...so you will forgive me if this is a review..
Autism & Vaccines: A New Look At An Old Story A Comprehensive Report
January 18, 2001
This is part 3 of a comprehensive report by the National Vaccine Information Center on a matter of keen importance to the autism community: vaccines. It has been distributed to thousands of health care professionals throughout the United States, including pediatricians, as well as every member of every state legislature throughout the country and every member of the US Congress.
We are reproducing the report in segments in the FEAT Daily Newsletter. The document in its entirety can be found at the NVIC website.
http://www.909shot.com/NVICSpecialReport.htm
DPT Vaccine Causes Brain Inflammation
By 1947, the first reports of brain inflammation and chronic brain damage, including death, after pertussis vaccination were published (Brody, 1947; Byers and Moll, 1948). In 1955, Niels Low showed that the EEG (electroencephalogram) of infants sometimes was altered by the DPT shot. He concluded that "mild, but possibly significant, cerebral reactions occur in addition to the reported very severe neurological changes."
By 1982, numerous reports of CNS dysfunction following DPT vaccination
had appeared in the medical literature (Berg, 1958; Strom, 1960, 1967; Dick, 1967, 1974; Kuhlenkampff, 1974; Stewart, 1977, 1979). In 1981, Pediatrics published a UCLA/FDA study by Cody et al revealing that 1 in 875 DPT shots in the U.S. is followed by a convulsion or collapse/shock reaction.
Finally, after more than 40 years of evidence in the medical literature that the DPT vaccine was causing brain inflammation and CNS damage in previously healthy children, this fact was confirmed by medical science in the 1981 National Childhood Encephalopathy Study (NCES) and in 1991 and 1994 by the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences (IOM).
Brain Damage On A Continuum
Signs of brain inflammation within seven days of DPT vaccination can range from high fever, irritability, high pitched screaming, prolonged crying for hours, drowsiness, and vomiting to seizures, collapse and unresponsiveness (altered state of consciousness) followed by immediate frank regression or progressive changes in mental, emotional and physical health ending with a diagnosis of mental retardation, seizure disorders, learning disabilities and other chronic neurological damage. DPT vaccine-induced brain inflammation, the IOM noted in 1994, is associated with a "broad range of long term dysfunctions (neurological, behavioral, educational, motor, sensory, and self care dysfunctions)" that are similar to those experienced by children after serious acute neurologic illnesses due to other causes.
[A child, who had been healthy and bright before he reacted within four hours of his DPT shot at 19 months of age with a convulsion followed by days of fever and screaming and was left mentally retarded with autistic behaviors, was awarded compensation in 1996 under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act despite protests by federal health officials that he was autistic and there is no proof that DPT vaccine causes autism. The U.S. Court of Claims made the award, agreeing with the plaintiff's lawyer that autistic behaviors can be the result of brain injury, including brain injury caused by DPT vaccine.]
A Shot in the Dark
One of the sources of information reviewed by the IOM and included in references in their 1991 report on pertusiss vaccine was original research documenting more than 100 case histories of DPT vaccine associated immune mediated neurological dysfunction contained in Coulter and Fisher's DPT: A Shot in the Dark (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985; Warner, 1986; Avery, 1991). Their book was the first to undertake an extensive examination of the history of pertussis and the pertussis vaccine within the larger context of the medical, scientific, legal, social, and political issues involving mass vaccination policies.
In their book, Coulter and Fisher described numerous case reports in more than 50 years of medical literature and in new case studies they presented of children, who had been developing normally (and in many cases were of above average intelligence), and then received a DPT shot (often simultaneously with live oral polio vaccine) who then exhibited symptoms of brain inflammation, including high fever, extreme drowsiness, vomiting, high pitched screaming, seizures, and alterations of consciousness. Many of these children were subsequently diagnosed as mentally retarded, epileptic, learning disabled, hyperactive, or autistic.
In a good number of cases, the children who had reacted neurologically to DPT were allergic, particularly to milk, or had been vaccinated while they were sick with a coinciding viral or bacterial infection. In addition to neurological damage, many were also left with chronic gastrointestinal dysfunction and severe allergies, as well as autoimmune disorders such as asthma. The personal or family history of autoimmune disorders appeared to outweigh a history of neurological disorders in terms of being a high risk factor for reacting to DPT, although a history of convulsions in the family was also a high risk factor.
Tetanus, Hib Affects The Brain
The tetanus bacillus produces one of the most potent toxins in nature which can severely damage the brain. In 1991, the Institute of Medicine concluded that tetanus vaccine can cause Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS), which begins one to four weeks after vaccination and takes up to four weeks to progress. The tetanus vaccine was also found to cause brachial neuritis, a neuropathy that usually appears within three weeks of vaccination involving painful nerve inflammation in the arm and shoulder which can progress over a period of many months.
Hib disease, a type of bacterial meningitis, is known to have a direct effect on the CNS and can involve seizures and profound brain damage. Although reports of demyelination (transverse myelitis and GBS) have been reported after children receive Hib (haemophilus influenza B) vaccine, which contains the Hib organism's capsular polysaccharide, a causal relationship has not yet been confirmed. The combination DPTH vaccine has been given to children since 1988.
