Examining the CDC's "spin" on measles

Thanks to Barbara Loe Fisher of the National Vaccine Information Center for a helpful article on recent news about measles. Read it here.

When I wrote about measles the other day, I didn't even think until afterwards, "How can the CDC and media say that all those measles cases were because of people not vaccinating?" I had not had a chance to look into it, but Barbara's article is insightful:

Only one fifth (14) of the cases were American children whose parents claimed a religious or personal belief exemption. This fact didn't stop CDC officials from trying to blame the measles "outbreaks" on the exemption-takers by stating "These cases and outbreaks resulted primarily from failure to vaccinate, many because of religious or personal belief exemption."

So what motives does the CDC have? Are they gearing up for putting an additional MMR shot on the pediatric schedule, as Barbara suggests? Are they stirring up fear of disease to encourage society to look down on those who don't vaccinate? Are they trying to prove (by lying about the facts) the validity of vaccine programs and hush all questions about vaccine safety, especially in light of Hannah Poling's case? Your guess is as good as mine. But the CDC's jab at non-vaccinators seems to me a calculated PR tactic in making excuses for an unproven vaccination program that is under increasing public scrutiny.

"No reason not to; it's a crime not to."

"And it does not cause autism."

This is today's FOX video report on the measles outbreak. The words of Dr. Steven Garner of New York Methodist Hospital and Shepard Smith of FOX News. It's a "crime" not to get your child vaccinated against measles. We can only guess this doctor means a "moral crime." And we can guess that Shepard is very busy and doesn't have time to read about regressive autism.

I understand that health officials want to eliminate the spread of disease - I really do. I don't think it's a small matter that people are getting sick. Please hear me; I just think that every parent needs to be able to make an informed decision about what is best for their child. It's not just religious beliefs that keep people from vaccinating, and it's not just autism scares.

Here are some of the complications that have been shown to be associated with measles vaccine, taken from the 55th edition of the Physician's Desk Reference, a standard in medical reference:

• encephalitis
• subacute sclerosing panencephalitis
• Guillain-Barre syndrome
• febrile and afebrile convulsions
• seizures
• ataxia
• ocular palsies
• anaphylaxis
• angioneurotic edema
• bronchial spasms
• panniculitis
• vasculitis
• atypical measles
• thrombocytopenia
• lymphadenopathy
• leukocytosis
• pneumonitis
• Stevens-Johnson syndrome
• erythema multiforme
• uticaria
• deafness
• otitis media
• retinitis
• optic neuritis
• rash
• fever
• dizziness
• headache
• death

The vaccine manufacturer has not evaluated the vaccine for carcinogenic or mutagenic potential nor is it known whether it can harm a fetus when administered to a pregnant woman.

How often do these adverse events happen? Well, the CDC doesn't really know. But you're just supposed to trust them. Believe them, it's rare.

Just out of curiosity, I went to the VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) site to see how many adverse events have been reported so far this year. These are for all vaccines, not just MMR vaccine. Now remember, the FDA and CDC don't put much stock in these numbers. (Until it comes to telling you reactions are rare.)

There have been 70 cases of measles as of today.

As of today, there have been 3,787 adverse events associated with vaccination reported to VAERS.

Let's just give the CDC some slack and say that perhaps some events were reported more than once, or weren't really associated with the vaccine, and let's cut that number by a third. That still leaves 1,262 adverse events ranging from fever, dizziness, going limp and staring, joint pain, aseptic meningitis, to babies stopping breathing, to "sudden death." I don't really have the time to read 3,787 lines in detail, but that's just a sample. Most of what I read happened right after or within a few hours of vaccination.

What's more likely is that 3,787 is just the tip of the iceberg. CDC and FDA officials have both said that there is underreporting to VAERS, not overreporting.

As parents find out more about the true risks of vaccination and hesitate to do it, the CDC and the drug companies are going to be pushing harder and harder for tougher mandates. I can see it coming. I plan on urging my lawmakers to protect my medical rights. To force parents to inoculate their children with substances proven to be harmful in some cases -- that is the true crime. I pray it doesn't come to that.

"Many seek the face of a ruler, but it is from the LORD that a man gets justice."
- Proverbs 29:26

Measles outbreaks in U.S.

A friend sent me an article from FOX News.com about measles outbreaks occurring in several states. So far, CDC reports 64 cases in nine states. An additional eight occurred in WA last week. They say 63 of those folks were either not vaccinated or it was unknown if they were. Fourteen people have been hospitalized, but no deaths have occurred.

I found this document which explains measles at length. Certainly some information to consider. (Click here to read an earlier post I wrote on measles.)

