Top 10 Lies Told During the Vaccine-Preventable Diseases Hearing
Originally published February 16, 2015, at www.thinkingmomsrevolution.com
Tuesday, February 10, the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee held a Hearing on Vaccine-Preventable Diseases. The hearing was one long propaganda session devoted to getting those who are questioning vaccines to stop doing so. During the course of the hearing, an alarming number of false or misleading statements were made. It’s distressing that such statements were allowed to stand in the United States Senate. So in an effort to correct a whole lot of “misinformation,” I decided to do a Top 10 Lies Told During the Hearing post. It wasn’t easy choosing my Top 10 as there were so many — and I ended up with 11 — but I think I have a pretty representative sample here. Please copy and send to your legislators. Obviously, they are in great need of real education on the subject.
Bonus Lie
Senator Lamar Alexander: “A troubling number of parents are not vaccinating their children.”
In the very same hearing we were told that “less than 1% of toddlers have received no vaccines at all,” while coverage for many of the older vaccines, including MMR, is above 90%, and has stayed steady in recent years. This came straight from Dr. Anne Schuchat, the Director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases and the “top immunization official in the United States,” according to Senator Elizabeth Warren. Katie Weisman at SafeMinds investigated and found it to be true, laying it all out in a blog post last Thursday. The fact is that childhood vaccination rates are high, as high as they’ve ever been. I submit that it’s not the number of parents who are not vaccinating that is “troubling” to Senator Alexander, but who is not vaccinating — namely the most educated and wealthy parents — and the fact that they insist on telling others exactly why they are not vaccinating.
Lie #10
Senator Lamar Alexander: “Infants and individuals who are immunocompromised are traditionally protected by what is called herd immunity: when more than nine out of 10 people are vaccinated.”
“Traditionally,” infants were protected by antibodies transferred from their mother in breastmilk. Only a small percentage of measles cases occurred in infants. “Herd immunity” was a theory first put forward to by A. W. Hedrich to explain why there were far fewer cases of measles when more than 68% of the child population had already had measles. It was an epidemiological construct used to predict the number of cases that could be expected based on the number that had already occurred. Hedrich was observing and talking about a population that had obtained their immunity through exposure to the actual disease. As we are finding, that sort of immunity is rather different from the immunity conferred by vaccination. The first does not “expire” or “wane.” The second does. Originally when putting forward the idea of herd immunity with respect to a vaccinated population, it was assumed that disease transmission would work the same way in a vaccinated population as it would in a naturally immune population. Scientists believed that getting more than a certain percentage of the population vaccinated would stop outbreaks and epidemics from happening. The expected resistance to outbreaks did not materialize.
It turned out that many people required more than one shot to exhibit immunity to measles. It also turned out that the protection afforded by the shot could wear off. So a second dose and a third booster dose were added to the schedule. Still outbreaks occurred, and scientists assumed that vaccinating a greater percentage of the child population would solve the problem. They raised that percentage several times, and it was decided that more than 90% of the population would need to be vaccinated. Only we hit 90% of all kindergarteners long ago, and we have maintained those high levels till today. The overall vaccination rate has not changed, and yet we are getting more outbreaks. And now some believe vaccination has to be nearly universal to achieve “herd immunity.”
The problem is that vaccine-induced “immunity” does not behave the way natural immunity does. For instance, something that you don’t hear about enough is the fact that the majority of the measles cases in the current outbreak were in adults over 20. Presumably those are the people who “didn’t know” their immunization status when asked, because they couldn’t remember whether or not they had gotten boosters in high school or going off to college. But ask yourself, what is the likelihood that most of those adults were not vaccinated as children, or even later? Pretty low, I should think, given that no one was talking about an “anti-vaccine movement” 20 years ago. And those adults were getting the measles at a higher rate than the (unvaccinated?) children were. Despite more than 90% of the kindergarten population getting vaccinated every year for nearly 20 years, the immune status of the adult population is largely unknown. A 1984 study predicted the current situation, where a greater percentage of the adult population is not immune, despite high vaccine coverage rates, and they didn’t even take waning immunity into account.
