More Required Vaccines and Bogus Whooping Cough Cases

"While there are a few exceptions, students who begin school without this [Tdap] vaccination will have two weeks from September 1 to get it or, legally, the schools will be obligated to exclude them from attending school, according to Claire Pospisil, spokesperson for the New York State Department of Health.....The reason for the new vaccine is simple: to protect the health of children and adults, Pospisil said. "We have had a widespread outbreak of pertussis or whooping cough in New York State throughout the previous year, 2006, and because of this, there will be a protective benefit against whooping cough if people are vaccinated," she explained....."The drug manufacturers have just approved a pertussis [vaccine] for adults," she noted....But according to Dr. Lawrence Palevsky, a holistic pediatrician at the Northport Wellness Center, the new immunization requirement, especially for pertussis, may be a bit premature...."I don't think true due diligence has been done to evaluate the potential neurological complications in children above seven years old who are given this vaccine"....According to Dr. Alan Sherr, chiropractor and director at the Northport Wellness Center, individuals who have not received any vaccinations may have a natural immunity to a particular virus. However, the case may be different for those who already have participated in routine vaccinations since infancy." - Michelle Gabrielle Centamore, Suffolk Life (August 22, 2007)

"A reported boom in U.S. whooping cough cases is now being questioned after health officials discovered a regularly used lab test misdiagnosed cases in suspected outbreaks in New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Tennessee. The false test results led thousands of people to take antibiotics unnecessarily and even caused a New Hampshire hospital to limit the number of patients admitted since hospital workers were thought to be infected....Government health officials say cases have tripled in the United States since 2001, with nearly 26,000 cases reported in 2005. Nearly half of those cases were diagnosed with the testing method now called into question, and that has raised doubts about the true number of cases......"It's been a roller coaster. Whoa, look at this big outbreak! Whoa, it wasn't really pertussis!" said Dr. William Schaffner, chairman of Vanderbilt University's department of preventive medicine." - Mike Stobbe, Associated Press (August 23, 2007)

Barbara Loe Fisher Commentary:

When public health authorities choose to scare us by hyping the dangers of infectious disease, like whooping cough (pertussis), the least we can expect is that they have gotten their scientific facts straight. The Keystone Cops act is not very reassuring: "Whoa, look at this big outbreak! Whoa, it wasn't really pertussis!".

For the last several years, public health officials have been beating the drums, warning us that whooping cough is on the rise despite a more than 95 percent uptake of pertussis (whooping cough) vaccine by all children entering kindergarten, who are required by most states to have 3-5 doses of DTaP (diphtheria- tetanus-acellular pertussis) vaccine before they can attend school. The CDC's solution has been to recommend yet another dose of pertussis vaccine via a booster Tdap shot for all 11-12 year old children. New York and other state health officials are in the process of persuading politicians to add Tdap to state mandatory vaccination laws. That "more is better" solution, say federal health officials, will finally stamp out whooping cough.

But now, we find out that many of the whooping cough cases reported in the "outbreaks" around the country, such as in New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Tennessee, were bogus cases because some "speedy" lab tests to confirm whooping cough give a false positive the majority of the time. So the reported tripling of whooping cough cases in the past five years may be a total fabrication and the push for children to get another booster dose of Tdap at 11-12 years old may not make any difference at all.

There are other infectious organisms, such as parapertussis, which cause respiratory disease that can mimic whooping cough and they are not covered in the Tdap vaccine. Lab diagnosis is critical to accurately confirming and treating whooping cough and it is unfortunate that it has taken so long to uncover the ineffectiveness of the lab test used to confirm many suspected whooping cough cases today.

