Impfungen Anhang 8
[Dr. Richard Moskowitz] makes the case against
mandatory vaccines for childhood illnesses. He believes those vaccines are
neither safe nor effective. He notes that vaccine safety trials are funded,
conducted, and micromanaged by the manufacturers themselves.
As a GP with more than 50 years’ experience in treating children and
their families, I feel it my duty to speak out against the new vaccine
mandates, for three main reasons.
1st there is no emergency to justify vaccinating children
against their parents’ wishes, let alone keeping them out of school if they
refuse.
2nd research cited to prove that vaccines are safe and
effective falls far short of the rigorous standards that valid medical science
must follow.
3rd the Nuremberg Code and the Helsinki Declaration, both of
which we helped write and still claim to abide by, explicitly forbid any
medical procedure, treatment, or experiment undertaken without the
fully-informed consent of the recipient.
There is no emergency
I’ll take the easy one first. The public hysteria that has led a number
of states to declare an emergency arose largely in response to measles
outbreaks in 2016 and 2019.
While a little larger than in the recent past, these were still quite
small, localized, and in most respects similar to those recorded in every year
since the vaccine was introduced, numbering just over 1000 cases in 2019,
compared to a few hundred in the years since 2000, when the CDC prematurely
declared the disease eliminated from the U.S.,
1 and anywhere from 400,000-800,000 cases annually in the pre-vaccine
era.2
If the CDC would just admit that they were a little hasty, and that such
outbreaks are bound to occur, they could still claim a historic victory over
this formerly ubiquitous disease. It’s
also worth remembering that virtually everyone of my generation came down with
measles in grade school and recovered without complications; nobody
thought it an emergency back then, so there was no urgent need for a
vaccine in the first place.
In any case, the hysteria behind the present campaign to eliminate all
religious and philosophical exemptions is utterly disproportionate to the facts
on the ground.
My own state of Massachusetts has seen 0-3 measles cases per year for
the last 5 years, and only 44 cases in the past decade, 3 with 97% of our
kindergarteners and 99% of our seventh-graders already vaccinated with the MMR,
4 well above the official target of 95% for the stricter new mandate that it
has in mind.
The alleged emergency rests on two assumptions so widely regarded as
self-evident that they are rarely challenged:
1) that these measles outbreaks are spread mainly by the unvaccinated,
and
2) that vaccines are so effective that only the unvaccinated are still
susceptible and thus capable of transmitting the disease to others.
Unfortunately, there is ample scientific evidence that exactly the
opposite is true. Although public health
officials rarely admit it, the vast majority of the cases of measles, mumps,
chicken pox, whooping cough, and influenza in both past and recent outbreaks,
typically from 75-95%, have been in vaccinated individuals;5 in the case of
mumps, the figure is typically 95-100%.6
So even if everyone were vaccinated, and all non-medical exemptions
eliminated, as the new laws require, similar outbreaks are virtually certain to
continue.
We also know that individuals receiving the “live” vaccines (measles,
mumps, rubella, chickenpox, rotavirus, and oral polio) “shed” them for weeks
afterward, and are thus contagious to family members, friends, and close
contacts.
As for the “non-living” vaccines, recent studies show that current
outbreaks of whooping cough are likewise being spread mainly by vaccinated
individuals, through the development of vaccine-resistant strains, while
analogous mutations have been documented in the case of HiB,
pneumococcus, IPV, HPV, and other non-living vaccines
as well.
In short, the push to vaccinate everybody, and the bullying that
typically accompanies it, actually help to propagate the diseases that the
vaccines were meant to eradicate.
The only scary feature of the 2019 outbreaks is that a large number of
those infected have been shown to bear the genotype of the vaccine virus,
rather than the wild type,
so that for the first time a significant proportion of the cases are
unvaccinated, providing still more convincing proof that the vaccine is
spreading the disease, and that the disease itself has mutated, an ominous sign
for the future.
Claims that vaccines are safe and effective are deceptive
My 2nd reason for writing is to show that vaccines are much
less safe and effective than we’ve been led to believe. Keep in mind that they’re given purely on the
basis of long-term health policy, rather than in response to a genuine
public-health emergency, like a deadly plague or imminent bioterrorist attack.
Most of them are directed against
a) diseases once life-threatening, that were already declining in
incidence and mortality before the vaccines were introduced, thanks to
improvements in sanitation, water quality, and other public-health measures
(e.g., diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus);
b) ordinary diseases of childhood that most people contracted and
recovered from without complications or sequelæ, like
measles, mumps, rubella, flu, rotavirus, chickenpox;
c) sporadic illnesses linked to mutant strains of organisms that are
part of our normal flora and relatively seldom cause invasive disease (pneumococcus, HiB).
To be pronounced effective, vaccines need satisfy just two narrow
criteria, namely, a significant reduction in the incidence, morbidity, and
mortality of the corresponding illnesses following their use, and significant,
prolonged increases in the level of serum antibodies against the
micro-organisms targeted by them.
Vaccines achieving these objectives often prove to have been much less
successful when investigated more systematically. The flu vaccine, for example, is virtually
predestined to fail, even when it succeeds in preventing many cases of the
strain it is directed against, first, because the extreme mutability of the
influenza viruses virtually guarantees that a different vaccine will be needed
every year, and sometimes even within the same season, with different
specifications that cannot be known in advance;
and second, because the generic illness we know as “the flu” is linked
to many different viruses, by no means restricted to the influenza group for
which it is named.
Some version of the same issue hovers over the other vaccines as well.
Even when they satisfy both criteria, the viruses and bacteria they are
directed against reliably mutate into different strains of the same or
closely-related organisms, which are not counted in the statistics, a process
which is naturally accelerated by these determined and systematic attempts to
eliminate them.
The pneumococcus and HiB
organisms, for example, are linked to sporadic cases of pneumonia, meningitis, endocarditis, and septicemia
involving mutant strains of bacteria that normally reside in the nasopharynx of most healthy people, so that the vaccines
targeting them have already elicited new, resistant, and even more pathogenic
strains
that are altering and will continue to alter that important ecosystem in
ways that the CDC and the drug industry cannot foresee and seem myopically
unconcerned about
in any case.
A more imminent threat is the whooping cough, which was rapidly
declining in incidence and mortality before the pertussis
vaccine was introduced the 1940’s, but has reappeared with a vengeance in the
last 20 years, again mainly in vaccinated individuals, and involving, in
addition to the wild type, a mutant strain resistant to the vaccine, and a
wholly new species that strikes mainly the vaccinated.
Another is polio, against which both the oral and injectable
vaccines have been somewhat effective in preventing large-scale outbreaks like
those of the 1950’s. In India, which uses the cheaper live, oral version, an
even more virulent form of paralytic disease, clinically indistinguishable from
the original, has become prevalent in recent years, and was conveniently named
Non-Polio Acute Flaccid Paralysis, or NPAFP, lest anyone suspect that the
vaccine is to blame.
In the U.S., which declared polio officially eliminated years ago, and
has reverted to the original injectable or killed
vaccine, another very similar disease has emerged, named Acute Flaccid Myelitis (AFM) for the same reason, with the related enterovirus D-68 widely suspected as the cause.
Likewise, the level of specific antibodies in the blood has dismally
failed to provide an accurate measure of immune status after vaccination. Even their advocates admit that vaccines are
never completely effective, since most targeted diseases continue to break out
and even predominate in highly-vaccinated populations, as we saw.
These alleged “vaccine failures” are then invoked to impose additional
booster doses, based on the assumptions
1) that they represent “bad batches,” and nothing more;
2) that low antibody levels in the vaccinated mean that the vaccines
have simply “worn off,” leaving behind nothing but a “blank slate;”
3) that the titer can be ratcheted up to the
desired level by simply adding more shots; and
4) that the antibody level is an accurate measure of immune status, of
the extent to which the vaccinated are resistant to infection with the natural
disease.