This means that Dr. Mark Sawyer’s statement: “This measles outbreak, like all other measles outbreaks, are occurring because we have too many intentionally unimmunized children in the United States, and it illustrates the problem created by immunized populations” is invalid. Firstly, as I’m sure Dr. Sawyer is aware, measles outbreaks have occurred in fully vaccinated populations and most measles outbreaks in recent years have been due to travelers from countries experiencing true epidemics, such as the Philippines. In addition, and as the above study indicates, outbreaks will continue to occur, even if we vaccinate all toddlers in the United States, with the majority of cases occurring in infants (who are no longer protected by their mother’s antibodies) and previously vaccinated adults.
Lie #9
Senator Lamar Alexander: “Too many parents are turning away from sound science. Sound science is this: vaccines save lives. They save the lives of people who are vaccinated. They protect the lives of the vulnerable around them like infants and those who are ill. Vaccines save lives.”
I take issue with the idea that people who question the wisdom of the current vaccine schedule are “turning away from sound science.” People are questioning the science produced by vaccine manufacturers and the CDC (and its associates), yes, but they’re finding it is anything but “sound.” A couple of very simple examples out of the many that abound include two studies published in 2004. The first was Thomas Verstraeten’s study “Safety of Thimerosal-Containing Vaccines: A Two-Phased Study of Computerized Health Maintenance Organization Databases” on Thimerosal and autism, which was published with a nonsensical analysis that arrived at a conclusion that “no consistent significant associations were found.” In other words, it “proved” diddly squat. Freedom of Information Act requests revealed that the study had gone through four previous analyses that made much more sense than the final one, all of which revealed a strong connection between autism (and other conditions) and early high exposure to Thimerosal.
The second study, “Age at First Measles-Mumps-Rubella Vaccination in Children with Autism and School-Matched Control Subjects: A Population-Based Study in Metropolitan Atlanta,” is frequently pointed to as “proof” that “vaccines don’t cause autism.” Aside from the fact that it’s nothing of the kind, a little over a year ago a whistleblower from the CDC itself pointed out similar analysis problems with that study. William Thompson, PhD, one of the authors of the study in question, says the CDC found a strong correlation between “on time” vaccination with MMR and autism rates in African-American boys, and in the “isolated autism” population – i.e. autism that was not coincident with some other condition such as Fragile X or Down syndrome. They managed to hide the first link, dropping 40% of the data by adding the requirement of a valid Georgia birth certificate, and just left out the second piece of information all together. These two studies are more representative of fraud than “sound science.”
In addition, and perhaps more importantly, what Senator Alexander ignores when he says “vaccines save lives” is that, whether or not vaccines save lives, they also kill and maim. Take a look through the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, and you will see that every vaccine has been known to kill. Senator Alexander talks about the wonders of polio vaccines, but he doesn’t mention that an early campaign had to be shut down because a vaccine made by one manufacturer caused polio in many recipients. He also doesn’t mention that most doses dispensed in the 1950s contained a monkey virus, SV-40, that no one knew was there and just happens to cause some forms of cancer, including leukemia.
Every vaccine carries a small risk of death and a not-nearly-as-small risk of permanent damage, and the MMR is no exception. Table injuries include anaphylaxis, encephalopathy and encephalitis. Many cases of encephalopathy and encephalitis have been compensated, and at least 83 but the total is probably more like 530, of those were people with autism. Encephalitis is literally brain inflammation and brain inflammation is a marker for autism. Three billion dollars has so far been awarded by the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, which has a huge backlog of cases. In other words, the “sound science” on vaccines isn’t nearly as one-sided as Senator Alexander would have you believe.
Lie #8
Dr. Anne Schuchat: “We are a victim of our own success . . . . Because of our success, parents may wonder if vaccines are necessary, and they may worry that the risks or temporary discomfort of vaccinating may outweigh the benefits of protecting their families from vaccine preventable diseases.
