In the April 2015
Northern Connection article, I
"Started the Conversation" regarding the controversy over vaccinations and I received the following response from a reader that is very interesting but too long for the comment section so I decided to post the response as its own page:
From a Reader: Hi, Ms. Anderson, this is my (long) response to your April 1 “Start the Conversation” article.
Thank you so much for starting (and continuing!) this conversation. This is a tough subject, and one that has upset and frightened people on both sides of the issue. We all want to keep our children and the whole community as healthy and safe as possible.
I think you’re an excellent writer, and you’re very brave to dive into this subject. I don’t quite agree with your theory that most parents delaying or refusing vaccines are making wrong decisions based on lack of knowledge about the diseases, though I’m sure that some do fall into this category. I’m old enough to have had some of these diseases, and there’s a pretty large disconnect between what these diseases are like in developed countries, and what today’s young doctors believe about them. I think it’s more an issue that today’s doctors have forgotten (or were never taught) that some of these diseases are not the deadly plagues the vaccine industry paints them to be, at least, not in developed countries with modern sanitation, clean water, good nutrition, and advanced medical care.
I don’t feel like I can really advise new parents on which invasive medical procedures they should give their children, but I would like to correct some of the common misconceptions about vaccines and the diseases they are meant to prevent.
First of all, I think most of the parents who are criticizing vaccine safety are not looking particularly at autism, but at the tens of thousands of reports of severe adverse vaccine reactions that are reported every year, and at the thousands of cases that have been conceded and compensated by the US Department of Health and Human Services.
These reactions include disabling and painful autoimmune disorders, paralytic and other neurological disorders, seizures, brain damage, and death. The number of such reactions reported may have been extremely rare 30 or 40 years ago, but it has drastically increased in the last few years, as has the number of reactions conceded by the government.
Some of us have experienced these reactions first-hand already, or our children have. Aren’t these reactions just as valid as the experience of those who have gotten the diseases the vaccines are meant to prevent? Shouldn’t our experience be part of this conversation?
Secondly, I think most people assume that each vaccine is just as safe and effective as the manufacturer claims. Shouldn’t we look at each one and see if it really is?
Let’s look at at the MMR and measles for starters.
Most people today don't know that in 1955, 7 years before the first measles vaccine was introduced, the mortality rate for measles was about 1 in 5,000 reported cases—but many cases went unreported, as measles was then considered an annoying but not dangerous disease that all children got, like colds and flu According to:
http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/189/Supplement_1/S1.long, 4 million individuals in the US were infected with measles every year, with a death rate of about 1 in 10,000.
Although the MMR is extremely successful at reducing measles incidence for the SHORT TERM, it is causing unforeseen major problems.
The immunity acquired by the vaccine is not lifelong, in spite of the promises of "lifelong immunity from a single shot!" that were made in order to initially sell the vaccine. What actually happens: 5-10% don’t develop any immunity to measles (and 35% don’t for mumps) after the first shot, so a second shot was added for everyone. Still, even after 2 shots, about 5% are considered “non-responders” for the measles portion of the vaccine (15-25% for mumps) and for the rest, immunity wanes sometime in adulthood, which causes 2 very troubling issues:
a) Vaccinated adults with waning immunity are, for the first time, at risk of getting the disease, including from recently vaccinated individuals, who shed live virus cells. This was not a phenomenon when the vaccine was first instituted, because the adult population at the time already had lifelong immunity from having had the disease as children. We are seeing it now, with documented cases of adults actually contracting measles from their own recently vaccinated infants. Measles contracted in adulthood has a much higher complications rate than measles contracted in childhood.
b) Infants are now at risk of contracting measles, not only from recently vaccinated siblings, but from exposed adults whose vaccine-induced immunity has waned. They were not at risk for this before the introduction of the vaccine, for the following reason: measles was originally a CHILDHOOD DISEASE, not an infant disease. Infants didn't get measles, because they were born with measles-specific antibodies conferred by their mothers, who had gotten measles as children. This protection generally lasted through infancy and even toddlerhood. If the mother breastfed, duration of protection continued even longer. This protection wore off sometime in childhood, when measles was, for the vast majority, not a severe disease.
But mothers who never had measles, even if vaccinated for it, do not confer that protection to their infants.
