The Immune System / The Challenge to Mass Vaccination

submitted by Dr. Gary Farr Last Updated October, 1, 2003

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More Vaccines and More Immune and Brain System Dysfunction

Between 1964 and 2002, the United States added eight new vaccines (a total of 23 doses) to the mandatory vaccination schedule, including five doses of live virus polio; two doses of live MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) vaccine; four doses of Hib (haemophilus influenzae type b, which is a type of meningitis); three doses of hepatitis B vaccine; one dose of live virus varicella zoster (chicken pox) vaccine; four doses of pneumococcal vaccine and more strictly enforced existing laws mandating five doses of DPT (diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus) vaccine.

In addition to more than doubling the number of doses of vaccine children have received during the past four decades, vaccination coverage rates rose in the United States from between 60 percent and 80 percent in 1967 for MMR, polio and DPT vaccines to between 80 percent and 95 percent coverage in 1996 for MMR, polio, DPT, hepatitis B and Hib vaccines. Since 1996, vaccination coverage rates for American children entering kindergarten have continued to hover around 95 percent with the "core" vaccines. Reported coverage rates are lower in states that include the two newest mandated vaccines, hepatitis B and chicken pox, in their reports.

During the same time period that the number of doses of childhood vaccines have more than doubled and vaccination coverage rates have neared 95 percent for five year olds, the number of American children suffering from immune and brain system dysfunction has risen dramatically. There has been a doubling of learning disabilities, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and asthma, a tripling of diabetes and a 300 to 600 percent increase in autism in most states.

These increasingly common brain and immune system disorders plaguing our children are forcing public school systems to build special education classrooms to accommodate the special needs of these children who are "stuck on sick."

After heart disease and cancer, autoimmune disease has become the third leading cause of illness in the United States and in many technologically advanced countries. According to the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (AAAAI), the autoimmune disease, asthma, is now "the most common disorder in children and adolescents, affecting nearly five million children under the age of 18, including an estimated 1.3 million children under the age of five. Fifty to 80 percent of children affected with asthma develop symptoms before they are five years old."

A 1997 study published in Science found that asthma has doubled in Western societies during the previous 20 years and in the United States causes one-third of pediatric emergency room visits. A 1995 report by the CDC stated that between 1982 and 1992, asthma increased 52 percent for persons between 5 and 34 years old and asthma deaths increased 42 percent.

Another autoimmune disorder, arthritis, is also "on a steady rise" according to the CDC in 1998, which estimated that arthritis now plagues more than 40 million Americans and projected that the number will grow to 60 million by 2020. Cases of diabetes, yet another chronic autoimmune disorder, have tripled in the US since 1958, now affecting nearly 16 million Americans and ranking fourth in the leading causes of death in America. The CDC concluded in 1997 that "the number of newly diagnosed cases of diabetes was almost 50 percent higher in 1994 than in 1980" and did not appear to be a result of the aging of the population.

In Europe, a 2000 report by the EURODIAB study group published in The Lancet evaluated the incidence rate of diabetes from 1989 to 1994 in Europe and Israel and found a 63 percent increase in children under 5 years old, a 31 percent increase in children five to nine years old; and a 24 percent increase in children 10 to 14 years old. They said, "The rapid rate of increase in children under 5 years old is of particular concern." There is no explanation for why adult-onset diabetes, once extremely rare in children, has become more prevalent in American children in the past ten years.

In addition to an unexplained increase in autoimmune disorders during the past three decades, there also has been an unexplained increase in the numbers of minimally brain damaged children who are filling classrooms for the learning disabled in schools across America. A disability survey of US children under 17 years old published in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (August 25, 1995) stated that the "6- to 14-year-old age group had the greatest number of disabled people."

Learning disability led the way, occurring in nearly 30 percent of all disabled children. A total of 1,435,000 children were listed as learning disabled with another 1,446,000 children reported as suffering from speech disorders, mental retardation, mental or emotional disorders, epilepsy and autism.

The 1997 Digest of Education Statistics looked at children 0 to 21 years old who served in federally supported programs for the disabled between 1976 and 1996 and found that the numbers of children with specific learning disabilities more than tripled in those years; those with serious emotional disturbances nearly doubled; and the numbers of autistic children served rose from 5,000 in 1991-92 to 39,000 in 1995-1996 to produce a staggering 680 percent increase.

About five percent of U.S. children (at least 2 million children) are estimated to have attention deficit disorder (ADD) or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). A 1990 survey of 2,400 practicing physicians showed there were about two million patient visits with the diagnoses of ADD. By 1994, ADD diagnoses had increased to 4.7 million, with 90 percent being prescribed drug therapy. By 1995, there were 1.5 million children taking Ritalin and a 2000 study reported that the number of two to four year olds taking prescription drugs like Ritalin and Prozac rose 50 percent between 1991 and 1995.

According to one NIH official, 40 percent of children diagnosed with ADHD have learning disabilities and "anywhere from 20 percent to 70 percent of children who have ADHD also have conduct disorder" often involving delinquent behavior. The growing numbers of children with an ADHD diagnosis is cause for concern because, as one researcher observed in an article in JAMA in 1998: "Adults with a history of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder appear to be over represented in the ranks of felons."

