Some months ago I read some meeting notes from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (a group of doctors who advise on vaccines, who are also on the boards of the drug companies that make them), and I discovered that they were intending to introduce chickenpox vaccine into the childhood vaccination schedule and to be given to pregnant women to 'protect' their fetuses from congenital varicella syndrome.
So when I read the article in the Daily Mail on 3rd January 2009, that all children and pregnant women are to recieve this jab, I wasn't surprised.
I did leave comments on the article but they weren't published, which they usually aren't.
The article stated that:
'Child health specialists say that mass vaccination is the best defence against chickenpox, which claims up to 50 lives a year, 40 of them children.'
(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1104555/Chickenpox-jab-children-pregnant-women.html).
This is chickenpox they are talking about, one of the mildest childhood ailments there are. I had it and was fine, all four of my daughter's had it, one of them during my pregnancy with my son but my baby was fine because I'd already had chickenpox as a child so could not contract congenital varicella syndrome. My daughters didn't even feel ill with it, no fever, no sickness and were playing and eating meals like normal. Their most major complaint was itchy spots, and now it's a deadly killer!?!
I was very interested to know where the Daily Mail got their source from for the 50 deaths per year since they didn't say, so I decided to find out myself.
According to the Health Protection Agency, which monitors diseases, chickenpox is not a notifiable disease (i.e. you don't have to tell the DOH if you have it), so they don't have any figures for how many people get it, however, they say that some information on incidence and deaths is kept by Royal College of General Practitioners by sentinel GP practices in England and Wales. Copy and paste link to see this HPA page:
(http://www.hpa.org.uk/webw/HPAweb&Page&HPAwebAutoListName/Page/1191942152829?p=1191942152829).
I looked on the Royal College of GP's site and brought up their annual report 2007 in which chickenpox incidence and mortality is discussed, starting on page 23.
It then stated on the first paragraph under 'Chickenpox/Shingles', page 25 that:
'CHICKENPOX IS GENERALLY MILD, HOWEVER, THERE IS AN INCREASED RISK OF COMPLICATIONS AND DEATHS IN THE IMMUNO-COMPROMISED. ESTIMATES OF CHICKENPOX DEATHS RANGE FROM 4 TO 9 DEATHS PER YEAR.'
(http://www.rcgp.org.uk/pdf/ANNUAL%20REPORT%202007%20FINAL%20COMPLETE.pdf)
Copy and paste the above in your browser and go to page 25 if you want to see this for yourself.
So just how does 4-9 deaths per year in immuno-compromised children equate to 50 deaths, 40 of them in children, as stated in the media? This is an absolute lie. All you have to do is see the records that these agencies have been keeping.
These deaths are in the immuno-compromised, not in healthy children.
Healthy children who haven't been medicated do not die of chickenpox.
An immuno-compromised person does not have an immune system because it has been destroyed by disease, radiation or chemotherapy. A person like this can die of the common cold, yet we don't start declaring the cold as deadly or insist on a vaccine for that (although I am sure they are working on it).
A vaccine has it's own risks and side-effects and is not a guarantee you won't get chickenpox. It may also cause chickenpox as it's a live virus vaccine (see 'diseases in the vaccinated' page for some examples of cases). I am sure then, given the side-effects, potiential vaccine deaths, and cases of chickenpox in the vaccinated, that there would be no justifiable benefit to it.
I thought after nearly 14 years of researching vaccines I would never be shocked anymore, but the NHS's latest idea to vaccinate all pregnant women with live varicella (chickenpox) vaccine is just plain stupidity, and dangerous.
They state their reason is to prevent congenital varicella syndrome which can cause deafness and blindness in an unborn baby in the same way that congenital rubella can.
