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Diving In, Part 3: New Vaccines and Random Questions

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Part 1 is here
Part 2 is here


I would like to go on record as saying that I don’t think vaccines are a bad thing, in and of themselves. I do think that they have served an important function in our understanding and the prevention of many diseases. However, I don’t think there is such a thing as a panacea, as much as we would like there to be, and over the past few decades, the medical-industrial complex has become so interwoven with the public health system that I’m not certain it is serving the people it claims to serve any longer.


One example of this phenomenon lies with the development of HPV vaccines. I wrote about this in 2013 here, detailing my issues with the vaccine Gardasil. Since that time, more countries have either banned or started investigating this particular vaccine because of the high number of adverse side effects, and yet in the US, our public health officials continue to advocate for its use within an even wider population. It is now recommended that boys have this vaccine and that all children have it starting at a younger age (an age at which NO trials have been done to determine safety or efficacy). If we were truly interested in long-term public health and not making money for pharmaceutical companies, we would proceed cautiously with this vaccine which has been shown to have some correlation with teenage-onset menopause and severe neurological issues.


Another example of the rush to develop vaccines that (I believe) are unnecessary is the chickenpox, or Varicella zoster, vaccine. Ours is one of the few countries that routinely and widely vaccinates our children for this disease that has not been shown to be deadly in the vast majority of cases. This article found at the National Center for Biotechnology Information illustrates the reason why, after much scrutiny of the matter, the United Kingdom does not push chickenpox vaccines on its children as a matter of routine. The conclusion of the physicians there was that there are two main areas of concern regarding this vaccine:

1. “…introduction of a routine childhood vaccination drives up the age at which those who are and remain non‐immune get the illness and chickenpox tends to be more severe the older you are,”


and


2. “…what will happen to the epidemiology of shingles if chickenpox vaccination is introduced in the United Kingdom?”


The answer to these questions from pediatricians I have taken my children to are as follows:


1. If your kids don’t get the disease naturally now, because all the rest of the kids are vaccinated for it, they will more likely get it when they’re older, when it is much worse, so they might as well follow the crowd and get the vaccine. What they neglect to mention is that the efficacy of the vaccine has been shown to be between 3 and 5 years, which means indefinite booster shots for the rest of their lives. And if they don’t – say they forget for a year or two when they first move out (like in college, when they’re exposed to tons of different infectious diseases), they’ll likely get a horrible case of it. They also neglect to mention that, had we not developed this vaccine and given it so widely (as opposed to just kids who are immunocompromised or otherwise indicated to have it), we wouldn’t have the issue of kids not getting it naturally. 


2. There’s a shingles vaccine. Don’t worry. Great, so now, on top of the multiple chickenpox vaccines my kids will be getting for the rest of their lives, they have to get shingles vaccines? 


If you’re a pharmaceutical company, you’ve created a solution to a problem that didn’t really exist. But with the CDC on your side, you are guaranteed to have a captive audience for your vaccines for years to come. And in my state, physicians are given financial incentives (higher ranking with Medicaid and state insurance programs as well as payment) if they have a significant percentage of their patients who vaccinate fully. Thus the pressure I get every time I take my kids to the doctor for a check up.



It seems that, in the UK, they have decided to be more conservative with their recommendation and follow the research instead of the money. Interestingly, it turns out that in households with children who acquire chickenpox naturally, there is a smaller incidence of shingles. What that means is that there is likely a protective factor against shingles for adults living with children who have naturally acquired immunity to chickenpox. 
So, why the development of the chickenpox vaccine? Previous to the development of this vaccine, fewer than 100 people per year (out of 4,000,000 who contracted the disease) had complications that led to death. One hundred people sounds like a lot, but that is 0.0025% (or 0.000025) of the people with the disease. And the rest of those people had not only naturally acquired immunity, but some protection against shingles as adults. The normal lifetime risk of getting shingles is 10-30%, but the UK researchers noted that, with a chickenpox vaccine program, the incidence of shingles rises 30-50% until everyone is vaccinated, which could take decades. 

In my opinion, this particular vaccine has become a boon for pharmaceutical companies despite the fact that it protects very few people from the serious side effects of childhood chickenpox and instead, opens up an entire generation of young adults to risk for adult chickenpox infection and future shingles. If you add in the risk associated with multiple vaccines (some reported side effects of the Varicella vaccine include shock, seizures, encephalitis, thrombocytopenia and Guillian Barre syndrome), you’re looking at a lifetime of risking your health again and again versus the risks associated with acquiring chickenpox naturally and suffering it’s side effects.

