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By Dr. Tim O'Shea
Part 1 of 2
They finally did it. After
years of lobbying and angling, GlaxoSmithKline finally got their new vaccine
for Hepatitis A tacked onto the mandated schedule as of Jan 2002, with
no public fanfare. (www.aap.org)
The vaccine is called Havrix,
and is delineated on p.1544 of the 2002 Physicians Desk Reference, which
incidentally was printed much earlier last year. Merck also has a hepatitis
A vaccine - Vaqta.
The CDC's mandated schedule
is the brass ring that all vaccine manufacturers are going for - approval
of a vaccine can mean annual revenues of $1 billion or more, which is
about what Merck pulls in for their current Hepatitis B vaccine.
Hepatitis A vaccine appears
in a brand new category on the mandated schedule called the 'high risk'
category. The significance of this new category will soon become apparent.
But before we get into that, let's take a look at Hepatitis A the disease
and assess the necessity for a mandated vaccine.
What Is Hepatitis A?
As every doctor knows, Hepatitis
A is an acute viral disease of the liver. Hepatitis A virus (HAV) has
supposedly been isolated:
"a 27-nm RNA picornavirus
(enterovirus) with only one serotype..."
- American Academy of Pediatrics, Dec 1996
The infectious agent is passed
from human to human either through
- the oral - fecal route,
waterborne, often from raw shellfish or dirty water
- blood and body secretions
Hepatitis A is a mild, self
limiting disease, resolving on its own with no treatment in 4-8 weeks.
Most infections are subclinical, meaning that most people who get the
disease never even know it because they never manifest symptoms. (Merck
Manual, p 377) The journal Pediatrics agrees:
"Most HAV infections
in young children are asymptomatic... Clinical hepatitis occurs in fewer
than 10% of infected children."
This disease is so mild that
90%of kids who get hepatitis A never even know it. Even the National Institutes
of Health states that:
"Most people who have
Hepatitis A get well on their own after a few weeks." - NIH Manual:
What I Need To Know About Hepatitis A
Most cases of hepatitis A are
found in Third World areas, outside the US. The question pops up: then
why are we the only country in the world who recommends the vaccine on
a mass scale?
That billion dollars hanging
in the balance wouldn't be in the equation, now would it?
Diagnosis of hepatitis A is
supposedly by IgM antibody. But more often, diagnosis is by symptoms alone.
Symptoms Of Hepatitis
A
According to Merck Manual,
the chief symptoms of hepatitis A are
- loss of appetite
- NVD
- hives
- joint pain
- dark urine
Hardly life-threatening situations.
Jaundice may also occur, but it usually indicates the beginning of recovery.
By the time these symptoms appear, the disease is no longer infectious.
Unlike hepatitis B, Type A
hepatitis disappears completely after acute infection, and does not contribute
to chronic liver disease or to cirrhosis. It is important to note that
after the patient recovers, he has lifetime immunity. True immunity.
Hepatitis A is a disease of
poor personal hygiene, bad sanitation, poverty, overcrowding - Third World
scenario. Even well-groomed, well-fed junkies are not high risk for Hepatitis
A. They're more apt to get Type B. Medline indicates the lack of sewers
in Third World locales as the biggest contributor to Hepatitis A. Again
from the journal Pediatrics we find that:
"The major method for
prevention of HAV infections is improved sanitation and personal hygiene"
Bottom line here: Hepatitis
A is not common in most of the United States.
Other Causes
It's shocking to discover
that hepatitis can be caused by both hepatitis B and hepatitis C vaccines!
This fact is found in a disclaimer
that GlaxoSmithKlein makes about Havrix, that it can't cure the hepatitis
caused by these other 2 vaccines. So can we infer from this that Havrix
itself also causes hepatitis? We don't need to infer it.
The manufacturer states it
on p 1545 of the 2002 PDR: a possible side effect of Havrix is hepatitis!
Another source of hepatitis
A for children is nososcomial infection. That means infants in hospital
intensive care units pick it up there. We never hear about it because
the new literature is leaving it out. (AAP Policy Statement, 1996)
So Then What's The Vaccine
For?
The question arises - did we
really need another vaccine beyond the 40 already mandated for school
kids, and specifically did we need a vaccine for a rare disease that resolves
by itself in a few weeks?
To answer the first, we must
ask were there any studies done which prove that the new vaccine is safe
when Havrix is added to the other 40 mandated vaccines?
No, there are none.
This concept of the cumulative
viral load is discussed at length in the 2002 edition of The Sanctity
of Human Blood.
Secondly, to substantiate the
necessity for any vaccine, we must look at two criteria:
- incidence of disease
- severity
How Many Cases Really
Are There?
This is tricky - research roulette.
