Strollerderby : vaccine

They Say: Another Reason to Vaccinate Your Kid

JeanneSager — Wed, 27 May 2009 14:28:00 GMT

The no-vax movement got more bad news this week with a report in Pediatrics that confirms herd immunity does not keep the non-vaccinated safe.

The study by researchers at Kaiser Permanente Colorado and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health determines kids whose parents opt out on vaccines are twenty three times more likely to develop pertussis than their vaccinated peers.

More commonly known as whooping cough, the incidence of pertussis was rapidly declining in the U.S. from the 1940s through the late nineties thanks to vaccinations. But with parents forgoing the vaccines, the numbers are back up - big time. In 2005 alone, more than twenty-five thousand cases were reported (for comparison check out the numbers in 1976 - only one thousand ten cases in the entire U.S.).

Those numbers should have proven the importance (and efficacy) of the vaccine, but parents have been skipping the vaccine in increasing numbers, or delaying it as part of the system touted by Dr. Robert Sears, a much revered pediatrician by the middle-of-the pack vax crowd. The study at Kaiser found that eleven percent of the kids who contracted pertussis were kids whose parents actually refused the vaccine (which makes a difference - these weren't kids whose parents opted out because of a medical issue that kept them from getting the vaccine).

What a fair number of anti-vaccine parents fail to realize is the problem isn't just the other kids their kids are coming in contact with. Even if the majority of American kids get the vaccine, adults age out of their immunity. Which means unless they head to the doctor for a booster, they're susceptible to the disease, and carriers who could be passing it on to your kids (studies indicate at least one third of pertussis cases were transmitted by mother to child).

And pertussis is not a silly, laugh it off disease. It can kill, particularly infants.

So if herd immunity isn't protecting your kids from pertussis, what else isn't it protecting them from?

Image: LA Times

Gardasil Accused of Serious Side-Effects; Parents Feel Put Off by Merck

Shannon LC Cate — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 18:02:00 GMT

Parents of girls and young women who had dangerous health crises--even sudden death--following Gardasil vaccinations, are feeling frustrated with doctors, the government and parent company Merck's response their concerns that the vaccination triggered the problems.

Did the vaccination cause incidents of Bell's Palsy, Epilepsy, ALS-like symptoms and similar issues? Did a pre-existing condition coincidentally rear its head after the vaccination--but unconnected to it--or could some combination be the case? Perhaps a pre-existing tendency towards a health problem was pushed into an actual condition by the drug?

Answers to these questions are critically important for their own sake of course. Perhaps these parents and their daughters are owed some compensation from Merck. Perhaps Merck needs to work out problems with the vaccine or add warnings and guidelines for doctors. But parents are complaining that they are too often put on indefinite hold, given forms to fill out that seem to go nowhere or simply dismissed by both Merck officials and the doctors administering the vaccines.

I worry that besides these possible dangerous side-effects of the vaccine, the most dangerous one yet is that a vaccine that is perfectly safe--and other vaccines by association--might develop a reputation as life-threatening, such that girls and women who might reap benefits--even life-saving ones--from this vaccine and others, won't get the shots.

Vaccines have a dark and murky reputation, more than anything because people who do have problems with them--however few--are treated with such disdain by the medical establishment.

I am of the opinion that vaccines are far and away a good thing. But that doesn't mean we should be uncritical of how they are developed or overlook serious complications that may arise from them. Quite the contrary, if we are to build public trust in them, serious scrutiny needs to be given to any claim that a serious side-effect has occurred.

image: merckfrosst.ca

Special Court Says Vaccines Don't Cause Autism

Brett Singer — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 20:15:00 GMT

In a decision that will infuriate many parents (including readers of this web site), a special court has ruled that the MMR vaccine did not cause autism in three children.

Special Master George Hastings of the Department of Justice wrote that, "The evidence does not support the general proposition that thimerosal-containing vaccines can damage infants' immune systems." The ruling comes from The Vaccine Court Omnibus Autism Proceeding. (Aside: "Special Master"? "Omnibus"? It sounds like a comic book.)