But more importantly, the rush by federal health officials to add yet another booster dose of vaccine without carefully investigating why whooping cough is apparently occurring in a highly vaccinated child population does not inspire confidence in the evidence with which the CDC supports vaccine recommendations. Assumptions are a poor replacement for scientific evidence.
Equally concerning is the lack of scientific evidence supporting the safety of giving children entering puberty multiple vaccines, such as Tdap, meningococcal, HPV and chicken pox vaccine and others without long term studies evaluating the impact of pre-adolescent vaccination on brain and immune function. Today, the CDC recommends that, by age 11, children should have received 53-56 doses of 15 or 16 vaccines depending upon if the child is a boy or girl. Where are the safety studies that demonstrate this much vaccination leads to greater long term good health?

America's highly vaccinated children are in the midst of a chronic disease and disability epidemic, with millions of them suffering with learning disabilities, ADHD, autism, asthma, diabetes, inflammatory bowel disorder, severe food allergies and other kinds of brain and immune dysfunction that affected far fewer children in the past when far fewer vaccines were given to them. The last thing our sick children need now is one more vaccine.

Doctors of Scientism: "No Cure for Autism"

There's no cure for autism, and many parents are willing to believe anything if they come to think it could help their child." Mulick chaired a symposium on "Outrageous Developmental Disabilities Treatments" Aug. 20 in San Francisco at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association. The symposium included presentations by several of Mulick's students at Ohio State who participated in a graduate seminar on fad treatments in autism.....Some of the newer, more popular fad treatments for autism involve special diets or nutritional supplements. Megadoses of Vitamins C and B6 are popular, as well as supplements with fatty acids like omega-3s. A casein and/or gluten-free diet, which involves eliminating dairy and wheat products, has also gained favor with some parents. While many of these treatments have never been adequately studied, that doesn't mean they aren't promoted....Autism, like many conditions, has cycles in which symptoms get worse and then get better. Parents tend to search for treatments when symptoms are getting worse, and when their children get better - as they do in the normal course of disease - parents credit the new therapy. "It's natural to have this bias that the therapy you're trying has had some positive effect," he said. "People want to believe." - Science Daily, August 20, 2007

"An Associated Press review of records in Minnesota found that a doctor and a pharmacist on the eight-member state panel simultaneously got big checks - more than $350,000 to one - from pharmaceutical companies for speaking about their products. The two members said the money did not influence their work on the panel, and the lack of recorded votes in meeting minutes makes it difficult to track any link between the payments and policy. But ethical experts said the Minnesota data raise questions about the possibility of similar financial ties between the pharmaceutical industry and advisers in other states."In the absence of disclosure laws, there's certainly no way to know," said Jack Hoadley, a research professor specializing in Medicaid at Georgetown University in Washington. "There are a lot of physicians in general who have at least some contract or grant funding out of pharmaceutical companies, and additional (who) do speaking engagements." - Martiga Lohn, Associated Press (August 21, 2007)

"Direct-to-parent marketing of ADHD drugs - - most of which are stimulants -- has grown pervasive over the last few years, despite a United Nations treaty banning most of it. Use of such medications increased by more than 60% from 2001 to 2005, according to the International Narcotics Control Board. This month's homemaker-targeted magazines, such as Family Circle, Woman's Day and Redbook, feature advertising spreads for Vyvanse, Shire US Inc.'s new entry in the growing stable of ADHD medications...... Children in the U.S. are 10 times more likely to take a stimulant medication for ADHD than are kids in Europe. In fairness, children in Europe are also somewhat less likely to be diagnosed with ADHD because of a stricter set of criteria. But that doesn't nearly account for the difference in prescription rates. The U.S., the only nation to violate the U.N. treaty, consumes about 85% of the stimulants manufactured for ADHD...." - Karin Klein, Los Angeles Times (August 20, 2007)

"State laws requiring proof of vaccination at early school entry are key to the U.S. vaccination program and help ensure that no child is unvaccinated," the [MMWR] editorial concludes. "Higher percentages of children are up to date at kindergarten entry than at younger ages, suggesting that early school-entry laws help maintain high coverage and ensure completion of the vaccine doses recommended for children by ages 4-6 years." - Laurie Barclay, M.D., Medscape, August 17, 2007

Barbara Loe Fisher Commentary:

"There is no cure for autism" says pediatric psychologist James Mulick at a recent American Psychological Association (APA) conference where his Ohio State University grad students criticized parents of autistic children, who maintain their children's autism involves neuroimmune dysfunction that is treatable with nutrition and immune modulating therapies. It appears that some psychologists are afraid they will lose a good chunk of their business if they can't keep autistic children in chemical and behavior modification chains and out of the offices of enlightened health care professionals successfully treating autism another way.

