Vaccine sleight of hand
Every Child by Two proclaims that vaccines save money! Lots and lots of money!
Childhood Vaccines Save Lives and Money
- Routine childhood immunization
- 33,000 deaths prevented
- $43 billion saved
But then, on the side of their web-page, is a link to a graphic illustration of the rising costs of childhood vaccination.
Looks like they want it both ways: “vaccines save billions” by reducing health care costs, preventing hospitalizations and doctor visits; BUT “the newer vaccines are more expensive and we need to put a lot more tax dollars into vaccination programs.”
If the numbers with respect to “dollars saved” were solid and existed across the entire vaccine program, the argument would be a good one. Upon further scrutiny, it looks like they are pulling a bait and switch. They put forward some old numbers based on the less expensive vaccines combined with some inflated statistics for predicted epidemics (see the “33,000 deaths prevented” link above for our detailed analysis of these numbers), then slide right past the huge increase in the number and cost of vaccines in the current U.S. schedule.
On top of this, some of the newer vaccines are aimed at illnesses which are of low incidence or fairly mild in most children. For example, Hepatitis B is very severe, but it isn’t common among infants born in the U.S. On the other side, chickenpox is usually a minor illness, although common. The chickenpox vaccine cost benefit justification actually depended on a monetary estimate of the cost of parental time lost from work. Some convoluted bookkeeping methods would be needed to demonstrate that universal vaccination with ALL of the vaccines on the current schedule results in overall health care savings. There is certainly no sign of these savings in the escalating cost of health insurance in the U.S. Read more
Indian Physicians slapped with anti-vaccine label!
Why? Because they questioned a WHO (World Health Organization) diktat in favor of universal Hib vaccination in India.
Sorry, but this is getting ridiculous. Anyone, at any time who raises any concern about the safety, efficacy, or appropriateness of any vaccine is now called anti-vaccine.
Here is a potted history of the recent outbreak of name-calling.
In the July 2010 issue of the Indian Journal of Medical Research this editorial appeared: Introducing pentavalent vaccine in the EPI in India: A counsel for caution.
The latest WHO position paper on Hib says ‘Hib vaccine should be included in all routine immunization programmes. This suggests that Hib vaccine should be included in the immunization programme universally, irrespective of an individual country’s disease burden, not withstanding of natural immunity attained within the country against the disease, and not taking into account the rights of sovereign States to decide how they use their limited resources. The mandate and wisdom of issuing such a directive, for a disease that has little potential of becoming a pandemic, needs to be questioned.
The editorial reviews the available data and on the basis of the science, questions the need for the Hib vaccine in India.
In response to this thoughtful challenge to the WHO policy on Hib, a news commentary was published in the BMJ (British Medical Journal) which called the concerned doctors an “anti-vaccine lobby.” This article, which is unreferenced, claims:
The Hib organism, which can cause severe bacterial meningitis and pneumonia, is estimated to kill more than 370 000 children worldwide each year, GAVI said. Nearly 20% of these deaths occur in India.
In response to the BMJ article, a rapid response was published in the online version of the BMJ by eight members of the supposed “lobby”
The doctors wrote:
The thrust for including Hib vaccine in India is based on 2 arguments. The first is that there is anecdotal evidence of the existence of Hib disease and Hib meningitis in India and that Hib meningitis may lead to long term morbidity. The second argument is that the well-to-do parents sometimes buy Hib vaccine in the open market to vaccinate their children. The Government of India must therefore provide it free for the poor, on the grounds of equity and fair play (2).
The problem with the anecdotal reports is that they do not specify the size of the universe from which the samples are drawn and public health policies cannot be based on these figures without a denominator. The many systematic surveys done to look at the magnitude of the problem of Hib disease in India have nearly always shown that the incidence of Hib disease is much lower than what was projected for India. Most of these studies have been funded by the WHO and these have been reviewed recently in an open access journal (3).
So, we have the BMJ calling names and publishing an unreferenced attack claiming high numbers of deaths from Hib, while the supposed anti-vaccine lobby provides carefully referenced information debunking the claims.
