Download Infant Vaccinations a Biological Assault

INFANT VACCINATIONS:A BIOLOGICAL ASSAULT?
By Franklin Cameron
Most new parents dutifully take their babies to the doctor or clinic at the prescribed
times to be vaccinated. Generally, it doesn't occur to them to question this public health
institution. However, growing numbers of doctors, scientists and parents have become
suspicious about the long-term implications of what some consider a national
experiment posturing as solid science. It could be said that the development of
immunization theory has been compromised by the theory's very successes.
The history of vaccines does indeed have some glorious chapters. In 1796, British
country doctor Edward Jenner formulated a vaccine that led to the global eradication in
our time of the deadly smallpox virus. A century later, French chemist Louis Pasteur
formulated a vaccine against rabies and even foresaw serums made from nonliving
substances that would one day materialize as synthetic, chemical vaccines. 1
These are among the defining legends of Western medical lore. Presently, researchers
on the vaccine trail have a new dream: to create a "supervaccine" to be used against all
invasive bacterial or viral organisms.1 It would theoretically be injected into infants
during their first weeks of life and thereafter protect them against every known humaninvasive microorganism including those causing common childhood diseases such as
measles, mumps, chicken pox and rubella.
That such a dream could have detractors seems almost sacrilegious. Why would a
medical practitioner or a parent oppose such an agenda?
One side of the controversy believes ardently in the military medical metaphor: The
body is perceived as a battlefield on which great generals, otherwise known as doctors,
wage war against a virulent enemy of viral and bacterial microbes to secure a kind of
peace known as health.
On the other side is a holistic belief system, espoused since Hippocrates, holding that
deleterious micro-organisms aren't the ultimate cause of disease. Thomas Sydenham,
who in the 17th century was known as the "English Hippocrates," put it this way: "Germs
seek their natural habitat--diseased tissue--rather than being the cause of diseased
tissue. For example, mosquitoes seek the stagnant water, but do not cause the pool to
become stagnant."2
In our time we've witnessed the gradual re-emergence of the Hippocratic model as
manifested by alternative and preventive medicine. Even as recently as 10 years ago
the idea that nutrition could have a positive effect on health was viewed sceptically by
many allopathic doctors. Today, it has become a widely accepted tenet of health. "You
are what you eat" is no longer perceived as the misguided prattle of fringe health
fanatics but the guiding principle of a multibillion-dollar natural products industry.
The aspersion of fringe fanaticism is presently applied to people who question the
wisdom of our national vaccination policy. Prominent among the critics are Harris
Coulter, Ph.D., and Barbara Fisher, co-authors DPT: A Shot in the Dark (Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1985; Warner, 1986; Avery, 1991). This book specifically targets the P in
DPT--the pertussis vaccine, which Coulter and Fisher claim had a poor success rate
and was even harmful to many infants.
Separately, Coulter and Fisher provide an update on the politics of infant vaccination.
Modalities at War
We live in a society of either/or arguments. One cannot take a stand on an aspect of
vaccination without being perceived as railing against all aspects of vaccination. Coulter
stresses it is not adult immunizations that are protested. No one, for example, disputes
the science or efficacy of the smallpox vaccine. Coulter also agrees that if one were to
travel in some parts of Asia, vaccinations against cholera or Blackwater fever would be
wise. What he and many other scientists dispute are the ever-increasing numbers of
infant vaccinations.
In psychology, more than a century of research has been dedicated to understanding
how an infant develops into an emotionally mature adult. Clearly articulated
developmental stages, each with tasks to be mastered, are well-documented. In purely
physical terms, our bodies must also pass through developmental phases. Coulter is
prominent among a group of scientists who postulate that childhood diseases are part of
that normal process. "Contracting and overcoming such diseases," he says, "is part of a
developmental process that actually helps develop a healthy, robust, adult immune
system able to meet the challenges that inevitable encounters with viruses and bacteria
will present later on."
On the other side of this controversy is a public health system that assumes its mandate
is to eradicate all bacterial and viral disease-causing organisms. The holistic medical
contingent argues that some of these organisms are millions of years old. How they fit in
the overall web of life--besides giving us measles and chicken pox, for example--is
unknown. What virulent organisms they feed on and control is also unknown. Even
mainstream scientists admit that solid data are lacking on the ecological relationship
between humans, the infecting agents and how infestation occurs.3
Unbeknownst to many parents, infant vaccination has long been a subject of
controversy. In his book The Assault on the American Child: Vaccination, Sociopathy,
and Criminality (North Atlantic Books, 1990), Coulter documents possible long-term
neurologic and other side effects of infant vaccines. Among these are lifelong allergies,
autism, brain damage, encephalitis, and dyslexia as well as learning and behaviour
disorders. What Coulter and Fisher vociferously protest is the lack of response to these
findings from the government-funded public health establishment. Fisher, who is also
cofounder and president of the National Vaccine Information Centre (NVIC) in Vienna,
Va., points out that the public-health infrastructure was built with vaccination as the
cornerstone of its preventive health policy.