When I read about the complications of measles, for me, I always want to compare it to the risks of the vaccine. Again, the CDC says the risks are minimal. But the CDC has NO RELIABLE SYSTEM for monitoring risks. They say right up front that their adverse reaction data is unable to prove causality or provide accurate numbers (click here to read their full-page disclosure on the unreliability of VAERS). So do we really know if risks are rare?

And why isn't the CDC as vigilant with their vaccine adverse reaction data collection as they are with their disease outbreak data collection? They're our experts, yet they can't figure this out? Or they just won't?

So we have about 70 cases of measles in 2008 all over the U.S. Seventy out of 300 million U.S. citizens, in four months. Every time you read an article about disease/vaccines these days, the author points out that people must be scared to vaccinate because they think vaccines cause autism. (Understandably, parents are concerned for their children.) They then always have to point out that "no studies" have proven vaccines to be linked to autism. But let's recall that Julie Gerberding (head of CDC) herself said on CNN that vaccines CAN trigger autism in the presence of mitochondrial disorders.

Either they do, or they don't. The CDC needs to figure it out. (If they don't know already - many in the autism circles believe they've known for over a decade. Do a little reading and you learn about SV-40, a cancer-causing virus that government officials knew was in polio vaccines back in the 60s, yet they kept using them. That virus is still showing up in tumors and human tissues today. Is this a system we can trust?)

But vaccines are a sacred cow in this country. Question them and you will see. Want to see a doctor commit career suicide? Google "Andrew Wakefield" and you'll see what happened to the man who listened to parents when they said their child's MMR caused them to regress. What you find people are saying about him won't be pretty. Check out also the Autism Research Institute to see what research is still happening today.

By the way, it's not just about the autism. There are many other things to consider before vaccinating. Many, many ugly health problems have arisen from injecting little pieces of bacteria, viruses, animal and human tissues and preservatives into our bloodstreams. How could they not? Get yourself a good book on vaccine risks and benefits. I personally am reading Neil Miller's Vaccine Safety Manual right now and it is incredibly helpful and well-documented.

We need to educate ourselves, by being willing to consider what the medical journals and researchers not particularly "respected" by the CDC are finding. The CDC, in my opinion, has a vested interest in controlling the information we are allowed to hear in the media, because they need our trust more than anything. If we don't trust them, they can't do their jobs. They need us to believe them to continue waging their war on infectious disease. They need injured people to be swept under the rug. They need to cover up what is really going on.

Some may think people like me are making a mountain out of a mole hill. What is more likely is that the CDC is making a mole hill out of a mountain of evidence that vaccines are not as safe as they say.

Measles

This blog can not possibly serve to dish out all the information that exists about measles, or any other disease for that matter. But here are a few sources I have found helpful regarding the first "M" of MMR:

• National Vaccine Information Center MMR page
• Think Twice MMR page
• Book: Vaccine Safety Manual by Neil Z. Miller (I am reading the previous book, Vaccines, Autism and Childhood Disorders, but I imagine this one is much more extensive)
• DVD: Vaccines: The Risks, The Benefits, The Choices by Dr. Sherri Tenpenny
• Congressional Testimonies from doctors and parents

You can read the MedLine information on measles here.

The CDC handout from the doctor's office (PDF downloadable from http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/side-effects.htm#mmr) reveals the following risks with the vaccine:

Moderate Problems
• Seizure (jerking or staring) caused by fever (about
1 out of 3,000 doses)
• Temporary pain and stiffness in the joints, mostly
in teenage or adult women (up to 1 out of 4)
• Temporary low platelet count, which can cause a
bleeding disorder (about 1 out of 30,000 doses)

Severe Problems (Very Rare)
• Serious allergic reaction (less than 1 out of a million
doses)
• Several other severe problems have been known to
occur after a child gets MMR vaccine. But this
happens so rarely, experts cannot be sure whether
they are caused by the vaccine or not. These include:
- Deafness
- Long-term seizures, coma, or lowered
consciousness
- Permanent brain damage

(Kinda sounds like autism to me....) Here, the CDC's own literature says that they do not know if permanent brain damage, coma, seizures, or lowered consciousness are actually caused by the vaccine. My question is, if I can't rely on them to be sure, why should I rely on the statement that reactions are rare? (Not to mention, shouldn't they be sure??? Have they become that lackadaisical about public health?) The FDA and CDC know that the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) is flawed. Doctors are not required to report. And anyone whose child has had a reaction to a vaccine knows that it takes a lot of arm-twisting and hospital tests before a doctor will even consider that it was the vaccine.

