Capitol Ideas: Shots in the Dark
Bethell, Tom
CAPITOL IDEAS by Tom Bethell Shots in the Dark „ yla Rose Belkin was a lively, alert five-week-old baby when I last held her in my arms,” said her father, Michael Belkin, a financial analyst in...
...Marian Wright Edelman, where are you now that we need you...
...The FDA has also said that as many as 90 percent of such reactions are never reported at all, so we should multiply these totals by ten...
...I can't believe this is happening in this country...
...date...
...A leaked internal CDC memo suggests otherwise...
...The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta says that in 1996 a total of 1o,637 cases of the disease were reported in the U.S., of whom 279 were below age 14...
...Public health is being used to undermine individual responsibility and to legitimize intrusion on family autonomy...
...But all are at risk of adverse reactions to the vaccine...
...At her final feeding she was agitated and feisty—then fell asleep and didn't wake up...
...But he began his own investigation, and he became disturbed by what he found...
...our grandparents got only one—smallpox...
...Articles have appeared in Science, Insight, the Washington Post, Toledo Blade, and Indianapolis Star, and elsewhere...
...What he couldn't get out of his mind was that a few hours before Lyla's death, she had been inoculated with the Hepatitis B vaccine...
...Nonetheless, she began her testimony with this eye-opener: "I am not here today as an official representative of Baylor College of Medicine but as a concerned citizen of Texas and the United States...
...He describes the modern medical attitude as: "Here comes this poor unprotected baby...
...Meanwhile, Modlin should disclose the financial relationship between the relevant drug companies and the ongoing research at Dartmouth Medical School...
...In fact, he added, "I don't care" how many reported cases there are...
...In Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, efforts are underway to rescind the mandate or expand exemptions...
...Although many are now getting the vaccine, hardly anyone in the general population is at risk for the disease...
...Many of the responses resemble multiple sclerosis...
...outcry of the 1950's...
...His problems have been attributed to the Hepatitis B vaccine by over a dozen different specialists of unquestionable medical expertise," she testified before the Texas Public Health Board...
...The bad effects may unfold over weeks...
...Without quite reaching his question, he asked: "How could an executive in a pharmaceutical company that made a billion dollars out of this experiment, and the director of a government agency impose an experiment—they talk about a strategy—this is an experiment...
...By which he means "hypothetical...
...Michael Belkin estimates that, in addition to his own daughter, at least 1,40o people have died throughout the country from an adverse reaction to Hepatitis B immunization...
...The CDC identifies the hepatitis risk groups as: drug addicts, homosexuals and heterosexuals with multiple partners, children of immigrants from certain areas, health-care workers, and infants born to infected mothers...
...Whatever you do," he said, "don't let somebody try to tellyou that Hepatitis B is uncommon because only n,000 cases were reported in this country...
...The forum organizer, Gerhard Bedding, is circulating a petition to rescind the mandate in New Hampshire...
...If all else fails, I think there is going to be a congressional investigation...
...The CDC explains that it has "generally not been feasible" to identify people "engaged in high-risk behaviors!' Instead, the agency recommended "making Hepatitis B vaccine a part of routine vaccination schedules for infants...
...At least loo published reports by physicians have attributed serious adverse effects to the vaccine...
...Jane Orient, executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, and a practicing physician, commented: "It's outrageous to be forcing this upon children, the great majority of whom are not at risk...
...18 May r999 • The American Spectator that Hepatitis B vaccination in urban centers is "inadequate...
...He cited a 1997 study claiming A vaccination craze puts us all at risk...
...Shouldn't legislatures at least wait for the results before they make shots compulsory...
...For weeks, Belkin and his wife agonized over what they might have done differently...
...Those shocking figures show how out of control the vaccination program has become...
...Since 1991, Hepatitis B inoculations have been given routinely to infants in the U.S., and 36 states now require that a series of three shots be given to infants as a condition of attending school...
...The general population is not at risk for Hepatitis B. The profile of those who are is similar to those at risk for AIDS...
...Only a few years ago, Dr...
...In France, a similar mandate was rescinded last October because doctors saw what was happening and sued...
...He added that "doctors, hospitals and scientists who [support this vaccination program] should be held responsible legally...
...His health care has cost the state of Texas around half a million dollars to Tom BETHELL is TAS's Washington correspondent...
...A student in her lab, who was required to take the vaccine, "went partially blind following her first booster injection, a medical condition that was exacerbated by her second booster which resulted in long-term hospitalization...
...This happened last September...
...According to Barbara Fisher of the National Vaccine Information Center in Vienna, Virginia, amendments to the Childhood Immunization Act of 1993 gave states financial incentives to set up tracking registries, and a "performance-based grant program" offered up to Sioo a head depending on the number of shots delivered...
...ABC's "zo/zo" aired a good program in January...
...The CDC hasn't yet done the studies showing whether all these shots are safe...
...Dunbar was honored by the National Institutes of Health for her vaccine work...
...Michael Belkin took along a chart showing that, in New Hampshire alone, the 48 reported adverse reactions to the vaccine in children aged zero to ten in recent years were 16 times greater than the number of cases of disease (three...