The pro-vaccine lobby has plumbed to new depths.
Myths 3.2 Chickenpox “the disease can be severe”
Filed under: CDC Watch, Parents' Pages, Vaccine Myths, Vaccine/Disease Analysis
Parents who take their children to chicken pox parties have forgotten how devastating this childhood disease can be according to vaccination experts:
“What happens if you bring your child to a chicken pox party and they’re the one in 10 who has a complication and is hospitalized?” said Dr. Jane Zucker, head of the city Health Department’s immunizations bureau.
We went back to 1951, when chickenpox afflicted millions of children every year in the U.S. to see if complications and hospitalization from chickenpox were common:
In general, chickenpox is a disease of young children and in them it usually runs an uneventful, if uncomfortable, course without leaving behind it any permanent bad effects. In very rare instances, a case of encephalitis or inflammation of the brain may occur after chickenpox, causing such symptoms as sleepiness, stiff neck, convulsions, coma, and even death.
Ordinarily, however, chickenpox is a mild though highly contagious disease…
This view of chickenpox as mild continued to exist in the U.S. for many years as this two part video snippet illustrates. Read more
Vaccine Myths 3.1: The Scourge of Childhood
Filed under: CDC Watch, Parents' Pages, Vaccine Myths, Vaccine/Disease Analysis
“…young parents of today do not remember…”
In 1974 the St. Petersburg Times wrote:
So many people are neglecting to get immunity shots that doctors fear the seven one-time scourges of childhood–polio, mumps, measles, rubella, diphtheria, lockjaw and whooping cough–may strike American communities again.
However, just six years earlier, in 1968, newspaper stories said things like this:
Although mumps is a relatively mild childhood disease, it can cause sterility when it strikes adult males.
At that time the recommendation was to give the recently developed shots to boys if they hadn’t had the mumps by the time they hit adolescence. Read more
Vaccine Myths, Round Two
Filed under: Parents' Pages, Vaccine Myths, Vaccine Science, Vaccine/Disease Analysis
Introduction: A while back, we explored some common anti-vax myths. Because in the great vaccine debates, the myths tend to outnumber the facts, we’ve decided to begin a multipart series dispelling some of the mythologies people argue over which preclude productive discussions over real issues. Below, you will find the facts behind two more common vaccine myths: herd immunity, and whether or not vaccines are profitable to pharmaceutical companies.
Myth: herd immunity isn’t real, and all the vaccine preventable diseases were declining in incidence prevaccine
Reality: vaccine induced herd immunity is a real phenomenon, and the incidences of the “diseases of childhood” (measles and mumps, for example) averaged out to be constant in the prevaccine era.
Here’s a chart showing the incidence of measles from 1912 till 1960.
Although the “death rate per cases” dropped an amazing amount, the same number of cases were happening per year on average. Read more
Pandemic – When did the definition change?
The old version:
WHO_Pandemic_preparedness_May_1_2009
An influenza pandemic
An influenza pandemic occurs when a new influenza virus appears against which the human population has no immunity, resulting in epidemics worldwide with enormous numbers of deaths and illness. With the increase in global transport, as well as urbanization and overcrowded conditions, epidemics due the new influenza virus are likely to quickly take hold around the world. Outbreaks of influenza in animals, especially when happening simultaneously with annual outbreaks of seasonal influenza in humans, increase the chances of a pandemic, through the merging of animal and human influenza viruses. During the last few years, the world has faced several threats with pandemic potential, making the occurrence of the next pandemic a matter of time.
and the new version:
WHO_Pandemic_preparedness_webpage_Sept_2_2009
What is an influenza pandemic?
A disease epidemic occurs when there are more cases of that disease than normal. A pandemic is a worldwide epidemic of a disease. An influenza pandemic may occur when a new influenza virus appears against which the human population has no immunity. With the increase in global transport, as well as urbanization and overcrowded conditions in some areas, epidemics due to a new influenza virus are likely to take hold around the world, and become a pandemic faster than before. WHO has defined the phases of a pandemic to provide a global framework to aid countries in pandemic preparedness and response planning. Pandemics can be either mild or severe in the illness and death they cause, and the severity of a pandemic can change over the course of that pandemic.