Addressing one of the children whose parents say became autistic after receiving the MMR vaccine, Hastings said, "I further conclude that while Michelle Cedillo has tragically suffered from autism and other severe conditions, the petitioners have also failed to demonstrate that her vaccinations played any role at all in causing those problems."

There have been over 5,000 cases filed by parents seeking compensation from the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, a $2.5 billion fund that was created through a "75-cent-per-dose tax on vaccines," according to Reuters.

Everyone's least favorite vaccine guy Dr. Paul Offit hailed the decision, saying, "it's a great day for America's children when the court rules in favor of science." I think there are a few parents out there who will disagree with him.

Does this put the issue to rest? I doubt it. I myself am highly skeptical of the notion that vaccines "cause" autism, mostly because so far the studies that I have read about can't find a link between the vaccines and autism. Of course, it doesn't help the anti-vaccine movement's case that the doctor who conducted a landmark study on the matter faked his data.

I know that many of you have strong feelings on this issue. Does this court ruling change your opinion at all?

Source: Reuters

Image: USA Today via Babble

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Researcher Fabricated Autism Link in Vaccine

JeanneSager — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 17:01:00 GMT

The man who launched a decade's-long fear for parents heading to have their children vaccinated has been proven a forgery.

The Sunday Times revealed the results of an investigation today showing Andrew Wakefield, the man who posited that the MMR vaccine was at the root of the increased autism diagnoses, fabricated his research.

Published in 1998 in The Lancet, the study claimed eight out of twelve children vaccinated with the MMR innoculation began showing symptoms that fall somewhere on the autism spectrum within days of getting the shot. It was performed at the same time as another study, for which Wakefield was paid, that was supposed to help parents who believed there was a link between the two put up a legal case. Some of the kids were used in both studies, and Wakefield has often been accused of crossing a clear ethical boundary in performing both studies.

The study has borne numerous attacks over the years - in part because it included just twelve children - but it is the most-often quoted piece of evidence by parents who point a finger at pro-vax parents as risking their kids' lives (this despite studies published in the time period since that have debunked his story). The investigation by the Times is just another nail in the coffin for that line of thinking. The investigation revealed that in most of the twelve cases, the ailments described in Wakefield's published reports were different from their hospital and general practitioner records.

From the Times: "Although the research paper claimed that problems came on within days of the jab, in only one case did medical records suggest this was true, and in many of the cases medical concerns had been raised before the children were vaccinated."

I feel for parents of autistic children who are searching for a reason. Autism is very real and equally terrifying, but as a parent who has vaccinated her child, I have always bristled at the inference that I am a bad parent for making that choice - with so little evidence to support their claims.

Image: USA Today

They Say: Vaccines are Safe - Take That Jenny McCarthy

JeanneSager — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 16:31:00 GMT

In yet another round of good news for those of us who vaccinate, the February issue of Pediatrics features a study out of Italy that says . . . wait for it . . . vaccines are good for kids!

In a month when I've written first about the meningitis vaccine working (yay!) and the death of a child from a disease his parents refused to vaccinate against (bad), I'm starting to feel like I'm beating the non-vaccinators out there over the head with all this pro-vaccine talk.

And then, there's more good news!

The study in Pediatrics comes out of Italy, and it's centered on the whole "thimerosal causes autism" debate. Children in Italy were given two different sets of shots in the early 1990s. According to the AP: Ten years later, 1,403 of those children took a battery of brain function tests. Researchers found small differences in only two of 24 measurements and those "might be attributable to chance."

Out of more than one thousand kids, only one case of autism was found - and that child received the lower level of thimerosal in his or her vaccine. Overall, the kids tested all scored - on average - within normal ranges on mental acuity tests.

The significance in this study is in the varying amounts of thimerosal, and its affects. If thimerosal causes autism, scientists who worked on the Italian study say it would stand to reason that increased dosages would show marked effect on kids. Yet the only autistic child in the randomized study to fall on the autism spectrum received a lower dose. The kids exposed to more thimerosal (which breaks down as ethyl mercury, hence some advocates' claims that mercury poisoning causes autism) should have been at higher risk if the theories held true.

"Put together with the evidence of all the other studies, this tells us there is no reason to worry about the effect of thimerosal in vaccines," said the new study's lead author, Dr. Alberto Tozzi of Bambino Gesu Hospital in Rome.