This one is a whopper – the oft-repeated refrain, “We are a victim of our own success.” As I wrote three years ago in one of my first blogs ever, it’s simply not true. Few parents were questioning vaccines before the 1986 law absolving vaccine manufacturers of all liability for the harm their products do – before the current era with its huge explosion in the recommended vaccine schedule. The fact that people are questioning that schedule in large numbers now is directly due to the reckless way the CDC has continued to tack new vaccines onto an already bloated childhood vaccine schedule in a one-size-fits-all, shoot-em-up style, without even testing what the overall effect is on children. That schedule has resulted in many times the number of vaccine injuries than used to take place, which, naturally, has eroded the confidence the public places in the officials charged with keeping vaccine policy sane and safe. To the extent that the vaccine program is “a victim” at all, it is merely of the greed and ambition of its architects.
Lie #7
Senator Lamar Alexander: “Would it be accurate to say that if your child contracted measles in the United States, the chances of death would be about one in 1,000?”
Dr. Anne Schuchat: “That’s right.”
No, Dr. Schuchat, it’s not right. According to the CDC’s own information, in the years just prior to the licensing of the first measles vaccine, approximately 1 in 1000 reported cases of measles resulted in death (not all of which were children, by the way; the disease is acknowledged to be harder on adults). The CDC includes the note that not all cases were reported. In fact, it was assumed that the vast majority were not, that there were somewhere between 3,000,000 and 4,000,000 cases per year. As Dr. Schuchat said, approximately 450 of those resulted in death in the pre-vaccine era. That corresponds to a death rate of 450 / 3,500,000 or 1 in approximately 8,000 cases. Which means that, based on her own agency’s numbers, the death risk is smaller by nearly a factor of 10 than the one quoted by Dr. Schuchat.
Lies #6 & 6a
Senator Elizabeth Warren: “Is there any scientific evidence that vaccines cause autism?”
Dr. Anne Schuchat: “No.”
Senator Elizabeth Warren: “Are there additives or preservatives in vaccines that can be toxic to kids?”
Dr. Anne Schuchat: “Not in the amounts that they’re in vaccines.”
I lumped these together because they are intimately related. Frankly, we’re all getting tired of the ease with which people lie on this subject. This is a list of 96 studies and papers, most of them peer-reviewed and published in mainstream publications, that support a link between vaccines and the development of autism. (Apparently, the words “any scientific evidence” now mean “upwards of 100 studies.”) And, yes, some of those ingredients are “toxic to kids,” particularly children with depleted glutathione, children who take Tylenol when vaccinating, children who are sick, children on antibiotics, children with a family history of autoimmune illnesses, including asthma, and children who have difficulty detoxing through methylation. In addition to the studies on the above list, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s book Thimerosal: Let the Science Speak covers the neurotoxicity of mercury rather well. And, contrary to another oft-heard lie, pediatric vaccines do still contain Thimerosal. Most multidose flu vaccines, commonly given to pregnant women and children as young as six months, contain a full dose of Thimerosal, and many others contain “trace amounts” (which for a number of reasons may not be so “trace” in a particular dose). The list also contains a number of studies relating to the neurotoxicity of the aluminum salt or gel adjuvants contained in many vaccines. Let’s just rate this one “Pants on Fire” and move on, shall we?Senator Elizabeth Warren
Lie #5
Senator Elizabeth Warren: “Is there any scientific evidence that vaccines contributed to the rise in allergies or autoimmune disorders among kids?”
Dr. Anne Schuchat: “No.”
See the reference list at the bottom of this blog. It’s not exhaustive. It’s just what I found rather quickly. I want to bring particular attention to one study I found recently: “Vaccination and Allergic Disease: A Birth Cohort Study.” The study took place in the U.K., and the authors found that exposure to the DPT was associated with a 14 times higher rate of asthma and a 9.4 times higher rate of eczema than in those who had not received a DPT vaccine. But the highest correlation was in the kids with the fewest doctor visits. Anyone with a smidgen of logic could see that it’s likely this means the unvaccinated children are healthier and, therefore, don’t need to go to the doctor as often. The study authors, however, assumed that this meant that those children had asthma and eczema just as often as the vaccinated children, but their parents weren’t taking them to the doctor to get them diagnosed, this in a country with socialized medicine! I can imagine this could be a possibility where healthcare would represent a difficult economic burden, but this was in the U.K. where that was absolutely not the case. The authors’ conclusion that “Our data suggest that currently recommended routine vaccinations are not a risk factor for asthma or eczema” is utterly nonsensical.
