The Immune System / The Challenge to Mass Vaccination

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

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Tracking Vaccines to enforce compliance

To encourage high vaccination rates, federal health officials give grants and other financial incentives to state health and education agencies, or withhold them. In 1993, Congress authorized more than $400 million for states that enforced mandatory vaccination by using social security numbers to track children from birth. Simultaneously, a grant program rewards state health departments with up to $100 for each fully vaccinated child.

The government eventually plans to link state vaccine tracking systems together to create a government operated electronic database monitoring everyone’s medical records, including vaccination status, from birth. (One federal proposal would link a national ID "smartcard" to a driver’s license and health care or a job.) Individual legislators at both the state and federal levels, have already proposed tax penalties for citizens who don’t fully vaccinate their children.

A number of private companies and organizations are already working with governments around the world to ensure "the integration and harmonization of immunization registries" through the promotion, standardization, and acceptance of computerized patient records systems that would monitor the health status of every child. The Children’s Vaccine Initiative (CVI) launched in 1990 at the World Summit for Children in New York City, set a goal to develop global strategies for "the development and utilization" of vaccines by all the world’s children. CVI received money from the United Nation’s Children’s Fund, the United Nations Development Program, the World Bank, WHO and the Rockefeller Foundation and major vaccine manufacturers. In 1994, CDC health officials developed the National Vaccine Plan for the U.S. which "provides a framework in which diverse domestic and international, public and private sector activities in immunization and vaccine development can be effectively coordinated."

HIV and Sexually Transmitted Disease Vaccines for Children

In a February 12, 1997 meeting of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, committee member Neal Halsey reminded HIV vaccine researchers that the government plans to target preteens for universal application of an HIV vaccine. Halsey told them "one of the things that’s happened in the past with vaccines is that sometimes the manufacturers have developed them and tested them primarily in an age group or a population which may not be the final target population that this committee has considered….We really see age 11 to 12 as the target for introduction of vaccines for prevention of sexually transmitted diseases….It would be nice if there were studies that were planned in parallel when you move another step in the direction of actually having a candidate [HIV] vaccine, realizing where we think we would want to use universal application of such a [HIV] vaccine."

But there are other plans to target adolescents for vaccines being developed for genital herpes, papillomaviruses that cause genital warts, and cytomegalovirus, all which are sexually transmitted. A spokesperson for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is sponsoring clinical trials of a herpes vaccine, was quoted as saying "Parents will have to take their daughters in to the pediatricians when they’re little girls to get them protected against sexually transmitted disease."

Vaccines for sexually transmitted diseases are not the only vaccines that will target adolescents. In 2003, researchers announced development of anti-smoking and anti-cocaine use vaccines but admitted there might be some resistance by parents to accepting these lifestyle vaccines for their children.

Getting Vaccinated in America to Vaccinate the World

As public health officials increasingly define disease control in global, rather than national, terms, mass vaccination proponents and vaccine makers must find ways to finance delivery of newer and more expensive vaccines to poor countries. They accomplish this by first making the vaccinations mandatory in rich countries, as HIV vaccine developer Stanley Plotkin, M.D., of Pasteur Merieux Connaught, explained in 1996: "The keystone of the [global mass vaccination] system is that the research costs [of drug companies] are recouped in North America and Europe, and the vaccines are sold in the developing world at much, much lower margins…The relatively high rate of childhood vaccination seen lately in most parts of the world is the result of that system."

In 1998, the CDC illustrated how this funding formula works by recommending that all American babies under six months receive three doses of rotavirus vaccine for diarrhea. Although a serious health problem in the Third World, where more than 800,000 babies lacking adequate nutrition or health care die from dehydration caused by severe diarrhea every year, most American babies recover from bouts with rotavirus and are left with permanent immunity. About 20 to 40 babies die of rotavirus infection in the US every year. By the summer of 1999, the rotavirus vaccine was pulled off the US market after it was discovered that babies were being injured and dying from bowel blockages following rotavirus vaccination.

Vaccine production problems and new epidemics

The rotavirus vaccine, which cost $40 a shot, was the first rhesus-human reassortment vaccine, created by co-cultivating rhesus monkey rotavirus strains with human rotavirus strains to create a genetic human-monkey hybrid strain of rotavirus. This production process, while more sophisticated, recalls the use of rhesus monkeys to produce the original Salk polio vaccine.

In the rush to put a polio vaccine on the market in 1955, polio vaccine pioneer Jonas Salk unknowingly used rhesus monkey kidney tissues contaminated with monkey viruses. By 1960, an NIH scientist, Bernice Eddy, discovered that rhesus monkey kidney cells used to make the Salk polio vaccine and experimental oral polio vaccines could cause cancer when injected into lab animals. Later that year the cancer causing virus in the rhesus monkey kidney cells was identified as SV40 or simian virus 40, the 40^th monkey virus to be discovered.