So, is it time those who don't vaccinate their kids stop looking cross-eyed at those of us who do?

Image: USA Today

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Kid Dies After Parents Said No to Hib Vaccine

JeanneSager — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 13:31:00 GMT

It's a disease entirely preventable, but a sudden burst in diagnoses of Hib (Haemophilus influenzae type B) in Minnesota kids has led to the death of one seven-month-old. His parents, along with those of two other infected children were in the growing group who have opted out on vaccinating their kids.

The fourth child infected was in the middle of the three-part vaccination process, while the fifth had an immune deficiency.

Despite the low number of infections, the CDC has gotten involved, concerned that parents choosing not to vaccinate their kids are putting other children at risk. Five kids, they say, is the highest number of cases in one area since 1992, when vaccinating against Hib became common practice in pediatricians' offices.

"The situation is of concern," Dr. Anne Schuchat, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Disease at the CDC, told CNN. "It could be happening elsewhere, and of course it's tragic that one of the children actually died from a preventable disease."

Since vaccinating against Hib became the norm for American children in the early 1990s, the CDC has seen a ninety nine percent drop in reported cases (from as much as twenty thousand before vaccinations).The disease primarily strikes kids under five, and it kills one in twenty. Of those who survive, ten to twenty percent end up with brain damage, many more go deaf.

What's troubling to me are the children infected despite their parents proper attempts to vaccinate - because other parents refusal to do so has allowed the disease to once again flourish. It's something very few people in the anti-vaccine community focus on - what happens to everyone else's kids. They argue that they are protecting their children from supposed toxins in the immunizations. But as a recent study proving the efficacy of the meningitis vaccine points out, the "herd immunity" provided by immunizing children protects the community as a whole.

By refusing to immunize their kids, these parents are putting society as a whole at risk - including the fourth and fifth kid in Minnesota, who were at special risks.

Image: CNN

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They Say: Meningitis Vaccine Actually Works

JeanneSager — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 13:24:00 GMT

We hear a lot of bad news these days about vaccines. Aack, autism. Aaack, superbugs.

Finally, some good news: the meningitis vaccine is working.

Since pushing the Prevnar plunger into the thighs of babies two months to two years began in 2000, rates of pneumococcal meningits have dropped sixty-four percent in kids under age two.

That’s based on studies in kids in 1998-99 to 2004-05 published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine. The numbers are dipping for bigger kids (and the biggest kids of all - us) too, dropping thirty percent in the same time frame. In people over sixty-five, the rates dropped by more than fifty percent.

The study notes that vaccinating children is as important if not more than getting to the rest of the population, because fewer sick kids means fewer germs spread around.

When kids are sick, they not only fail to cover their mouths and practice the type of hygiene adults (should) practice, but they’re also a sector of the population that can’t be isolated when sick. We as adults can stay home from work and hide on the couch, kick everyone out of the room (well, unless we’re parents, in which case we just try to hide from our kids and spray a lot of Lysol).

Kids, on the other hand, need to have someone in close proximity caring for them - and that someone can easily pick up their germs. The disease cycle doesn’t stop when you’re dealing with kids – it just gets passed over to Mom and Dad. But with immunized kids, researchers say they're able to create a "herd immunity."

It doesn’t solve the autism debate or the superbug debate, but this is the kind of news that puts a little wind back into the sails of Moms like me who have vaccinated their kids. At least some of them are working.

Image/Source: USA Today

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They Say -- Vaccines Work

Brett Singer — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 14:00:00 GMT

We do a lot of stories on Babble about the potential dangers of vaccines, and about people who are trying to raise awareness of those dangers. Nothing wrong with that. But sometimes it’s a good idea to show the other side of things.

A recent article in U.S. News and World Report points out that deaths from measles declined by 74 percent from 2000 to 2007. The article actually used the word "plunged", which for once was not hyperbole. A 74 percent drop is big. The data comes from a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report, which stated that "the number of deaths fell from 750,000 to 197,000." In some countries (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Sudan) the drop was as high as 90 percent.