Back when vaccines were first developed, they were designed to combat highly infectious, deadly diseases, and they were mostly developed by pure scientists who had little financial stake in the outcome. These days, pharmaceutical companies who are concerned with their stakeholders’ satisfaction commission their own scientists to create vaccines that may or may not be immediately necessary (the “fast tracking” of Gardasil is one egregious example of a corporate push to market that was altogether unnecessary) and gradually increase the population and number of boosters that are given, continually growing their market share. Until we can be assured that the entities who are recommending the vaccine schedule have no conflict of interest and have done truly independent studies on safety, efficacy, and necessity of each and every one of the vaccines on our current US schedule, it is unfortunately up to the consumer to advocate for themselves, their families, and follow the money. 






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Diving In, Part Two (Or, Why the Vaccine Debate Isn’t Cut and Dried)

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In case you missed, it, Part 1 of my writing on vaccines in the US can be found here.



I suppose that, like most other very controversial subjects, it shouldn’t surprise me that the vaccine debate tends to get framed as an all or nothing, black and white, choosing sides issue. Whenever we are driven by fear, human beings tend to lose the ability to think rationally and begin to believe that there is a Right and a Wrong answer, and the question of whether or not to vaccinate can certainly be a fearful one.
I do continue to be mystified, however, by people who should know better – public health officials and medical practitioners, for starters – that position vaccines as an all-or-nothing proposition, and here is why:
Vaccines are not all created equal. Accusing me of being “anti-vaccine” because I am concerned about the safety and/or efficacy of some vaccines or the current US vaccination schedule is akin to saying I am “anti-car” because I wouldn’t consider driving a Volkswagen but I might choose a Toyota.

  • There are a vast array of vaccines available, some of which were created decades ago and some that are fairly recent. 
  • Some vaccines on the market are multivalent (that is, they are designed to inoculate against more than one disease-causing organism) and others are monovalent (for one organism only).
  • Some vaccines were created to work against bacterial disease and others were designed for viruses.
  • Some vaccines contain adjuvants (chemicals that are supposed to increase the body’s immune response to create stronger immunity) such as aluminum and others do not.
  • Some vaccines are designed to be injected once in a person’s lifetime and others require multiple boosters in order to maintain a high level of immunity.
  • Some vaccines contain inert ingredients derived from animal parts, others from human fetal tissue, and things like MSG (monosodium glutamate).
  • Some vaccines have been tested many times over a long period of years on individuals of all ages, genders and races, and others have been “fast-tracked” which means that there was a determination that there was some public health risk that necessitated them getting to market faster, so there hasn’t been the same rigorous level of testing. 
I could go on, but hopefully it is imminently clear that the vaccines Americans are encouraged to give their children (and have themselves) are very different from one another. Much like buying a car, it is important to do research on each individual vaccine in order to determine a risk/benefit ratio and decide what is comfortable for you. For example, when my daughters’ doctor recommended the chickenpox vaccine for them, I researched it as thoroughly as I could and ultimately chose not to have them get those shots because I felt as though the risks outweighed the benefits. Similarly, they have not had the HPV vaccine and I don’t foresee either of them getting it anytime soon. (If you’re curious about why, you can read this post particular to the Gardasil vaccine. Since I wrote it, there has been a great deal more information published by other people who are critical of both Gardasil and Cervarix that shouldn’t be difficult to locate online.)

Please don’t think that I am under the impression that doing research on the safety  and efficacy of individual vaccines is a simple endeavor. I am fully aware that it is not, and I know how lucky I am to have both the time and the educational background to locate, digest, and mostly understand the data. Many, many people are unable to do what I have done, and the system is unfortunately not set up to support any kind of patient education regarding vaccines or any other pharmaceutical, for that matter. Many vaccines are available through drugstores and grocery stores in America, which makes it a challenge to have an in-depth conversation with the provider regarding risks and possible complications. Even if you go to a physician for vaccines, many of them aren’t as well-informed about the individual attributes of each vaccine as they could be, and a great deal of them are unwilling to have a candid conversation about the ingredients of individual vaccines. In a perfect world, the person who is recommending that you inject your child with something would have looked at the studies done on that drug to determine whether or not it is a good idea, but the amount of information is incredibly huge. The doctors I’ve met are content relying on the word of the CDC that vaccines are safe, but because these drugs are created and sold by massive
corporations who may or may not be interested in the greater good of public
health, but who are nevertheless incentivized to create a product that they can
bring to market quickly that will produce enormous profits for their
shareholders. In turn, these corporations use that money to lobby lawmakers who
wield a great deal of power over government agencies responsible for
determining whether these vaccines are safe and effective and when they get to
go to market, as well as recommending where in the vaccine schedule they ought
to be placed. There is a very clear conflict of interest for many physicians
and scientists working on vaccines who are being paid by large pharmaceutical
companies to create new vaccines. And, in many states, regular family physicians are paid by the state to give patients vaccines, so the more children they inoculate, the more they are rewarded. 

Ultimately, this issue is much more nuanced than many of us would like to believe, and because it is so complicated, we often fail to have productive conversations about it. In my heart of hearts, I believe that we are all striving for a country with healthy children, but if we are going to get there, it will, at some point, mean that we sit down together without fear or anger or labels and get everything out on the table with that singular goal in mind. 











