Vaccine Scene 1999: Overview And Update
By Harold Buttram, MD
Taken from "Healthy News You Can Use" #112 - www.mercola.com
As an introductory comment, virtually all of the world's religions, in their origins, have
taught the importance of maintaining cleanliness and purity of the human body. Although it
is an accepted practice to maintain a separation between matters of science and religion,
in issues surrounding childhood immunizations there is sufficient overlap to justify
mention of the religious aspect.
The most basic long-term concern with current childhood vaccines, one as yet largely
theoretical, is that the introduction of foreign genetic material, especially in the forms
of live-virus vaccines, into the system of the child may bring about genetic changes.
These in turn may bring about disease-creating situations due to the presence of alien,
incompatible genetic elements in the child. Research in this area being in its infancy, we
have a long way to go before such a theory can be proven scientifically, but the concept
does have roots in folklore from the earliest dawn of human history as well as in
religious faiths.
It is true that there may be situations where extreme measures may be justified to
preserve life and health as the lesser of two evils. The basic question, therefore, is
whether the benefits of current childhood vaccines outweigh the harm, or whether the
reverse is true.
As to the benefits of vaccines, polio has been eliminated from the Western Hemisphere;
smallpox may have been eliminated worldwide, although there are disturbing reports that it
still to be found in parts of the Far East.
However, vaccine proponents would have us believe that vaccines have been largely
responsible for controlling virtually all of the former epidemics of killer diseases in
the U.S.A. With the exceptions cited above, the facts do not bear this out. According to
the records of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, from 1911 to 1935 the 4 leading
causes of death from infectious diseases in the USA were diptheria, scarlet fever,
whooping cough (pertussis) and measles. However, by 1945 the combined death rates from
these causes had declined by 95%, BEFORE THE IMPLEMENTATION OF MASS IMMUNIZATION PROGRAMS.
(1) By far the greatest factors in this decline were sanitation through public health
measures, improved nutrition, and better housing with less crowded conditions.
It should be pointed out that today's children receive up to 35 vaccines before school
age, whereas today's senior citizens received only one, the smallpox vaccine. Most infants
have been receiving up to 15 doses of mercury-containing vaccines by the time they are 6
months old. It is almost inconceivable that these heavy burdens of foreign immunologic
materials, introduced into the immature systems of children, could fail to bring about
disruptions and adverse reactions in these in these systems. It is reasonable to ask
ourselves, therefore, what is known about these reactions.
A small but growing minority of physicians and scientists are becoming aware that safety
testings for the various vaccines have been woefully inadequate. As one of many examples,
in 1994, a special committee of the National Academy of Sciences published a comprehensive
review of the vaccine safety of the hepatitis B vaccine. When the committee investigated 5
possible and plausible adverse effects, they were unable to come to any conclusion for 4
of them because, to their dismay, they found that relevant safety research had not been
done.
The clear implication of this and other revelations (2) concerning a general deficiency of
safety testing in the vaccine field is that
adverse reactions may be taking place on a large scale without being recognized as to
their true nature.
There is a school of thought that the so-called minor childhood illnesses of former times,
including measles, mumps, rubella and chicken pox, which entered the body through the
mucous membranes, served a necessary and positive purpose in challenging and strengthening
the immune systems of these membranes. (3) In contrast, the respective vaccines of these
diseases are injected by needle directly into the system of the child, thereby bypassing
the mucosal immune system. As a result, mucosal immunity remains relatively weak and
stunted in many children, one complication of which may be the rapid increase in asthma
now seen, both in frequency and severity.
It is true that in former times there were occasional serious complications from these
childhood diseases, but most of these could be eliminated by nutrition, homeopathy, and
other simple means, if these approaches were made widely available. No one wants to see
serious complications from diseases in our children, but the vaccine route may in time
prove to be the worst possible choice that could have been made, as concerns these minor
childhood diseases.
Perhaps the greatest concern with vaccines today rests with the possible casual relation
with the growing epidemic of childhood autism, developmental delay, and
attention-deficit-hyperactivity disorder, (ADHD). Regarding the latter, a recent report
stated that ADHD had increased from 900,000 in 1991 to nearly 5 million today.
Regarding autism, a recent statistical survey mandated by the California state legislature
found an increase of 273% in California in the past 10 years. Reports from education
departments in a number of states, reporting on the rapidly increasing needs of classrooms
for developmentally delayed children, reflect comparable increases throughout the nation.
(4)
At present, primary suspicion for this epidemic of neurobehavioral disorders rests with
the MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) vaccine. Although scientific evidence has not yet
reached the standards of proof, one pioneer researcher in this area, Dr. Vijendra Singh
with the University of Michigan, has published a report of a study in which he found that
a large majority of autistic children tested had antibodies to brain tissue, in the form
of antibodies to myelin basic protein. He also found a strong correlation between
myelin basic protein antibodies and antibodies to measles, mumps, and rubella (almost all
of the children had been immunized with MMR, and none had had these diseases). (5) This
study confirms the results of a similar study published in The Lancet in 1998 by Dr.
Andrew Wakefield of the Royal Free hospital in London, showing a link between MMR
vaccination and Crohn's disease of the bowel and autism. (6)
If the MMR vaccine were causing an autoimmune reaction involving the brains of autistic
children, what would be the mechanism? Although research in this area is in its infancy,
as previously mentioned, we do know some things. Both the measles and mumps
fractions of the MMR vaccine are cultured in chick embryo tissue. As purely genetic
material, viruses are highly susceptible to the process of "jumping genes," in
which they may incorporate genetic material from the tissues in which they are cultured
(7-8). Once this genetic material of chick origin is introduced into the child, it
may set in motion an immunologic battleground, a process that the work of Dr. Singh would
tend to confirm.