Now here's a stat to make you cringe – "worldwide child deaths from measles have dropped to 9.2 million," according to Ann M. Veneman of UNICEF.

What's cringeworthy about that? Later in the same article, Veneman puts it another way: "It is estimated that 500 children a day die of measles. This is an unacceptable reality when there is a safe and effective and inexpensive vaccine to prevent the disease." Unacceptable? No kidding.

While there are very few measles deaths in the United States, the disease is on the rise here, with 130 cases reported in 2008. Says U.S. News and World Report: "Almost half of these cases were among children whose parents declined vaccinations."

I wonder about that last line. "Almost half" implies that more than half of the cases were from vaccinated children – right? Which would seem to conclude that the vaccine is less than perfect. But let's look at it another way – the more parents refuse to allow their children to be vaccinated, the more measles cases there are, and so on. Is there a point when the potential dangers of vaccines outweigh the potential risks?

I feel strongly that the devil lies in the details – for example, is it possible to make vaccines without mercury, one of the substances many people feel is dangerous? Rather than a "vaccines or no vaccines" debate, we could have a debate about the particular vaccine itself. But that doesn't make for an easy headline.

The link to the U.S. News and World Report article was suggested by a commenter on this post by Hannah about a toddler who died after an MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccination. The parents blamed the vaccine for the 18 month old's death; the coroner's report later found "no link" between the tragic death and the vaccine. While stories like these can inspire parents to refuse to get their children vaccinated (regardless of what the coroner's report said), it is worth remembering that vaccines have enormous benefits as well as risks.

Source: U.S. News and World Report (Thanks to commenter gpgirl for the link.)

Image: helpyourautisticchildblog.com

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Mother Blames Cervical Cancer Vaccine For Daughter's Paralysis

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 23:20:00 GMT

The cervical cancer vaccine can’t seem to untangle itself of controversy. First, abstinence groups worked overtime to block its widespread use, arguing that it would encourage premarital sex. What it actually does is prevent girls from contracting four of the strands of HPV that are responsible for the majority of cervical cancer cases in the world. Yes, HPV is an STD, but the vaccine has almost nothing to do with premarital sex. Since HPV is so easily spread, it is entirely possible that a girl could wait until marriage to have sex and then contract HPV if her husband had had as much as one sexual encounter before the marriage.

Fortunately, the abstinence argument against the vaccine has been mostly steamrolled, particularly in the U.K., where a government-funded program aims to save 400 lives a year by administering the Cervarix vaccine to 300,000 12- and 13-year-old girls. (In the U.S., the more commonly used, but very similar, vaccine is called Gardasil.)

But the program has gotten some bad—and scary—press recently, after a 12-year-old girl became paralyzed from the waist down shortly after receiving the vaccine at school. Ashleigh Cave’s mother, Cheryl, believes that the shot was implicated in her daughter’s illness, but doctors have claimed that the vaccination was unrelated to the sudden onset of Ashleigh’s dizziness and eventual loss of the use of her legs.

Although nothing I’ve read indicates that Ashleigh has been definitely diagnosed yet, it seems clear that she has Guillain-Barré syndrome, which can cause paralysis, and which has previously been linked (perhaps wrongly) with the cervical cancer vaccine.

13 girls are reported to have been diagnosed with Guillain-Barré after receiving the Gardasil vaccine in the U.S., causing some concern among parents about the safety of getting their daughters vaccinated. However, considering the total number of girls who received the vaccine and the natural incidence of the disease, 13 is within the number of people who would be expected to fall prey to Guillain-Barré just by chance. Doctors and health experts continue to assert that there is no reason to believe the cervical cancer vaccine is unsafe.

Still, it is only too easy to understand why Ashleigh’s mother harbors her doubts, considering that her daughter’s initial diagnosis was “vertigo and generalised myalgia, probably due to recent vaccinations.” I hope further investigations can set the public’s collective mind at ease.

Photo: straightfromthedoc.com

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New Jersey Lays Down the Law: Vaccinate All Kids Against the Flu

JeanneSager — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 18:36:00 GMT

I should probably preface this with a bit of a disclaimer: I'm a pro-vaccine parent, particularly the flu shot. But I still think the ultimate choice for vaccinating my child should rest with me. Which is why I'm glad I live an hour outside of New Jersey.

