What is at stake? Currently, 1 in 88 children in America are diagnosed with autism. 1 in 52 boys are diagnosed with autism. In addition to autism there is ADD, learning disorders, neurological problems, allergic disorders, asthema, and autoimmune diseases. These have all increased substantially in the U.S. in the past 30 years.
The most important point is:
"Perhaps the single most important factor that creates uncertainty in the minds of concerned parents is that the right type of research has not yet been done. I'm talking about prospective, randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind, large-scale research on vaccination and autism as a whole (not just on the MMR and mercury)..." (page 226)
What needs to be done is testing the entire vaccine schedule as a whole. Currently, the pharmaceutical companies only test their vaccine in addition to the current schedule and determine if that one additional vaccine causes side effects such as autism. But nobody has tested whether the schedule as a whole leads to higher instances of autism. Dr. Sears states that the IACC, Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee, the federal government's autism policy-making board, has requested this study be done, but the CDC has not started it.
Without this study, we don't know if the current schedule leads to a higher risk to autism and other neurological disorders. Just because we test individual vaccines, doesn't mean that the entire schedule as a whole is safe. It can be that the entire schedule is what is disrupting the nervous system and brain and causing autism. That means without this study, we are taking a risk when we give our children vaccines and we don't know how much the risk is. The risk could be severe, or the risk could be mild. But without this study, we cannot say the current schedule is no more likely to cause autism as the lack of vaccines. A study as described above would prove that the current schedule is no more likely to cause disorders and it amazes me that we give vaccines without having completed this research.
Many vaccines contain aluminum. Aluminum is toxic according to the FDA which recommends that intravenous treatments contain no more than 25 micrograms of aluminum per liter (which a typical adult would receive in 1 day). A study was done with 100 premature babies who were given IV with aluminum and 100 premature babies had almost all of the aluminum filtered out. Dr. Sears says that the results showed, "infants who were given IV solutions with aluminum showed impaired neurological and mental development at 18 months, compared with babies who were given much lower amounts of aluminum. Those who got aluminum received an average of about 500 micrograms spread out over an average of 10 days, or about 50 micrograms per day. The babies who got the solution with aluminum filtered out received about 10 micrograms daily." (page237)
So 50 micrograms per day over 10 days is bad. Current vaccines have between 125 micrograms to 850 micrograms. If the government recommend schedule is followed, a baby can receive 1225 micrograms on his second month visit. Dr Sears continues, "My third instinct is to look for these studies (to determine the ability of healthy infants to excrete aluminum rapidly), and so far I have not been able to find any... I can't find any studies in the FDA documents or anywhere else that examine the internal toxicity of aluminum in vaccines when tested on human infants. There isn't a single human infant research study that proves the amount of aluminum in vaccines is safe." (pages 239-240)
This is just astounding to me. We never tested the entire vaccine schedule and we never tested what the threshold amount of aluminum is that can be safely injected into a baby. This further supports my view that there are unknown risks to the current vaccine schedule. I personally would like to mitigate this risk by spreading out the vaccines and preventing too much aluminum from being injected into my baby at one time.
This doesn't come from Dr. Sears book, but when I think about the pharmaceutical companies, I believe that they have an incentive to insert bias in their research. They don't want to do a full test on the vaccine schedule because if it is shown that vaccines do cause autism, then they would lose huge revenues due to a fall in demand for their product. However they would not be subject to lawsuits because the Supreme Court recently ruled that pharmaceutical companies cannot be held liable for vaccines. Instead the taxpayers are liable.
The government also has incentives for making sure the above study does not happen. If it is found that the current schedule is harmful, then the government could be subject to lawsuits. People would also lose faith in elected officials, government medical experts, and the government in general. The government is responsible for preventing epidemics and vaccines are the most effective way of doing this. If there is an epidemic, people blame the government. But if there is autism, the government is not blamed. Therefore, the government has an incentive to be biased towards vaccines, so long as the long term harm they cause is not contagious.