Autoimmunity: From Disease and Vaccines
In 1935, scientists investigating the neurological complications of rabies vaccine discovered they could deliberately induce brain inflammation in lab animals by injecting them with brain myelin, causing an autoimmune reaction whereby the animal develops antibodies to its own brain tissue, causing demyelination. (Rivers & Schwenker, 1935).
The autoimmune diseases diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and lupus, for example, involve chronic inflammation that causes tissue destruction including central nervous system damage. It is thought that these diseases may be triggered by an infection that activates autoreactive T-cells and, in individuals genetically susceptible to developing autoimmunity, results in chronic inflammation and/or autoantibodies that selectively destroy organs in the body such as the brain.
Hepatitis B and Autoimmunity
During the past decade, there have been persistent reports in the medical literature that, within weeks of recombinant hepatitis B vaccination, some children and adults are suffering recurring fevers, severe joint pain, vision and memory loss, muscle weakness, debilitating fatigue and other chronic immune and neurological dysfunction which can involve demyelination of the brain. The virus that causes hepatitis B disease attacks the liver and can cause such severe joint pain, fatigue and weakness that the disease is sometimes mistaken for rheumatoid arthritis or lupus. Rare complications of hepatitis B disease include demyelinating disease, such as transverse myelitis, and neuropathy.
Likewise, clinical symptoms that follow hepatitis B vaccine complications are similar to lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, as well as optic neuritis and multiple sclerosis (Guiserix, 1996; Pope & Bell, 1998; WHO, 1990;Berkman, 1996). GBS, chronic fatigue and vascular disorders have also been reported (Shaw, 1988; Salit, 1993; Granel, 1997). Tourbah et al described CNS inflammation within 10 weeks of hepatitis B vaccination (Neurology, 1999) and concluded that "The persistent inflammatory activity observed clinically and on MRI in these patients is comparable to that usually observed in multiple sclerosis," hypothesizing a triggering role of hepatitis B vaccination in CNS demyelination.
Burton Waisbren, M.D., began writing and speaking about molecular mimicry and hepatitis B vaccine reactions in 1996. Bonnie Dunbar, Ph.D., Professor of Cell Biology, Baylor College of Medicine; Ronald Kennedy, Ph.D., Professor of Microbiology and Immunology, and William Hildebrand, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, of the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center are three scientists working to clarify the role that genetic predisposition may play in the development of immune mediated neurological dysfunction following hepatitis B vaccination.
They are studying families with several members who have reacted severely to hepatitis B vaccine and are investigating autoimmune mechanisms involving molecular mimicry and epitope spreading. Dr. Hildebrand made a presentation at the October 26-27, 1998 Institute of Medicine Vaccine Safety Forum Workshop on the correlation between major histocompatibility complex (MHC) genes and autoimmune diseases.
Dunbar, an award winning vaccine developer, whose brother suffered a severe, disabling reaction to several hepatitis B vaccinations, is particularly concerned that race may be a factor in both normal and abnormal immune responses to vaccines. She said, "There may be variations in the way that different genetic populations respond to different vaccines and this needs to be carefully evaluated before new vaccines are licensed and recommended for use by everyone."
Hepatitis B vaccine has also been associated with diabetes (Poutasi, 1996). A 1996 report by Barthelow Classen, M.D. in the New Zealand Medical Journal noted a 60 percent increase in juvenile diabetes following a massive hepatitis B vaccine campaign for babies from 1988 to 1991. In 1997, U.S. federal health officials acknowledged that one of their own studies showed that "the possibility that hepatitis B vaccination, particularly at older ages, may increase insulin dependent diabetes mellitus (IDDM) risk cannot be ruled out and will require larger more detailed studies."(Classen has also published studies which show an increase in diabetes in children after the addition of Hib and MMR vaccine in Finland (Infectious Diseases in Clinical Practice, 1997).
Pertussis, DPT and Autoimmunity
The pertussis toxin, sometimes referred to as islet-activating protein, has been shown in laboratory animals to provoke excess production of insulin by the pancreas and diabetes in mice. In 1970, Pittman talked about DPT "vaccine-induced hypoglycemia" and a report in 1982 (Champsaur et al, Journal of Pediatrics) concluded that the administration of the DPT vaccine to a 16 month old child with a coinciding viral infection and a genetic predisposition may have lead to "insular damage and anti-islet autoimmune reactions, leading to insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus.".
From the earliest days of pertussis vaccine use, it has been associated with development of asthma in previously healthy children (Koeng, 1953; Halpern & Halpern, 1955; Hopper, 1961; Hannik, 1969). In a 1997 issue of Epidemiology, New Zealand researchers reported that of 1,265 New Zealanders born in 1977, 23 received no childhood vaccinations and none suffered childhood asthma. Among the 1,242 who got DPT and polio shots, 23 percent later had episodes of asthma, 23 percent had asthma consultations and 30 percent had consultations for other allergic illness.