A similar process may have taken place with the oral (Sabin) polio vaccine, which is
cultured in monkey kidneys. Years ago Dr. John Martin, then serving as the director
of the viral oncology branch within the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, reported to his
supervisors that he found foreign DNA in contemporary polio vaccines. He later
learned that a simian (Monkey) cytomegalic virus had been found in all of the eleven
African green monkeys imported for production of the polio vaccine. (9) After leaving the
FDA he took a position as professor of pathology with the University of Southern
California. There he tested blood samples from patients with chronic fatigue
syndrome, autism, and other nervous disorders. This work led to his discovery of unique
cell-destroying viruses that were not recognized by the immune system. Termed
"stealth viruses," the viruses were able to cause persistent infections because
they were missing genes which, if evoked, would express immunity. (10-11)
In March 1995 Dr. Martin communicated to FDA officials that some stealth viruses clearly
originated from African green monkey simian cytomegalic viruses, a type of herpes virus
that may also infect humans. Dr. Martin asked the FDA to help him investigate the
prevalence of this infection in the general population and in polio vaccine lots. His
request was denied. (9)
Long overdue, on June 17, 1999 U.S. government officials voted to withdraw their
recommendation for the use of the live polio vaccine and to recommend
"exclusive" use of the inactivated (Salk) polio vaccine. (Parenthetically, the
Salk vaccine is free of the danger of herpes virus contamination.)
In summary, it is possible that either the MMR or the oral polio vaccines, by mechanisms
described above, may induce a process of encephalitis or brain inflammation, which may be
highly prevalent but as yet rarely recognized for its true nature.
As another basic concept, it is highly pertinent that many of today's children are
second-generation vaccinees, that is, they are born to mothers previously vaccinated with
the measles, mumps and rubella vaccines. It is possible that the reaction rates in the
second-generation vaccinees may be happening on a much larger scale due to previous
sensitization of the mothers from their vaccines, this sensitization in turn being
transmitted to the fetus during pregnancy. (12) If this process is taking place, something
we cannot know until appropriate research is done, one shudders to think of the
unfathomable consequences, should the process be continued into yet another, a third
generation.
Time may prove that vaccine programs went awry when they deviated from the most basic of
all medical ethics, the right of a patient to accept or reject a medical therapy, or the
right of parents to accept or reject vaccines for their children. Freedom-of-choice
provides a system of checks and balances now lacking. At the very least, this would
provide the parents with power to compel better safety screening of the vaccines. The
remedy? Parents should be allowed the right of informed consent, or the right to accept or
reject vaccines for their children based on full and uncensored disclosure of pros and
cons.
Today we have a system in which vaccine production by the pharmaceutical companies is
largely self-regulated. Of course these companies are interested in profits from their
products which, in itself, is not wrong. However, when arbitrary decisions in the
mandating of vaccines are made by the government bureaucracies, which are highly partisan
to the pharmaceuticals, with no recourse open to parents, we have all the potential
ingredients for a tragedy of historical proportions.
REFERENCES:
(1) Dublin, L. Health Progress, 1936-1945, New York Metropolitan
Life Insurance Co., 1948, Page 12.
(2) Buttram, H. The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act: A
Critique, The Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients, October, 1998: 66-68.
(3) Incao, Philip Supporting Children's Health, Alternative
Medicine Digest, Issue 19: 54-59. (
(4) From information compiled by F. Edward Yazbak, MD, FAAP,
available from our office on request. Tel# 215 536-1890.
(5) Singh V & Yang V. Serological association of measles virus
and human herpesvirus-6 with brain autoantibodies in autism, Clinical Immunology and
Immunopathology, Vol 88 (1); 1998: 105-108.
(6) Wakefield, AJ et al, Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia,
non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children, The Lancet, Vol
351, February 28, 1998: 637-641.
(7) Kumar S & Miller LK, Effects of serial passage of
Autographa California nuclear polyhedrosis virus in cell culture, Virus Research, Vol 7;
1987: 335-349.
(8) Jahnke U et al, sequence homology between certain viral
proteins related to encephomyelitis and neuritis, Science, Vol 29, July 19, 1985:282-284.
(9) Emerging Viruses, AIDS and EBOLA, Leonard G Horowitz, DMD, MA,
MPH, Tetrahedron Publishing Group, Rockport, Massachusetts, 1997:488-493.
(10) Martin WJ et al. African green monkey origin of the atypical cytopathic
"stealth virus" isolated from a patient with chronic fatigue syndrome. Clin
& Diagn Virology, Vol 4; 1994: 93-103.
(11) Martin WJ et al. Stealth virus epidemic in Mohave Valle, I. Initial
report of virus isolation, Pathobiology, 65 (1); 1997: 351-356.
(12) Gupta S et al. Dysregulate immune system in children with autism,
beneficial effects of intravenous globulin on autistic characteristics, J of Autism and
Develop Disorders, 26 (4); 1996: 439-452, (In this article on page 450 it was stated,
"We theorize that the high titers of rubella antibody....presented in mothers of
children with autism would be transplacentally transferred and may persist for a prolonged
period in the child. When such a child gets MMR immunization, rubella antigen may complex
with preexisting antibodies and such complexes might play a role in pathogenesis of
autistic features.")
COMMENT: This is an excellent review by Dr. Buttram. He is a wonderfully kind elderly
medical doctor in Quakertown, PA. One of my good friends, Dr. Bill Kracht is his
associate. If you are from that area of the country, their practice is one of the best
around. They are both highly recommended physicians who provide top-notch care.
215-536-1890