 

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Why Gardasil Makes Me Nauseous

When I took the girls for their annual back-to-school physicals in August, it was to a new doctor. The pediatrician they grew up with had a few strikes against him including the fact that he is male and my girls are getting to an age where that feels weird.  He is also a professor at the local medical school which means his hours are limited in the clinic.  I did a little research, as much as is possible online, to find a new doctor who might be more open to my parenting methods (ie. not mocking me for keeping my kids gluten free despite the fact that neither of them has Celiac disease, not prescribing antibiotics for every single thing, not pressing me on the chickenpox or HPV vaccines).

The girls both really liked this new doctor, but at the end of Lola’s visit, she still pulled out the state’s printout of their current vaccinations and pointed out that they are both missing the chickenpox and HPV vaccines.  I told her I wasn’t comfortable giving either of them those vaccines and she implored me to rethink it, telling me that she feels like they are both perfectly safe.  I didn’t have the balls or the time to ask where she formed that opinion.

I have since read more and more about the HPV vaccine (namely, Gardasil) that scares the crap out of me.  In the interest of paraphrasing for those of you who don’t wish to read the clinical studies or spend nearly an hour watching the YouTube video below, let me share what I’ve learned thus far.  And, in the interest of full disclosure, I am NOT a physician or a clinical researcher, but I did graduate college with a major in biology and a minor in chemistry and spent eight years as a medical/surgical assistant in various settings.  I feel pretty confident in my ability to dissect a medical study.  Here goes:

  • The HPV vaccine was created based on the premise that the human papilloma virus is responsible for some cervical cancers.  It is also touted as an effective way to prevent infection by HPV in the first place. However, fully 70% of HPV infections resolve themselves without ANY treatment in the first year. That number climbs to 90% after two years. As a good friend of mine says, there is nothing stronger than a human’s own immune system.  So, of the 10% of HPV infections that persist after two years, less than half of them are present in cancer of the cervix.

  • There are 104 different strains of HPV. Some studies say that four of them are correlated with cervical cancer, others say three. The Gardasil vaccine is designed to guard against two of those strains.  It seems unlikely that the rate of prevention of cervical cancer is high enough in those two instances to warrant vaccinating everyone over the age of 9.

  • Pap smears are responsible for the vast majority of cervical cancer diagnoses in the world and cervical cancer is one of the least fatal cancers around, considering it’s ease of treatment. In addition, HPV is not considered to be the sole cause of cervical cancer and it is unknown whether it works in concert with other factors.

  • The current death rate in the United States from cervical cancer is between 1.5 and 4 per 100,000. A physician who works for Merck (the company that created Gardasil) admitted that the rate of reported side effects from the vaccine is higher than the rate of cervical cancer. Please keep in mind that for a side effect to be considered “adverse” it has to result in significant illness or disability or death, generally after an ER visit. So those kinds of effects are MORE LIKELY to occur than the CANCER ITSELF.
  •  As if that isn’t enough, here’s another shocker: rates of adverse vaccine effects are based on a ratio of the number of reported adverse effects to the number of vaccines distributed from the manufacturer. Wait for it…that means that they are completely disregarding the number of vaccinations that are actually given. There are vast numbers of vaccines that are thrown out every day in this country thanks to expiration dates or power failures or damaged packaging. That means that the ratio of REPORTED adverse effects is actually much higher than reported by the drug companies because they are not counting those vaccines that are discarded. Even higher than that, because according to the American Journal of Public Health (and some common sense thinking), the vast majority of adverse effects are never even reported.

And speaking of ‘adverse effects,’ the YouTube video embedded here *(for some reason, the link doesn’t show up in the post, despite showing up in my HTML version, so here is the URL in case you’re interested) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoWUSuGCo-I  details the lack of interest by Merck or regulating bodies in the effects Gardasil may be having on fertility rates in girls. There have been many reported incidences of girls receiving this vaccine and going into menopause. Yes, you read that correctly, their ovaries stop working.  And because this vaccine is being pushed to girls as young as 9 in the US, we don’t even have information on their menstrual periods because most of them haven’t started yet, and they may never reach menarche because of this vaccine.

I could go on, but I suspect your eyes are glazing over right about now.  There are two reports here and here that cite scientific studies and explain a great deal of what I find frightening about Gardasil. One caveat: I do not necessarily agree with all of the rhetoric accompanying the facts in these two sources.  One is adamantly ‘pro-life’ and goes at it from the viewpoint of the sanctity of life and abstinence teachings and the other one is very adamantly anti-vaccine. That said, both back up their arguments with solid, scientific fact and easily reproducible information.  If you have an extra 48 minutes and feel the need to investigate for yourself, I recommend the video as the doctor who presents it did a great deal of research and is very careful to show her process throughout. I have no reason to believe that she is anything but concerned about the safety of this vaccine. I know I am.

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