...One politician who has stood firm is New Jersey's Christie Todd Whitman...
...R ecently, John F. Modlin, professor of pediatrics and medicine at Dartmouth and chairman of CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, debated the issue at the University of New Hampshire with Burton A. Waisbren, an immunologist from Milwaukee...
...She refused to sign into law a mandate rushed to her desk by gullible legislators...
...The New York Times in particular has acted as an uncritical conveyer-belt from the CDC to the general public...
...04 20 May 1999 • The American Spectator...
...In his response, Burton A. Waisbren said that "the first thing that should be done is we should stop universal Hepatitis B vaccination...
...In fact, I am sure that some of my colleagues would not approve of my appearance...
...Its Hepatitis B vaccine is the first in the country to use recombinant DNA technology...
...One scandalous feature of this vaccine is that the drug companies used safety studies that monitored children only for four or five days after vaccination...
...Martin's Press...
...Our children now get 33 doses of ten different vaccines by kindergarten...
...An Institute of Medicine report refutes CDC's claim...
...CAPITOL IDEAS by Tom Bethell Shots in the Dark „ yla Rose Belkin was a lively, alert five-week-old baby when I last held her in my arms,” said her father, Michael Belkin, a financial analyst in New York City...
...Little did I imagine as she gazed into my eyes that she would die that night...
...State health depaitments have a budgetary interest in mandating shots...
...When he sees today's CDC officers in their military uniforms, he is reminded of nothing so much as his childhood in occupied Holland, during World War II...
...Thus is science put at the disposal of politics...
...A bounty is put on children's heads," Fisher said...
...We need to get at it immediately to give it the benefit of our protection...
...He spoke to Bonnie Dunbar, a molecular biologist at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston...
...Grassroots opposition is growing...
...Not for nothing was "Prevention" added to its title...
...Having studied the FDA's reports of adverse reactions in infants, CDC concluded that there were "no unexpected events...
...Then disaster struck again...
...It's as unscientific to deny causation, without careful investigation, as it is to assert it...
...Five years earlier, her brother had experienced multiple sclerosis-like symptoms following vaccination...
...What's probably more accurate is extrapolated data...
...His latest book, The Noblest Triumph, was recently published by St...
...Now, a longterm study of the effects on nurses (who must get the shots) is underway...
...A meeting at the agency in 1997 discussed "possible association" between the vaccine and MS and recommended a "case control study" with 6o days as a "reasonable time limit to use for the onset of MS post-vaccination...
...It reminds him of the "Kill all the bugs...
...Many such cases involve what is called auto-immunity...
...The truth is that CDC is a political agency which has become accustomed to disseminating public-health scares as a way of protecting and expanding its budget...
...Another CDC claim, that "studies show that these side effects arereported no more frequently among those vaccinated than among persons not receiving vaccine," cited only references dated ten years before the vaccine was available...
...It is believed that the genetically engineered vaccine sometimes confuses the body's immune system into attacking itself...
...The Food and Drug Administration set up a system for reporting adverse reactions to the vaccine, and by October 1998 almost 25,000 vaccine-related adverse events had been reported, many of them life-threatening...
...I am horrified by what I am seeing on this issue," said Baylor's Dr...
...There were four times as many child deaths (11) as there were cases of disease...
...This is especially true in the medical field...
...In other words, the risk of adverse events must be borne by innocent infants, who can be singled out on the maternity wards, because the sex and drug addicts can't be expected to identify themselves...
...The vaccine is safe, they said...
...Most doctors he spoke to scoffed at the idea...
...Five days were enough to get the vaccine approved...
...The autopsy ruled out choking...
...To drum up a Hepatitis B scare, and justify the massive vaccination program, the CDC has arbitrarily multiplied the number of reported cases by 20, using the argument that most go undiagnosed...
...So how come everyone is urged to get the vaccination, including newborns, and why are state health departments playing along, agreeing that children can't go to school if they don't get their shots...
...Most doctors I spoke to said it must have been Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, a catch-all diagnosis for unexplained death...
...derives $900 million per annum from vaccine sales...
...The problem is that most legislators, like most journalists, are cowed by assertions of medical expertise, and by threats that any delay will jeopardize the nation's health...
...Modlin said the critics were "uninformed," and suggested that attributing deaths to the vaccine was like blaming automobile accidents on the Cheerios antecedently consumed...
...In 90 percent of cases, antibodies are naturally produced and after a flu-like illness the patient recovers and is immune for life...
...Dunbar...
...He has now been rated permanently and totally impaired...
...Merck & Co...
...Scientists are increasingly supported by for-profit companies," the Wall Street Journal recently reported, "but a new study shows that critical fact is seldom revealed in published research...
...In response to a question, he allowed that there was such a connection...
...A swollen brain was the only abnormal finding...
...Because, he added, "they don't know if this is going to help the situation...
...Sidney Wolfe of Ralph Nader's Health Research Group, a foe of drug company profiteering, was not familiar with this controversy...
...Especially those that are benefiting handsomely from pharmaceutical company income as consultants and expert witnesses while carrying out vaccine clinical trials...
...She doesn't recommend the shots for those not in risk groups...
Vol. 32 • May 1999 • No. 5