Unfortunately, none of these assumptions stands up to careful
scrutiny. First, we already know but choose
to forget that the titer can’t be simply manipulated
at will by adding more boosters.
In 1980, Dr. James Cherry, a leading vaccine advocate, discovered that
children receiving the MMR who later developed low titers
responded to a booster dose only minimally and for an unacceptably short
time.19
A few years later, when measles outbreaks in highly-vaccinated
populations generated pressure to do something drastic, Cherry’s research was
quietly shelved, the booster was mandated, and it remains in force to this day.
Then in 1986, a clustering of several hundred measles cases were
reported in the Midwest, of which 94% were in vaccinated schoolchildren, and a
sizable number were unusually mild, with a paler rash, no fever, and minimal
discomfort, fatigue, or other systemic involvement.20
The scientists researching the outbreak were startled to learn that the
milder version was commonest in vaccinated cases with no antibodies at all,
while the typical acute illness affected mainly vaccinated kids with high titers in the supposedly “immune” range.21 Indicating subclinical viral activity in both
subgroups that serological testing failed to detect, these findings led me to
wonder if vaccinated persons with low levels of antibody were being
misidentified as susceptible, inappropriately revaccinated, and thus subjected
to further complications that were likewise overlooked.
Not long after, I happened to witness just such a misfortune when asked
to review a damage compensation claim following the Hep B vaccine. The claimant
was a young lab tech who developed a nasty cough lasting for many months after
a series of three Hep B shots as required for her training.
When she applied for a job four years later, her serum showed zero
antibodies to the virus, and her new employer, supposing her to be still
susceptible, insisted on a second round.
This time she relapsed almost immediately, with an even more intense
version of the same cough, followed by a sequence of new complaints, including
nodular goiter, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis,
esophageal reflux, palpitations, and anxiety,
requiring maintenance doses of several drugs and medical supervision all year
round; and her claim was denied without even a hearing, because none of her
complaints were officially-approved complications of the vaccine.22
The vaccine manufacturers design the safety trials
As to safety, virtually without exception, vaccine safety trials are
funded, conducted, and micromanaged by the manufacturers themselves, and then
rubber-stamped by the government agencies that are supposed to be regulating
them, a more blatant style of corruption pithily summarized by a former
Vice-President of Pfizer who had witnessed and indeed helped to perpetrate it:
Everybody is out there begging for money. The big international
corporations have lots of money. They give grants for research, pay doctors and
researchers thousands to travel around, speak at conferences, and establish
educational programs, all to make profits for their products. The safety trials
are supposed to be third-party and independent, but the money won’t keep coming
unless they say what you want them to
say. Everybody knows this is how things
work. Only the public doesn’t
know it.
The basic strategies developed to conceal or minimize adverse reactions
include the following:
1) instead of inert placebo, the so-called “control” groups are given
the toxic chemical ingredients of the vaccines under study, or a different
vaccine entirely;
2) to qualify as vaccine-related, adverse reactions must occur within
hours, or days, or at most a week or two after the shot, thus arbitrarily ruling
out the entire chronic dimension, within which the majority of them occur.
3) they must appear on the vanishingly small list already recognized by
the industry, thereby excluding the possibility of discovering new ones; and
4) adverse effects reported by the recipients but not specifically asked
about by the research team are subject to numerous restrictions, with the lead
investigator given complete authority to disqualify them, based on criteria
that are never specified.
Naturally, the upshot of these shenanigans has been massive
underreporting of adverse reactions, estimated at somewhere between 1% and 0.1%
of the true figure.
The manufacturers won this unrestrained and largely unchallenged
dominance in the 1980’s, when multiple lawsuits resulted in large payouts for
brain damage following
the DPT vaccine, whereupon they threatened to stop making vaccines
entirely unless Congress excused them from all further liability.
In 1986, Congress acceded to this ultimatum by passing the National
Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, which created the taxpayer-funded VICP program
for compensating claims, and deprived patients and experimental subjects of
their right to sue for damages,29 a free ride granted to no other industry.
In 2011, the Supreme Court actually upheld this devil’s bargain, ruling
that vaccines are “unavoidably unsafe,” so that the industry must indeed be
excused for whatever deaths or injuries may result from them!
Evidence of harm
As a GP caring for families, I’ve always felt uneasy about giving
vaccines routinely, because the diseases they’re designed to prevent are acute
illnesses, with high fever
and a massive, concerted outpouring of immune mechanisms that succeed in
expelling the invading organism from the body, whereas vaccination, by
contrast, is by definition a chronic process, involving long-term antibody
production as an isolated phenomenon that requires the vaccine organism to
remain inside the cells of the host for years, with no obvious path or mechanism
for getting rid of it.
In any case, in light of the industry’s successful campaign for
concealing and minimizing the harm done by vaccines, perhaps the simplest way
to approximate the extent of
the problem is to look at it in reverse, at the major health benefits to
be acquired by not vaccinating, and simply allowing our children to acquire the
ordinary diseases that
most of them would naturally be exposed to. Many studies have shown that children who
come down with and recover from acute diseases with fever, like measles, mumps,
rubella, chickenpox, and influenza, are significantly less likely to develop
chronic autoimmune diseases and cancer later in life than those merely
vaccinated against them.
Another unexpected finding is that the risk of death, hospitalization,
and major adverse reactions following vaccines depends less on which one, than
the total number of individual vaccines administered, both simultaneously at
the same visit and cumulatively over the patient’s lifetime.
That nonspecificity makes it clear that these
worst outcomes are not idiosyncratic aberrations or genetic mutations of a very
few hypersensitive individuals, but regular, predictable consequences of some
fundamental property built into the vaccination process per se.
These studies already provide ample justification for questioning and
doubting the prevailing assumptions that vaccines are uniformly safe and
effective, that they save vast sums of money from not having to care for
patients suffering from the corresponding diseases, and that it is OK and even
desirable to pile on as many different ones as the traffic will bear.
According to the CDC’s current guidelines, children are mandated or
strongly recommended to receive a total of 70 doses of individual vaccines by
the age of 18,35 and
149 by age 65.36
Nor should we disregard the 200-plus vaccines still in the pipeline or
the others sure to follow, free of regulation or restraint, and often for no
better reason than that we possess the technical capacity to make them.
Incentivized with a blank check of that size, it becomes increasingly
improbable with each passing year that children who obey these guidelines live
out a full lifespan, free
of autoimmune diseases and cancers to make them suffer grievously and
die before their time.
Human rights under attack
The real bottom line of our fake emergency and the bad science cited to
justify it is an aggressive campaign by the drug industry, the CDC, and the
doctors who follow their lead to dispense with fundamental human rights that
have long been inseparable from our democratic way of life, upheld in our
courts, and still loudly proclaimed even by those most determined to take them
away.
Without a real emergency, forcing parents to vaccinate their children
against their will, their best judgment, and their deepest instincts
a) denies them the right to choose the form of health care that they
feel is best for their children;
b) forces them to accept an unnecessary and unsafe medical procedure
without their fully-informed consent; and
c) forfeits their children’s right to an education if they persist in
refusing the procedure.
In contemporary case law, the legal right of parents to decide which
form of health care will be given to their children is not absolute, and has
been suspended temporarily in life-threatening situations where courts have
granted physicians and hospitals temporary custody to perform emergency
surgery, for example, when their parents refused to allow it on religious
grounds.38 But most vaccinations are
given routinely to prevent diseases that they may never encounter, are in no
sense imminent, and only rarely dangerous.
Secondly, the right of medical patients and experimental subjects to
refuse any procedure without their fully-informed consent was unequivocally
affirmed in the Nuremberg Code, which the U.S. helped write and almost all
developed nations adopted in the wake of atrocious Nazi medical experiments in
World War II, and the Helsinki Declaration, “Ethical Principles for Medical
Research Involving Human Subjects,” which elaborates on the same issues in a
passage that sounds almost as if it had been
written with the vaccine mandates in mind:
In medical research involving competent human subjects, each potential
subject must be adequately informed of the aims, methods, sources of funding, any
possible conflicts of interest, institutional affiliations of the researcher, anticipated
benefits and potential risks of the study and the discomfort it may entail, and
any other relevant aspects of the study.
