The Other Side of Vaccines

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By Ingrid Maida
Exclusive to Eastern Group Publications

Heralded as one of the 20th Century's greatest medical achievements, child vaccinations have today become society's indispensable weapon in the fight against contagious diseases. So heavily promoted are vaccine's benefits, rarely do people doubt their effectiveness, or bother to inform themselves of their potential risks.

Yet they do exist.

Richie was born in New York in 1983 and, as is the custom, was injected with the DPT (Diphtheria, Pertussis and Tetanus) vaccination when he turned two-months-old. Thirty-three hours later, Riche, up until then a healthy baby boy, had died. The death certificate stated that the cause of his passing was "irreversible shock due to a probable reaction to DPT."

Although some would believe that his case is a unique exception, the facts say otherwise.

"Because vaccination is a medical procedure that carries a risk of injury or death, every citizen should have the right to be fully and accurately informed about a vaccine's benefits and risks," said to EGP Barbara Fisher, founder and director of the National Vaccination Information Center, NVIC, based in Virginia. "(Everyone) should be allowed to make an informed, voluntary decision without being harassed or punished by the State."

However, the administering of immunizations to children is not something that most parents have the power to decide. Just after birth, for example, every baby is immunized against Hepatitis B, well before a mother can inform herself about the vaccine.

And requiring children be given a long list of immunizations before they can attend school is now a routine fact of life. "Whenever the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recommends a new childhood vaccine for 'universal use, ' state health officials add it to the mandatory vaccination list for school requirements," states Fisher.

While kept mostly out of mainstream view, an organized anti-vaccination movement has existed worldwide for several decades. Those who are at the forefront of this movement are not only thousands of parents of children who have been afflicted or even died from adverse reactions to immunizations, but also a growing number of doctors who seriously question the benefits vs. risks of child immunizations.

In 1996, after many years of lobbying, the Food and Drug Administration, FDA, substituted the DTP vaccine with the modified "acelluar" DtaP. According to Fisher, the old DTP vaccine, which is still used to today in Latin America, showed that 1 in every 875 people injected with it suffered convulsions, fainting spells or shocks; 1 in every 110,000 suffered cerebral inflammation; and 1 in every 310,000 suffered permanent brain damage.

Until the FDA ordered the removal of DTP in 1996 after considering it too dangerous, it was administered for years and seen as a reliable vaccine by most government authorities, medical professionals and parents.

"We have been questioning one-size-fits-all national vaccine policies and calling for better quality scientific research into why so many children are becoming autistic, learning disabled, hyperactive, asthmatic and diabetic and suffering other kinds of brain and immune system problems after repeated vaccinations," stated Fisher.

Even as some diseases like polio have almost disappeared from the face of the earth, due to massive vaccinations according to most health officials, other afflictions have spread with greater force, generating diverse investigations into the possible role vaccinations have played in their expansion.

One of the most common allegations is that the MMR (Mumps, Measles and Rubella ) vaccination is somehow responsible for the dramatic rise in autism in American children. According to a study performed by Dr. Mary Megson, autism was diagnosed in 1 out of every 10,000 children in 1978. But in 2000 it had become an "epidemic" that affected 1 in every 500 children in the U.S.

In London, Prime Minister Tony Blair fanned the flames of this controversy when in February of last year he refused to respond to questions asking whether his son had already been administered the MMR vaccine.

Due to innumerable cases of children having had some kind of adverse reaction to one or several vaccines, in 1986 the U.S. government created the National Compensation Program. Since 1988, this fund has handed out more than $558 million to 638 victims (affected adversely by vaccines) and/or their family members.

In 2002, the World Health Organization, WHO, reported 24,199 cases of adverse reactions to vaccinations in the U.S. In that same year, WHO announced only 8,296 cases of pertussis, 37 cases of measles, 27 cases of tetanus, one case of diphtheria and zero cases of polio in the U.S.

Health authorities today continue to push mandatory and voluntary vaccinations on the public, while always adding new vaccines to the already long list (like the flu vaccines). They also continue to stress that none of these have serious side effects. At the same time, those who oppose this health policy insist that not only are there too few investigations being performed on the possible negative effects of vaccines, but also that there is too much unknown about their long term effects.

"The outstanding scientific question that is yet to be answered, however, is whether the use of many vaccines in early childhood is contributing to chronic disease later in life," said Fisher. "The use of multiple vaccines (38 doses of 12 vaccines currently) in early childhood is a relatively new development over the last 20 years."

This is the first of three articles in EGP examining the risks and the debate surrounding mass vaccinations.

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