This observation coincides with the evidence presented by medical historian Harris Coulter, Ph.D. in his 1990 book Vaccination, Social Violence and Criminality, where he draws parallels between the residual learning disabilities and hyperactive/abnormal behavior caused by complications of disease or vaccine-induced encephalitis and the hyperactive/abnormal behavior and learning disabilities being exhibited by more and more American children.

Many children with learning disabilities, ADHD and developmental delays exhibit signs of autoimmune dysfunction, with severe allergies to foods, drugs, and environmental toxins. This is particularly true for a brain disorder, autism, which is affecting more and more children in the US, Canada and Europe and has caused the most controversy in the vaccine safety debate.

Autism Numbers Soar

The Autism Society of America (ASA) estimates that "more than one-half million people in the US today have autism or some form of pervasive developmental disorder," making autism one of the most common developmental disabilities. Autism is also the fastest growing developmental disability affecting children in the U.S.

A 1998 Maryland Special Education Census Data report revealed that the state experienced a 513 percent increase in autism between 1993 and 1998, while the general population in Maryland increased just seven percent from 1990 to 1998. Between 1992 and 1997, data from the 16th and 20th Annual Reports to Congress on the implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) showed a 300 percent increase in autistic children served under IDEA in 25 states.

In an April 1999 report, the state of California’s Department of Developmental Services (DDS) found a 273 percent increase between 1987 and 1998 in the numbers of new children entering the DDS system with a professional diagnosis of autism. The report concluded that "the number of persons with autism grew markedly faster than the number of persons with other developmental disabilities (cerebral palsy, epilepsy and mental retardation) and "compared to characteristics of 11 years ago, the present population of persons with autism are younger (and) have a greater chance of exhibiting no or milder forms of mental retardation…"

In a report in April 2000, the CDC found the incidence of autism in Brick Township, New Jersey in 1998 was 1 in 150 children. In 2003, the state of California issued another report that revealed that during a 15 year period from 1987 to 2002, the number of new cases of autism increased by 634 percent while the number of other disabilities only increased between 57 and 79 percent. Between the years 1999 and 2002, the number of new autism cases entering the system nearly doubled.

Autism, once rare (1 in 10, 000 births) is now the number one disability entering California’s DDS system and is estimated to be occurring in 1 in 323 children. Because these latest figures only represent those cases which are professionally diagnosed as full spectrum autism and does not include milder forms of autism or those children born before 1997, the autism prevalence numbers for California may be closer to 1 in 150 children.

Although public health officials and doctors in the US, Canada and Europe are claiming that autism in children is not actually increasing but just appears to be increasing because of changes in diagnostic criteria, better diagnosis and better record keeping, parents of autistic children disagree. Rick Rollens, the father of an autistic son and co-founder of the M.I.N.D. Institute at the University of California-Davis, said "Anyone who knows anything about autism knows it can’t be better diagnosis because you can’t hide an autistic child. You can spot an autistic child from across an airport."

Conservative Institute of Medicine Weighs In

Because the brain and immune systems develop at their most rapid rate in the first three years of life, it is a legitimate scientific question to ask whether artificial manipulation of the immature immune system with vaccines can cause permanent damage and death and could be contributing to an increase in immune mediated neurological and autoimmune dysfunction in children.

Underlying the skepticism about the safety of national one-size-fits-all vaccine policies, which do not take into account biodiversity and genetic differences and justify vaccine casualties with the utilitarian "greater good" argument, is a basic challenge to the quality and quantity of the science, which is used to under-pin mass vaccination policies.

When Congress passed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, they included a mandate for the Institute of Medicine (IOM), National Academy of Sciences, to convene independent experts to examine the medical literature and gather other evidence to find out whether vaccines can or cannot cause permanent disability and death. Between 1991 and 2003, the IOM published reports, which have been both praised and denounced by public health officials and parents alike.

But whatever the two sides have to say about the IOM reports, it is clear that one of the most conservative segments of the scientific community has looked at the evidence and concluded that, yes, vaccines can cause a range of autoimmune and brain dysfunction and there is a lot that is still unknown about vaccine side effects. And, like the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, this is the first "official" acknowledgement of that fact in the history of vaccination in the U.S.

In the 1991 and 1994 reports, IOM committees found a causal relationship between certain vaccines and autoimmune disorders such as acute and chronic arthritis, Guillain Barre syndrome (GBS), and thrombocytopenia (failure of blood to clot) as well as brain inflammation and encephalopathy (degenerative disease of the brain). Two live virus vaccines--oral polio (OPV) and measles--were found to cause vaccine strain viral infections that could end in death.

Because either too few scientific studies had been conducted or the quality of the studies which were conducted were not good enough, the IOM could not conclude whether or not vaccines were involved in the development of many other brain and immune system disorders such as residual seizure disorders, aseptic meningitis, learning disabilities, attention deficit disorder, erythema multiforme (lesions of the skin or mucous membranes), or certain demyelinating diseases of the brain such as optic neuritis and transverse myelitis.