With respect to autoimmunity, see the list detailing the research supporting a vaccine/autism link above. Autoimmune inflammation is a frequent feature of autism. Also see this list of recently compensated vaccine injuries which mentions inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy, transverse myelitis, Guillain-Barre syndrome, and rheumatoid arthritis, all autoimmune diseases and all caused by vaccines. (If you look them up, you will see that a large percentage of all vaccine injuries include the word “inflammatory.” Ask your local autism moms and dads about inflammation sometime.)
Lie #4
Senator Elizabeth Warren: “Is there any scientific evidence that giving kids vaccines further apart is healthier for kids?”
Dr. Anne Schuchat: “It increases the risk.”
Senator Elizabeth Warren: “It adds to the danger.”
Dr. Schuchat’s got me here. There is no “scientific evidence” that giving kids vaccines further apart is healthier for them. There is a whole lot of anecdotal evidence that it is, but, oddly enough, that evidence has never been collated or quantified. What Dr. Schuchat forgot to mention, a lie by omission if you will, is that there is also no “scientific evidence” that it isn’t healthier for kids. That would be because the CDC has never bothered to test the current vaccine schedule for safety at all, or even the combinations of vaccines that are routinely recommended, let alone done a study comparing the health outcomes of the recommended schedule to those resulting from a more spaced-out one or — dare I say it? — no vaccines at all.
Lie #3
Dr. Tim Jacks: “We have weekly visits to an outpatient clinic where she has her procedures, she has bloodwork drawn, and she gets her chemotherapy infusions. At one such clinic visit my children were exposed to measles. . . . My hope is that we can prevent some families from going through the same thing we have gone through these last three weeks. I also hope that we can prevent more families from getting measles altogether. Prevention is simple, vaccinate.”
Much as I commiserate with a parent worried about a sick child, this statement cannot go unchallenged. As discussed in last’s week’s blog by Jean Ghantous, herself the mother of a child battling leukemia, in this country it is far more likely that an immunocompromised patient, such as a child with leukemia, will be infected with measles by a child who was recently vaccinated than by an unvaccinated child. This is why the medical recommendations for immunocompromised individuals include staying away from those who have recently been vaccinated with live-virus vaccines for at least a few weeks, but do not mention staying away from those who have not been vaccinated. That may change if there are orders of magnitude more measles cases, but at present the threat is far larger from the recently vaccinated. And I have yet to see anyone ask that those children stay home from school “to protect the immunocompromised.” In addition, Dr. Jacks’ daughter did not encounter measles at school. She encountered it at an outpatient clinic, where, you know . . . sick people go. It is a shame that she was exposed to measles, but realistically speaking, wouldn’t you think that a doctor would expect every visit to an outpatient clinic to include the danger of exposure to sick, perhaps contagious, people?Senator Patty Murray
Lie #2
Senator Patty Murray: “We are really fortunate today to have a vaccine today that can prevent most forms of cervical cancer, which I am sure you know is the second leading cause of cancer deaths among women in the United States. About 12,000 women get cervical cancer every year. About 4,000 are expected to die from it. We know that those are deaths that can now be prevented.”
This one is positively horrifying. I can only assume that because Senator Murray had cervical cancer herself she really wants to believe this, but it’s a lie that absolutely must not be allowed to stand. I wrote a blog about this one too. The upshot? Sixty years of continuous vaccination (including boosters every 10 years) of 70% of the country’s adolescent girls, coupled with continued regular pap smears (and there’s certainly no guarantee that people who feel themselves “protected” will continue to get them), may save 1,300 of the 240,000 women that cervical cancer would otherwise be expected to kill in those sixty years, assuming the rate of cervical cancer continues as is. That means that sixty years of vaccinating the vast majority of young women — many of whom have already exhibited devastating health effects from HPV vaccination, including autoimmune disease and premature ovarian failure — would only reduce deaths from cervical cancer by 0.5%.
And the #1 Lie From the Hearing:
Dr. Anne Schuchat: “We like to let people know that the vaccines are recommended at the times they’re recommended because of the way they work and because of the disease risk. So our advisory committee on immunization practices reviews the science of the vaccines and diseases and updates the schedule every year based on the best information available.”
