From: SCHAFER AUTISM REPORT "Healing Autism:
No Finer a Cause on the Planet
http://www.freewebz.com/schafer/SARHome.htm
COMMENTARY
Vaccines Need a Closer Look
[By Harold Buttram | Alternet / Washington Free Press.]
http://santafenewmexican.com/site/news.cfm?BRD=2144&dept_id=500277&newsid=64
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[Introduction by the Santa Fe New Mexican: This article is an attempt
to express a minority view and position that is contrary to current
government, public and majority medical opinion on the subject. However,
whatever position on the vaccination decision one chooses to adopt, we feel
the most important point is parental choice. Therefore, we ardently believe
the best approach to this very controversial subject is to present both the
pro and con, good and bad, known and unknown about immunizations and then
help guide the patient or parents to choose what is best for them or their
children.]
This is termed "informed consent" and should be the basis of every
medical test or treatment; vaccinations being no exception.
Any medical therapy must balance the "effectiveness" versus the
"safety" of its actions on the human body. For instance, aspirin therapy is
effective in preventing a second heart attack after having a first heart
attack and it is quite safe, only having a very small incidence of stomach
or intestinal bleeding as a potential long-term side effect. As you read the
following, please keep these key points in mind in terms of "effectiveness"
versus the "safety" of vaccinations: Scientific evidence does support the
effectiveness of immunizations. They do prevent infectious diseases; some
better than others, but this point is not disputed. Scientific evidence does
not support the safety of immunizations. Safety studies on vaccinations are
limited to short time periods only: several days to several weeks. There are
no long-term (months to years) safety studies on any vaccination or
immunization. There is small but increasing scientific evidence of long-term
side effects from immunizations that need much more study.
Inadequate Proof of Benefit of Vaccines It is true that there may be
situations where extreme measures may be justified to preserve life and
health. The basic question, therefore, is whether the benefits of current
childhood vaccines outweigh the harm, or whether the reverse is true. As to
the benefits of vaccines, polio has been eliminated from the Western
Hemisphere, and smallpox may have been eliminated worldwide. [For
information on history of smallpox eradication, the nature of the disease,
and the side-effects of the vaccine, see the article "Don't Fear a Smallpox
Outbreak" by Dr. Sherri Tenpenny.] Vaccine proponents would have us believe
that vaccines have been largely responsible for controlling virtually all of
the former epidemics of killer diseases in the U.S.. With the exceptions
cited above, the facts do not bear this out. According to the records of the
Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, from 1911 to l935 the four leading
causes of childhood deaths from infectious diseases in the U.S.. were
diphtheria, pertussis (whooping cough), scarlet fever, and measles. However,
by l945 the combined death rates from these causes had declined by 95
percent, before the implementation of mass immunization programs. By far the
greatest factors in this decline were sanitation through public health
measures, improved nutrition, better housing with less crowded conditions
and the introduction of antibiotics. Also, the virulence of microorganisms
tends to become weakened or attenuated with the passage of time and serial
passages through human hosts, one example of which is whooping cough
(pertussis) which is clearly a much milder disease today in Western nations
than it was l00 or so years ago.
Safety Not Proven It should be pointed out that today's children
receive 22 or more vaccines before school age, whereas today's senior
citizens received only one, the smallpox vaccine. Some of these vaccines
contain potentially toxic mercury (though mercury-free types have recently
been produced in response to safety concerns). With growing public concerns
about potential adverse reactions on the immature immune systems of
children, it is reasonable to ask ourselves what is already known about such
reactions.
There is a school of thought that the so-called "minor childhood
illnesses" of former times, including measles, mumps, rubella (German
measles) and chicken pox, which entered the body through the mucous
membranes, served a necessary and positive purpose in challenging and
strengthening the immune system of these membranes. In contrast, so the
theory goes, the respective vaccines of these diseases are injected by
needle directly into the system of the child, thereby bypassing the mucosal
immune system. As a result, mucosal immunity remains relatively weak and
stunted in many children, complications of which may be the rapid increase
in asthma and eczema now being seen, both in terms of frequency and
severity.
This concept tends to be confirmed by four controlled studies, widely
separated geographically, in which vaccinated children were found to have
significantly more atopic disorders than controls. In commenting on the
increased incidence of asthma and other atopic disorders in the United
Kingdom in the article, "Measles and atopy in Guinea-Bissau," the authors
made the following comment: "The rise of allergic disease among children in
the UK over the past 30 years remains unexplained. One hypothesis is that
infections in early childhood prevent allergic sensitization, and that
successive generations of children have lost this protection as their
exposure to infectious disease in early life has declined. Consequently the
prevalence of atopy and concomitant allergic disease has risen."
It is true that in former times there were occasional serious
complications from these childhood diseases, but this is an area in which
nutritional approaches and homeopathy traditionally have been at their best.
If these approaches were made widely available, it is probable that most of
these complications could be eliminated. No one wants to see serious
complications in our children, but the vaccine route may in time prove to be
the worst possible choice that could have been made, as concerns the minor
childhood diseases.