Dr. Sears write, "The 2003 Verstraeten study in Pediatrics is another favorite of the "mercury is safe" crowd. Although at first it was considered reliable, it was later discovered (in unpublished CDC research made public by the Freedom of Information Act) that the study initially showed that vaccine mercury actually increased the risk of autism sevenfold. But instead of publishing that result, researchers expanded the study to include tens of thousands of additional children who were part of a bankrupt HMO that failed to keep adequate medical records, essentially diluting the study with enough nonautistic children to give to result that the mercury did not cause autism."(pages 215-216)
This quote proves to me that it is possible for bias researchers to manipulate their results to prove what they want to prove. Medical research is not objective. This means that we need to take circumstantial evidence seriously.
Against Dr. Sears, there is: http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/123/1/e164.full. They have no counter to what I consider Dr. Sears' main argument which is that we never tested the full schedule against a non-vaccinated group and see if the full schedule group has more disorders. About aluminum, they state the babies drink much more aluminum from both breast milk as well as formula. Dr. Sears replies that most aluminum taken into the digestive system is passed through without entering the bloodstream, unlike IVs and injected vaccines. Also the Eickhoff study they reference against Dr. Sears actually concludes that more study should be done on aluminum.
My son is nearly 2 months old. We have chosen a vaccine schedule for him that is very similar to the government schedule, but does have some minor changes to minimize the possible dangerous affects of aluminum. The first change is to avoid the Hepatitis B vaccine which is given at birth and at 1 month. There is no risk of Hepatitis B for an infant and this vaccine does have aluminum. We will delay this until he is 2 and 1/2 years old. The second change to to delay polio until he is 1 year old. There hasn't been a case of polio originated from the U.S. for 25 years, so there is little risk of contracting this disease. The third change was to split the HIB, Pc, DTaP, and Rotavirus. Instead of getting all 4 at 2, 4 and 6 months, we are getting Rota and Pc at 2 months, and then HIB and DTaP at 3, and then back to Rota and Pc at 4, etc. until 7 months. DTaP and Pc both have aluminum, so we split these. The fourth change is to delay the MMR, which is typically given at 1 year old. We will wait until close to 2 years old, or until we want to enter him into day care (MMR is required for daycare).
Also, we want to make sure that we take the versions of vaccines with less aluminum. For DTaP, the lower aluminum version is the Daptacel brand (Sanofi Pasteur). For HIB, there are 2 versions with no aluminum: ActHIB and Hiberix.
Full Schedule Used by Myself
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Start
taking flu vaccine after the child is older than2 years old. Take the nasal form of the vaccine. The flu vaccine should be taken in the fall.
2 Months: Rotavirus, PC
3 Months: DTap, HIB
4 Months: Rotavirus, PC
5 Months: DTap, HIB
6 Months: Rotavirus, PC
7 Months: DTap, HIB
12 Months: Polio
14 Months: Polio
16 Months: PC, HIB
19 Months: DTap, Polio
2 Years: Chickenpox, Flu
2 Years, 6 Months: Hep B
2 Years, 7 Months: Hep B
3 Years: Hep B, Flu
3 Years, 6 Months: MMR
4 Years: Hep A, Flu
4 Years, 4 Months: DTaP
4 Years, 8 Months: Polio
5 Years: MMR, Flu
5 Years, 6 Months: Hep A
6 Years: Chickenpox, Flu
7 Years: Flu
8 Years: Flu
9 through 18 Years: Flu each year
12 Years: Tdap
13 to 14 Years: HPV (3 doses)
16 Years: Meningococcal
Important
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Use
aluminum-free brand of HIB.
Aluminum-free brands are ActHIB and Hiberix. Avoid the PedVaxHIB brand.
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Use
Daptacel brand (Sanofi Pasteur) for DTaP.
Do not use the Infanrix brand (GlaxoSmithKline).
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