Mulick is a proponent of the old and very expensive, long term Early Intensive Behavioral Intervention (EIBI) therapy performed by child psychologists on mentally retarded and autistic individuals, many times with simultaneous use of prescription drugs. Although this kind of intervention may work for some autistic children and parents, it is by no means the be-all and end-all of treatment for children who have experienced regressive autism.

How sad that doctors in teaching positions at major universities, such as Ohio State University, are instructing their young students to belittle parents, who search for non-toxic nutrition and supplement therapies to lessen their children's brain and immune system dysfunction. These Bettleheim wanna-bes cannot resist setting themselves up as high priests in the new Church of Scientism, where they preach a dogma that requires the promotion of pharmaceutical products and medical interventions sanctioned by the church they have created.

The high priests of Scientism feel threatened when they cannot convert those who refuse to believe and obey. Thus, the demonization of the unbelievers and a search for appropriate punishment begins. In this case, perhaps the idea that parents, who provide their autistic children with gluten and casein free food, should be legally prosecuted for "child medical abuse." This would allow the children to be made wards of the State so that doctors employed by the State could force them to drink cow's milk instead of soy milk, eat white bread instead of rice, take Ritalin instead of vitamin B and be subjected to extreme "behavior modification" techniques that would make a Marine beg for mercy. Our grandmothers may have given us an apple and a spoonful of cod liver oil every day to keep the doctor away, but the high priests of Scientism are going to make sure that vitamin and omega 3 supplements are branded "dangerous" so they can keep conning politicians into legally requiring babies to be injected with mercury and aluminum while convincing themselves that a little Prozac never hurt a toddler.

What really makes the Scientism devotees angry is that autism is not about bad mothering, as the late, great Bernie Rimland, Ph.D. demonstrated. It is not about "bad genes" as the parent bashing pediatric psychologists tell their students at Ohio State University. No, autism is mostly about loving parents allowing their perfectly normal, healthy babies to be subjected to 48 doses of 14 viral and bacterial vaccines at the hands of clueless pediatricians and then watching in horror as their babies regress into a spectrum of chronic brain and immune system dysfunction that finally ends with a diagnosis of "autism." And when enlightened health care professionals, who refuse to subscribe to the "incurable autism" myth, work with parents to provide healing nutritional and other natural therapies that lessen or sometimes totally eliminate the children's vaccine-induced brain and immune system dysfunction, the apostles of Scientism are both jealous and worried they will lose paying customers.

Too many doctors of medicine have made a Faustian bargain with the pharmaceutical industry. And slowly, the people are figuring out that medical science has been hijacked by ideologues, who pretend to love "scientific truth" but love power and money more.

Abraham Lincoln said "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time." It is time to take back our lives from drug and vaccine pushing doctors who worship at the alter of Scientism and exploit the people for power and profit.

NVIC Analysis Shows Greater Risk of GBS Reports

NVIC Analysis Shows Greater Risk of GBS Reports When
HPV Vaccine Is Given with Meningococcal and Other Vaccines

Washington, August 15, 2007 – The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) today issued a new report on HPV vaccine (Gardasil®) safety analyzing adverse event reports to the federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). The analysis gives evidence for a reported association in VAERS between Gardasil and Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS), with a statistically significant increased risk of GBS and other serious adverse event reports when Gardasil is co-administered with other vaccines, especially meningococcal vaccine (Menactra®).