Unfortunately, the American people were not told the truth about this in 1960. The SV40 contaminated stocks of Salk polio vaccine were never withdrawn from the market but continued to be given to American children until early 1963 with full knowledge of federal health agencies.

Between 1955 and early 1963, nearly 100 million American children had been given polio vaccines contaminated with the monkey virus, SV40.. Today, US health officials admit that the Salk polio vaccine was contaminated with SV40 and that SV40 has been proven to cause cancer in animals. At a conference on SV40 and human cancers held by the National Institutes of Health in 1997, there was no disagreement among both government and non-government scientists about these two facts. The only disagreement was whether SV40 was actually being identified in the cancerous tumors of children and adults alive today and, if it was, whether the monkey virus was in fact responsible for their cancer. Non-government scientists working in independent labs around the world said, yes." But the scientists connected with the US government said "no."

Highly credentialed non-government scientists continue to identify SV40 in human brain and lung cancers and are finding that SV40 is also associated with bone cancers and Non-Hodgkins Lymphomas. And in a report published in 2001 on SV40 and cancer, the Institute of Medicine stated that "in light of the biological evidence supporting the theory that SV40 contamination of polio vaccines could contribute to human cancers, the committee recommends continued health attention in the form of policy analysis, communication and targeted biological research."

At a September 10, 2003 investigative hearing of the U.S. House Subcommittee on Human Rights and Wellness chaired by Congressman Dan Burton, testimony was provided by attorney Stanley Kops that the Salk vaccine was not likely the only vaccine contaminated with SV40 and used by millions of American children. Since 1963, the vaccine manufacturer and federal health agencies have assured the world that, while the Salk vaccine was made using the SV40 infected rhesus monkey kidney tissues, the oral polio vaccine used after 1963 was made using African Green monkeys, which are rarely infected with SV40. The vaccine manufacturer and government health officials have insisted that the switch from rhesus monkey to African Green, as well as testing protocols to detect SV40, prevented SV40 from contaminating oral polio vaccine after 1963.

At the hearing, Kops presented internal vaccine company memos and federal agency documents suggesting that (1) the original seed stocks of oral polio vaccine were made using the rhesus monkey and were contaminated with SV40; (2) the major oral polio vaccine manufacturer did not adequately test their master seed stocks which reportedly contained SV40 but used them to produce vaccine released for use by American children from the 1960’s through the 1990’s; and (3) federal regulatory agencies either did not know or knew and did not do anything about evidence that SV40 contaminated oral polio vaccine was released for use by the public from the 1960’s through the 1990’s.

If SV40-contaminated rhesus monkeys were used to produce original OPV seed stocks, and if these seed stocks were used to produce oral polio vaccine that was swallowed by American children through the 1990’s, and if SV40 does cause human brain, lung and bone cancers, then this could explain why children today, who were not born before 1963 and never got the SV40 contaminated Salk vaccines, are now sick and dying from cancerous tumors containing DNA from a monkey virus that was in those vaccines. Pediatric brain cancer, once rare, rose during the past few decades according to the National Cancer Institute. But it is unknown how many of these children had or have SV40 in their brain tumors because nobody checks.

The precedent that has been set by federal health agencies allowing SV40 to contaminate polio vaccine given to millions of children may be influencing how new vaccines are being created. Transcripts of meetings in 1998, 2000 and 2001 of the FDA Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee which dealt with adventitious agent contamination of vaccines, reveals that vaccine manufacturers are asking the FDA for permission to use cells from human and animal cancer tumors — cancer cells — to make HIV and other viral vaccines in the future that would be used on a mass basis. There has been a federal ban on the use of cancer cells to produce vaccines since 1954 but active consideration is being given to lifting that ban despite the acknowledged risks of contamination with adventitious agents, including residual DNA and RNA.

There is frank admission that the limitations of technology and lack of scientific knowledge means there can be no guarantee that vaccine will not be contaminated with substances that could prove harmful to humans one day. Nevertheless, there are plans to set allowable threshholds for adventitious agent contamination of vaccines.

A Brave New World

In 1997, CDC official Walter Orenstein, M.D., testifying before the US Congress, painted a picture of the future in his annual appeal for more vaccine funding. "On the horizon are vaccine technologies that would have been considered science fiction just a decade ago but are now reported at scientific meetings," he said. "Snippets of synthetic DNA have worked as experimental vaccines in animals. Edible plants have been bioengineered to become vaccine factories…Vaccines have been enclosed in microscopic capsules, permitting them to be released slowly over time."