Dr. Mark Sawyer: “In every case, for every vaccine, the risk from the disease outweighs any risk from the vaccine.”
I’m just going to blow this one (and its companion) out of the water with one example. Everyone at the CDC knows that infants are not capable of producing the mature IgG antibodies that vaccines are meant to stimulate until they are at least nine months old, and can’t reach full capacity until well past the age of five. They should know as well that the incidence of hepatitis B in children 0-4 years of age in 1990, before the vaccine’s use in children, was less than 2 in 100,000, and the vast majority of those children were in high-risk situations such as born to a mother who was hepatitis B positive. Hepatitis B is a blood-borne and sexually transmitted disease that is easy to test for. This means that if you were hepatitis B negative, there was virtually no possibility that your toddler, let alone your infant, was going to be exposed to hepatitis B — even in the years before the vaccine was used routinely in newborns. Like every other vaccine, this one carries the risk of death, and the birth dose has been associated with a three-fold risk in autism in boys. Why then did – and does – the CDC advisory committee recommend three doses for infants in the first year of life, when the vaccine so obviously carries plenty of risk and zero benefit for at least 99,998 out of every 100,000 babies? And why do they recommend it on the first day of life, when you don’t yet know anything about the status of your child’s immune system?
While I understand the desire on the part of our government officials to “ensure the public health” by banging the drum of vaccination, after all — we all grew up hearing what a wonderful boon they were to humanity — the wholesale evasion of truth can no longer be tolerated. The facts simply do not support a one-size-fits-all vaccination policy, especially one that appears to be on steroids, as ours does. The longer and harder one is pushed, the stronger and more determined will be the resistance. Parents are rightfully concerned for their children’’s health as so many have watched theirs drop like flies before their eyes. Ignoring those concerns — and the vaccine injuries that caused them — won’t make them go away.
Please send this on to everyone you know and your two senators and your congressional representative. (You can do so by registering with the NVIC advocacy portal.) Everyone needs to recognize unthinking propaganda for what it is, and your elected officials need to know that we won’t stand for it any longer.
References
“Japanese researchers have demonstrated a strong association between immediate hypersensitivity reactions to measles, mumps, rubella, varicella, and Japanese encephalitis immunizations and subsequent detection of anti-gelatin immunoglobulin E (IgE) antibodies. They suggested that previous receipt by these patients of diphtheria-tetanus-acellular pertussis vaccines with trace amounts of gelatin was responsible for the sensitization.”
“As determined by 48-hour passive cutaneous anaphylaxis (PCA) tests, the highest titre of anti-Oa IgE was obtained in a three-injection protocol with 0.1 micrograms Oa and 1 microgram pertussis toxin for the priming dose, followed by two further doses of 0.1 microgram Oa alone. In single-dose immunizations, the highest PCA responses were obtained in sera from mice given 20 micrograms Oa and 1 microgram pertussis toxin. These data confirm that murine IgE production to Oa depends on particular combinations of immunization variables.”
“Ige-Mediated Systemic Reactions to Gelatin Included in the Varicella Vaccine,”
“Most anaphylactic reactions and some urticarial reactions to gelatin-containing measles, mumps, and rubella monovalent vaccines are associated with IgE-mediated gelatin allergy. DTaP immunization histories suggest that the gelatin-containing DTaP vaccine may have a causal relationship to the development of this gelatin allergy.”
“These genetic factors may therefore define a genetically-vulnerable sub-population, children with a family history of atopy, who may experience an exaggerated T(H)2 immune response to aluminum-containing vaccines.” “Identification of these individuals may decrease the risk of adverse events associated with the use of aluminum-containing vaccines.”
“Pediatric diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis vaccination has in fact been associated with an increased risk of atopic disorders, although this was not confirmed by others (see references 4, 5, and 17 and references therein). It should be noted, however, that most or all of these studies relate to vaccination with WCV, at least during the first year of life. WCV induces a more Th1-directed response compared to acellular vaccine (2, 30), implying that acellular vaccines may be more prone to play a role in inducing atopic disorders.”