The potential subject must be informed of the right to refuse to
participate in the study, or to withdraw consent to participate at any time
without reprisal. After insuring that the potential subject has understood the
information, the physician or another appropriately qualified individual must
then seek the potential subject’s
freely-given informed consent, preferably in writing.
Regarding children’s right to an education, the ACLU sums it up admirably:
All children living in the U.S. have the right to a free public education. The Constitution requires that all be given
equal educational opportunity, regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, or sex,
and whether rich or poor, citizen or non-citizen. Even those in this country illegally have the
right to go to public school.
It is not difficult to imagine a genuine public health emergency, such
as a deadly plague or imminent bioterrorist attack, in which it might be necessary
to suspend all of these rights temporarily.
But that is precisely what small, localized outbreaks of ordinary
childhood diseases most assuredly are not, while the suspension of rights that
the vaccine mandates would enforce are permanent.
The upside-down politics behind the mandates
I have always felt that defeating the new mandates and protecting the
rights of parents and children from them should logically be a popular, winning
issue for liberal and progressive politicians, organizations protecting civil
liberties, public radio and TV stations, and a majority of the news media.
At the moment, however, the strictest of the new laws have been enacted
or proposed in the blue-est of blue states, and their
main opponents seem to be aligned with the GOP, claiming descent from Ronald
Reagan and seeing government regulation itself as the problem. As for the Democrats, even the fiercest
critics of Big Pharma dare
not question their motives when it comes to vaccines, and even recycle
their favorite talking points.
As if in lockstep, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston
Globe, and various NPR radio and TV stations, have likewise maintained a united
front on the issue, uncritically accepting the alleged emergency as settled
fact, stigmatizing “anti-vaxxers” as deluded or ignorant
crazies, and declining to publish or give credence to dissenting views. Kissing
the First Amendment good-bye, Congressman Adam Schiff has gone even further,
directing Facebook to censor all content opposing
vaccines or questioning the mandates.
Yet, at bottom, the politicians, the news media, and the general public
deserve blame for nothing more than believing without questioning, for taking
on faith what they’re being told, by medical and and
scientific “experts” in a position to know, that vaccines are safe and
effective, that the science is settled, that the emergency is real, and that
vaccinating everybody is the only solution.
In an ideal world, or even a well-functioning democracy, as we often
take pride in being, we should be able to trust our medical experts to know and
speak the truth, and to
be open to changing our minds when new facts are brought to light. The fact that we aren’t shows that we
continue to believe because we need to believe, because we want
to have faith in the religion of modern medicine,46 which is impervious
to the questioning and doubt that true science requires.47
The jig is up
In any case, a number of signs and portents lead me to prophesy that
this topsy-turvy politics may be about to change. The most obvious reason is
the sheer aggressiveness
of the campaign, as if powered by knowledge that the end is near.
A good example is the CDC’s latest agenda item, Healthy People 2020,
which seeks to extend the existing mandates to adults, and may well backfire,
since having to stand
in line and roll up their own sleeves might stimulate parents to think
about vaccines in a new way, to walk the
talk they now righteously impose on their children.
Another is the sheer number of vaccines that are out there, with all the
boosters and multiple vaccines being given together at the same visit, which
will mean more and more casualties, each with his or her own grieving parents,
relatives, and friends, not to mention the skyrocketing costs of medical care
and special education in the schools.
Even though still largely “under the radar,” unacknowledged as
legitimate or vaccine-related by most doctors, hospitals, schools, and even
some family members and friends, the sheer numbers of aggrieved parents
convinced that vaccines were responsible have mobilized a formidable online
presence, demonstrated and testified before state legislatures, and already
persuaded some of them to leave their religious and philosophical exemptions in
place.
The increase in volume has also brought about a subtle change in the
news media, like more objective reporting of anti-vaccination protests by
nurses refusing to take the flu and Hep B shots that some hospitals are
requiring as conditions of their employment, which suggests that the religious
aspect may slowly be wearing thin and giving way.
Similarly, many of the women asserting the right to control their own
bodies, through access to abortions and birth control, and by exposing sexual
abuse and harassment,
will also want to have children, and to fight for the right to decide on
what kind of health care to give them.
Whether or not to vaccinate will thus finally, inevitably, and rightly
come to be recognized as a woman’s issue, a mother’s issue, and ultimately a
father’s, too, one supremely worth demonstrating, protesting, and otherwise
fighting for, engaging with politicians about, and even running for office
themselves, to make it happen.
So in the end it all comes back to parents as the spearhead or leading
edge for change. If the industry, the
CDC, and most doctors are right that vaccines are truly safe, then those
thousands upon thousands of aggrieved parents who claim that vaccines have
killed or crippled their children and must live every day in the shadow of
those tragedies, whatever may have caused them, must be either lying, deluded,
ignorant, or stupid.
Having cared for many such children over the years, I will attest to the
fact that their parents are none of these.
By no means ignorant “anti-vaxxers,” the
derogatory term meant to ridicule and defame them, their only mistake was to
have done exactly what they were told, and now they want answers — to learn the
truth about vaccines, and
to insure that they be made as safe as possible: “ex-vaxxers”
would be a more accurate label.
After 52 years of practicing family medicine, I can also say with
complete assurance what should have been obvious all along, that caring parents
are much better judges of what really happened to their children than those
giant multinationals who make and sell vaccines, profit so lavishly from them,
and cannot even be sued for the tragedies
that result.
[Dr. Michel Bouko Levy]
Remedy protocols for vaccine injured children.
Among all the vaccinations performed today – the strongest scientific
experience about the disease itself and its vaccination results is with DTaP and MMR. Two
vaccinations performed during infancy -D.P.T.P. and M.M.R- present severe side-effects and will induce
recurrent pathologies similar to the vaccine toxic agents. The first booster
might open a Pandora’s Box. Side effects must be analyzed with meticulous care
-capriciousness, weeping, insomnia, fever, skin, thirst, abscess, otitis, etc.- along with the rhythm and periodicity of the
different diseases. Homeopathic Drainage must be performed in the infant or
child who presents diseases and/or changes in behavior
following the booster, from the first minutes after the injection and up to 3
months later.
The Isotherapeutic of Vaccination must be used
after homeopathic drainage: one dose in 15CH and going up to 200K then MK and
XMK as needed. Note the reaction after the remedy – in most cases they happen
around the 8th day. A skin rash augurs well -fever and physical symptoms are to
be taken more seriously- neurological reactions such as nightmares testify to a
deep impact and sensitiveness to the Toxin.
PDTa [Diphtherie, Tetanus und Keuchhusten (Pertussis)].
About 50% of children have reactions in the first days following the
booster: local inflammation, fever, loss of appetite, otitis,
rhinopharyngitis, cough. Some have severe symptoms
such as abscess, asthma, eczema or even neurological disorders – weeping and
screaming, restlessness or sleepiness, nightmares, and convulsions. The distant
consequences are of the same order with a dominance
of respiratory tract pathologies from E.N.T. to lungs – but also
intestines, colon, bacterial, fungal, and parasitic disorders. The vaccination
aggravates the existing hereditary immune system weaknesses and causes an
immune blockage.
MMR
Measles dominate the MMR pathologies: allergies, conjunctivitis,
rhinitis, spasmodic coryza, nose obstruction, cough, hayfever and asthma, physical and psychological growth
disorders -essentially decalcification and language- and all the Tuberculinic anergic diseases.
Boosters might provoke local abscess, screaming, restlessness, sleepiness,
nightmares, fever. All children presenting “measles-like syndromes” during the
week following the booster -called classical side-effects- need a specific
homeopathic treatment.
