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Vaccinations: What's a
Parent to Do?
by Peggy O'Mara,
Publisher/Editor, Mothering
When Mothering first covered the down side of
vaccinations in 1979, we did so because vaccinations and circumcision
were the two most popular topics in our letters section. They were
popular topics because our original readers, natural living pioneers,
were theoretically opposed to invasive practices such as these, but
recognized that deciding about vaccinations and circumcision was
difficult, complex, and highly personal.
Although we have published information about the
down side of vaccinations for nearly 20 years, it is only a small
minority of parents, even a minority of our readers who conscientiously
object to vaccinations. Many more want to be informed and to make wise
choices when choice is available, but for the most part want to comply
with the standard recommended vaccination policy.
It was because of these parents, these readers,
that we departed from our usual editorial coverage of vaccinations and
published a look at "both sides" of the vaccination issue in
our Summer 1996 special edition. Where we had usually printed personal
interest stories and scientific philosophy, here we did statistical
analysis and scientific and medical debate. We published this coverage
because we saw that parents who normally went along with the status quo
were finding it nearly impossible to evaluate vaccinations.
Our vaccinations special edition was very helpful
to parents. However, in the last year there has continued to be an
outstanding diversity of contradictory material published on
vaccinations. Just when I felt that parents had some tools for
understanding vaccinations, intensified compliance efforts, new
vaccines, and bad press conspire to further confuse parents.
On the one hand, I have seven press releases on my
desk from the Centers for Disease Control, Every Child By Two (The
Nurses Foundation), Merck, and so forth announcing recent outbreaks of
contagious disease and encouraging vaccination. On the other hand, I
read the Money Magazine article (December 1996) suggesting the
profit motive in vaccination manufacture and reporting on past
contamination of polio vaccines with cancer-related viruses.
As a parent myself and someone who reports for
parents, I don't know what to think anymore. I know that the article
mentioned above presented a sensational view, but increasing questions
are being raised for parents. We need to participate in some open and
civilized dialogue about vaccinations that includes parents as well as
members of the healthcare, scientific, and ethics community. I think
parents are on the verge of a panic.
To better understand vaccinations, let's talk
about disease in general. Disease is caused by either a virus or a
bacterium. The ability of the virus or bacterium to hurt the body is
related to the overall health and well-being of the body itself Some
viruses and some bacteria are more virulent than others. The presence of
a virus or a bacterium in an organism is not necessarily proof of
disease; in fact, many viruses and bacteria coexist peacefully with
humans.
Vaccinations, first developed for smallpox,
rabies, and yellow fever in the late 1800s, were developed to act
against viruses.
Antibiotics, first developed in the 1940s, act
against bacteria. Most antibiotics are produced naturally from soil
organisms.
Antiviral drugs, first distributed in the 1970s
have not been developed to the same extent as antibiotics because they
are toxic.
Because of the difficulty producing successful
antiviral drugs, scientists have developed vaccinations against specific
viral diseases. Since the 1960s, vaccines have been developed for
measles, mumps, rubella, chicken pox, meningitis, and hepatitis B.
More than 200 viral and bacterial vaccines are
currently being created by federal health agencies and vaccines
manufacturers.
No information is available on plans for use or
distribution of these vaccines.
Vaccine development has become big business.
Worldwide revenues of nearly $3 billion are expected to more than double
to $7 billion over the next five years as more vaccines are developed.
How did this happen? In the 1960s, the National Cancer Institute (NCI)
researched viruses as possible cancer triggers. At the same time, the
Department of Defense was experimenting with inducing triggers for
cancer as biological weaponry.
In 1969, biological weaponry was outlawed, and the
United States Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases
(USAMRID) changed its mission from biological weaponry research to
developing protective vaccines and controlling lethal microorganisms and
infectious diseases. Other government and private research facilities
followed suit. Vaccine industry revenues are estimated at more than $1
billion a year in the US alone. This is up from $500 million in 1990, a
200% increase over six years. The cost to fully immunize a child has
risen from $107 in 1986 to $367 in 1996, a 243% increase over ten years.
Many health-related products make a profit. What
confuses parents about vaccinations and profit is that vaccinations are
required. What further confuses parents is that two vaccines can be on
the market for the same disease and be administered equally when one is,
in fact, less reactive than the other and thus safer in the eyes of the
parent.
The acellular pertussis vaccine has only recently
been approved for use in the US even though it has been in use in Japan
since 1981. Studies show it to be less reactive than the whole cell
pertussis vaccine and, in some cases, twice as effective in preventing
pertussis. Even so, the whole cell pertussis vaccine is still
administered to most babies in the US. Make sure and request the
acellular vaccine if you choose the pertussis vaccination.
Similarly, a new and safer polio vaccine, the
injected polio vaccine (IPV) is now available. While wild polio is no
longer present in the Western hemisphere, the oral polio vaccine has
been known to cause polio a few times a year. The injected polio vaccine
does not carry this risk.
And while this new safer injected polio vaccine is
available, the oral polio vaccine continues to be given to over 90% of
all babies. And, the safer injected polio vaccine is more expensive,
more than twice as expensive as oral polio vaccine. The manufacturers of
oral polio vaccine, a $230 million per year business, lobbied against
the injected polio vaccine.
It's bad enough that parents have to worry about
possible reactions to vaccinations. The Money magazine article
tells us that vaccines themselves may be contaminated with viruses that
can trigger cancer. Who knew that the development of vaccinations has
been fraught with such controversy?