The HPA say on their site that:
'A Varicella Vaccine Pregnancy Registry was established in the USA in 1995 to monitor the outcomes of pregnant women who were inadvertently immunised with varicella vaccine 3 months before or any time during pregnancy. Information on the first ten years of the Pregnancy Registry has been published. More recent data are also available: during the first 12 years of the pregnancy registry, there were 628 prospective reports with information available on the pregnancy and baby. No babies were born with congenital varicella syndrome (see below) or birth defects compatible with congenital varicella syndrome. While the number of reports is relatively small, the overall rate of birth defects in women who received varicella vaccine and were reported to the Registry was similar to the expected rate in the rest of the population.
There is no specific safety concern, either for the mother or the baby, when varicella-containing vaccine is given in, or shortly before pregnancy, and no cases of congenital varicella syndrome have been causally linked to varicella vaccine virus. Women who have been immunised with varicella vaccine in pregnancy can therefore be immediately reassured.'
(http://www.hpa.org.uk/web/HPAweb&HPAwebStandard/HPAweb_C/1221202947812
However, I decided to find this Varicella Vaccine Pregnancy Registry and see if it was as safe as the HPA claim.
Here's what the registry said when the vaccine began its use in the States:
'Notice to Readers Establishment of VARIVAX{Registered} Pregnancy Registry
VARIVAX{Registered} * (Merck & Co., Inc. {West Point, Pennsylvania}), a live attenuated virus vaccine for preventing chickenpox, recently has been licensed for children aged greater than or equal to 12 months. Adults without a reliable history of chickenpox also can receive the vaccine. However, because no data exist about the effects of VARIVAX{Registered} on fetal development and because natural varicella infection can cause a complex of congenital anomalies (i.e., congenital varicella syndrome), the package circular states that VARIVAX{Registered} should not be administered during pregnancy and that pregnancy should be avoided for at least 3 months after vaccination. '
(http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00040693.htm).
That's right, not only should pregnant women not be vaccinated, but they should avoid getting pregnant for 3 MONTHS after the shot because of the risk of birth defects! This advice is from the CDC.
I thought, perhaps they have some new recommendations now because they now think it's safe, so I sought a more recent document, and found the data sheet from Merck vaccine manufacturer for Chickenpox vaccine, dated November 2008, and it stated in the contraindication section:
'Pregnancy; the possible effects of the vaccine on
fetal development are unknown at this time.
However, natural varicella is known to sometimes
cause fetal harm. If vaccination of postpubertal
females is undertaken, pregnancy should be
avoided for three months following vaccination.'
And in the 'Pregnancy' section:
'It is also not known whether Varivax can cause fetal harm when administered to a pregnant woman, or affect reproduction capacity, therefore Varivax SHOULD NOT BE ADMINISTERED TO PREGNANT FEMALES.'
Copy and paste this to see the data sheet:
(http://www.merck.com/product/usa/pi_circulars/v/varivax/varivax_pi.pdf
The HPA in the UK even say further down their page that 'the number of women analysed to date is not high enough to rule out a very low risk.'
So they're basically saying they don't know, and the whole purpose of our registry is because they don't know. They are monitoring things to see how many miscarriages and birth defects they get.
When pregnant mothers were vaccinated with live virus MMR vaccine, it was found to cause autism or ADD in their children.
'We identified 60 rubella-susceptible mothers who were revaccinated in the postpartum period with either the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) or the monovalent rubella vaccine and whose children later received MMR vaccine. Forty-five of these women have children diagnosed with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD); another ten women have children with autistic symptoms, ADD/ADHD or other developmental delays; and four women have children with other health problems, mostly immunologic. These outcomes raise concerns about the practice of postpartum vaccination and suggest that an immune mechanism may increase children's susceptibility to ASD.'
Source: Medical Sentinel 2001;6(3):95-99, 108.
With Gardasil, the American version of our Cervarix HPV vaccine, 28 women suffered miscarriages after having the vaccine (and that was in addition to the five who gave birth to babies with defects in the trial):
'The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said the cervical cancer vaccine Gardasil is safe despite that 28 U.S. women who received the vaccination had miscarriages.
A 24-year-old woman miscarried in May after being vaccinated with Gardasil and an investigator reported to the federal government that the miscarriage "may have been caused by Gardasil because the patient received the injection within 30 days of the pregnancy."