NVIC is calling on the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to issue an Advisory and amend its March 12 policy by alerting the public that Gardasil has been associated with 15 cases of GBS and an increased risk of GBS and other serious adverse event reports made to VAERS when the vaccine is administered simultaneously with Menactra and other vaccines. “The precautionary principle dictates that good science should precede CDC vaccine policy recommendations,” said Barbara Loe Fisher, NVIC co-founder and president. “Parents have a right to expect proof of safety and not assumption of safety before new vaccines, like Gardasil, are given simultaneously with other vaccines to their children.

GBS is a disorder in which the body’s immune system attacks part of the peripheral nervous system, and can cause total paralysis. “Our analysis of Gardasil reports to VAERS indicates there was a two to 12 times greater likelihood that serious adverse events, such as GBS, were reported when Gardasil was given in combination with Menactra rather than given alone,” said Vicky Debold, PhD, RN, NVIC director of patient safety. “Accepted scientific standards indicate that these findings are statistically significant and cannot be dismissed as coincidence. In particular, the available VAERS data show there was a more than 1,000 percent increased risk of GBS reports following Gardasil administration when Menactra was given at the same time.”

Reported GBS and Other Serious Adverse Events

NVIC found that, as of May 31, there have been 2,227 Gardasil adverse events filed with VAERS, including 13 suspected or confirmed cases of GBS (two more GBS reports were made in June for a total of 15) and 239 cases of syncope (fainting with temporary loss of consciousness), many of which resulted in head injuries and fractures. Seven deaths have been reported after receipt of Gardasil. Nearly 10 percent of all Gardasil adverse event reports to VAERS involved avoidable medical errors.

A total of 1,930 reported Gardasil adverse events involved administration of Gardasil alone, and 135 adverse events involved co-administration of Gardasil with Menactra. NVIC’s comparative analysis of those two categories of VAERS reports indicates that when Gardasil was given simultaneously with Menactra rather than alone, there was a statistically significant increased risk of reported adverse events:

*respiratory problem reports increased by 114 percent;
*cardiac problems 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 increased by 674 percent; and
*GBS reports increased by 1,130 percent.

On February 21, NVIC expressed concern about the safety of administering Gardasil simultaneously with other vaccines because the manufacturer (Merck), the FDA and the CDC had not provided evidence to the public that co-administration was safe. (1) On March 12, the CDC published recommendations for Gardasil use in MMWR that acknowledged there is a lack of evidence that Gardasil can be safely administered with other vaccines, while encouraging physicians to co-administer Menactra and other vaccines with Gardasil based on assumption of safety. (2)

Adverse Event Reports to NVIC: Shannon Nelson

Nineteen Gardasil adverse event reports from 12 states have been made to NVIC’s Vaccine Reaction Registry involving unconsciousness and injury, convulsions, numbness, weakness and other neuromuscular and coordination problems and GBS.

Shannon Nelson, 18, a Chicago area athlete, musician and artist entering college reported to NVIC that she received HPV vaccine (Gardasil), meningococcal vaccine (Menactra) and chicken pox vaccine (Varivax ®) simultaneously on June 21. Symptoms of tingling, numbness and muscle weakness began within a week and progressively got worse. By July 3 she could barely walk or raise her arms. She was hospitalized, paralyzed with GBS on July 5, and spent 22 days in the hospital.

“Before the shots, I ran six miles a day,” said Nelson. “The doctors told me that I might have been put on a respirator if I hadn’t been in such good shape,” she said. “I am out of the hospital now and getting a lot of physical therapy. I just want to go to college and do the things I did before, like play the guitar and draw or even just be able to smile. My Mom and I wish we had known about HPV vaccine risks, especially what could happen if I got other vaccines at the same time.”


To view a copy of NVIC’s report on HPV vaccine (Gardasil) safety, go to http://www.nvic.org/Diseases/HPV/HPVHOME.htm. To report a vaccine reaction, go to https://www.nvic.org/report/reaction.htm

* * * * *

Founded in 1982, the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) is a non-profit 501(C)3 organization working for child health, public education and consumer empowerment. NVIC is dedicated to preventing vaccine injuries and deaths through public education and defending the right to informed consent to vaccination. NVIC has operated a private Vaccine Reaction Registry for 25 years.

