471–477).)
Many parents homeschool their children because they want to provide them with a superior learning environment, which includes being protected from unnecessary toxic exposures from pharmaceutical products like vaccines. Other parents have children who are already vaccine injured and are trying to protect them from further harm. Children homeschooled from birth are among the brightest and healthiest in the country and often get scholarships to college, precisely because they have not been over-vaccinated and do not suffer with ADHD, learning disabilities, autism, asthma and diabetes like their highly vaccinated public school counterparts.
The forced vaccinators are plenty worried about the fact that the unvaccinated children in America are brighter and healthier than the highly vaccinated. They cannot tolerate that comparison and are apparently willing to do whatever it takes to turn government employees into the Vaccine Police, who can knock on parents' doors and charge them with child neglect for failing to salute CDC officials smartly and inject their children with 56 doses of 16 vaccines by age 12.
Any Man Who Takes the Liberty of Another…Is Bound to Become a Tyrant
American writer and philosopher, H.K. Mencken, who was an elitist critic of democracy and religious beliefs and many values Americans hold dear, was nevertheless a champion of personal liberty. His words are truer today than they have ever been, as Americans are assaulted by attacks on personal freedom in the area of health care choices by M.D./Ph.D. ideologues. Mencken said:
“I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman’s club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave.”
Americans tend to take their individual freedoms for granted, as if our nation’s founders guaranteed them for us in the U.S. Constitution. Unfortunately, in the Age of Scientism, it is the arrogant, power-hungry pharmaceutical product peddlers hiding behind letters written after their names who are working diligently to take those freedoms away. How much longer are we going to let them do it?
If the State can tag, track down and force individuals against their will to be injected with biologicals of unknown toxicity today, there will be no limit on which individual freedoms the State can take away in the name of the greater good tomorrow.
i LOVE this blog. your commentaries are excellent and so well informed; you really help me sift through information quickly that would take me FOREVER to sift through. thank you!
ReplyDeleteI remember a couple of years back, exploring the VAERS website to locate the reports.
ReplyDeleteIt was at first a shock to me that the data was extremely difficult to find, in fact it was all but buried in the website. I would have expected this information to be readily available and easy to access.
Indeed, there is a lot of money being made by drug companies. I work in a health care environment and frequently run into drug reps. They seem, for the most part, to all have the same motivation, as their sales bonuses attest to. A selfish industry that promotes the broad use of medicines without unbiased checks and balances. Drug companies have deep pockets. They frequently swarm our hospital, dying to sell their drugs, feeding the staff on plates, napkins, boasting their drug logo and info.
Justice, I pray!
Doctors know which side their bread is buttered on. If the real truth were to be revealed in much the same way these miracle durgs are advertised Doctors would only be useful for Traumma. No more so called Specialists. No more wierd chemical cocktails placed in our bodies, that do more harm than good. Without the useless drugs, and the "Frankstein Doctors," we would be much better off.
ReplyDeleteAfter all the body if properly cared for, and prepared, does and will heal itself. If you cut your hand, will it not heal?
I agree with your concern about vaccines but do you have any references, studies or evidence (other than your own children and those of your friends) for your statement that:
ReplyDelete"homeschooled Children homeschooled from birth are among the brightest and healthiest in the country and often get scholarships to college, precisely because they have not been over-vaccinated and do not suffer with ADHD, learning disabilities, autism, asthma and diabetes like their highly vaccinated public school counterparts."
These are the kind of out of the blue, unsupported statements that hurt the case for genuine concern about vaccine risks and turn off many otherwise intelligent and interested parents and doctors.
Actually, if you google homeschooled kids, you can find quite a lot of research that shows that, on average, they have higher test scores and do better on SAT's than standard-schooled kids.
ReplyDeleteAs for being healthier, I can't find research, but since they are not exposed to viruses the way kids are in classrooms, it isn't an untoward assumption. Anecdotal evidence suggests kids often start getting sick more when they start school (I mean cold, flu, chickenpox,etc. not serious illnesses). They are healthier by virtue of less exposure to illness, not necessarily by other lifestyle practices.
For more information on vaccines, use video.google.com and search for
ReplyDelete"Bayer AIDS", "In Lies We Trust: The CIA, Hollywood and Bioterrorism", and "Endgame".
My son is 13 yrs old. He moved to SC and was given menactra. He collapsed 3 days later went into a seizure, they sent him to the first hospital where they stopped his breathing trying to stop the seizure. The seizure was 4 hours full blown, 36 hours it lasted. My son was in cicu for 4 days in an induced coma. The doctors found viral meningitis. They informed me he was starting to go septic. Thank God he woke up on the 4th day! My son has never had a virus, an ear infection, not even a fever in his entire life. Then he gets this shot and almost dies!