Threat of Brain Damage Perhaps the greatest concern with vaccines
today rests with their possible causal relation to the growing epidemic of
childhood autism, developmental delay and attention deficit hyperactivity
disorder (ADHD). Regarding the latter, a recent news item stated that ADHD
has increased from 900,000 in l99l to nearly 5 million today. Statistics may
be open to question, but one cannot question the observations of veteran
elementary school teachers who, in our experience, unanimously and
emphatically report a marked increase in this disorder in recent years.
Regarding autism, a recent survey mandated by the California state
legislature found an increase of 273 percent in California in the past 11
years.
At present primary suspicion for this epidemic of neurobehavioral
disorders rests with the MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) vaccine. Although
scientific evidence has not yet reached the standards of scientific proof,
one pioneer researcher in this area, Dr. Vijendra Singh with the Department
of Pharmacology, University of Michigan, has published the report of a study
in which he found that a large majority of autistic children tested had
antibodies to brain tissue in the form of antibodies to myelin basic
protein, a protein strongly correlated to measles antibodies (almost all of
the children had been immunized with the MMR vaccine, and none had had these
diseases).
This study tends to confirm the results of a similar study published
in The Lancet in l998 by Dr. Andrew Wakefield and coworkers of the Royal
Free Hospital in London, indicating a possible link between MMR vaccination,
Crohn's disease of the bowel, and autism.
If the MMR vaccine were causing an autoimmune reaction involving the
brains of autistic children, what would be the mechanism? Although research
in this area is in its infancy, we do know some things. Both the measles and
mumps fractions of the MMR vaccine are cultured in chick embryo tissue. As
purely genetic material, viruses are highly susceptible to the process of
"jumping genes," in which they may incorporate genetic material from tissue
in which they are cultured. Furthermore, protein sequences in the measles
virus have been found to have similarities to those found in brain tissues.
As a result, once this foreign genetic material is introduced into the child
by a vaccine, it may set in motion an immunologic attack on brain tissues, a
process which the work of Dr. Singh would tend to confirm.
Stealth Virus A similar process may have taken place with the oral
(Sabin) polio vaccine, which is cultured in monkey kidney tissue. Years ago
Dr. John Martin, then serving as director of the viral oncology branch
within the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, found foreign DNA in
contemporary polio vaccines. He later learned that a simian (monkey)
cytomegalic virus had been found in all of the 11 African green monkeys
imported for production of the polio vaccine.
After leaving the FDA Dr. Martin took a position as professor of
pathology with the University of Southern California. There he tested blood
samples from patients with chronic fatigue syndrome, autism, and other
nervous system disorders. This work led to his discovery of unique
cell-destroying viruses that were not recognized by the immune system.
Termed "stealth viruses," some of which he thought had clearly originated
from the simian cytomegalic virus, these viruses were missing specific genes
which ordinarily would induce immune responses from the host. It should be
admitted that this work is preliminary. No definitive conclusions can be
drawn from it, but the need for further intensive investigation should be
apparent.
Overdue in the opinion of many, on June l7, l999, U.S. government
officials voted to withdraw their recommendation for the use of the live
oral polio vaccine and to recommend exclusive use of the inactive (Salk)
polio vaccine, because the former vaccine has been the only remaining source
of polio cases in the U.S.A since l979.
Damage May Yet Escalate As another concept, it is highly pertinent
that many of today's children are second-generation vaccinees; that is, they
are born to mothers previously vaccinated with the measles, mumps, and/or
rubella vaccines. It is possible that the reaction rates in the
second-generation vaccines may be happening on a much large scale due to
previous sensitization of mothers from their vaccines, this sensitization
being transmitted in turn to the fetus during pregnancy. If this process is
taking place, something we cannot know until appropriate research is done,
there predictably will be additional increases in autism beyond that already
taking place, should the process be continued into a third generation.
Time may prove that vaccine programs went awry when they deviated from
the most basic of all medical ethics, the right of parents to accept or
reject vaccines for their children. Freedom of choice provides a system of
checks and balances now lacking. At the very least, this would provide the
parents the power to compel better safety screening of vaccines.
Today we have a system in which vaccine production by the
pharmaceutical companies is largely self-regulated. Naturally these
companies are interested in profits from their products which, in itself, is
not wrong. However, when arbitrary decisions in the mandating of vaccines
are made by government bureaucracies, who are highly partisan to the
pharmaceutical companies, with no recourse open to parents, we have all the
potential ingredients for a tragedy of historical proportions.
In closing, it may be appropriate to cite an item which, though
seemingly small in itself, may be indicative of the problems with which we
are faced. In January l993 a scientific journal published the results of a
study of 89 children with adverse clinical reactions following
administrations of various combinations of vaccines. Detailed case histories
were taken and blood tests were done to examine various parameters of
cellular and humoral immunity. It was found that children with adverse
reactions had marked increases in abnormal blood parameters as compared with
children who had had no reactions.
The first study of its kind as far as we are aware, perhaps the most
striking and significant feature of the report is not the results of the
tests, which might have been anticipated, so much as the fact that it was
published in a foreign publication, Czechoslovakia Pediatrics. American
science has been foremost in the development and promotion of vaccines. That
it should be laggard in basic safety testing, of which this study may
represent one of the modest beginnings, is a sad reflection on the American
scientific community. Do we not have a right to expect better?
[Harold Buttram is an author and physician at the Woodlands Healing
Research Center in Quakertown, Penn.]
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