So the MMR may have been excellent at reducing measles incidence in children, but has then shifted the burden of disease to the two populations most at risk for complications--adults and infants. Since the vaccine does not produce complete or lasting immunity, there will always be outbreaks, even with 100% compliance—with the infants and waned-immunity adults shouldering most of the risk of complications.
In spite of industry claims, measles has never been eradicated in the US (or anywhere else), by the way. Yes, we read such claims, but it’s actually never happened. There have been several hundred of cases every year, not including vaccine-strain measles, which for some odd reason are reported as “atypical measles” and are not counted in measles statistics. These are cases that are either caused by the vaccine itself, or are cases caught by someone exposed to either vaccine shedding, or to an individual developing a case of vaccine-induced measles.
There is no evidence that vaccine-induced measles is any milder (or any worse) than wild-strain measles.
This leads us to the issue of vaccine safety. The MMR has NEVER been adequately assessed for safety, and the Cochrane Reviews—a group of pro-vaccine MD/PhD researchers who are widely considered the gold standard of mainstream medical review--have been pointing this out for at least the last decade. Their exact words in every review of the MMR are: “The design and reporting of safety outcome MMR studies, both pre- and post-licensure, is largely inadequate.”
http://www.cochrane.org/CD004407/ARI_using-the-combined-vaccine-for-protection-of-children-against-measles-mumps-and-rubella.
We cannot say with any certainty how many neurological or autoimmune disorders are triggered, as there is no adequate tracking system, nor are not adequate safety studies looking at this.
http://www.cochrane.org/CD004407/ARI_using-the-combined-vaccine-for-protection-of-children-against-measles-mumps-and-rubella.
We do know that some occur. We do not know how many, or why they occur at all.
Merck’s own website tells us that MMR-induced seizures are most likely to occur within 8-14 days of vaccination—yet post-marketing surveillance fails to look at this, and health care providers receive no education for the particular time frame, so they do not know to report such reactions to VAERS. (I challenge you to find a mother of a a one-year-old who can remember much from two days ago, let alone two weeks ago—most would never associated a febrile seizure with a vaccine received 8-14 days ago.)
Merck’s website also tells us that up to 25% of adult females will develop arthritis/arthralgia as a side effect from MMR; there is no way to know how many 12-month-old infants (which is the age the vaccine is given) also develop painful inflammatory/autoimmune joint pain, nor what other “silent" symptoms or repercussions there might be, as 12-month-old infants are generally not able to explain what hurts.
The package insert also tells us that the MMR has never been assessed for carcinogenicity nor for fertility impairment.
This is very disturbing. This vaccine has been recommended since 1971, and the post-marketing information on safety outcome is still inadequate?
And this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are 13 other vaccines on the schedule, with widely varying safety, efficacy, and/or necessity issues.
Yes, it’s frightening to think that vaccines don’t do everything promised. It’s also frightening that so many people marginalize and demean anyone who criticizes vaccines.
And yes, it is confusing for new parents, especially when many sources on both sides are inaccurate, misleading, or both—like the parents.com article you linked, which mentions only the most obscure serious vaccine reactions without mentioning the most common serious reactions. It also throws around some VERY convoluted statistical estimates as though they were known facts (for example, reporting the pertussis death rate as 1 in 1,500 when the CDC reported 1 in 2,400 “pertussis-related deaths” in 2012, although I would agree that even 1 in 2,400 is a serious problem). There are several other major problems with that article, and I’ll be happy to go into more detail if you like.
Even if we leave autism out of the discussion, vaccination today is NOT a "no-brainer.” It’s not an all-or-nothing issue; what is true of one vaccine or disease is not necessarily true of all, and we should not be thinking of this as "vaccination: yes or no?” We should be looking at each disease, and each vaccine, and we should be looking at the studies, not at a 1-size-fits-all schedule for all vaccines/all children, and not at few industry-paid experts promoting that schedule.
Much remains unknown about the immune system, about autoimmunity, and in particular, about unforeseen adverse reactions to vaccines. The experts can’t seem to predict who will have a severe adverse reaction to vaccines; when it happens, they don’t know why—not even when the reaction is quickly recognized and reported, which makes it all the more disturbing to learn that such reactions are increasing.
That’s why it’s so important to keep the conversation going, and I am deeply grateful to you for starting it (and continuing it!).
Thank you so much,