ReplyDeleteyou people are ridiculous. of course vaccines have side effects - anything you put in your body has the potential for an adverse effect. but you, the author, are being extremely irresponsible by telling parents not to vaccinate their children. we vaccinate children because the risk of getting the illness and the consequences of that are so much worse than the risk of an adverse effect from the vaccine itself. you people have never lived through polio, or tetanus, or even measles... the risk of having lifelong consequences from those illnesses is SO much worse than the risk of vaccine side effects. and those diseases are far from gone from this world, and even this country.
ReplyDeletein the end, you can put your own child at risk if you want, but at least be responsible to the rest of society. a colleague of mine (a pediatrician) tried to convince a patient's parents to vaccinate many times over and they refused to do it. eventually, their daughter did come down with measles. unfortunately, before the rash broke out it looked like the common cold, so they took her to the doctor's office, where she played in the waiting room with a child who was getting chemotherapy for cancer. guess what happened next? the healthy child with measles went through a tough illness but came out ok; the child with cancer died just a few weeks later of measles-related complications. it's sickening to think that all of you are so irresponsible that you want to take chances with your own children's lives, and the lives of other people's children! GET REAL. vaccines save lives. start being really informed and responsible for a change.
and by the way, the pediatricians who vaccinate your children hardly make any money off of it. we make the least money of any specialty. i know nurses who make more money than i do. and i've never received or taken anything from a pharma company - most doctors and institutions are moving away from that. well-child visits and vaccinations are not really all that profitable - but we do them because we want our kids to grow up healthy and strong. it's because we have our patients' best interests at heart. there's no other incentive for us to give vaccines!
ReplyDeleteif all you conspiracy theorists think you can do a better job as a doctor to your children, then go to medical school and get trained yourself. then see what you think. you NEED a reality check. who are you going to take your unvaccinated child to see when they come down with pneumococcal meningitis? or measles? what is shocking is that by being adamantly against vaccines - and the whole medical profession - you are putting your own AND other people's children at risk! why do you want to hurt children instead of helping them?
No one is saying that the doctors are profiting directly, but certainly the pharma companies ARE!
ReplyDeleteAs for the argument that unvaccinated people are endangering others ... well that is RIDICULOUS.
If you truly believe that these vaccines WORK, then all you have to do is have your child vaccinated, and they're not in danger at all, right?!?
This child undergoing chemo that ended up contracting measles ... weren't their parents at fault there under your argument. If THAT kid had been vaccinated, it would NOT have gotten sick, right?!?
If you believe vaccines really work, then the only people at risk are those that are NOT vaccinated. And we each have a right to risk ourselves, what business is it of yours?
Why do you believe that forcing a risk of side effects upon millions of people is ok?
Especially when even these vaccine producers don't truly know everything about their product. It used to be that you got these vaccines ... like once or twice as a child .. for a 'lifetime' of immunity. Now they come up with 'boosters' for older children and adults.
Why would I need a booster, if the vaccine protection was lifelong. Well, maybe because those creating and testing these vaccines don't 'know everything'?!?!
If they'd just admit that to start with, instead of lying about the risks. You have clueless people taking a risk by getting the vaccine, only to be 30-50% protected?!? I doubt anyone told them that they still have a 50% chance of getting menningitis?
One of the reasons why this debate is so contentious is that so many people can't seem to understand statistics. rdy, even Ms. Fisher states that the vaccine is "ineffective 30-50% of the time" which means it IS effective 50-70% of the time.
ReplyDeleteAlso, you don't have a 50% chance of getting meningitis if you get the vaccine...you have a 50% chance that the vaccine won't protect you from the disease if you are in a situation where you would have normally contracted it. However, considering the incidence of the disease is so low, even if it only works 50% of the time, you still have only about a 1/200,000 chance of getting sick from this germ. That's a lot better than 50%!!!
You misinterpreted the statistics and misstated the facts as a result.
Ms. Fisher is somewhat guilty of that as well. While serotype B isn't covered by the vaccine, it is most prevalent in the infant/toddler age groups--that's the group for which the vaccine would be ~50% ineffective. However, Menactra is not approved for that age group anyway, so when you're evaluating it, the 70% effective number is the closest to reality. Maybe that doesn't change your mind, but at least you'll be making a decision based on real numbers rather than erroneous ones.
Re: the child on Chemo who got the measles....the measles vaccine is a LIVE virus vaccine, and as such is contraindicated for patients who are immunosuppressed. It's quite possible that this child was not eligible for a measles vaccination and is totally dependent on the control of the disease based on the high prevalence of immunization in the community to protect him/herself. So the cancer child's parents were not necessarily being irresponsible by not vaccinating--no pediatrician would have done it even if they had asked.
