CHAPTER SEVENThe Other VaccinationsIn addition to the "mandatory" vaccinations, there are several other vaccinations which we should also consider. You might encounter one of them someday. These vaccines are less frequently administered: pneumonia, hepatitis B, Hib meningitis, and chicken pox (varicella).RABIES (HYDROPHOBIA)Also called "hydrophobia," Rabies and the dangers of the vaccine given to stop it are discussed in more detail in the section, "How Did Vaccinations Begin?"
At the worst, a person can receive an especially virulent form of rabies from a rabies shot. (See the section, "How Did Vaccinations Begin?" for more on that.) At the best, the rabies shot will accomplish essentially nothing:
SMALLPOXSmallpox was the disease that got vaccinations started. Cowpox was a mild disease normally contracted by cows and the milkmaids who worked with them. Edward Jenner found that he could give inoculations of cowpox to people, and this appeared to give them immunity to smallpox. Oddly enough, that which he did was not as dangerous as the later vaccines—which consisted of dead or weakened germs from the same dangerous disease! Multiple vaccinations against smallpox were common. James Phipps, the eight-year-old boy initially vaccinated by Jenner in 1796, was later revaccinated. He died at the age of 20. Jenner’s own son was also vaccinated, more than once, and died at 21. A study, published in 1980, overviewed many of these multiple vaccination cases—and showed that revaccinated children developed "chromosomal aberrations in their white blood cells" (R.S. Mendelsohn, M.D., Risks of Immunizations, 1988, p. 90). As sanitation steadily improved, the incidence of smallpox kept lessening. Before England’s first compulsory vaccination law of 1853, the most smallpox for any two successive years was only 2,000. Those were the most severe epidemics (Boston Globe, June 11, 1991, p. 13). In Jenner’s own time, he himself admitted that the disease was rare; for, normally, at any one time there were only a few hundred cases in all England. But, 17 years later, in 1870-1871, more than 23,000 people died from smallpox (E. McBean, The Poisoned Needle, 1974, p. 13). During that same two-year period, over 124,000 died of smallpox in Germany during the same epidemic. All had been vaccinated (ibid.). It is an astonishing fact that 90% of all smallpox cases occur after the individual has been vaccinated (ibid.). In order to avoid malpractice suits, smallpox deaths that occur too quickly after vaccination are sometimes given another name: pustular eczema.
"In the thirty years ending in 1934, 3,112 people are stated to have died of "chicken pox," and only 579 of smallpox in England and Wales. Yet all the authorities are agreed that chicken pox is a nonfatal disease."—M. Beddow Bayly, Case Against Vaccination, London, June 1936, p. 5. We now have a new disease: monkeypox. An official 1979 report of the World Health Organization said this new disease afflicting man is clinically indistinguishable from smallpox (World Health Organization, Weekly Epidemiological Record, 1979, 54:12-13).
"From West Germany we read of more vaccination casualties. A reader writing to Organic Consumer Report (June 13, 1968) mentions an article which appeared in Medical World which stated that about 3,000 children each year suffer varying degrees of brain damage as the result of smallpox vaccination. This same writer mentions another medical journal in which Dr. G. Kittel, M.D., reported that in the previous year,
Before concluding this section on smallpox, the findings of Dr. Charles A.R. Campbell should be of interest. Recommended for the Nobel Prize around the turn of the century, Dr. Campbell carried out significant research into typhoid, malaria, and smallpox. He made an important discovery which could help eliminate smallpox. But his discovery was, for the most part, ignored. Dr. Campbell found that smallpox, like malaria, was carried by a blood-sucking insect, and that neither was infectious nor contagious. After careful experimentation, he found that smallpox was caused by the bite of cimex lectularius, a bedbug. These small creatures infested the straw-padded mattresses of that time. But more: Dr. Campbell went on to learn that the amount of pocking (marking) on the skin, from smallpox, was directly related to whether or not the person was eating fresh greens. So smallpox is but one of several "filth diseases": smallpox and typhus, caused by body lice; Bubonic Plague; by lice on rats and rat manure; typhoid and cholera, and by contaminated water. Obviously, the solution to smallpox is a cleaner environment and better nutrition, not vaccinations of weakened germs. PNEUMONIASeveral pneumococcal vaccines are under investigation. In 1977 a pneumococcal vaccine was licensed which contained 14 types of S pneumonia. This was replaced in 1983 by a vaccine of 23 types. These polysaccharide vaccines have only had limited success; so researchers are now trying to make a conjugate form, in which the polysaccharide is bonded to a protein carrier. So far, they have been unsuccessful in producing it. Therefore the 1983 method is still being used. It is predicted that soon children will begin to be vaccinated for pneumonia. A controlled study was made of 1,300 healthy Australian children. Some were given the pneumonia vaccine; others were not. The researchers concluded that the vaccine accomplished nothing beneficial:
Studies have not shown any appreciable effect in reducing ear infections in children by the vaccine. Instead of preventing the ear infection, the pneumonia vaccine only altered the types of microbes in the ear. So little is known about the pneumonia vaccine, that it has not yet been approved for general administration to children. Only those "with increased risk of serious pneumococcal infections" are now receiving it.
