Vaccine Court Decision Imperils Children's Health
Ronald Bailey | March 31, 2008, 12:06pm
Infectious disease researcher Paul Offit decries in a New York Times op/ed the recent award of compensation to the family of Hannah Poling by the Federal Court of Claims under the the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. Terry and Jon Poling asserted that Hannah became autistic after receiving nine childhood immunizations. Naturally, anti-vaccination autism campaigners hailed this decision. Offit points out:
In 2000, when Hannah was 19 months old, she received five shots against nine infectious diseases. Over the next several months, she developed symptoms of autism. Subsequent tests showed that Hannah has a mitochondrial disorder — her cells are unable to adequately process nutrients — and this contributed to her autism. An expert who testified in court on the Polings’ behalf claimed that the five vaccines had stressed Hannah’s already weakened cells, worsening her disorder. Without holding a hearing on the matter, the court conceded that the claim was biologically plausible.
On its face, the expert’s opinion makes no sense. Even five vaccines at once would not place an unusually high burden on a child’s immune system. The Institute of Medicine has found that multiple vaccines do not overwhelm or weaken the immune system. And although natural infections can worsen symptoms of chronic neurological illnesses in children, vaccines are not known to.
“There is no evidence that children with mitochondrial enzyme deficiencies are worsened by vaccines,” Salvatore DiMauro, a professor of neurology at Columbia who is the nation’s leading expert on the disorder, told me. Indeed, children like Hannah Poling who are especially susceptible to infections are most likely to benefit from vaccines...
The vaccine court should return to the preponderance-of-evidence standard. But much damage has already been done by the Poling decision. Parents may now worry about vaccinating their children, more autism research money may be steered toward vaccines and away from more promising leads and, if similar awards are made in state courts, pharmaceutical companies may abandon vaccines for American children. In the name of trying to help children with autism, the Poling decision has only hurt them.
A 2007 study found that childhood vaccinations have reduced hospitalization rates by 90 percent or more over the last century. As the New York Times reported:
Death rates for 13 diseases that can be prevented by childhood vaccinations are at all-time lows in the United States, according to a study released yesterday.
The study, by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, and published in The Journal of the American Medical Association, is the first time that the agency has searched historical records going back to 1900 to compile estimates of cases, hospitalizations and deaths for all the diseases children are routinely vaccinated against.
In nine of the diseases, rates of death or hospitalization declined more than 90 percent since vaccines against them were approved, and in the cases of smallpox, diphtheria and polio, by 100 percent.
In only four diseases — hepatitis A and B, invasive pneumococcal diseases and varicella (the cause of chickenpox and shingles) — did deaths and hospitalizations fall less than 90 percent. Those vaccines are all relatively new — the one for chickenpox, for example, was adopted nationally only in 1995. Also, some diseases like hepatitis typically strike adults, who are less likely to be immunized.
Whole Offit op/ed here.
Some reason reporting on the autism/vaccine myth here.
Disclosure: I was vaccinated against hepatitis A and B, tetanus and Japanese encephalitis in December.
Francisco Torres | March 31, 2008, 3:20pm | #
Good old Libertarianism, totally blind anything that involves cooperation.
You mean, division of labor, capital investment, markets... NONE of that involves cooperation? Or what do you mean by 'cooperation'?
The reason why we have a special Vaccine court, ladies and gentlemen, is that vaccination is a special case.
Circular thinking.
What vaccines really do is lower the infection rate from a disease exposure, but there often remains a substantial risk all the same. This serves a valuable social purpose, however.[...] people are basically not told the whole truth - that no the vaccine won't totally protect your child, but - if all the children get vaccinated, they'll be by and large safe from the disease. So it's a social good more than an individual one. Can Libertarians appreciate that?
Can you appreciate cogent arguments? First, you Beg the Question by assuming people do not know the basic characteristics of a vaccine - you just assume people are "not told the truth", as if people were dolts - so that you can argue that vaccination is a "social good". Second, you assume that people would not vaccinate their children if given a choice, BUT YOU CANNOT KNOW THAT. IF vaccines give a child a chance of not getting diseases, most parents would opt to have their children vaccinated, if they followed this incentive (people respond to incentives, don't you know that?). So, even if a few or some people do not vaccinate their children, most would, if given the choice - most people vaccinate their cats and dogs, and those are not mandatory, so why would parents act differently altogether?