There have been 3,461 adverse reactions, including eight deaths, reported since the vaccine was approved for use in girls as young as 9 in June 2006. '
Source: Fox News, December 6th, 2007.
Vaccination of women with live virus vaccines around conception has always been contraindicated by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the vaccine manufacturer because of potential risks to the fetus. Nevertheless this dangerous practice occurs and is associated with maternal health problems and a very high incidence of early-onset autism in the children.Postpartum vaccination with live virus vaccines has been recommended by the CDC, and described as 'convenient' by the vaccine manufacturer. This 'routine practice' may lead to health and is also associated with many health and obstetrical problems in the recipient, and is frequently associated with autism in both current and future children. Re-vaccination often fails to produce immunity, the very reason for which it was recommended.
Source:
Med Hypotheses. 2002 Sep;59(3):283-8.
News that doctors are calling for all children to be inoculated against chickenpox causes me concern.
The vogue is to recommend immunisation for diseases that are either relatively harmless, or serious but rare.
Most children suffer only a few uncomfortable days. Yet we are being told that it is a serious disease against which we need to vaccinate. These recommendations are based on research that actively looked for serious complications of chickenpox in all children admitted to hospitals in the UK and Ireland over a 13-month period. The researchers found 112 children who had serious complications of chickenpox, most often a secondary infection treatable with antibiotics. Six deaths were reported. Excluding one baby that died in the womb, four had a chronic health problem, such as HIV or cerebral palsy. Only one previously healthy child died, out of a total population of over 10 million. Chickenpox causes serious complications in less than 1 in 10,000 children.
We now give our children 25 different vaccines, in various combinations, before the age of 15 months. We are in danger of becoming dependent on immunisation, rather than on our immune systems, for our future health. This may appeal to vaccine manufacturers, which operate in an increasingly profitable market, but should concern the rest of us.
There must be an overwhelming case before a decision is made to vaccinate the whole population. Not only has the case not been made for chickenpox, but inoculation will pose particular problems. It will push the disease into older age groups, who will catch the illness as their vaccine-induced immunity wears off, as we have seen happen with mumps. The complications of chickenpox are much greater in older people: an adult over 15 years of age is 10 times, and an adult over 50 is 100 times, more likely to die from the illness than a child.
A second problem is that vaccination is likely to increase the number of people getting shingles, more serious than chickenpox, that already causes 60 deaths a year, mainly among older people. A review in 2003 by government doctors concluded, "Routine infant varicella [chickenpox] vaccination is unlikely to be cost-effective and may produce an overall rise in morbidity [illness]". What has changed since then? A further problem is that the vaccine consists of a live virus, like the measles, mumps and rubella vaccines. However, uniquely, a recipient of the chickenpox vaccine can be infectious; though not common, there have been numerous reports from the US of people catching chickenpox from vaccinated children.
Source: Dr Richard Halvorsen, The Telegraph, 2nd January 2009.
Childhood vaccination against chickenpox has been ruled out by the JCVI.
The committee said it had concluded that such a vaccination programme would be neither cost effective nor epidemiologically sound.
Incidence of varicella infection among under-fives has risen in the last two decades, prompting the JCVI to review vaccination strategies for chickenpox and shingles.
Predictions showed that a childhood immunisation programme, combined with vaccination of older people against shingles, would reduce varicella infections, the JCVI said.
However, large numbers of breakthrough infections in adults would be expected to occur as a result of a one-dose childhood schedule. Without the immunity boost from children's exposure to varicella, incidence of shingles would increase for 40-60 years after the programme.
A vaccination programme could also increase the risk to unborn children or neonates should infection occur during pregnancy.
A two-dose childhood vaccination programme would only be cost effective after 80-100 years or more, and for the first 30-50 years the programme is likely to be ‘cost ineffective', the JCVI said.
The committee has already recommended a herpes zoster vaccine for people in their 70s to protect against shingles, provided a licence vaccine can be obtained at a reasonable cost.
Source: Healthcare Republic, 8 April 2010.
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