References:

1) Vaccine Safety Group Releases Gardasil Report: Calls on FDA and CDC to Warn Doctors and Parents to Report to VAERS, February 21, 2007 http://www.nvic.org/Diseases/HPV/pr022107HPV.htm.

2) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Quadrivalent Human Papillomavirus Vaccine: Recommendations of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) Early Release 2007; 56 March 12, 2007:1-24. http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr56e312a1.htm

The Search for Autism's Environmental Triggers

"Until recently, about 90 percent of autism research has focused on genetics, and only perhaps 10 percent on environmental factors, said Dr. Gary Goldstein, chairman of the scientific board of Autism Speaks, a national research and advocacy group. In the coming years, he expects the ratio to be 1 to 1. Dr. Martha Herbert, a Harvard neuroscientist and Massachusetts General Hospital neurologist, said a few years ago, autism researchers would be marginalized if they talked about environmental factors. But now, "any major article or proposal concerning the causes of autism is coming to be considered incomplete if it doesn't talk about a potential role of environmental factors."....The dispute over thimerosal long tainted the whole idea of environmental triggers for autism, discouraging scientists from entering the field, some researchers and parents say. Career- wise, "It has not been safe for scientists to work on this problem" of possible environmental factors in autism, said Mark Blaxill of Cambridge, cofounder of Safe Minds, a parent group. But the rates of autism have reached epidemic proportions, he contends, and clearly, genes cannot account for such rapid change." - Carey Goldberg, Boston Globe, August 13, 2007

Barbara Loe Fisher Commentary:

It is encouraging that autism researchers at the University of California - Davis, as well as researchers in academia and government are focusing research initiatives on the complex relationship between genetic and environmental trigger co-factors in the development of autism. Understanding all potential causes of the growing chronic disease and disability epidemic among children, which includes millions of children suffering from regressive autism and other developmental delays, deserves to be made a high priority in biomedical research.

Although it is becoming clearer that bolus and cumulative mercury exposures via mercury preservatives in vaccines are not the sole cause for increases in cases of autism during the past quarter century, the hypothesis that mercury preservatives in vaccines have harmed the brains and immune systems of many children should not be dismissed. Mercury is a neuro-toxin and does not belong in any form in any product consumed by humans, much less directly injected into humans. Biological mechanism research on animals has already confirmed that thimerosal can be toxic and research should continue into the potential synergistic effect of repeatedly injecting even trace amounts of thimerosal along with other components, such as aluminum, into infants and children via vaccines.

Science is a dynamic search for truth and evolves with each new discovery over time. The search for the truth about all causes for vaccine injury and death cannot be left in the hands of epidemiologists. That search also properly belongs in the hands of basic science researchers examining the biological effects on brain and immune function of atypically manipulating the immature human immune system by injecting multiple vaccines during the first years of life, when the brain and immune system are developing at their most rapid rate outside the womb. The UC-Davis study certainly cannot fail to include evaluation of the biological effects of the most frequent atypical environmental exposure most children of the 21st century are subjected to in early life: repeated injection of lab altered live viruses and killed bacteria via vaccines that also contain quite a few potentially toxic ingredients.

Parents will be closely watching the way the UC- Davis study is conducted and will eagerly await the results of this important investigation into the potential environmental and genetic co-factors involved in the development of autism. Any new information which will help shine a light on ways to prevent and develop healing therapies for autism is a step in the right direction.

CBN Report Asks: "Are Vaccinations Safe for Your Kids?"