And as we want everyone to get vaccinated, of course there should be price controls.
Wait... This is a non sequitur. Where do you conclude one from the other?
And as it's just totally not fair to force people to care for a child permanently damaged by a vaccination that was really for the good of society and not so much for that child itself - a compensation fund.
Why would it not be fair? If it is for the good of society, and by the way you are rationalizing this, the social good outweighs the individual's rights, how come the individual have a right to compensation for his or her sacrifice for the greater good? This is called Inconsistent Logic - you cannot have your cake and eat it, too.
Which is not the same as suing the vaccine maker, anyway.
Stop - you just made less sense. A person could sue the vaccine maker if the company sold a defective product, but that would be if the individual considered the vaccine as a product and not a selfless act of devotion towards the "greater good".
Next week, I'll explain to y'all why we need roads. See you guys, I'm off to reread Atlas Shrugged.
We need roads? Since when?
Susie | March 31, 2008, 3:49pm | #
"Dr. Paul Offit disclosed that he holds a patent on a rotavirus vaccine and receives grant money from Merck to develop this vaccine. He also disclosed that he is paid by the pharmaceutical industry to travel around the country and teach doctors that vaccines are safe."
extract from http://vaccinationnews.com/rally/openstmntconint.htm
To vax or not is up to the individual, but before you listen to who is talking, you maybe need to look at who is paying them.
It's not just thimerosal that can cause problems. There are so many other toxic substances in vax and some that people might find morally objectionable... animal tissues (a problem if you are vegetarian) and cells derived from aborted fetuses (Catholics?)
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/238012/fetal_tissue_and_the_production_of.html
http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/medical_ethics/me0044.html
Also remember there have been no studies to say that giving children several shots in one session are safe, even though Offit says "each infant would have the theoretical capacity to respond to about 10,000 vaccines at any one time."
He doesn't sound very wise does he? I don't know about you, but I just can't trust a guy who would say something that is so obviously stupid.
Maybe it's the overload of vax, maybe it's the ingredients, maybe it's the combination of both on already compromised immune systems. This is an interesting article on the health of children who aren't vaccinated.
http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Health/2005/12/07/the_age_of_autism_a_pretty_big_secret/6829/
Good luck to everyone (like myself) with children, there is a lot of confusing stuff out there. It's harder and harder for us to make good choices now... in the old days people just listened to their docs and no one knew any better.
Now what you can do is educate yourself on both sides of the issues, we have had a lot of pro vax indoctrination, which needs to be re-examined.
Before having a baby and researching all of this I was ambivalent about vaxes...now I am much more inclined to be anti-vax or at least in favor of selectively vaxxing.
http://www.generationrescue.org/pdf/user_friendly.pdf
Knowledge is power.
Lynn | March 31, 2008, 6:14pm | #
I tried to post this earlier but I do not think it went through. Sorry if this is repost.
It is known that glutathione is an amino acid that helps the body clear out heavy metals. If you are low on glutathione, you cannot clear them as quickly and they can accumulate in your body and cause neurological damage.
Some research has shown that some severely autistic kids have very low glutathione levels. Glutathione is produced in part in the mitochondria and therefore it makes sense that those challenges can be magnified in a body that cannot help itself.
Doctors and health authorities need to start paying attention to the additional challenges of certain individuals, and allow more waivers or provide better screening for x y or z that equals severe reaction in some kids.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15585776?ordinalpos=14&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
Also of interest an informal survey was done on the mothers of autistic kids at one of the conventions. Granted it is a small sample, not "scientific", but should make you go hmmmm.
IN the normal population, those with a blood type ending in a negative (Rh-) is about 15% of the total population. Women who are Rh- are given a drug called Rhogam to prevent hemolytic disease of the newborn. Now there are mercury free versions of this shot, but previously women were given two with each birth. It is life saving drug, one that can be made without mercury. Of the moms at the autism meeting, something like a whopping 45%-55% were Rh- and therefore recieved Rhogam or similar shots during/after pregnancy. Therefore, the fetus already got that mercury exposure before birth, possibly explaining those cases that were not "regressive autism" because they already had their mercury concentrated in them as fetuses.