Parents were storming the statehouse in Trenton this week, protesting a new law that mandates children between the ages of 6 months and 5 years be vaccinated against the flu. Mandated. As in, made law.

It's the first law of its kind in the country - although plenty of other states have rules regarding medical interventions and our kids. I had no reason to protest the Vitamin K shot administered when my daughter was born, but then again, I wouldn't have been able to. I live in New York, one of a number of states that requires babies be given the injection right in the hospital, shortly after birth.

New Jersey's new law, which technically states children (under 5 and over 6 months) who attend daycare or preschool need to be vaccinated against the flu and pneumonia by Dec. 31, comes as we enter the first flu season for which the CDC has advocated all children (not just those under 5) be vaccinated. Advocated. Not mandated.

The flu shot has a lot going for it, don't get me wrong. The flu sends 200,000 Americans to the hospital every year, 20,000 of them children under 5. It kills 36,000 Americans, including people who die from a secondary illness due to an immune system weakened by the flu. It's a disease that spreads easily and can hit anyone. It's a shot I'm going to get, my husband is going to get and our daughter is going to get.

But I've seen nothing in all the news reports - even those that have come out in support of the new mandate - to explain how parents are supposed to pay for this. And I'm still leery of letting the step in at surface level to tell us how to parent. When a child is in clear danger, yes. When a child might or might not get a disease that might or might not make them seriously ill and might or might not be avoided by a shot, I wouldn't call it a clear and present danger. Are parents who don't get the shot playing with fire? Personally, yes, I think so. But I don't think there's enough evidence to show that the state stepping in on this one will make a difference in a child's life.

Image: Health News-Stat

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They Say: no link between autism and measles vaccine

Brett Singer — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 17:30:00 GMT

This news is unfortunately not likely to solve anyone's questions about whether or not vaccines are a cause of autism.

"Dr. W. Ian Lipkin of Columbia University, collaborating with a team from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Trinity College in Dublin, tackled the hot-button question: whether the MMR vaccine causes autism.

"'We are persuaded there is no link,' said Lipkin, director of the center on infection and immunity at Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health in Manhattan."

HOWEVER…

"The study was not designed to address other rumored theories of autism's cause, such as thimerosal, the much-debated mercury-based preservative in some other vaccines, Lipkin said."

Now, as usual, the devil is in the details. The 1998 study that linked MMR vaccines to autism was based on a whopping 12 children. I'm no scientist (nor have I played one on TV) but that doesn't sound like a very large sample base.

For this new study, "Lipkin and colleagues searched for traces of genetic material linked to the virus in intestinal tissue taken from 25 children with autism and gastrointestinal problems. They compared the samples to those from 13 children without autism but with intestinal problems. In 24 of the group of 25 and in 12 of the 13, there was no evidence of viral persistence, leading researchers to conclude the vaccine did not cause autism or gastrointestinal problems." So it’s a larger group of kids. Not that many, but on the surface it sounds more valid.

HOWEVER…

Why not do a study on thimerosal, which contains, as Jenny McCarthy calls it, "frickin' mercury"? Wouldn't that be, like, actually useful?

In theory, this study will put to rest parents' fears about this particular vaccine. Of course, as the great Homer Simpson once said, communism works -- in theory. In other words, I doubt this news will do anything to change anybody's mind one way or the other.

source: Newsday

image: timesonline.typepad.com

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Expanded Uses of HPV Vaccine

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 17:01:00 GMT

Recently, I wrote about a national survey that revealed that one quarter of teenage girls has a sexually transmitted infection (STI). Well, the most common of those STIs—HPV (the human papillomavirus)—no longer need pose a threat. A vaccine against HPV has been available since June 2006 for females between the ages of nine and 26. And yesterday, the pharmaceutical giant Merck announced that it’s seeking FDA approval of the vaccine for women ages 27-45.