HOMEOPATHIC DRAINAGE PROTOCOL
The immune system has a hereditary program which must be studied during
the first years of the infant and child through his diseases and the side
effects appearing from the boosters. All have to be noted in the Line of Life.
The person with an immune dysfunction from a vaccination will present recurrent
diseases most likely similar to the toxin effects. The Wheel of Emunctories
might be disrupted from its elimination function -apart from the skin- first at
all digestive and respiratory levels. In most chronic cases, a prolonged
homeopathic drainage protocol is required before a toxin remedy can be given.
Analyze the family pathologies: mother and father, sisters and brothers,
aunts and uncles. The treatment contains 3 levels: Homeopathic Drainage of the
sensitive organs, Constitutional fortifying,
and Reactive Modes regulation with Central and Satellite remedies. Add
Tissue salts, are always very beneficial for children. Oligotherapy
is used in mild cases, Organotherapy is helpful when
there are severe recurrent pathologies. Phytogemmotherapy
is very effective but it contains alcohol and has to be handled accordingly.
Central remedies
Just after the booster, one
dose: ARNICA 15CH
The day after, one dose:
SILICEA 15CH
2 weeks later, one dose: THUJA
15CH
Before inoculation: Start one month before:
Mineral salts can be used in association or alternated
according to each individual condition. 1 to 3 tablets a day of the
corresponding mineral salt of the infant:
Premature or ill-looking:
SILICEA 6DH
Stout and healthy looking:
CALCAREA CARBONICA 8DH
Thin and fragile child:
CALCAREA PHOSPHORICA 6DH
Immune system:
One dose every 2 weeks:
THYMOSINUM 9CH
Morning: COPPER GOLD SILVER
TRACE ELEMENT
Evening: MANGANESE COPPER
TRACE ELEMENT
In case of fragile child, add 5 to 20 drops a day:
Morning: RIBES NIGRUM BUDS 1DH
Evening: ROSA CANINA YOUNG
SHOOTS 1DH
After inoculation
Local inflammation with or without fever, abscess-like:
Alternate every hour 3
granules as needed of ARNICA 4CH / BELLADONNA 4CH / LEDUM 4CH
Local treatment: wet
compresses with CALENDULA MT and ECHINACEA MT
Appearance of pathologies similar to the vaccination toxins:
Carbonic: one dose a month of
CALCAREA CARBONICA 15CH
Phosphoric: one dose a week of
CALCAREA PHOSPHORICA 15CH
REACTIVE MODES REGULATION
Psoric drainage
Rapid reactions to the booster, alternation of the pathologies from the
outside to the inside and reverse -all kind of skin reactions, abscess, itching,
anorexia, vomiting, diarrhea, weight loss, food
allergies (milk) recurrent inflammatory fever- diseases start suddenly and the
patient recovers fast.
3 granules a day of ALOE /
CALCAREA SULFURICA / CINNABARIS / a.a.p. 4CH
One dose a week in the following order:
1st week: NUX
VOMICA 15CH
2nd week: HEPAR
SULFUR 15CH
3rd week:
BELLADONNA 15CH
4th week: PSORINUM
9CH
Chronic adenitis, repeated sudden fever, weight loss, thinness,
dermatitis, parasitism: one dose a week
of PSORINUM 9CH then 15CH then 30CH
Diarrhea and fever after booster, spasmodic
colitis, long lasting bronchitis: one dose a week of PARATHYPHOIDINUM B 9CH
then 15CH then 30CH
Skin reactions:
One dose a month as needed of
SULFUR IODATUM 9CH then 15CH and 30CH
For itching eruptions, add 3
granules a day of APIS 4CH and HISTAMINUM 4CH
Tuberculinic drainage
Violent reactions and progressive loss of energy, recurrent exhausting
fever, respiratory system involved in most inflammation flare ups, lymph nodes
recurrent and chronic, allergies:
Lymph nodes drainage:
10 drops a day: AGRAPHIS /
CISTUS / MERCURIUS / a.a.p. 4CH
In severe cases, add LYMPHATIC
GANGLION / SURRENINE / a.a.p. 4CH
1 or 3 tablets – 1 to 3 times
a day – of ALL TWELVE TISSUE SALTS
One dose a week in the following order:
1st week: SULFUR
IODATUM 9CH
2nd week:
PULSATILLA 15CH
3rd week: AVIAIRE
9CH
4th week: SILICEA
15CH
Loss of appetite and weight: one dose a month of NATRUM MURIATICUM 15CH
followed the day after by one dose of SILICEA 15CH
Otitis, acute and subacute,
Eustachian tube chronic obstruction, recurrent fever with loss of appetite and
energy, spasmodic cough: one dose every other week of AVIAIRE 9CH to 15CH
Whooping cough like disease, spasmodic cough from nose obstruction,
laryngitis, twitches, convulsions, delay of growth and psychomotor development:
one dose a month of PERTUSINUM 15CH
Severe Tuberculinic reactions
Asthma, severe acute attacks during the night, thinness, restlessness
and exhaustion: one dose every other week of ARSENICUM ALBUM 15CH
Every cold makes a cough, hoarseness < in the morning and > when
lying: alternate one dose every other week of MANGANUM ACETICUM 9CH /
STANNUM IODATUM 9CH
Il-looking with profuse sweating of the head and soles, big skull on
skinny body, obstinate: alternate one dose every other week of NATRUM
MURIATICUM 15CH / SILICEA 15CH
Thinness, rapid loss of appetite, profuse sweat, slow and difficult
growth, headaches:
One dose a week: CALCAREA PHOSPHORICA 15CH
One dose as needed:
TUBERCULINUM 9CH to XMK
Sycotic drainage
Recurrent discharge especially in E.N.T. organs, nose obstruction and
its reactional symptoms, centripetal reactions by
adenoids, polyps, and warts – lack of reaction to heavy allopathic treatments,
bacteria and fungus sensitization:
10 drops of CALCAREA CARBONICA
8DH / TEUCRIUM 3DH / THUJA 8DH / a.a.p.
One dose a week in the following order:
1st week: THUYA
15CH
2nd week: NATRUM SULFURICUM
15CH
3rd week: DULCAMARA
15CH
4th week: SILICEA
15CH
Bronchitis, bronchiolitis, asthma: one dose
every other week of NATRUM SULFURICUM 15CH / DULCAMARA 15CH
[Dr. Mike Patrick]:
Hello, everyone and welcome to this week's edition of PediaCast, a pediatric podcast
for parents. It's our 14th episode and I'd like to welcome everyone to the
program this week.
This week our main topic is going to be on immunizations, although
instead of looking at each individual immunization and what they do this week
we're actually going to tackle the most controversial of the topics and I'll
give you my take on some of these.
The first one is going to be mercury in vaccines. What's that all about?
MMR and autism will be coming up after that and then Menactra
and Guillain Barre
Syndrome. And then coming soon to an office near you, new vaccines that are on
the horizon and will probably be routinely given within the next year or so; so
we'll discuss those things.
Now I read on Drudge this morning that four elderly folks with chronic
diseases died after getting the flu shot and so the country [01:35] actually
suspended giving flu shots for the time being until they can look into this a
little bit more. I will say that all four of these individuals did have chronic
diseases that put their lives immediately at risk.
And we still don't know if it was something to do with the vaccine that
caused their deaths or if it's just a coincidence that these folks happened to pass
away within a few days of getting their flu shots because there was a big push
to get folks with chronic illnesses immunized in Israel as in other countries,
so it could be that it's just a coincidence that these four folks passed away
from their illnesses and it wasn't related to the flu shot at all. Or it could
be that there was some sort of contamination because, this is just speculation,
but all four of the flu vaccines apparently did come from the same distributor.
So they're looking into it and as soon as there's more information we'll
address that for you on the PediaScribe blog. And
also probably next week will have some information about it as well.