“Acellular pertussis immunization induces IgE antibodies to pertussis toxin, especially after booster vaccination. The higher median pre- and post-booster levels of pertussis toxin specific immunoglobulin E and post-booster levels of IgG to pertactin and diphtheria in children with local side-effects reflect a multifactorial immunological mechanism of such reactions.”
“Modulation of the Infant Immune Responses by the First Pertussis Vaccine Administrations,”
“However, Pa recipients also developed a strong Th2-type cytokine response to the B. pertussis antigens, as noted previously. In addition, they induced Th2-type cytokines to the co-administrated antigen tetanus toxoïd, as well as to the food antigen beta-lactoglobulin. Furthermore, the general cytokine profile of the Pa recipients was strongly Th2-skewed at 6 months, as indicated by the cytokines induced by the mitogen phytohaemagglutinin. These data demonstrate that the cytokine profile of 6-month-old infants is influenced by the type of formulation of the pertussis vaccine they received at 2, 3 and 4 months of life. Large prospective studies would be warranted to evaluate the possible long-term consequences of this early modulation of the cytokine responses in infants.”
“Béla Schick and Serum Sickness,”
“Their research demonstrated that patients who were repeatedly injected with serum suffered not only more intense bouts of sickness with each successive injection, but in some cases, antitoxin injections resulted in dangerous anaphylaxis. What patients were experiencing was in fact an allergic reaction to horse proteins present in the antitoxin serum. (Von Pirquet and Schick coined the word “allergy” in 1906.)”
“Nobel Lecture on Anaphylaxis, December 11, 1913,”
“ . . . the effects of anaphylaxis in mankind are very well known. Two doctors from Vienna, Pirquet and Schick, have studied the matter with the greatest care. They have described serum-sickness (“SerumKrankheit”) in children subjected to injections of diphtheria serum and they saw that it was in most cases an anaphylactic phenomenon. It is only in the rarest cases that the first injection is productive of immediate reaction. When it comes to the second injection, an immediate reaction follows for 90% of the cases, that is to say when the period between the first and second injection is from ten to thirty days.”
“When food proteins are injected in to the blood stream, a type I hypersensitivity reaction against an allergen, encountered for the first time, causes a response in a type of immune cell called a TH2 lymphocyte, which belongs to a subset of T cells that produce a cytokine called interleukin-4 (IL-4). These TH2 cells interact with other lymphocytes called B cells, whose role is the production of antibodies. Coupled with signals provided by IL-4, this interaction stimulates the B cell to begin production of a large amount of a particular type of antibody known as IgE that are specific to the food proteins. Secreted IgE circulates in the blood and binds to an IgE-specific receptor (a kind of Fc receptor called FcεRI) on the surface of other kinds of immune cells called mast cells and basophils, which are both involved in the acute inflammatory response. The IgE-coated cells, at this stage are sensitized to the allergen (food proteins).”
“Vaccination and Allergic Disease: A Birth Cohort Study,”
“Our univariate analysis showed that exposure to DPPT was associated with an increased risk of developing asthma (hazard ratio [HR] = 14.0; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 7.3, 26.9) and eczema (HR = 9.40; 95% CI = 5.92, 14.92) (Tables 2 and 3). However, these relations were dependent on consulting frequency: 83% of children not recorded as vaccinated were in the lowest quartile of consulting frequency for the first 6 months. When the analysis was stratified by consulting frequency, it became clear that there was a strong association between DPPT and asthma in the lowest quartile of consulting frequency, and that this association was reduced considerably in the next higher category of consulting frequency. We were unable to calculate an association in the highest 2 categories, because too few children in these categories were unvaccinated (Table 2). The effects showed a similar pattern for eczema, and here we had enough data to perform a test for interaction.”
“Vaccination and Autoimmunity-‘Vaccinosis’: A Dangerous Liaison?”