In the early days of vaccine research, three
scientists: Hilary Koprowski, Jonas Salk, and Albert Sabin, worked
simultaneously and independently on the development of the polio
vaccine.
The polio virus was first isolated in liquid in
1908, but no one knew how to keep a virus alive outside of the body.
Viruses can only reproduce in living cells. Outside of living cells,
they are nonliving and can be stored as chemicals are stored. In 1948,
Dr. John Enders and two coworkers grew the polio virus in cells cultured
from human placentas cast away at birth. They won the Nobel Prize for
this work. In 1955 Wendell Stanley crystallized the poliovirus in his
Berkeley lab.
As part of the development of the polio vaccine,
Koprowski, Sabin, and Salk held field tests and vaccine trials in the US
and other countries. During the 1935 trials, vaccines from viruses
cultured in monkey organs accidentally caused polio in several children.
Dr. Jonas Salk, who worked for the National
Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (NFIP) founded by Franklin Roosevelt,
created a vaccine from chemically inactivated viruses grown in monkey
cell tissue. In a field test in 1954, 400,000 received the vaccine. The
secretary of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW)
officially licensed the vaccine soon thereafter.
By the summer of 1955, however, the story had
changed. Reports came pouring in of children who became paralyzed from
the vaccine itself, the components of which had apparently not been
fully inactivated. More than 200 people were hit with vaccine-induced
polio the summer of 1955 and 11 died.
Vaccine production stopped, and a complete
political shake-up hit HEW. The secretary Of HEW, the director of the
National Institutes of Health (NIH), and several other officials
resigned. The polio vaccine was restarted after screening procedures
were tightened and was eventually replaced by another version.
In another incident, between ten and thirty Salk
vaccines and Sabin sugar cubes were found to be contaminated with SV40,
a simian virus from Asian rhesus monkeys, mainly from India. In 1954,
Bernice Eddy, a doctor of bacteriology, discovered live monkey viruses
in supposedly inactivated polio vaccines developed by Salk. Her
discovery led to the discovery of SV40 by Laurelia McClelland and
Maurice Hilleman at Merck's vaccine division. SV40 is a simian
retrovirus. Monkeys are used in scientific experimentation in viral,
cancer, and vaccine research and have a high incidence of retroviruses.
At least 40 simian viruses have been identified.
Between 1959 and 1965, research on pregnant women
showed the incidence of brain tumors in children of Salk-vaccinated
mothers to be 13 times greater than in children of mothers who hadn't
received the Salk vaccine. German scientists have found evidence of SV40
in 30 out of 110 brain tumors. Brain tumors have increased 30% in the US
over the last 20 years. Anyone who has received polio vaccine,
particularly before 1964, could be at risk for carrying SV40.
In 1961, Congressional hearings before the House
Health and Safety Committee were called to investigate the SV40
contamination of some lots of vaccines. In written testimony, Hilary
Koprowski, whose polio trials in what is now Zaire were also suspected
of being contaminated, admitted that human cells, even with the risk of
cancer, are safer than the unknown risks of monkey cells for vaccine
research.
All major infectious diseases have apparently been
eliminated from the Western world. Only noninfectious diseases like
cancer, emphysema, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's and osteoporosis have
not yet yielded to medical control. These noninfectious diseases have
taken the place as causes of death and illness that infectious diseases
once had.
As parents we are increasingly asked to vaccinate
our children against diseases that we seldom see and about which we are
not worried. We wonder why hepatitis B is given to babies when it
is a sexually transmitted disease. The three recommended doses of
hepatitis B vaccinations costs $40 or more. The duration of protection
is unknown, and booster shot requirements are undefined. We wonder why
more reactive vaccines stay on the market when safer vaccines are
available. And, we wonder if there are still contaminants in vaccines.
As parents, we want our concerns taken seriously.
The public health crusade to eradicate disease does so sometimes at the
expense of our children. This is not acceptable to us as parents nor
should it be acceptable in a civilized society.
When the Institute of Medicine attempted to verify
particular vaccine reactions, they found a lack of studies on vaccine
reactions in general. The National Institutes of Health spends
approximately $415 million a year promoting vaccines and new vaccine
research. None of that budget is allocated to the study of vaccine
reactions, and vaccine contaminants.
I wish there were some answers here. Instead I
present you with a plate of wriggling questions and I call for a public
airing of all of these questions. It is unethical in a time of so many
questions about vaccinations or in any time to deny philosophical
exemptions. It is unjust to ask parents to become medical experts in
order to protect their children. And, it is immoral to risk the health
of even one child in order to save the lives of many.
We need a better way.
Further information:
National
Vaccine Information Center (NVIC)
NVIC assists parents whose children have suffered vaccine reactions,
promotes research to evaluate vaccine safety and effectiveness, and
monitors vaccine research, policymaking and legislation.
Vaccine
Information & Awareness (VIA)
VIA offers an information package with package inserts for each vaccine,
informed consent information, a comprehensive list of books,
and links to state
statutes and exemptions and state health departments.
Related book: Vaccination:
The Issue of Our Times by Peggy O'Mara
References are available upon request from Mothering:
(800) 984-8116, (505) 984-8116
Editorial, Mothering, No. 84, Fall 1997, Pages 6-7.
Reprinted with permission. |