"Barbara Loe Fisher of the National Vaccine Information Center says there are real problems, but many doctors are in denial. She said, "It can't be true -- because how, how, could they possibly really live with the idea that something that they try to do that was good - has turned out to be bad for a lot of people.......Vaccines - especially multiple vaccines injected the same day - can put the microglia into constant battle mode. In that mode, the brain turns on itself, causing what's known as "bystander damage." A leading neurology journal seemed to confirm this with autopsies of autistic brains. "They found all of them had over-activation of the brain's microglia, chronic brain inflammation, which is by this mechanism," [Dr. Russell]Blaylock said. Mercury, aluminum, and MSG are powerful activators of the microglia -- linking brain damage with vaccines. Fisher says the vaccine companies try to exclude that damage. She explained, "The manufacturers conduct clinical trials and whenever anything bad happens in that clinical trial -- nine times out of 10 if not 10 times out of 10 -- they write off the health problem that occurs or the death that occurs as a coincidence......."We have to individualize the policies to begin with," Fisher said. "But we have to do the scientific studies to really determine whether a policy of using 48 doses of 14 vaccines before age 6 is a wise policy." - Gailon Totheroh, CBN News, August 1, 2007

"My 3-and-a-half-year-old brother, Enoch, was born a healthy and normal baby. He developed as he should have, crawling faster than we could run, cruising down halls and around rooms and taking a few independent steps by his first birthday. He was always into mischief and fairly burst with energy. But at 15 months, Enoch was given his DPT (diphtheria, whole cell pertussis and tetanus) vaccine. He became lethargic and unresponsive to his family. No longer was he attempting to walk....Enoch continued to get worse, shrieking out a high-pitched scream instead of crying normally as he once had. He was limp as a newborn and my parents felt as if they were losing him....Enoch's pediatricians were busy concentrating on getting his eczema under control and wasted no concern at all over his lethargic behavior and failure to walk. "He's just lazy," they told my parents, "because he's got older siblings to carry him around." Mom strongly disagreed...... Enoch saw six other doctors at Johns Hopkins, including another child developmental specialist, a pediatric neurologist, two different pediatric opthalmologists and two pediatric genetics specialists....After running many tests and getting no answers, the neurologist marked down that Enoch had been damaged by his vaccinations. The specialist we had originally contacted agreed. My parents were told that Enoch's recovering his abilities was dependent on his willpower and God. Enoch is not alone in reacting to his immunizations. Many other children have suffered adverse side effects, including deafness, brain damage, autism, seizures, bronchial spasms and death, from various vaccines.

The Web site of the National Vaccine Information Center [www.nvic.org], a nonprofit organization, recommends that parents ask themselves eight questions before allowing their children to be vaccinated: (1) Is my child sick right now? (2) Has my child had a bad reaction to a vaccination before? (3) Does my child have a personal or family history of vaccine reactions, convulsions or neurological disorders, severe allergies or immune system disorders? (4) Do I know if my child is at high risk of reacting? (5) Do I know how to identify a vaccine reaction? (6) Do I know how to report a vaccine reaction? (7) Do I know the vaccine manufacturer's name and lot number? (8) Do I know I have a choice? " - " - Elizabeth Johnston, Martinsburg Journal

Barbara Loe Fisher Commentary:

The National Vaccine Information Center has been working to prevent vaccine injuries and deaths through public education for the past 25 years. The best way for a parent to become educated about vaccination and how to prevent their child from being harmed by vaccines is to become an educated health care consumer.

Today, the Christian Broadcasting Network's "700 Club" broadcast an excellent overview of the dilemma that faces parents when they take their children to get the 48 doses of 14 vaccines the federal government recommends children under six receive - "Are Vaccinations Safe for Your Kids?" - and you can view the report and post your opinion at
http://www.cbnnews.com. The report will be broadcast again at 11 p.m. EST on the CBN and ABC Family channel. This morning, after the report aired at 10 a.m. EST, "700 Club" host, Dr. Pat Robertston, and his co-host expressed their concern about the vaccine safety issue.

If you choose to vaccinate your child according to the government's recommended schedule, if you plan to selectively choose which vaccines your child will receive, or have decided not vaccinate, it is important to understand the risks and complications of diseases and vaccines. Knowledge is power. Go to www.nvic.org and learn more about vaccines and your state vaccine laws.