OK. Don't forget if there's a topic that you would like us to address on
PediaCast all you have to do is drop by the website
and visit the Contact page that's at www.pediascribe.com/podcast and just click
on the Contact link once you're there. You can also email us at
podcast@pediascribe.com and then of course we also have our Skype line, which
is 347-404-KIDS, that's 347-404-K-I-D-S.
Now before we get started with our first topic, let me remind you that PediaCast discussions do not address specific children or
specific situations. A face-to-face interview and hands-on physical examination
are crucial in determining a diagnosis and formulating a treatment plan.
Therefore, if you have a concern regarding your child's health, be sure to
consult your local doctor.
Every effort is to keep PediaCast accurate and
up-to-date, but because medicine is a constantly changing field and because
unique situations may call for variations in medical treatment our advice
should not be taken as the standard of care for your community. And finally,
the opinions expressed on PediaCast are my own and do
not necessarily represent the opinions of any government agency or a
professional organization.
OK. On to our first topic, we're going to discuss mercury in vaccines. I
don't think there are any parents of infants out there that haven't heard about
this. Thiomersal is the compound that's in question.
It's a mercury-based preservative that has been used in vaccines really for the
last 75 years. It was even used when Jonas Salk produced the first polio shot
back in the 1950s. There has been speculation that Thiomersal,
which is the mercury-based preservative, causes neurodevelopmental
disorders, such as autism, ADHD and speech and language delay.
We are giving an ever increasing number of vaccines, meaning that babies
are exposed or were exposed to more mercury in their immunizations. And
basically, the pressure sort of reach the boiling point in the late 1990s and
as it is now Thiomersal is no longer use as a
preservative in vaccines with the exception of some multi-dose vials of flu
preparation still have Thiomersal in them.
So if the mercury preservative is no longer in the vaccines, why are we
discussing it? Well many parents listening have kids whose immunizations did
contain Thiomersal and of course parents themselves
were exposed to the mercury, too, when they had their vaccines when they were
children.
Also there have been many vaccines supply issues which are in some
degree related to the removal of the mercury preservative and I wanted to
address those as well. So it is still something even though there's not a lot
of immunizations out there that still have the mercury-based preservative in
it. It's still a question that I get asked a lot in the office and you may have
had questions about it yourself.
Now a little bit of a history with this, if you do a medical literature
search of all scientific articles containing the word Thiomersal,
you'll find about a thousand scientific articles since the 1970s. Half of these
articles were written between 1970 and the mid 1990s and these mostly dealt
with allergic reactions to mercury containing preservatives at particularly in
eye drops, which also have the Thiomersal in them.
During this timeframe there really were no outcries of concern over a
possible link with neurodevelopmental disorders. Now
the other half of the studies were written since the late 1990s and these
mostly deal with a possible link of mercury to neurological problems.
So why the shift in the literature? From the 70s to the late 90s it was
about allergic reactions and then from the late 90s to the present day we're
dealing mostly with neurological problems that are associated with mercury. So
why the shift? Well in 1997, congress passed the FDA Modernization Act and part
of this act charged the FDA with reviewing the risks associated with all
mercury-containing food and drugs and that included vaccines because of the Thiomersal which was being used widespreadly
as a preservative.
Mercury is known to be toxic to humans. There's no question about that.
The central nervous system is the body system that seems to be most affected by
mercury, but other body systems can be affected as well including the kidneys,
the lungs, the gut or GI tract and the skin.
Now the toxic effects of mercury at the cellular level, we won't get too
deep into the specifics, but basically it interferes with the calcium balance,
it disrupts membrane function and messes up protein production and basically
causes some major problems.
The degree of the toxicity does appear to depend on at how much mercury
you're exposed to, the patient's age, their overall health and also their
nutritional status. And then it also is going to depend on exactly what type of
mercury that you're exposed to. And basically there are three types of mercury,
there's elemental mercury, inorganic mercury and organic mercury.
Elemental mercury is the one that's used or used to used, I should say,
in thermometers and exposure to this form of mercury really cause the worst
effects when it was inhaled. So if you inhale elemental mercury, it's going to
cause lung disruption, you get some bloody secretions, it's pretty yucky. And
of course, this elemental mercury is the ones that many parents and
grandparents out there that may have played with when you were a kid.
I remember I had a college roommate who had a little container with mercury
in it and we'd open it up and this mercury would stay in a ball and you could
kind of roll it around. It stayed together, yet it was a thick liquid as well.
We'd mess with it and move it around the room and some of you may have had that
experience as well. Of course, if you do that now, the Health Department is
going to come in and they're going to take all your furniture out of the house
and it'll be like Monsters, Inc. when the baby patrol came, it'd be something
like that, I think. I'm kind of making light of it, but it can cause some
serious problems but we just have found that out sort of recently.
Now the inorganic mercury, it's actually still used in paints and dyes
and it can cause the same sort of problems as the elemental form. But what we're
really talking about with the preservatives is organic mercury, organic just
meaning that there's carbon molecules that are attached to the mercury. And
organic mercury exposure is actually mainly associated with neurological
dysfunction like we've been talking about in the brain and then it can also
have some skin reactions as well.
The organic mercury can be further divided into methyl mercury and ethyl
mercury. So methyl with an "M" and then ethyl with an "E".
Now ethyl mercury is the form we're talking about with Thiomersal
while methyl mercury is the kind we're exposed to in tuna and swordfish and in
some other types of sea life.
Now why is this important? Why am I even going into the chemistry of
this? Well, there can be a big difference between chemical effects on the body
when you're looking at a methyl compound versus an ethyl compound. OK? So this
is kind of important to distinguish. For instance, ethanol, which is an ethyl
compound, that's the alcohol that makes you drunk, that's what Budweiser has in
it, has ethanol. Now methanol with an "m" is a methyl compound and
this is the type of alcohol that can actually cause severe brain damage even in
small amounts and can also result in blindness.
So when you're looking at ethanol, there is a big difference between
ethyl versus a methyl compound. Now if we take this a step further, most of
what we know about mercury poisonings actually comes from methyl mercury. Why
would that be? Let's face it, no one's volunteering to have themselves
intentionally exposed to a whole bunch of mercury, so we can't really study the
effects, right?
So what we can do is look at some populations where methyl mercury,
particularly in fish and also in contaminated rice in China has affected large
populations and then looked to see what kind of problems that they had. Well in
the 1950s, a large Japanese population was exposed to fish that was
contaminated with large amounts of methyl mercury. And a Chinese population, as
I said before, a little later than that in the 60s was exposed through a
contaminated rice. And the effects on these patients after their exposure to
massive amounts of methyl mercury did include mental retardation and blindness,
as well as other neurological problems.
But what about ethyl mercury? Well we assume exposure to massive amounts
of it would cause neurological problems as well, but there've been any reports
of this happening to humans. We do know that ethyl compounds are generally less
harmful than methyl compounds and we also know that infants were exposed to
just miniscule amounts of the ethyl mercury in the vaccines.
Now still, with as many vaccines as were given in the late 1990s there
was accumulative exposure over the first two years of life to ethyl mercury
that slightly did exceed the safety limit established by the environmental
protection agency from methyl mercury. So they looked at how much methyl
mercury a person is allowed to be exposed to and still be safe based on their
body weight and basically said, well, since we don't know for sure if ethyl
mercury has the same effect or not, we're going to make that level be the same
for ethyl mercury as well just in case.
Now how much is it are we talking about? It amounted to the same amount
of methyl mercury you would expect to find in one can of tuna fish. But given
the body size of an infant it was slightly too much. So if an infant ate a
whole can of tuna fish, it'd be too much mercury and that's basically the
amount of mercury that kids were exposed to during the first year of life.
But again, keep in mind, in the tuna it's the methyl with an
"M" mercury and in the Thiomersal was the
ethyl mercury. And again, ethyl things seem to be less of a problem for humans
than methyl things are. But again, we don't know for sure because we've never
done any studies to see because no one's going to volunteer. But we are
comparing apples to oranges when we're comparing methyl and ethyl mercuries and what they do.