"When I look at it," Fisher says, "what I see is allopathic medicine at war with the other
modalities. Homeopathy, naturopathy, chiropractic are perceived as challenging the
basic premise of allopathic medicine, which is that germs are the ultimate cause of
illness and must be destroyed--in this case, by vaccines."
Both Fisher and Coulter agree that not only are vaccines the sacred cow of the public
health system, they have also become the golden calf. What that means is money.
Fisher points out that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), with an
annual budget of around $360 billion, is the most powerful and wealthiest federal
agency in the country. On the face of it, that could be wonderful. What better priority
than national health? The way it plays out, however, has roused serious concerns in the
alternative medical community.
In the United States there are two main vaccine policy-making groups, the Advisory
Committee of Immunization Practices (ACIP) and the Centers for Disease Control
(CDC) under HHS. ACIP makes recommendations for vaccine policy. Fisher says these
recommendations turn into mandates "because state health officials automatically turn
them into state law. In most states," she says, "[when it comes to public health] you no
longer even have a vote by the legislature. All the state health departments have to do
is issue a regulation, and it automatically becomes a law."
Fisher says: "For 16 years I have sat in rooms with these officials, both at scientific
conferences and government meetings. I was appointed to the Vaccine Advisory
Committee for four years under HHS. I was the token consumer representative." What
she observed was lack of oversight of this huge enterprise. "You have the highly funded
HHS. You have the federal health infrastructure that funds the state public-health
infrastructure. Together they have decided they are going to use vaccines to eradicate
disease-causing microorganisms from Earth. Then there are the drug companies that
manufacture the vaccines; they have a very profitable relationship with FDA and CDC.
Everyone is committed to the same premise. What we are trying to make the public
realize is that no money whatsoever has been portioned to independent researchers
who work outside this very profitable, self-reinforcing loop."
Biological Integrity
For years dissenters have been raising questions about vaccines. Among them: What is
the safe quantity of vaccine antigens that will not cause local, systemic and sometimes
severe neurological damage in infants and children? What happens to the vaccine
antigens in the body years later? Where do they go, and what are they capable of
doing?4 To what degree is the introduction of live viruses via routine vaccination
responsible for autoimmune diseases? What effect do live viruses, which are
incorporated directly into the genetic material of our cells, have on the cells
themselves?5
Coulter correlates the explosion of learning disorders in the past 30 years with mass
infant inoculations and bemoans the fact that no studies are being conducted to
investigate this correlation.6 Instead, Congress set up the National Vaccine Injury
Compensation Program in 1986, thereby creating a no-fault system to protect vaccine
manufacturers from lawsuits and to compensate parents of children who have been
harmed by vaccines. Since 1990 more than $500 million have been paid out. 7 One
would think that such a large payout would itself raise serious questions about our
vaccination practices.
It is ironic that alternative medical practitioners, whose theories have historically been
called unscientific, should be demanding: Where are the control groups? Where are the
long-term follow-up studies? Where is the adversarial research?
"Brave souls have raised their own money and have identified that these problems
exist," Fisher says, "but when they try to publish, many are kept out of the medical
journals or are even vilified. The public health infrastructure will brook no view other
than 'vaccines are totally safe and effective.' "
Currently, vaccines are being mandated in ever-increasing numbers of doses. "Right
now in America," says Fisher, "we require 34 doses of 10 different viral and bacterial
vaccines before children are allowed to go to school. Some of these are live virus
vaccines--the polio, chicken pox, measles, mumps and rubella vaccines. What concerns
us presently is the proposed implementation of vaccination registries that would track
every child in the country to ensure that vaccine schedules are complied with. This
would even include entitlement programs--no shots, no family assistance. A state
legislator in Oregon has proposed a bill to deny tax exemptions for children whose
parents cannot prove their children were vaccinated with all the governmentrecommended vaccines."
There are three major issues at stake. The first is Coulter's premise that overcoming
childhood diseases constitutes important stages in the development of a robust, adult
immune system and that bombarding an infant's immature immune system with live
viruses actually can do more harm than good.
The second issue involves how antibodies are transferred from a mother to her child to
protect an infant during its first months and years of life. If the mother had contracted
and overcome measles during her childhood, she would be able to pass this immunity
on to her baby, both through the placenta and by means of breast-feeding, thereby
protecting the child for 12 to 15 months after birth.