OTOH, the larger issue of whether protection from an admittedly devastating but also very rare disease is one that should be MANDATED is very legitimate (imho). Sure, the side effects are rare, but then again, so is the disease. I think it's reasonable to debate the relative merits and risks of the vaccine. I just don't think we should be doing it based on false impressions based on flawed interpretations of statistics.
To Dr. Anonymous:
ReplyDeleteI'm just wondering why a child on chemo would be in a regular clinic or waiting room to begin with. Anyone I have ever known on chemo has to be careful about who they are around and a nurse I know who works with cancer patients also has missed quite a few days of work because she shouldn't come in when she is sick or thinks she may be getting sick. A waiting room, especially to a pediatrician or family doctor can be a very germy place. Every time I have taken my kids in for a well-check they end up coming home sick. That is, of course, if it was never the vaccines that caused their illnesses... But they are germy places, sick people are there because it's a doctor's office! I'm not going to say it's anyone's fault because if the measles hadn't been floating around, it could've easily been something else.
The author isn't telling people not to get vaccinated or to not vaccinate their children. She wants people to make well-informed choices and it should be a choice! You're saying that every child should be vaccinated in order to protect not only themselves, but those around them. I think I will make the decision as to whether or not my child will be sacrificed for that cause.
And for the record, both of my kids are completely up to date on their vaccinations. Since my youngest had a bad reaction to a vax that the doctor refused to recognize as related, I will be more careful with any future children I may have. It's easy to push for vaccinations when you're not a parent or no harm has ever come to your child from them, but that's a lot like those people who have smoked for 50 years and not gotten lung cancer or who rode without carseats and seatbelts and "turned out ok." Just because it turned out ok for you doesn't mean it will be that way for everyone and when it comes to vaccinations there are certainly two sides. It's just that no one wants to listen to the other side.
Also, maybe you should be the one to tell a parent whose child died because of a vaccination that what happened to their child is SO much better than the lifelong consequences of the illness they could've had. I'm sure it will bring them a great deal of comfort.
My daughter now has Gullian Barre syndrome after being vaccinated for with menactura before she left for college. Thank God she did not end up in the hospital but has continually been bothered by tingling in her feet and at times her hands. But 2 weeks ago, two students came down with mennigitis at her college. However one of them had the vaccine and still got mennigitis. She is now not able to receive any other kind of vaccatine. We watch her closely and make sure she gets her rest and eats healthy.
ReplyDeleteLet's start this by saying, EVERY PARENT HAS THE RIGHT TO BE THOUROUGHLY INFORMED! Education is key, in any choices we make,Knowledge is power,the power to choose and make informed choices in all facets of our lives. I myself have seven children all but 3 are fully vaccinated. My education about vaccines started w/my first child in 1993, she was a preemie(6wks early)after looking at her tiny body and seeing the amount of vaccines administered. I chose to immunize them at the age of 2, all but my 5th child who Ichose to start at 2mo. shame on me she has been my sickest. I will never negate the importance of vaccines, they are important in preventing certain diseases, what I would like to know is why we as parents/doctors can't rally together to enforce the needed cleaning up of all vaccines, there is NO need for all these neurotoxins and bi-products found in them..if you got rid of these"fillers" would not the only side effect be the disease itself..and we would in fact "know" what shot caused the side effect.
ReplyDeleteI vaccinate my children even though I know there are risks in doing so. There is no question that vaccines are one of modern day medicines greatest success stories, but with out a doubt there are side effects for some individual including death. If my child was immune compromised (even if it meant that had a cold at the doctors visit they were supposed to get vaccinated) I would not vaccinate. If they had cancer or some other autoimmune disease, there is no way I would vaccinate! I think it would be too much for there already compromised immune systems to have to process a vaccine. If I was a parent of a child with autism I don't think I would want to vaccinate my other children for the fear that they may have a genetic susceptibility to damage to their immune systems from vaccines. Then there is the whole concern over newer vaccines without enough data to know if there are serious side effects (and what population provides the data while we wait for the results?) If your children are healthy and there is no immediate family history of cancer, autism etc. then I feel we should vaccinate our children (not for std's or other unproven vaccines and definitely not for the flu if they contain mercury derivatives) But I also feel doctors should be delivering 5 different vaccines at one time! To dangerous for a little babies immune system, and if a child had a reaction, how would you know to which vaccine? In any case every time I have my children vaccinated I hold my breath and pray God protects them.