Here is a quote from the meeting minutes taken from the Advisory Commission on Childhood Vaccines Conference Call in March of last year (2007). I got this right off the HHS Web site:

"VAERS also has its weaknesses. VAERS is often missing data or has inaccurate data. There is underreporting to VAERS. Accuracy rates are not known. VAERS is better at detecting events that occur in close time proximity with vaccination, than events with long latency periods. There is a lack of an accurate denominator or number of people that are vaccinated. There is also a lack of a control group. All of these weaknesses result in the near inability to assess causality."
-- Dr. Ann McMahon, Food and Drug Administration (italics mine)

(Aside: It was estimated in a Journal of the American Medical Association study that reporting of adverse events may be as low as 1% to 10%. There were 128,035 adverse events reported in a less-than-five-year time span (around the middle of 1999-beginning of 2004). So does that mean that there were possibly 1.28 million to 12.8 million adverse events in those 5 years?)

The manufacturer of the MMR vaccine warns that it "has not been evaluated for carcinogenic or mutagenic potential." (Source: Physician's Desk Reference, 55th edition, as quoted by Neil Miller) ... Not been tested for the possibility to cause cancer?

"Severe afflictions affecting nearly every body system -- blood, lymphatic, digestive, cardiovascular, immune, nervous, respiratory and sensory -- have been linked to this 'preventative' inoculation." -- Neil Miller, Vaccines, Autism and Childhood Disorders

Dr. Robert Mendelsohn, a pediatrician for almost 30 years, wrote in his 1984 book How To Raise a Healthy Child...In Spite of Your Doctor that the measles vaccine side effects included "even a relationship with Hodgkin's disease and cancer." He describes the reluctance of some doctors to even vaccinate their own children during a Los Angeles measles epidemic: "Unlike their patients, who weren't told, they realized that 'slow viruses' found in all live vaccines, and particularly in the measles vaccine, can hide in human tissue for years. They may emerge later in the form of encephalitis, multiple sclerosis, and as potential seeds for the development and growth of cancer."

Dr. Mendelsohn also noted that "in a 1978 survey of 30 states, more than half of the children who contracted measles had been adequately vaccinated." The World Health Organization has said that the chances of catching measles are about 15 times greater for those who are vaccinated than those who are not. Similar data on the inefficacy of measles vaccines is recorded by Neil Miller, whose sources are the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association, and several editions of the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Here's why I do not think this particular disease is worth the risk of the associated vaccine for my child. (Again, this is just me; this is not medical advice.)

In 1920, 1.6% of measles cases ended in death.
In 1955, it was only 3 in 10 million.
Vaccination began in 1963.
(Source: MMWR 4/2/1999 - thank you, Dr. Tenpenny)
So the disease was already on its way out before vaccination began.

Much of what I have read indicates that measles is a pretty innocuous disease that rarely leaves behind any complications in healthy, well-nourished children. Treatment consists of bed rest, drinking fluids, and administering calamine or other lotions to relieve itching. Vitamin A has also been shown to be an important part of helping the body to fight the disease. Doctors will bring up the risk of measles encephalitis (brain infection), but I question the likelihood of this occurring in a healthy child. This is just one parent, assessing the risk for my child. (Well, and my husband makes two parents, deciding together!)

Entire books and Web sites are dedicated to the CDC/FDA/HHS/AAP/AMA-denied link between autism and the MMR. But it didn't take me much reading to be haunted forever by those three little letters. Once you start reading testimonies from parents just like you, who love their kids like you love your kids, you just can't look back. I will never look at public health policy in this country the same way.

I leave you with an excerpt from one of the Congressional Government Reform Committee meetings, that took place on April 6, 2000. The words of Rep. Dan Burton (R-Indiana):

"Liz Burt was one of the hundreds of parents who contacted us. Her five-year-old son, Matthew, has been classified autistic. He was developing normally. At age 15 months, following his MMR vaccine, he began to regress. Since the time of his vaccination, he’s had chronic diarrhea. This is very prevalent in autistic children. He also didn’t sleep on a regular basis for over three years. Liz took her son to numerous gastroenterologists in prominent medical facilities in the United States. with no resolution. Finally, this past November, Liz took her son to London, to the Royal Free Hospital. A team of medical experts there examined Matthew. They felt that he had a bowel obstruction. To the family, this seemed impossible since he had constant diarrhea. An x-ray indicated that Matthew had a fecal mass in his colon the size of a small cantaloupe. After the obstruction was cleared with laxatives, Matthew underwent an endoscopy and colonoscopy. The lesions in Matthew’s bowel tested positive for the measles virus."

You do the math.

[EDITED 5/2/2008 TO ADD: OK, now I see who Liz "Burt" was - her name is actually spelled "Birt," and she was a champion for autistic families. I found a bunch of information on her after her tragic death in 2005 on Adventures in Autism.]