In the 2002 Physicians Desk Reference, the manufacturer of Havrix cites
13-year old studies which supposedly show the incidence of hepatitis A
and state that the case death rate is six-tenths of one per cent. (p 1545)
This is claiming that about
six out of a thousand who get hepatitis A die from hepatitis A. It seems
like a rather high death rate until one realizes that these are not US
figures, but global figures, meaning that they were taken primarily from
Third World countries because that's where the majority of hepatitis A
is found!
So that means that these patients
are trying to recover from a disease of poverty, filth, and malnutrition
in an environment of poverty, filth, and malnutrition. Hardly applies
in the rare instance of a patient in most of America. But these are the
studies and figures that the vaccine manufacturer has used to convince
the FDA that Hepatitis A is such a serious disease in the US that a vaccine
is necessary.
Numbers, numbers, numbers.
Different sources, different stats. From the American Academy of Pediatricians
website we see only half the death rate reported by the PDR:
"Mortality is rare,
especially in children. The case-fatality rate has been estimated as
3 per 1000 clinical cases in the United States.." - http://www.aap.org/policy/01207.html
Looking at the true incidence
of the Hepatitis A in the US is an academic artifice, a daunting challenge
indeed. A standard government reference for epidemiology is Statistical
Abstracts. On p 137 of the most recent edition (2000), we find that the
overall incidence of Hepatitis A has been declining for the past 2 decades:
- 1980 -- - 29.1 cases per
100,000
- 1998 -- - 23.2 cases per
100,000
This decline is good news,
and of course has nothing to do with the vaccine. The vaccine just came
out. But the figures still seem a little high, don't they? On closer inspection,
getting out the magnifying glass and reading the microprint footnote on
that same page, we read:
"Includes cases imported
from outside the United States"
Huh? 'Cases imported from outside
the United States'? We're not talking Pinot Noir here. No one doubts that
the vast majority of hepatitis A cases are foreign. It's a disease of
poverty, filth, and malnutrition.
Unfortunately in a disease
which only manifests symptoms less than 10% of the time, and with the
immense amount of immigration and international travel going on, there
is simply no way to separate foreign from domestic origin.
To further illustrate the low
credibility of government figures for hepatitis A cases, we need only
look at a CDC report which claimed more than 10 times higher incidence:
30,000 cases, which is about 300 cases per 100,000. (Hepatitis Surveillance
Report No. 55)
That's a little different from
23 cases per 100,000. So which study is right?
Who knows? Results depend on
who funded it, who wrote it, and who was responsible for verification.
The truth is no one can really
say with authority how many cases of hepatitis A occur in the US annually.
The Real Number Of Deaths
In an earlier part of that
same reference - Statistical Abstracts, p 90 - we find that the total
number of annual US deaths from all 3 types of viral hepatitis put together
(Types A, B, and C) in 1998 was only 4700.
Remember this 4700 also includes
complications of autoimmune diseases, terminal infectious diseases, and
other serious illnesses, most in communities of poverty and malnutrition,
alcoholics, drug addicts - individuals of this nature. This lowest common
denominator of life supposedly represents the necessity of a vaccine for
all.
Looking at the PDR's global
figures above - a mortality of 6 out of 100,000 - we see the usual attempt
by the vaccine manufacturers to grab the credit for saving us from an
already declining disease.
As we learned from the Michael
Alderson figures cited in The Sanctity of Human Blood (p 45), virtually
every infectious disease of the past century had almost disappeared by
the time vaccines came on the market.
This is the perfect
time to make the same claim for Hepatitis A, before it disappears
completely on its own. Masterful PR in action, a la The Doors
of Perception.
We may be sure that future
studies on US hepatitis A incidence will show vast decreases, for which
the vaccine will doubtless be given credit. Just remember the virtual
impossibility of determining incidence at this time, when the vaccine
is being introduced.
Stats game aside, almost all
sources agree that children are not the group dying from hepatitis A:
"hepatitis with mortality
occurs mostly in people with underlying conditions, such as chronic
liver disease, and in older age groups" - http://www.aap.org/policy/01207.html
The Vaccine Itself
This is fun. Hepatitis A vaccine
is made from infected human connective tissue cells.
Not kidding.
Not from just one guy, but
rather each batch of vaccine is made from an infected mass of cells which
had 1000 donors. (Pediatrics) Imagine that party. They are infected with
hepatitis A virus, the causative vector presumed to be present in every
case of hepatitis A disease.
The agents are filtered, and
attenuated with aluminum, formaldehyde, and phenoxyethanol - a synonym
for ethylene glycol - a component in antifreeze.
Someday we're gonna pay for
this.......