Now enter the mainstream media and the "French terror groups"
and I do call these French groups "parental terrorists" because they
basically inject fear into the hearts of moms and dads without really telling
them the whole story. It's like the sky is falling, there's mercury in the
vaccines and it's going to kill all you children! You know, the cry goes out;
we're poisoning our infants with mercury and of course given the legal climate
in our country and given the fact that every parent with a
developmentally-challenged child really wants to find an explanation as to why
that happened. The vaccine companies want the target remove from their backs,
so they take the mercury out.
You may be asking yourself, what's the big deal here? Even if there's a
slight chance that Thiomersal could be a problem, why
not just take it out of the vaccines, right? It makes sense. Well the problem
really is vaccines supply. When vaccines were packaged in multi-dosed vials
with the Thiomersal in them, they had a pretty long
shelf life. So the multi-dosed vials are basically a vial that you can maybe
have five doses of the immunization in it and once it's opened it's only going
to be good for so long just like a product you get at a grocery store, you it
up and then you got to put it in the refrigerator. You could get five doses out
of this bottle, but it can only stay open for so long.
But the advantage to it is you didn't have to do individual packaging,
you could just have all five doses in one bottle. So it helps the product to be
cheaper and then you can stockpile it a little bit better, too, because of the Thiomersal that's in there, it has a much longer shelf
life.
When you take the Thiomersal out, then the
shelf life is greatly diminished and diminished shelf life does make it harder
for vaccine companies to stockpile vaccines so they slow down production
because if they make more of the vaccine than they can sell and it has a short
shelf life and then the vaccine goes bad and then the company loses money. And
then the company stockholders, they're not really amused by that.
It also affects supply at the doctor's office level because if I'm
ordering vaccines with the shorter shelf life, I'm going to order less of it
because I don't want to take any chance that they'll expire because then I have
to eat cost. You can't return expired vaccine to the manufacturer. If it goes
bad because it's gone past its expiration date then we have to eat the costs.
So the drug companies are making less and the doctors are ordering less because
of fear that the vaccine is going to expire and will to be trashed. So this
basically results in a diminished supply.
When I was training in the early and mid 90s, we never ran out of
vaccines. Never. I don't ever remember a time that there was a shortage of any
vaccine. And now we run out of vaccine all the time. There are babies who get
their shots late and they're at risk for getting pertussis
or polio or measles because of the shortages that we're seeing in vaccines.
And my personal opinion is that these shortages that we're now seeing
really are related to the fact that we have shorter shelf lives of the vaccine
material and again, that's because of the Thiomersal
being taken out of it. It's easy for us to forget what life was like before
routine immunization. I mean, nearly every family dealt with childhood death.
It was not uncommon at all for a family to have six kids and two of them died
before they were age 12. And in many parts of the world this is still the
situation today.
Now flu vaccine, by the way, is the exception with all this. Some
multi-dose vials for kids three and over do still contain Thiomersal.
And you know what? We have plenty of that one in our office.
The infant doses on the other hand, are single dose prepackaged
syringes and guess what, without Thiomersal and guess
what, we don't have any of it.
So the kids most at risk for flu complications can't get flu protection,
again, because there's no Thiomersal in the vaccine
and we just have much trouble, a lot of trouble getting a hold of it. You may
shrug your shoulders at this, but if your baby is the one who ends up in the
ICU with severe pneumonia that started with a flu, which does happen to
hundreds of previously well babies every year, you might change your mind about
it.
And if the supply of other vaccines continues to be a problem and if we
begin to see more cases of once extinguished diseases, such as infant pertussis and polio and measles, then the benefit of the Thiomersal may begin to outweigh its risk. See, it's all
very complicated. I mean, it seems like a no-brainer, get the mercury out of
the baby shots, right? It seems like it's the politically correct thing to do,
but everything we do has consequences and you have to take a look at both sides
of an issue.
You have to educate yourself and really that's what PediaCast
is all about. You have to decide what's best for you and your family after
you've given due consideration to both sides of an issue. It's different than
it used to be because these are the same kind of things that doctors have
always had to do deal with in terms of looking at benefit versus risk. But now
that all the information is out there in the hands of parents, in the media and
on the Internet, parents are put in a position where they have to look at these
things themselves and try to decide which side of the coin that they agree
with. And so this put the burden on the parent to look in to things and I'm
hoping that's what PediaCast is able to do for a lot
of you.
Now to be fair, let's take a look at what "the sky is falling"
people are saying. If you go to www.nomercury.org and we'll have a link to that
in the Show Notes and click on the link "The Science" and it reveals
information from nine different research studies that looked at the effects of
ethyl mercury. And one of the prominent ones on there, in fact, it's the first
one listed, directly from the research itself, it says, "There was little
difference in the neurotoxicities of methyl and ethyl
mercury when effects on the dorsal root ganglion or coordination disorders were
compared." And it goes on to further say, "The neurological science
and symptoms of methyl and ethyl mercury intoxication are identical." OK.
So this is the quote that they put up on their page. And then they nicely
provide the link to the study itself, which is in a PDF form.
So what does the study actually say or what did it look at? What this
particular study, which this organization is using to say "the
neurological science and symptoms of methyl and ethyl mercury are
identical", let's take a look at exactly what the study did. What they did
is neurotoxicity, so brain problems and kidney problems were compared in rats
that were given five daily doses of eight milligrams per kilogram of either
methyl or ethyl mercury. So they gave eight milligrams per kilogram of mercury,
either ethyl or methyl, for five days. Now that's the equivalent of a 20-pound
baby getting 400 milligrams of mercury.
In reality, baby vaccines, when they had the Thiomersal
in them, it was a tiny amount. In fact, the cumulative dose of mercury over the
first six months of life was less than 200 micrograms. So the study is using a
dose which is 2,000 times stronger and given over five days rather that over a
six-month period.
Now just for fun, let's take a look at iron, right? Iron is a heavy
metal and it's an important part of a baby's diet. The recommended amount of
iron intake is six milligrams per day. That equals 1,000 milligrams or a gram
over the course of six months. If we gave 2,000 times the recommended six-month
dose over a five-day period, that would end up being 2,000 grams of iron over
five days, OK, 2,000 grams.
A lethal dose of iron for a baby is around 600 milligrams and that means
that 2,000 grams, which is two kilograms, isn't it? So two kilograms of iron
would kill over 3,000 babies. My point here is that iron is not dangerous in
tiny amounts, in fact, it's helpful. In large amounts, it's going to kill you.
And this study showed that huge amounts of ethyl mercury is bad. No kidding!
I'm sorry, but these anti-immunization groups are parental terrorists. I
mean, they strike fear into the heart of parents with grossly exaggerated
studies. It's just craziness. Show Notes will have the link www.nomercury.org
so you can take a look for yourself.
I also encourage you to visit the FDA's
information page on Thiomersal and we'll have a link
to that one in the Show Notes as well.
OK. Today we are not afraid to strike out against the main controversial
topics. Oh, trust me; I'm planning on getting a lot of email over this episode.
MMR and autism. MMR, measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, has been
licensed in the U.S. for 3 decades, so for about 30 years now. And it contains
live attenuated measles, mumps and rubella virus, which basically that means
that it's a live virus but it's been a bred, so to speak, to not be nearly as
infectious as the real measles, mumps and rubella virus that's found out there
in nature.
What a live virus vaccine does is that it stimulates the immune system
to make antibodies against these viruses. So if the virus, itself, the real
one, out in the wild enters the body, you can fight them off with antibodies
that you made against the vaccine version of the measles, mumps and rubella.
Now the first dose of the MMR is usually given at 12 to 15 months of age
and then the second dose is given at four to six years of age. Compared to the
pre-vaccine era, the reported number of measles, mumps and rubella cases has
dropped by about 99% in the United States.
For more detailed, look at those diseases, themselves. I refer you to
episode five for measles, episode six for mumps and episode seven for rubella.