Fisher recalls the measles outbreak of 198990: "A whole group of young mothers who
had been vaccinated against measles, and therefore had only temporary artificial
immunity, were not able to give their babies the protection their unvaccinated mothers
had given them." She observes: "We saw a lot of measles in very young babies where
they did not naturally occur before. Furthermore, these babies were dying of a
particularly nasty kind of measles, which aroused speculation that the virus may have
mutated beyond the scope of our present vaccines."
This leads to the third issue. By artificially suppressing these micro-organisms through
mass vaccinations, Fisher asks, are we causing them to evolve into more virulent
forms? We've seen what happened when antibiotics were indiscriminately used; now
humans are faced with super germs for which there is no known defence. Fisher
wonders, with vaccines, "Are we actually creating a worse problem for future
generations than if we found alternative ways to live in harmony with these viruses?"
The fact remains that none of these questions is being addressed publicly. Says Fisher:
"You have a very narrow-minded view of public and individual health that has been
embraced by the public health police. I am waiting for the scientists who have the guts
to come forward and speak out. They're going to be in the disciplines of immunology,
genetics, microbiology, cell biology and bacteriology. They've got to step forward and
take the power away from the epidemiologists, who like to manipulate numbers, and the
infectious disease specialists, who are absolutely obsessed with the eradication of
micro-organisms through the use of vaccines."
What's Next?
Even more vaccines are coming down the pike. Fisher cites the rotavirus, a new livevirus vaccine to keep babies from getting diarrhea. Also, an AIDS vaccine is on a fast
track. That it will be mandated for everyone, she says, is almost certain. "There will be
no way of knowing what havoc even a portion of that virus is going to cause years after
it is injected into the body. I believe we are in tremendous danger. If we do not rein in
this vaccine autocracy, we could literally compromise the biological integrity of the
human race."
That an immune compromised species might be proceeding into the future is
speculative. Whether Coulter, Fisher and others in the alternative medical community
are right or just well-intentioned alarmists is not known. What is known is that the
questions they have raised have been peremptorily deemed unworthy of governmentfunded research. Arthur M. Silverstein, professor of ophthalmic immunology at The
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, discussed the swine flu vaccination
tragedy of 1976, when the Guillain-Barré syndrome was identified as a direct
consequence of swine flu vaccination. He concludes: "The decision to produce a
vaccine should probably be separated from the decision to immunize," and "a
mechanism should be built into such programs from the start that requires periodic reevaluation of the premises upon which decisions are made." 8 Perhaps a public forum to
objectively evaluate the arguments for and against our national vaccination policy-including its very premise--is finally now in order.
Sidebars:
Opting Not to Get the Shot
Vaccinations: Why Some Parents Think Twice
The Case for Vaccinations
References
1. Chase A. Magic shots: a human and scientific account of the long and continuing
struggle to eradicate infectious diseases by vaccination. New York: William Morrow and
Co.; 1982. p 39.
2. Bieler H. Food is your best medicine. New York: Ballantine Books; 1992. p 40.
3. McNeill W. Plagues and peoples. New York: Anchor Books; 1989.
4. Murphy J. What every parent should know about childhood immunization. Boston:
Earth Healing Products; 1993.
5. Moskowitz R. The case against immunizations. J Am Inst Homeopathy 1983;76:7-25.
6. Coulter H. The assault on the American child: vaccination, sociopathy and criminality.
Berkeley (CA): North Atlantic Books; 1990.
7. Mariner W. Health affairs. 1992 Spring;11(1):255-65.
8. Silverstein A. Pure politics and impure science. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press; 1981. p 142.
Why Some Parents Think Twice
1. UCLA FDA Study. Pediatrics 1981;68(5):650-60.
2. British Department of Health and Social Security. The national childhood
encephalopathy study. 1981.
3. Stratton K, et al. Adverse events associated with childhood vaccines: evidence
bearing on causality. Washington (DC): National Academy Press; 1994.
Opting not to get the Shot
1. Neustaedter R. The immunization decision: a guide for parents. Berkeley (CA): North
Atlantic Books; 1990.
The Case for Vaccination
1. Oski F, et al. editors. Principles and practice of pediatrics. 2nd ed. Philadelphia: J.B.
Lippincott; 1994.
2. Weil A. The debate over immunization. Dr. Andrew Weil's Self Healing [newsletter]
1996 Sep.
3. Robbins A. Modern vaccines--progress toward vaccines we need and do not have.
Lancet 1990 Jun 16;335(8703):1436-8.
4. U.S. Bureau of Census, Statistical Abstracts of the United States. 116th ed.
Washington (DC); 1996.
Franklin Cameron is a free-lance writer based in Denver, Colo. His writing specialties
are history and natural approaches to physical and mental health.