The 1991 IOM report concluded "In the course of its review, the committee found many gaps and limitations in knowledge bearing directly and indirectly on the safety of vaccines. Such shortcomings relate, for example, to pathologic mechanisms of specific infectious agents, the molecular basis of vaccine injury, and the natural history of conditions such as encephalopathy, mental retardation and chronic arthritis … many of the population based epidemiologic studies are too small or have inadequate lengths of follow-up to have a reasonable chance of detecting true adverse events, unless these effects are large or occur promptly and consistently after vaccination. If research capacity and accomplishment in this field are not improved, future reviews of vaccine safety will be similarly handicapped."

The 1994 IOM report again noted that "the lack of adequate data regarding many of the adverse events under study was of major concern to the committee. Presentations at public meetings indicated that many parents and physicians share this concern." The report added, "The committee was able to identify little information pertaining to why some individuals react adversely to vaccines when most do not. When it is clear that a vaccine can cause a specific adverse event, research should be encouraged to elucidate the factors that put certain people at risk for that adverse reaction."

In a report in 2002 issued by the IOM Immunization Safety Review Committee on vaccines and autoimmune dysfunction, the committee found that scientific evidence from epidemiological studies on whether allergy, including asthma, can be caused by multiple vaccination was conflicting and concluded the evidence "was inadequate to accept or reject a causal relationship." The committee found there was biological mechanism evidence that vaccines could increase the risk of immune dysfunction in some children that could lead to increased infections and allergy, including asthma. It stated that "the biological mechanism evidence regarding increased risk for infections is strong." The report added:

"The committee was unable to address the concern that repeated exposure of a susceptible child to multiple immunizations over the developmental period may also produce atypical or non-specific immune or nervous system injury that could lead to severe disability or death. There are no epidemiological studies that address this. Thus, the committee recognizes with some discomfort that this report addresses only part of the overall set of concerns of some of those most wary about the safety of childhood immunizations."

Evidence that Diseases and Vaccines Adversely Affect Brain Function

Inflammation of the brain (encephalitis, encephalomyelitis, encephalopathy) has been documented for more than 200 years in the medical literature to be caused by viral and bacterial infections as well as by vaccines containing altered viruses and bacteria. It is well known that smallpox infection and smallpox vaccine can both cause brain inflammation as can rabies and rabies vaccine.

It is widely accepted that pertussis or whooping cough can cause brain inflammation and permanent brain damage, with endotoxin and pertussis toxin in the B. pertussis bacteria responsible for most of it. In 1994, the IOM acknowledged that the whole cell pertussis vaccine in the DPT shot, which contains endotoxin and pertussis toxin, can cause both acute brain inflammation and chronic neurologic dysfunction in previously healthy children within seven days of receipt of DPT vaccine.

Measles virus infection has long been associated with demyelinating disorders and brain damage. In 1998, officials of the federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program found that a causal relationship exists between live measles vaccine and encephalopathy after analyzing cases of children who received measles vaccine alone or in the combination MMR shot and, within 15 days of vaccination, suffered neurologic signs that progressed to death or mental regression, retardation, chronic seizures, motor and sensory deficits and movement disorders.

Evidence that Diseases and Vaccines Cause Immune Dysfunction

In addition to brain inflammation, however, viral and bacterial diseases and viral and bacterial vaccines have been associated with the development of autoimmune dysfunction. 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.

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, chronic inflammation and/or autoantibodies may occur that selectively destroy organs in the body such as the brain.

The pertussis toxin has been shown in animal studies to provoke excess production of insulin by the pancreas and diabetes in mice. And from the earliest days of pertussis vaccine use, it has been associated with development of asthma in previously healthy children .

The primary complications for rubella disease and live rubella vaccine are autoimmune. There is evidence that persistent rubella viral infection in congenital rubella victims can cause diabetes. And chronic arthritis has been confirmed to be caused by both the disease and vaccine.

Since the late 1800s, the development of diabetes after mumps infection has been reported and there have been case reports of diabetes following mumps vaccination and after measles-mumps vaccination and MMR vaccination. In 2003, a study conducted by Barthelow Classen and David Carey Classen, published in the Journal of Pediatric Endocrinology and Metabolism, identified clusters of cases of type 1 diabetes mellitus, occurring in consistent temporal time periods after Hib vaccination, and it concluded that there are also clusters of cases of diabetes occurring 2-4 years after pertussis, MMR and BCG vaccination. The study data were also consistent with the occurrence of clusters following mumps infection.

A gastrointestinal disorder thought to be caused by infectious or immune mechanisms is Crohn’s disease, which has been linked to measles infection and measles vaccine. 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.

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 or rheumatoid arthritis as well as optic neuritis and multiple sclerosis. GBS, chronic fatigue and vascular disorders have also been reported following hepatitis B vaccination. Researchers have also described CNS inflammation within 10 weeks of hepatitis B vaccination 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.