We had a little series going there, if you can figure that out. So the MMR has
definitely been a success story in terms of getting rid of these potentially
deadly illnesses.
Now, in step trouble. The MMR-autism flap began in 1998 when Dr. Andrew
Wakefield, a British bowel specialist, conducted a chart review of 12 patients.
Really, I’m not making this up. 12 patients. And based on that chart review,
Dr. Wakefield concluded that MMR causes intestinal inflammation, which leads to
“leaky bowel,” which then allows harmful toxins to enter the body and then that
these toxins then travel to the brain and cause autism. And now since every
autistic child in the developed world had received an MMR vaccine and since
autism is most commonly diagnosed between the 1st and 2nd birthdays, around the time
of the MMR, many parents of autistic children sort of clung to this report like
a colony of mold on old bread, if you know what I
mean.
Never mind that the U.K. Medical Research Council condemned Dr.
Wakefield’s report. Never mind that other medical researchers from around the
globe found fault with his research methods.
Never mind that subsequent well-designed statistically significant studies
failed to show any link between MMR and autism. But these stricken parents had
found what they wanted - a reason.
So now many parents fear the MMR vaccine and some downright refuse it.
They’ll put their children in a speeding automobile a median’s throw away from
a twenty-ton eighteen-wheeler rocketing in the opposite direction. And they’ll
let their children ride in an airplane travelling 500 miles-per-hour at an
elevation of 35,000 feet. They’ll allow their children to swim unattended and
ride bicycles without helmets and get on slapped-together carnival rides run by
a guy sporting more tattoos than teeth, but they won’t get the MMR vaccine.
It’s too risky. After all, Dr. Wakefield looked at twelve kids, and again,
these parental terrorist organizations, the ones who don't want you vaccinating
your children agree with him.
So what kind of studies have been done since Dr. Wakefield's revelation
back in 1998? Well in 1999 and I'm going to go through ten of these studies
very briefly, in 1999, a study from the U.K. looked at the trends in autism
diagnosis over a period of 20 years and found no difference in the age of
autism diagnosis between the vaccinated versus unvaccinated children.
And then in 2001, another study from the U.K. looked at the incidents of
autism diagnosed among boys who are ages two to five years; between 1988 and
1993 there was a seven-fold increase in the number of boys diagnosed with
autism; while the vaccination rate with MMR stayed steady at over 95% of all
children receiving the vaccination.
This probably reflects a better understanding of what constitutes autism
leading to more widespread recognition and diagnosis of the disorder. But you
wouldn't expect such a high increase in the number if it was just solely based
on immunization.
Another study in 2001 looked at the incidents of autism between 1980 and
1994 in California and here the number of kids diagnosed with autism in that
time period rose by 373%, while vaccination rates increased only by about 14%.
Again, to me, what this probably just shows that we're understanding autism
more and a lot of these kids before were just said "they are mentally
retarded" and put away in an institution or at home of some sort. Whereas,
starting in the 80s and 90s we began to understand what was happening with
these children a little bit better and we had more programs to deal with them
at home and keep them in the house. And so now, we have more kids instead of
just being called mentally retarded, they are properly diagnosed as having
autism.
Now in 2002, a study looked at a large group of kids born in Denmark and
this is where it starts to become a little bit, for me, more of an issue in
terms of this being something to really look at to show that there probably is
not a relationship between MMR and autism. So this study looked at a large
group of kids who are born in Denmark between 1991 and 1998 and it looked at a
group of children who had received the MMR and a group of children who had not
ever received the MMR.
And the "MMR group" actually had a lower relative risk of
being diagnosed with autism than the "no vaccine group". So the group
of kids who had the MMR were not being diagnosed with autism more often than
the group of kids who did not have the MMR. And I don't have the numbers on how
many kids were in this study but I do know it was a large number.
Then in 2002, a population study in London looked at autism rates in
kids with a history of bowel problems and compared that to their MMR vaccine
status and again, no link was found between MMR and autism or even between MMR
and bowel problems like Dr. Wakefield had suggested.
Then in 2004, another U.K. study looked at over 5,000 children and
again, compared rates of autism between those who had been vaccinated with MMR
and those who are unvaccinated. And again, the unvaccinated group actually had
a higher relative risk for developing autism.
And then in 2005, a systematic review of 31 articles published before
2004 that looked in to unintended effects associated with the MMR and none of
the studies reviewed showed an association between MMR or the development of
bowel problems, such as Crohn's disease or ulcerative
colitis and none of them showed any link between MMR and autism.
Then in 2005, another population-based study in Japan looked at the
number of new autism cases between 1988 and 1996 in a population where MMR use
has been withdrawn. And this study showed the rate of new cases of autism
increased even after the MMR was withdrawn from use. So as kids started to not
get MMR in the Japanese population, the number of kids diagnosed with autism
continued to increase even though none of them were getting MMR vaccine.
And in 2006, a study of over 27,000 children in Canada looked at the
autism rates of vaccinated versus unvaccinated kids and there was not an
increased occurrence of autism in the vaccinated group.
And finally, in 2006, a study of 904 children also showed no significant
difference between vaccinated versus unvaccinated children in terms of the
number of kids diagnosed with autism.
So there are 10 large, respected studies done since 1999 that show no
link between MMR and autism, yet these parental terrorists strike fear into
parents with Dr. Wakefield's theories of 12 patients and may have no studies at
all to support their claim; only anecdotal reports of kids who had the MMR and
a week later they were losing developmental milestones.
Now, thousands of kids get the MMR everyday in the United States and
thousands are diagnose everyday with autism. Here and there you're going to have
one who gets their shots one week and begins to show signs of autism the next
week. That does not mean that the two events are related. But understandably,
parents with autistic kids want something to blame and vaccines are an easy
target. They give these parents a focus on which to seek revenge and it really
has become that modern day medical equivalent to "Joseph
McCarthy-ism", blame the vaccines for your woes.
But in the meantime, we do run the risk of seeing a rise in disease that
routinely took the lives of our grandparents and great grandparents' children.
OK. I'm ranting today. I don't do this very often and I'll try not to
have such controversial topics in our next episode. OK. Menactra
and Guillain Barre
Syndrome. What in the world is that?
Well, Menactra is a vaccine that protects you
from a bacteria called the menin… See? Even I stumble
on these words sometimes… Meningococcus is the name
of the bacteria. It causes meningococcemia, which is a blood infection caused
by the meningococcus bacteria.
It's a nasty little bacteria, let me tell you. It causes sepsis,
meningitis and it can cause a blood-clotting disorder that leaves you with
hundreds of tiny broken blood vessels and micro bruises in the skin. It's
really a serious disease and it usually causes death in the great majority of
cases if you get this bacterial meningococcus. So
this is the kind of meningitis you occasionally hear about reported in
colleges. And again, it has a high mortality rate over a short period of time.
Now the vaccine to protect against this particular type of meningitis
was previously recommended for entering college freshmen. But last year the
recommendation changed from age 18 down to age 12 to 15 years, because this age
group is also at risk for becoming infected with the bacteria.
This means that over the course of the last year millions of doses have
been given as we catch up all the 12 to 18-year-old. So it used to be given
when kids got to be 18, now we give it at 12 to 15 years of age, but when we
see a kid who is 16 or 17 we also give it to them to sort of catch everybody
up.
Now, a problem is going to emerge with this, as we gave more of the
vaccine, we began to see some cases of Guillain-Barre
syndrome that were reported within a couple of weeks of teenagers getting the
vaccine.
What is Guillain-Barre syndrome? Well Guillain-Barre syndrome, basically the body makes
antibodies against the bacteria and we talked about this with the MMR vaccine
as well. So you're basically giving a part of the bacteria, it's a protein on
the bacteria meningococcus and when you get the
vaccine you don't get the whole bacteria; you just get the protein that's on
the bacteria. But it's enough to make your body's immune system respond and
make an antibody against that protein. So then if the real bacteria comes along
your immune system will have antibodies to attack it.