Just a thought.
Next time you meet a mom of an autistic child, ask them if they are Rh-.
Lynn | March 31, 2008, 8:17pm | #
I am not sure Cosmotarian who you suggest is proposing conspiracy theories, but I would love to see you provide something in terms of backup (I can't even tell if you are being sarcastic nor which side of the argument you are falling on.)
Offit doesn't just advise the ACIP, he is patent holder. Also, he holds an MD and chief of infectious diseases at Childrens hospital in Philly as well as professor at University of Penn med school. I wonder how many interns he has influence over with his tainted world view. (Chaching.) He is set to make far more than just a few thousand dollars by pushing his vaccines down the ACIPs throat as well as the public at large with all of his "expertise".
And do not worry that 80% of people are given partial or misinformation about the vaccines prior to vaccinating. No need for informed consent rights for patients. They should just "do what their godlike deity doctors tell them to do because doctors know better than them and just shut the hell up!" (TIC)http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11158491?dopt=Abstract
And do not worry that such conflicts of interest are readily given waivers by the governing bodies they advise to. It is all about public safety, right? (TIC)
One can find the govt reform committee page on this (my old link directly to Burtons inquiry wont work), but here is a nice paraphrased synopsis. http://www.whale.to/v/staff.html
Note the timeline of ACIP and VRBAC vs FDA approval. Pay close attention to the types and quantities of conflicts of interest in the various boards. Nothing to sneeze at.
Just a thought for those rational thinkers.
Oh, and the EPA estimated the vaccines were previously well above EPA standards, but the FDA and CDC had different standards. Detractors said the EPA standards were for the dosage of mercury over time which would be "safe". Sure, aspirin is safe over time too. But take the entire "safe dose" at one time as vaccines/mercury is given and lets see what happens. It is only the most poisonous substance on earth.
Lynn | March 31, 2008, 9:09pm | #
The real problem is that it seems it is mostly boys who have this genetic predisposition to not be able to pass the 25 mcg of mercury through harmlessly. Girl babies are less likey to have a problem processing the mercury.
So we need something different to start killing off/sterlizing/lobotomizing a bunch of girls...especially the lower class girls. We also need more revenue for drug companies. So lets make it mandantory that all teenage girls have to get a HIV vaccine injection....even though the vaccine will only prevent 5 of 150 types of HPV(rendering it completely useless) and nevermind that HPV is harmless in 90% of the people who already carry it....we'll just link it to cervical cancer and then we can market our new vaccine as "the Girl Cancer Vaccine" and we can lobby to make the states require ALL their girls to take it!
This will make big money...who likes cancer? and who doesn't want to save teenage girls from STDs? this is another win/win. Get Ronald Bailey on the phone, we need him to talk about how this is a libertarian idea, you know to shut up all the wacko libertarians.~Cosmo
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Ah, now I see. You are being completely sarcastic. Being new here, I do not know the tone a person writes with. (Simply, something is lost in this method of communication...things like tone and inflection.)
Maybe the genetic predisposition is the shortage of glutathione as well as other heavy metal removing "good chemicals of the body." There is also research that suggests that high levels of testosterone are partly to play with regards to autism/mercury challenge.
The theory is, percoccious puberty/very high testosterone in males or high levels of testosterone in girls can have an affect on severity of autism. The reasoning behind that is that mercury binds in very tight sheets with testosterone, and is not easily removed by current methods such as chelation (commonly accepted practice for removing heavy metals.) Because they have so much testosterone, the mercury becomes stuck in the body, wreaking havoc.
Add to it that testosterone is responsible for aggression....then talk to a parent of an autistic child and step into their shoes for a day.
People need to check their facts, especially the bonehead that wrote this article with a clearly biased point of view (just look at the title.)
Gabe Harris | March 31, 2008, 10:53pm | #
clipped this:
.....
Especially when government agencies and politicians, including the FDA, the CDC, and former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, were exposed for colluding with the pharmaceutical manufacturers of mercury-containing vaccines in Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s devastating 2005 Rolling Stone exposé “Deadly Immunity.”