Several years ago, vaccine researchers held a press conference in Washington, D.C. to announce research to create a genetically engineered "supervaccine" that will be given orally at birth. This supervaccine — dubbed by one researcher as the "Holy Grail" — will contain raw DNA from 20 to 30 viruses, parasites, and bacteria that will be inserted directly into the cells of babies. The vaccine will be time-released over several months. Disease organisms scheduled to be included in the supervaccine are pneumonia (three viruses), AIDS (two viruses); dengue hemorrhagic fever (four viruses), diarrheal disease (several viruses and bacteria), measles, meningitis (six viruses and bacteria), polio (three viruses), schistosomiasis (one parasite), tuberculosis, typhoid fever and pertussis.

In all, vaccine manufacturers and US govermment researchers are developing more than 150 different viral and bacterial vaccines. A live virus flu vaccine that will be squirted up the nose has been licensed and will target all healthy children and adults between the ages of 5 and 49 in the coming flu season. Adhesive skin patch vaccines and high technology jet guns will someday deliver vaccines designed to prevent strep throat, asthma, stomach ulcers, tooth decay, cancer and the common cold. If the microbe fighters have their way, the "Brave New World" of the future will truly be infection free.

Or will it? In 1993, scientists at the American Society of Microbiology annual meeting reported that diseases such as tuberculosis and meningitis have become resistant to antibiotics because of their overuse in the past decades. One study shows that pediatricians are prescribing antibiotics for 44 percent of children with common colds. In 1998, evidence of penicillin-resistant strep bacteria caused worry that more people will die from severe pneumonia, bacteremia and meningitis. That same year a government report warned that the overuse of antibiotics in animals, which transfer microbes from livestock to humans through the food chain, is producing resistant bacteria, including antibiotic resistant salmonella, enterococci and E. coli. Health officials warn food producers that antibiotics should never substitute for "inadequate hygiene."

Now there are signs that viruses and bacteria, eager to survive, may be outsmarting vaccines. A 1998 study published in the British Medical Journal found that B. pertussis infection is occurring in vaccinated populations in the Netherlands, Norway and Denmark despite vaccination rates as high as 96 percent. Among other causes of the whooping cough outbreaks, scientists have found an increasing incidence of B. pertussis with a mutated surface protein.

In 1998, a CDC study identified eight distinct genotypes of a wild-type measles virus in populations around the world. In January of 1999, the CDC reported a 1998 measles outbreak in Alaska in which 51 percent of the children had received one or more doses of measles vaccine. Will health officials add yet another dose of measles vaccine, as they did during measles outbreaks in the late 1980’s when they realized that one dose failed to do the job?

While the global village gets smaller and smaller, US health officials warn parents and the media that terrible diseases killing children in the Third World are "just a plane ride away." The climate of fear that has been created post September 11, 2001, saw government health officials attempt to convince the American public that the most reactive vaccine ever used by humans — the live virus smallpox vaccine — should again be used by everyone to prepare for the possibility of a smallpox bioterrorist attack. Ironically, it was the American health care workers, who give vaccines, who took a look at smallpox vaccine risks and said "No thanks" to that plan.

The microbe hunters, who want us all to believe as they do that vaccines are the weapons we must all use to insure the health and well being of mankind, are so far winning the political battle for the hearts and minds of the most influential segments of our society. And yet, the parents and doctors questioning their wisdom and their authority are making their pleas for thoughtful reconsideration of the global mass vaccination plan heard in many forums.

"What we forget is that millions of years of evolution have taken place on this planet, and up until the last 100 years, humans have lived in relative harmony with microbes. Yes, there have been epidemic infectious diseases in history, but they have always resolved themselves," said Richard Moscowitz, M.D. "I don’t think there is any real appreciation for what we may be doing by using so many vaccines to try to eradicate so many organisms."

If we stay the present course, will mankind be free from infectious disease but crippled by chronic disease? Will eradication of feared diseases, such as AIDS, through mass vaccination be one of man’s greatest triumphs or will we live in fear of deadly mutations of microbes that have outsmarted man’s attempt to eradicate them? We may look back at the crossroads we are at today and wish we had decided to make peace with nature instead of trying to dominate it.

Whatever government and industry decide to do, public support for mass vaccination programs will continue to erode if public policy continues to precede science and individual health is dismissed as less important than public health. Doctors, who enforce vaccination without allowing informed consent and insist that some may be sacrificed for the greater good, will continue to lose the faith and trust of the people. Vaccines will come to be associated with feelings of fear and harm instead of feelings of safety and protection as the vaccine safety debate becomes more polarized and citizens calling for forced vaccination are pitted against those calling for freedom of choice.

Perhaps the peace we need to make is not as much with nature, as with ourselves.