The two documents above can also be found at: http://attentiallebufale.it/informazione-scientifica/speciale-bufale-pandemiche-come-difendersi/lanalisi-di-doshi-al-voltafaccia-delloms/
These two documents were sourced and provided by Dr Tom Jefferson, and Peter Doshi.
And here is Fukuda, at WHO, claiming that they didn’t change it!
Now let me move on to the second issue. Did WHO change its definition of a pandemic? The answer is no, WHO did not change its definition.
Mumps Vaccine: Perceptions and Emerging Realities
Mumps outbreaks are occurring in highly vaccinated populations and this has led to differences in opinion amongst scientists around the efficacy of the vaccine, with various mechanisms of failure being put forward. It has been suggested that the number of vaccinated young adults (18-24 yrs) who contracted mumps in the US in 2006 form a small percentage of the overall vaccinated population. The fact that 84% were vaccinated with two doses is reduced to a minor detail when numbers are crunched in the “right” way. However, this is not the view of all scientists. There is concern as to why highly vaccinated populations are having mumps outbreaks. By choosing to avoid the issue, essentially ignoring the reason why young adults who have been vaccinated twice with the MMR are coming down with mumps, the evidence on the real efficacy of mass vaccination against a benign childhood disease is not discussed. Read more
Health Marketing, Risk Communication, and the Media
Remember the Great Influenza Vaccine Shortage a few years back?
Panic swept the nation after the FDA rejected many European flu shots because of possible contamination during manufacturing. What was left was rationed according to age and risk factors, and the public could be seen every night on the news waiting in long lines to get the remaining doses.
Now, setting aside for the moment the ongoing questions regarding the usefulness of flu shots in any age group, especially the elderly, one might come to wonder what has changed in recent years to bring about this new terror regarding influenza.
The answer, as outlandish and implausible as it might sound, is that this fear has been manufactured and marketed by the people in public health. Read more
For the Good of the Herd
Filed under: CDC Watch, Parents' Pages, Vaccine/Disease Analysis
In an era where CDC experts are saying, “Just line up for Gardasil, and you’ll have a 70% reduced chance of getting cancer”, are parents asking any critical questions about the crystal ball gazing abilities of these experts now and in the past? Why is there talk of adding a third MMR vaccine into the childhood schedule, and also putting it into adult vaccination programs as regular boosters?
Will most people just roll up their sleeve, assuming the new ideas will have the good outcome the CDC will predict?
Most of those people won’t know, that in 1967, the CDC said: *
For centuries the measles virus has maintained a remarkably stable ecological relationship with man. The clinical disease is a characteristic syndrome of notable constancy and only moderate severity. Complications are infrequent, and, with adequate medical care, fatality is rare.
Effective use of these vaccines during the coming winter and spring should insure the eradication of measles from the United States in 1967. Read more
Where to start?
Parenthood is tough! Decisions, decisions, decisions. And here in “The Information Age”, many parents feel that there is no room for poorly informed choices for The Big Decisions. For many parents, the issue of vaccines was at one time a “no brainer”. Children were “completely” vaccinated. Everyone believed that vaccines were necessary to save your baby’s life. For the majority, vaccines were completely beyond debate. Today, many parents are questioning the safety and necessity of the large numbers of vaccines on the schedule, particularly for obscure or milder diseases. Vaccine necessity, which used to be taken for granted, has suddenly become an uncertain, debatable matter that has to be researched in depth.
What are the issues which require consideration as one steps outside the “Just do whatever your doctor tells you to do!” mindset?
- 1) the ethics of vaccine decisions in light of herd immunity
- 2) the immediate risk to the baby or child from both the diseases and the vaccines
- 3) the social stigma of possibly going against the flow and not following the recommended schedule
- 4) and the confusing, often conflicting ocean of scientific literature on the topic.
So where should a parent start? Read more