You're basically revving up the immune system to get it to make these
antibodies. And in revving up the immune system, in some people you also get
antibodies that then attack their own peripheral nerves, which leads to extreme
weakness because these nerves in your body are inflamed. And some people at
such a degree of weakness that you can't walk, sometimes they're so weak they
have trouble breathing and even have to be placed on a ventilator. And the
weakness progresses over at two to three-week period and then it slowly
improves. It's rarely fatal, but it can be fatal if it's not diagnosed in a
timely fashion and proper support of care instituted.
The incidents of Guillain-Barre are higher in
some families which does suggest that there's probably a genetic component
involved with this. You may have heard about this (teenager at home), the media
was all over it because these kinds of headlines attract viewers and readers
and viewers and readers attract advertising dollars, not that I'm bucking that
trend if there are any potential sponsors for PediaCast
out there, I'm just explaining motives. Actually, Guillain-Barre
has been reported with other vaccines as well, not just this Menactra, most notably the flu vaccine, but the incidents
are extremely low and it does tend to run in families.
Now what kind of numbers are we talking about? Well since the age of
recommendation was lowered from 18 to 12 to 15, there have been (drum roll
please) 17 reported cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome.
Seventeen! That's all! Seventeen! That means that there are 1.25 cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome per one million doses of vaccines
given, which is about the same incidents that we see with the flu vaccine as
well, that you usually see one or two cases of Guillain-Barre
per one million doses given.
So the rate of occurrence is very, very low. And in the opinion of the
medical community, myself included, the benefit of the vaccine outweighs the risk
because meningococcal disease has a very high mortality rate.
Now here in lies a problem with the Internet, before the mass the
distribution of information became available to regular folks, these same
issues came up in medicine and other disciplines all the time. There are risks
in everything we do. Build a bridge and there's a risk an earthquake will knock
it down. Of course we try to minimize the risks by building the bridge in the
right location and giving it special characteristics that make it more likely
to hold up. But there may still be conditions under which that bridge could
fall. Engineers understand that, but as long as the benefit outweighs the risk
by a very large margin, it's OK.
Now if your loved one is on the bridge when it falls or my loved one is
the one who gets Guillain-Barre after their Menactra vaccine, you and I are not happy campers. But as
professionals, as engineers, as scientists and as doctors, we have to look at
the big picture.
If we withhold advances because of every tiny risk, we get absolutely
nowhere. These tiny risks are made public and spread easily via the Internet
and that's fine. Knowledge is power as I've said before. But it also does come
with responsibility. You cannot become a "sky is falling" person. You
have to become a scientist. You have to look at both sides of an issue. You
have to look in the right places and you have to find the source that gives you
as clear a picture as possible.
And when it comes down to it, that is the goal of PediaCast,
to empower parents with the knowledge you need to make good decisions.
OK. Our Coming Soon, if not already, to a Doctor's Office Near You
segment, we are going to about four vaccines that are just about ready. The
first one is the hepatitis A vaccine. Hepatitis A virus infects the liver and
leads to jaundice and also possible liver failure. It is spread by the fecal-oral route and I'll leave that to your imagination on
how that sort of thing spreads. If you still can't figure it out just think
lettuce and spinach workers in California.
There has been a vaccine that prevents hepatitis A for some time and
it's often given prior to foreign travel, but with the incidents of hepatitis A
increasing in the U.S. and the degree of liver damage it can cause, the
Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices of the CDC is recommending that
all children receive a vaccine at one year of age. Now we're still waiting for
the American Academy of Pediatrics to add the vaccine
to its official schedule, but that should come soon, so check with your doctor
to see if he/she has it in stock.
The next vaccine is MMRV and this vaccine contains measles, mumps,
rubella and varicella, which is fancy word for
chickenpox. It doesn't really add anything new; it just combines two vaccines
that are given now between 12 and 15 months of age. And then it can also be
given prior to kindergarten when most kids get the second MMR and this would
help boost chickenpox immunity during the school-age years as well. So look for
that one, coming soon.
Also the rotavirus vaccine; rotavirus is a viral disease that causes
severe vomiting and diarrhea, also frequently causes
dehydration as well. In the developed world, it's rarely fatal due to access to
IV fluids. But in the developing world, it does cause significant problems with
disease and even quite a bit of death as well from dehydration with kids who
get it and then don't have access to medical care or IV fluids if they need
them.
Now an oral rotavirus vaccine was introduced several years ago, but
subsequently it was withdrawn due to an association with a potentially serious
type of bowel obstruction known as intussusception,
which can be deadly in some cases. And here's an example where a vaccine was
shown to have a problem in statistically significant research studies and look
what happened. The manufacturer withdrew it and all the organizations that
recommend vaccine said, "Oop, let's not do
this," because there really was a potential problem with that particular
vaccine. So there's not a big conspiracy to hide the fact that there are
problems with vaccines. It's not the case.
Now a new oral rotavirus vaccine called RotaTeq
has recently done well in three research trials which included an unprecedented
study population of 70,000 infants. So look for the Advisory Committee on
Immunization Practices and the American Academy of Pediatrics
to come out with their recommendations regarding this one some time here soon.
Finally, we're going to look at the Gardasil,
which is the HPV or human papillomavirus vaccine.
This is another vaccine that's aimed to the virus and this one protects, again,
it's called human papillomavirus. It's an organism
often spread during sexual encounters and it has been implicated in the
development of cervical cancer.
Gardasil was evaluated in four clinical
trials involving over 20,000 recipients. And overall, 99% of girls and women
immunized in the study developed good immunity against the virus. Gardasil is going to be given to girls and women between 9
and 26 years of age in a three-dose series over the course of six months.
We're still awaiting official recommendation of this one from the
American Academy of Pediatrics, but again, that
should be coming soon. That recommendation is important because this is a very
expensive vaccine, so you'll definitely want to ask your doctor about it once
it's recommended and the insurance companies are covering it.
Now, do we have too many vaccines? We already have so many and then
we're coming out with all these new ones. Is it too many? There are those who criticize
that the development of so many new vaccines is a problem, suggesting that
we're simply giving too many of them and that our immune system can't handle
them for some reason.
Sigh. Give me a break. The typical school-age child is exposed to hundreds,
possibly thousands of viruses during a typical school year and his/her immune
system revs up with every one of them. We are simply revving up the immune
system artificially, so that when the real bug comes along we have protection
and in this way we can avoid the diseases that are known to cause the biggest
problems.
Do vaccines, themselves, cause problems? I think sometimes they do. Life
threatening allergic reactions are possible as is Guillain-Barre
and other significant complications which you can read about when your doctor
gives you the vaccine information sheet.
However, the incidents of any of these conditions are extremely low. And
when you look at the big picture, when you look at the protection, our society,
our way of life and the health and well-being of our children have, over the
overwhelming evidence suggest that the benefit far outweighs the risk.
I'm all for parents making choices for their children. Don't get me
wrong. And when parents choose not to vaccinate, I respect their wishes. I also
have them signed a waiver stating that they understand that I disagree with
their decision, but that's a legal issue, not a medical issue.
All I ask is that parents tap in to good resources when they make a
decision and my hope is that PediaScribe and PediaCast will become a source parents trust when it comes
time to search for answers. So the information is out there, you just have to
find it from a good place.
Now I'm not saying that in the end if you look over the information for
vaccines and against vaccines and you decide that based on that information you
really don't want to give your kids vaccines, I'm fine with that. I really am.
I am all for parents making choices for their kids and you won't find a lot of pediatricians who admit that. But I do want to say though,
you have to look at both sides and you cannot be scared by these parental
terrorist organizations whose sole motive is to strike fear into parents in
order to get you to do what they want. If they had good statistically
significant studies to show that the problems that they talk about are valid
problems that aren't just happening by chance or that they're not just a
coincidence, then I would be all for them.
Vorwort/Suchen Zeichen/Abkürzungen Impressum