By age 50, at least 80 percent of women will have acquired genital HPV at some point in their lives. Most of the time, the virus goes away on its own, although it can develop into cervical cancer, which is the second leading cancer in women worldwide and which kills about 3,700 women in the U.S. each year. Gardasil is 100 percent effective against four strains of HPV that together cause about 70 percent of cervical cancer cases and about 90 percent of genital warts outbreaks. In other words, widespread vaccination against HPV could save millions of women’s lives.

Assuming that the FDA does approve vaccinating older women, the next expansion of Gardasil’s use will most likely be to males, who are currently not approved for the vaccine, nor can they be tested for the virus. So they could easily carry several of about 30 sexually transmitted strains of HPV and have no idea they are putting their partners at risk.

Probably the vaccine’s biggest setback is its prohibitive cost: $360 for a series of three shots over a six-month period. Many, but by no means all, insurance companies cover the cost of the vaccine. Fortunately, the Vaccines for Children Program offers Gardasil free of charge to uninsured and underinsured children 18 years of age and younger—which is one reason why it’s important to get girls vaccinated while they are young.

Before the vaccine was approved in June 2006, it was speculated that conservative opposition would be the biggest obstacle to making the vaccine widely available. In fact, most Christian groups such as Focus on the Family wisely support the vaccine, but are opposed to making it mandatory, worrying that inoculating preteen girls against an STI sends a pro-premarital sex message. But Merck and many health care professionals argue that vaccinating girls before their first sexual contact is the only (almost) surefire way to combat the spread of cancer-causing HPV.

What do you parents think? How would (or did) you feel bringing your nine-year-old to get vaccinated against a disease overwhelmingly caused by sexual contact? Do you think boys should receive the Gardasil vaccine? Should states make the vaccine mandatory? And would you pay for the vaccine if your insurance company didn’t?

Photo: teenagerstoday.com

New Cause for Autism Found

Cole Gamble — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 15:00:00 GMT

On the heels of a recent federal panel ruling that a Georgia girl’s autism might have been exacerbated by vaccination, comes this news of a recent autism study that found a gene that helps make connections in the brain might have a significant role in autism.

The gene, contactin 4, can be disrupted in its normal function when it is found in too many or two few pairs within the brain. The findings of this study illustrate how, as the search for autisms root cause progresses, new findings prove to mystify as well as clarify. Dr. Eli Hatchwell, the lead on this study, asserts the most common mistake in finding autism causes is assuming there is one overarching root for all autism cases. In this study, for instance, the contactin 4 factor only accounts for 2.5% of autism. That is a very significant number, but it also shows there are likely many other reasons for a person to have autism. The contactin 4 mutation is present at birth, which means environmental factors do not play a part. However, knowing that contactin 4 is not the basis for all, or even most autism, theories such as the vaccine link still can not be discounted.

Shots Without the Shot? Where Do I Sign?

Madeline Holler — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 14:15:00 GMT

Show of hands: Which of you parents actually teared up the first few times your babies got shots? Me, me, me. I'm embarassed to admit, that I even got a little weepy when our dog got his rabies booster. Clearly, I suffer some kind of imbalance.

So imagine how delighted I am to read about this development in the world of innoculations: a flu vaccine that is administered orally!

Korean researchers say the new vaccine worked in mice, avoiding not only the painful prick but also the discomfort some people feel from the inhaled vaccine.

With the success of trials in mice, they'll now be testing it on humans.

Of course, this is the flu vaccine. No word on all the other shots kids get. But hey, it's a start. My now 6-year-old still screams and flails when she gets shots. Only I don't cry for her anymore. All the tears are for me.

Cure For Addiction As Easy As Shot In The Arm

Amy S.F. Lutz — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 22:50:00 GMT

How great would it be if drug addicts could just get a shot that would keep them from getting high anymore? Pretty great, unless you're the Lifetime channel, and would lose an entire subcategory of tearjerker, made-for-TV movies.

Researchers at the Baylor College of Medicine in Texas have been working on a cocaine vaccine for the past ten years, and report now they are close to FDA approval. The vaccine works by targeting cocaine after ingestion, so, while addicts may relapse and take the drug, they would no longer get high from it.

Similar vaccines for heroin, methamphetamine, and even nicotine are also in development. So, Mom, soon you won't have any excuse not to kick the habit (Her nicotine habit, that is. Not meth.)