In a recent study (Hurwitz & Morgenstern, 2000) reviewing data from the National Center for Health Statistics from 1988 to 1994 and, comparing vaccinated to unvaccinated children, it was found that a child who received DPT or tetanus vaccination was 50 percent more likely to experience severe allergic reactions, more than 80 percent more likely to experience sinusitis and twice as likely to experience asthma as those children who were not vaccinated. The authors concluded that "asthma and other allergic hypersensitivity reactions and related symptoms may be caused, in part, by the delayed effects of DTP or tetanus vaccination.".
Rubella and Autoimmunity
The primary complications of rubella disease and live rubella vaccine are autoimmune. There is evidence that persistent rubella viral infection in congenital rubella victims can cause diabetes (Menser, 1978; Rubenstein et al, 1982). And chronic arthritis has been confirmed to be caused by both the disease and vaccine. In 1991, the Institute of Medicine found a causal relationship between rubella vaccine (RA 27/3) and the development of acute and chronic arthritis. Symptoms of severe joint pain most often occur within two to three weeks of vaccination, which has been noted to be the incubation period of natural rubella and the time period in which the vaccine strain virus can be isolated.
Mumps, Measles, MMR and Autoimmunity
Since the late 1800's, the development of Insulin Dependent Diabetes Mellitus (IDDM) after mumps infection has been persistently reported (Harris, 1899; Otten et al, 1984). There also have been case reports of diabetes following mumps vaccination (Sinaniotis, 1975; Otten, 1984) and after measles-mumps vaccination (Quast, 1979) and MMR vaccination (Taranger, 1987).
A gastrointestinal disorder thought to be caused by infectious or immune mechanisms is Crohn's disease, which has been linked to measles infection (Ekbom, 1994) and measles vaccine (Thompson, 1995). Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, both thought to be autoimmune disorders, have also been reported to occur at a high rate in persons who had measles and mumps infections in the same year of life (Montgomery et al, 1999). Evidence has been documented that measles infection as well as the MMR vaccine may be involved in the development of a syndrome involving both inflammatory bowel disease and regressive developmental disorder in children (Wakefield et al, 1998).
Autism, The Brain, and The Immune System
In the year 2000, the controversial hypothesis that autism is somehow linked with vaccination has set the stage for a long overdue examination of the interaction between the brain and the immune system and the evidence for both disease and vaccine-induced immune and brain dysfunction, which has been documented in the medical literature for more than 200 years.
After Rimland in the 1960's persuaded researchers to investigate the biological rather than psychological cause for autism, DeMyer and her colleagues wrote in a 1973 Journal of Autism and Childhood Schizophrenia that the findings of their study "in conjunction with other investigations, support the biological cause theory of autism." The authors noted that a high number of autistic children have "gross EEG abnormalities" and are neurologically handicapped with learning and behavior disorders that range from mild to severe mental retardation. They concluded that "viral disease during or after gestation, birth trauma, malnutrition, oxygen lack or generally any of the events known to damage the brain may be the cause of the autistic syndrome.".
Seizures and Autism
In 1975, Mnukhin and Isaev also found a high incidence of epileptic seizures in autistic children, indicating autism has an organic, neurological basis. They were soon joined by other autism researchers who asserted that the symptoms of autism are grounded in dysfunction of the nervous system (Ornitz & Ritvo, 1976). Deykin and MacMahon in 1979 (American Journal of Epidemiology) agreed that the high rate of abnormal EEG's and seizures in autistic children suggested neurologic damage. They pointed out that the central nervous system is not fully developed at birth and may be at special risk for brain damage from viral infections in the first year of life. They concluded that "viruses with encephalitic potential, especially those occurring during gestation or during the first few months of life might be associated with the development of certain childhood mental illnesses.".
Autoimmunity Affects Vaccine Responses
In 1982, Weizman and his colleagues reported that some autistics have abnormal cell-mediated immune responses to myelin basic protein, (a component of brain myelin) suggesting that an autoimmune mechanism may be involved in the development of autism. That report reinforced observations by Stubbs in 1976 that some autistic children have defective antibody responses to rubella vaccine and, in 1977, that autistic children have depressed T-cell responses.
In 1984 in Pediatric Annals, Ritvo and Freeman described the medical model of autism and concluded, "The symptoms are due to neuropathology which, in turn, may have a variety of etiologies," observing that there is a high rate of abnormal EEG's, seizures, severe allergies, and significant differences in brain metabolism patterns and brain chemistry in autistic children compared to those who are not autistic.
The autoimmune connection was made again by Reed Warren and his associates in 1986 when they presented evidence that confirmed Stubb's studies in the 1970's indicating that autism is associated with immune system dysfunction. Warren stated, "The lack of suppressor cells in the autistic patients may be consistent with an autoimmune process underlying the development of autism." He added, "Our findings in the autistic patients are quite similar to those observed in a study of patients hospitalized for major depressive disorder.".
In 1987, Rutter and Schopler writing in Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, discussed the clear differences between adult schizophrenia and childhood autism, particularly the high rate of seizures and mental retardation in autistic children. They pointed out that there were two groups of autistic children: those babies who have abnormal behavior at birth and those who develop normally and then regress and added "There is no one basic deficit because the disorder reflects varying patterns of organic brain dysfunction rather than any single disease state.".