HEPATITIS BHepatitis B is a serious liver disease which hard drug users had, until it got into the blood banks—and was given to a wide range of people who were receiving transfusions. When a vaccine for hepatitis B was developed in the 1970s, many doctors were concerned that it might be contaminated with an AIDS virus (J.A. Finkbeiner, M.D., Medical World News, January 10, 1983). It is of interest that two-thirds of physicians with hepatitis B have refused to take the vaccine (R.S. Mendelsohn, M.D., "Drive to Immunize Adults Is On," Herald of Health Newsletter, September-October, 1985). Yet, in 1991, the CDC began work to mandate inoculation of all infants against hepatitis B! In fact, many doctors are already routinely giving multiple doses of it to very young infants (Boston Globe, June 11, 1991). HIB MENINGITISThe scientific name for this disease is haemophilus influenzae b (Hib), although it has no relationship to influenza. It is a bacterial disease which causes upper respiratory and ear infections, inflamed sinuses, pneumonia, swelling of the throat, and meningitis. And what is meningitis? It is an inflammation of membranes which cover the brain and spinal cord. In 1985, a purified polysaccharide form of vaccine for meningitis was released. It was called PAP. Shortly afterward, a conjugate form of this vaccine (PRP-D or HbOC) was licensed. The conjugate form is now recommended and mostly given. In the United States, it is the only kind now used. Researchers suspect that meningitis is especially caused by other vaccinations which have been given. So we have here a new vaccine being given to eliminate a serious disease frequently caused by other vaccines. It is known that central nervous system infections occur more frequently as a direct result of DPT and measles vaccine (H.L. Coulter, M.D., Assault on the American Child: Vaccination, Sociopathy, and Criminality, 1990). Fifty percent of Hib meningitis cases occur in children 6 to 7 months of age—after or about the time they receive the other vaccinations. The attack rate decreases rapidly with increasing age. Fifty percent of the cases occur in infants under one year of age. If no vaccines were given to children below 18 months of age, a large number (as many as 75%) of the meningitis cases might be avoided. The original polysaccharide form of the vaccine was not very effective. So the conjugate form is now used. Here is part of what the conjugate form accomplishes:
Although the Hib vaccine is often called the "meningitis vaccine," it really provides little protection against the Hib form of meningitis—and, aside from Hib, there are also several other causes of meningitis (pneumococcus, meningococcus germs, and some viruses). In addition, the Hib germs may also cause upper respiratory infections, ear infections, and sinusitis; yet the Hib vaccine is no help in resisting those infections. In summary, it could be said: "The vaccine for meningitis has too many unclear aspects. Efficacy is questionable, the frequency of side effects is unknown, and long-term side effects have not yet been discovered for this vaccine only recently licensed in 1985. Parents need to decide whether they are willing to risk the possible side effects of a vaccine which is questionably effective, experimental, and not targeted at the population of children under 18 months who are most at risk."—Randall Neustaedter, O.M.D., The Immunization Decision, 1990, pp. 70-71. CHICKEN POX (VARICELLA)Chicken pox is one of the mildest diseases of childhood. Almost all children are infected, and as a result develop permanent immunity. A chicken pox vaccine was developed in 1973. To date, it is generally used only with children with cancer and leukemia.
Such an action would result in great profit to the manufacturers, and would probably result in an increase of adult chicken pox cases. As with measles and mumps vaccines, chicken pox vaccines—widely given—would have more likelihood of serious disease and resulting complications. Unusual cases of varicella zoster illness may also occur, as they now do after measles and mumps vaccinations. Varicella zoster virus can be stored in nerve cells after natural chicken pox infection, and erupt in later years as herpes zoster ("shingles"). That is a very painful skin eruption which can last for several weeks. Plotkin says that varicella vaccine has caused zoster in normal children (S. Plotkin, New England Journal of Medicine, 1988, Vol. 318, pp. 573-575). What is the future for us, if chicken pox vaccine becomes another required inoculation?
"One would not, however, want to vaccinate against varicella routinely in childhood if immunity wanes and thereby creates a population of varicella-susceptible adults."—A.A. Gershon, "Live Attenuated Varicella Vaccine," Annual Review of Medicine, 1987, Vol. 38, pp. 41-50.
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