ReplyDeleteOne part of your analysis does not make sense. The following paragraph: "Menactra protects against serotypes A, C, Y and W-135. However, the vaccine does not contain serotype B, which causes about one-third of all cases of meningococcal disease in the US. and more than 50 percent of cases in young infants. Therefore, in terms of preventing meningococcal disease in America, Menactra is ineffective 30 to 50 percent of the time, depending upon age."
ReplyDeleteMy understanding is that infants are not given the vaccine at all based on CDC recommendations, so regardless of how the vaccine is structured, it would not change infant mortalities. With regards to comparing differences types of the disease in older children and adults, you are misusing the statistisc. You actually need to evaluate the effectiveness of the vaccine based on the cases per 1000 people before the vaccine was first given versus after. Using only the number of current cases in each type of the disease paints a false picture. Actually, the fact that so many cases are of the one type that is not vaccinated is evidence that the vaccine may be working properly for the other types. The only way to really know is to compare the before and after.
For a hypothetical example of how the stats should and should not be used, let's say that before, there were 100 cases of each of the five types of the disease (500 cases total), and now once the vaccine was introduced, there are 5 cases of the four types for which we vaccinate and still 100 cases for the one type against which we do not vaccinate (120 cases total). If you only looked at the current state of affairs (post-vaccine), you would say, holy cow, they are not vaccinating for the disease type that causes 100 out of ever 120 cases! 83% if cases are not aided by the vaccine!
But this would be misleading, because you need to make a comparison to the 500 cases that would have developed without the vaccine at all, which you cannot do simply by looking at current cases. If you did do the comparison correctly, you would see that it gets rid of 95% of cases for the four types it does vaccinate against and 76% of cases overall. Now these are just made-up numbers, but I am using them to show how misuse of statistics can misguide your understanding of what is happening. You need to compare the right stats. Thanks!
How do you prove your statement that homeschooled children are brighter and healthier than their counterparts ?
ReplyDeleteI had the Menactra vaccine on October 10th, hours after I had the vaccine I had the first of 28 seizures. I spent 11 days in the hospital and 8 in the pediatrics ICU. Every doctor in that hospital refused to admit that I had infact reacted to the Menactra vaccine. Rediculous!
ReplyDeleteMy child had a severe reaction to the Dtap vaccine when he was age 6. He had Epilepsy prior to the vaccination, but well controlled with Topamax -- only 5 seizures in the 4 years leading up the the vaccine. Immediately following the vaccine, he began having several tonic-clonic and tonic seizures a week, and sometimes several a day. This continued for 8 months, as he failed one med after another, and eventually ended up in ICU with 30 seizures in one weekend. In that 8 months, he lost his speech, developed autistic traits, had severe cognitive loss, and became aggressive. Even when the seizures were finally stopped with the Ketogenic Diet, he still has not regained his lost skills, he cannot attend a regular school because of his cognitive loss and aggressive behaviors. We lost our little boy to the vaccine. And now...he is 11, and we are being pushed to get the Tdap. If we refuse, he can't stay in the special school.
ReplyDeleteAs I write this my 29 year old Grad School applicant son is lying in bed 3rd day off from work because within a few days of the Menactra vaccine his body is going through many changes, Muscle fatigue, nausea and chills and muscle spasms and aches likened to fibro myalgia. NOTHING was different except this gawd damn unnecessary vaccine that caused all of this health issues. Doctor are complicit in making money for big Rx and that seems to be all anyone cares about, you do NOT cure illnesses by injecting people WITH the disease, it is much safer to deal with it if it should arise. This system is of the devil and nothing more.
ReplyDeleteI am LIVID that he was even forced ot take this damnable vaccine just to go to college. A stupid vaccine that their own tests show is ineffective 50% of the time when the risks of him catching anything is far less than the guarantee of a vaccine containing God only knows what is a guaranteed 50% for sure bad side effects.
Please pray that Brian, an otherwise healthy young man, gets over these symptoms and quickly if Lord wills it. Thanks,Michael
My daughter had the Menactra vaccine at 11:55 today,by 12:00 she collapsed on the floor in the drs.waiting room with her eyes wide open. She was unresponsive and I thought she was dead and then she began to have a seizure.I was told by the Dr. That this was normal. NORMAL? There is absolutely nothing normal about it. It took almost 2 hrs for her to regain full muscle control and to be able to sit up unassisted. She had tremors and couldn't maintain a normal no unless she was laying down. We had them file a report which they did but not without an argument. She has had a headache and fever all evening g and is extremely tired. I will probably be up most of the night checking on her. I am not an antivaxer but my two youngest will not be getting this one. Scariest day of my life and I've lived thru the 10 day old having open heart surgery.
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