Aluminum And Formaldehyde
Just for the sake of argument,
let's make the colossally irresponsible concession that the attenuated
viral agent in this vaccine is necessary to stave off the "epidemic"
of Hepatitis A about to sweep through our children's bloodstreams.
All right, we'll concede that
unlikely situation. So do the science wizards then want to explain the
additional presence of one of the most potent of all human neurotoxins
and also of a well known carcinogen in this supposed life-saving elixir?
Of course I am now referring
to the aluminum and formaldehyde which GlaxoSmithKline thought so vital
to the composition of Havrix. (PDR, p 1544)
As Drs. Russell Blaylock and
Theo Colburn have well explained, it is not just the connection with Alzheimer's
that makes aluminum such a danger to human physiology. It's that aluminum
can interfere with the formation, development and survival of virtually
any human nerve tissue in an unpredictable fashion, beyond any timetables
yet devised. (Excitotoxins, Our Stolen Future) We simply don't know.
As for formaldehyde, let's
just ask how much danger of cancer is an acceptable risk in the pure,
perfect blood of a newborn? Cancer occurs first in just one cell. So where
are the studies that prove that this "trace" of formalin or
antifreeze will not be sufficient to cause that first cell mutation that
develops into cancer? Where are they?
As long as we're talking about
scientific probability here, let's take the discussion one step further.
This single causative viral agent that has been identified for hepatitis
A is a presumption.
Remember - diagnosis is often
by symptoms and by the presence of IgM in the blood. Viral infections
are not cultured for diagnosis - it's largely theoretical. So then doesn't
the isolation, concentration, and dissemination of an infectious viral
agent seem at least a little presumptuous if not enormously reckless,
especially when we're talking about the unformed immune systems of the
newborn infant population?
That seems like a reasonable
question, doesn't it?
Mass Dissemination Of
An Unproven Agent
Here's the key point -- is
it really necessary to introduce an attenuated infectious vector into
our entire population of children in order to theoretically prevent a
disease which is extremely rare in the vast majority of US communities,
and getting rarer?
And is self-limiting, does
not contribute to chronic liver disease, and confers lifetime immunity
to the ones who get it? What are we doing?
Even the manufacturer does
not claim that the vaccine confers immunity, but only delay of the disease.
Thus the need for boosters.
Get the idea - if the vaccine
worked, we wouldn't need boosters after 6 months or a year. Following
this shaky logic, if the immunity only lasts a year, the child should
get boosters every year for the rest of his life.
Now, the booster shot and the
first vaccination shot are identical. So why does the first shot supposedly
last for a year but the last one is going to be effective for the rest
of the patient's life?? Anybody ever think of that??
The other big issue is that
the Hepatitis A virus is supposedly a specific agent that has been photographed,
sequenced, and catalogued, and occurs the same in every case of the disease.
Classical diagnosis is by symptoms and the presence of the antibody, remember?
IgM.
But acute viral liver infections
can be of a variety of completely different agents and disease scenarios.
To pretend that they can all be cured by the dissemination of one single
type of attenuated viral agent is disingenuous at best and scientifically
ludicrous, even criminal, at worst. Mass inoculation must be absolutely
proven to be necessary, beneficial and free from side effects, or else
it shouldn't even be considered. Havrix meets none of these criteria.
The New High Risk Category
The most disconcerting - make
that horrifying - aspect of the new Mandated Vaccine Schedule that has
just sneaked up on us will prove to be the creation of this new High Risk
category, in my opinion.
As we would expect, this ingenious
addition was tacked onto the program with no fanfare, no general public
attention. Suddenly the most vaccinated children in the history of the
world are still not getting sufficient injections, even at 40 vaccines
now mandated.
So for further protection,
the CDC has now created the new High Risk category that they'll christen
with just 2 vaccines: Hepatitis A and influenza. Now folks, these extra
shots aren't really part of the mandated schedule, but are intended for
the child who needs that extra protection because he is what we doctors
call 'high risk.'
Which according to the American
Pediatrics Association means any child who seems to have a tendency to
get colds, asthma, allergies, the flu, or is generally sick.
What percentage of kids does
that include? Like, all of them?
Step right up. It's such a
slick set-up. The script will go something like, well, little Johnny and
little Suzie just got their regular shots, so they should be fine. By
the way, Mrs. Jones, do these children have a tendency to get allergies,
colds, or the flu?
Oh, they do?
Well, then the newest recommendations,
just to be on the safe side, are that for extra protection for Johnny
and Suzie we should add just two more shots today, while they're here.
And that's the new Hepatitis A shot and the flu shot. Yes, and then they
should be good for a year. Yes, all the other kids are getting the 2 extra
shots. You can't be too careful these days, you know.
Who's going to argue with a
rap like that? Only the most informed.
Please see our next issue
for the continuation of this article.
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