Kennedy writes in the opening lines:
In June 2000, a group of top government scientists and health officials gathered for a meeting at the isolated Simpsonwood conference center in Norcross, Georgia. Convened by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the meeting was held at this Methodist retreat center, nestled in wooded farmland next to the Chattahoochee River, to ensure complete secrecy. The agency had issued no public announcement of the session -- only private invitations to fifty-two attendees. There were high-level officials from the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration, the top vaccine specialist from the World Health Organization in Geneva and representatives of every major vaccine manufacturer, including GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Wyeth and Aventis Pasteur. All of the scientific data under discussion, CDC officials repeatedly reminded the participants, was strictly "embargoed." There would be no making photocopies of documents, no taking papers with them when they left.
The federal officials and industry representatives had assembled to discuss a disturbing new study that raised alarming questions about the safety of a host of common childhood vaccines administered to infants and young children. According to a CDC epidemiologist named Tom Verstraeten, who had analyzed the agency's massive database containing the medical records of 100,000 children, a mercury-based preservative in the vaccines -- thimerosal -- appeared to be responsible for a dramatic increase in autism and a host of other neurological disorders among children. "I was actually stunned by what I saw," Verstraeten told those assembled at Simpsonwood, citing the staggering number of earlier studies that indicate a link between thimerosal and speech delays, attention-deficit disorder, hyperactivity and autism. Since 1991, when the CDC and the FDA had recommended that three additional vaccines laced with the preservative be given to extremely young infants -- in one case, within hours of birth -- the estimated number of cases of autism had increased fifteenfold, from one in every 2,500 children to one in 166 children [it currently stands at one in every 150 children].
Lynn | April 1, 2008, 11:59pm | #
Some people can process the 25 micrograms some can't....to then say that those who can't are just genetically broken so it isn't anyones fault is pretty weak.
The fault lies elsewhere. Drugs that harm some percentage of patients - which is just about all of them - shouldn't be yanked from the market. The benefit to 99% of patients shouldn't be eliminated just because of that 1% who will suffer an adverse drug reaction.
The fault also lies with people who say, "oh well, this kid was just genetically unprepared for this," without following that up with, "we're gonna search high and low to find what genetic (or physiological) quirk made this happen and will make every effort to screen patients prior to administration of this drug or vaccine."
What needs to be done is testing (and more research to find more gene-drug relationships) to determine beforehand whether a patient is likely to suffer an ADR... whether a patient carries some genetic variation that makes them unable to process a drug or its components properly.
Then parents and physicians can made educated decisions based on their own child's genetic makeup rather than on data from studies paid for by various interested parties. Hell, even impartial studies can be flawed, and unless you know how to read and interpret the literature, you've got no hope of knowing which data to believe and which data may or may not apply to your child in particular.
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There are some different aspects to these cases over most ADR. For starters, it is not "mandatory for entry into school" that anyone take anything other than vaccines. If parents are too stupid to ask, thats one thing. IF parents ask and are given incorrect or incomplete information, that is a different.
Parents are told their kids wont be admitted to school, are denied entry into some daycare centers, at times are ostracized by the ignorant of the community that may not understand their choice to opt out of some or all vaccines, are not given true risk/benefit equations, are not told about the nature of the disease, failure rate of the vaccines, treatability, are not fully informed how to report a reaction to VAERS, are not told about state waivers (and some states are pushing for medical waivers only and bedamned anyone that doesnt want them for their own personal reasons). Some people are even threatened that their children will be removed from them.
There have been cases where parents have seen vaccine reactions in their older kids, try to postpone or avoid vaccines with their younger kids, and are given THREATS. Now they have a household full of kids with serious neurological delays and disabilities. Coercion of this type should be illegal but they are merely ignored in the name of "the greater good and public health" and "medical science".
So I agree, they should be looking fast and hard for those people who are more likely to have a reaction based on genetics. Maybe a simple glutathione test. If someone takes a statin, they get regular liver tests. Simple. Except you are talking about an ADULT who has a hopefully mature brain, and not a newborn baby or child that has their entire life ahead of them-stolen.
If they keep this up, there won't be anyone left without serious neurological damage to run this country.