“The mechanism (or mechanisms) of autoimmune reactions following immunization has not yet been elucidated. One of the possibilities is molecular mimicry; when a structural similarity exists between some viral antigen (or other component of the vaccine) and a self-antigen. This similarity may be the trigger to the autoimmune reaction. Other possible mechanisms are discussed. Even though the data regarding the relation between vaccination and autoimmune disease is conflicting, it seems that some autoimmune phenomena are clearly related to immunization (e.g. Guillain-Barre syndrome). The issue of the risk of vaccination remains a philosophical one, since to date the advantages of this policy have not been refuted, while the risk for autoimmune disease has not been irrevocably proved. We discuss the pros and cons of this issue (although the temporal relationship (i.e. always 2-3 months following immunization) is impressive).”
“Rheumatoid Arthritis and Swine Influenza Vaccine: A Case Report,”
“Vaccine-triggered autoimmune reactions can involve two different processes: “antigen specific” in which vaccine products share epitope mimicry and “antigen nonspecific” in which the vaccine activates autoreactive T cells that release cytokines. Vaccine led major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class II induction could facilitate the presentation of autoantigens and the activation of autoreactive T cells, initiating a cascade of self-propagating autoimmunity. Vaccines may contain potentially noxious substances and trace contaminants. Besides antigens and contaminants, adjuvants could stimulate immune responses nonspecifically acting through Toll-like receptors to induce interferon-alpha and the effective processing of self-antigens.”
“Reactive Arthritis after Jepatitis B Vaccination.”
“Rheumatic Disorders Developed after Hepatitis B Vaccination,” “Hepatitis B vaccine might be followed by various rheumatic conditions and might trigger the onset of underlying inflammatory or autoimmune rheumatic diseases. However, a causal relationship between hepatitis B vaccination and the observed rheumatic manifestations cannot be easily established. Further epidemiological studies are needed to establish whether hepatitis B vaccination is associated or not with an incidence of rheumatic disorders higher than normal.”
“Could Autoimmunity Be Induced by Vaccination?”
“Autoimmune reactions to vaccinations may rarely be induced in predisposed individuals by molecular mimicry or bystander activation mechanisms. Autoimmune reactions reliably considered vaccine-associated, include Guillain-Barré syndrome after 1976 swine influenza vaccine, immune thrombocytopenic purpura after measles/mumps/rubella vaccine, and myopericarditis after smallpox vaccination, whereas the suspected association between hepatitis B vaccine and multiple sclerosis has not been further confirmed, even though it has been recently reconsidered, and the one between childhood immunization and type 1 diabetes seems by now to be definitively gone down. Larger epidemiological studies are needed to obtain more reliable data in most suggested associations.”
“Arthritis after Hepatitis B Vaccination. Report of Three Cases,”
“These three cases show that arthritis after hepatitis B vaccination probably is more common than reported so far, especially in a genetically predisposed subject (two of our patients expressed HLA-DR4).”
“A New Case of Reactive Arthritis after Hepatitis B Vaccination.”
K.M. Gillespie, et al., “The Rising Incidence of Childhood Type 1 Diabetes and Reduced Contribution of High-Risk HLA Haplotypes,” The Lancet, 364 (Nov. 2004): 1645-7.
M.C. Levin, et al., “Autoimmunity Due to Molecular Mimicry as a Cause of Neurological Disease,” Nature Medicine, 8, 5 (May, 2002): 509-13.
TM Dokheel, “An Epidemic of Childhood Diabetes in the United States?” Diabetes Care, 16, 12 (Dec., 1993): 1606-11.
Libman et al. “Was there an Epidemic of Diabetes in Nonwhite Adolescents in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania?” Diabetes Care. 1998 Aug;21(8):1278-81.
J. Barthelow Classen, “Association Between Type 1 Diabetes and Hib Vaccine, Causal Relation is Likely,” British Medical Journal, 319 (Oct. 1999): 1133.
O. Kaipiainen-Seppanen and A. Savolainen, “Changes in the Incidence of Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis in Finland,” Rheumatology, 40, 8 (Jan. 31, 2001): 928-932.
P. Stastny, et al., “HLA-DR4 and Other Genetic Markers in Rheumatoid Arthritis,” Rheumatology, 27, 2 (1988): 132-138.
H. Orbach, “Vaccines and Autoimmune Diseases of the Adult,” Discovery Medicine, (Feb. 4, 2010).
HLA-DR4 has Been Associated with “Nonresponse to Hepatitis B Vaccine.”
