Vaccination Myth #1:

"Vaccines are safe..."

...or are they?

The Federal government VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System) was established by Congress under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Compensation Act of 1986. It receives about 11,000 reports of serious adverse reactions to vaccinations annually, which include as many as one to two hundred deaths, and several times that number of permanent disabilities.

VAERS officials report that 15% of adverse events are "serious" (emergency room trip, hospitalization, life-threatening episode, permanent disability, death). Independent analysis of VAERS reports has revealed that up to 50% of reported adverse events for the Hepatitis B vaccine are "serious." While these figures are alarming, they are only the tip of the iceberg.

The FDA estimates that as few as 1% of serious adverse reactions to vaccines are reported, , and the CDC admits that only about 10% of such events are reported. In fact, Congress has heard testimony that medical students are told not to report suspected adverse events.

The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC, a grassroots organization founded by parents of vaccine-injured and killed children) has conducted its own investigations. It reported: "In New York, only one out of 40 doctor's offices confirmed that they report a death or injury following vaccination."

In other words, 97.5% of vaccine related deaths and disabilities go unreported there. Implications about medical ethics aside (federal law directs doctors to report serious adverse events ), these findings suggest that vaccine deaths and serious injuries actually occurring may be from 10 to 100 times greater than the number reported.

With pertussis (often referred to as "whooping cough"), the number of vaccine-related deaths dwarfs the number of disease deaths, which have been about 10 annually for many years according to the CDC, and only 8 in 1993, one of the last peak-incidence years (pertussis runs in 3-4 year cycles; no none knows why, but vaccination rates have no such cycles).

When you factor in under-reporting, the vaccine may be 100 times more deadly than the disease. Some argue that this is a necessary cost to prevent the return of a disease that would be more deadly than the vaccine.

But when you consider the fact that the vast majority of disease decline this century preceded the widespread use of vaccinations (pertussis mortality declined 79% prior to vaccines), and the fact that rates of disease declines remained virtually unchanged following the introduction of mass immunization, present day vaccine casualties cannot reasonably be explained away as a necessary sacrifice for the benefit of a disease-free society.

Unfortunately, the vaccine-related-deaths story doesn't end here. Studies internationally have shown vaccination to be a cause of SIDS , (SIDS, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, is a "catch-all" diagnosis given when the specific cause of death is unknown; estimates range from 5,000 to 10,000 cases each year in the US).

One study found the peak incidence of SIDS occurred at the ages of 2 and 4 months in the US, precisely when the first two routine immunizations are given, while another found a clear pattern of correlation extending three weeks after immunization.

Another study found that 3,000 children die within 4 days of vaccination each year in the US (amazingly, the authors reported no SIDS/vaccine relationship), while yet another researcher's studies led to the conclusion that at least half of SIDS cases are caused by vaccines.

Initial studies suggesting a causal relationship between SIDS and vaccines were quickly followed by vaccine-manufacturer-sponsored studies concluding that there is no relationship between SIDS and vaccines; one such study claimed that there was a slightly lower incidence of SIDS in vaccines.

However, many of these studies were called into question by yet another study that found "confounding" had erroneously skewed the results of these studies in favor of the vaccine.

At best, there is conflicting evidence.

But shouldn't we err on the side of caution? Shouldn't any credible correlation between vaccines and infant deaths be just cause for meticulous, widespread monitoring of the vaccination status of all SIDS cases?

Health authorities have chosen to err on the side of denial rather than caution.

In the mid 1970's Japan raised their vaccination age from two months to two years; their incidence of SIDS dropped dramatically; they went from an infant mortality ranking of 17 to first in the world (i.e., Japan had the lowest infant death rate when infants were not being immunized).

England's vaccination rate temporarily dropped to about 30% at about the same time following media reports of vaccine-related brain damage. Infant mortality dropped substantially for about 2 years, then rose again in close correlation to rising immunization rates in the late 1970's.

Despite these experiences, the medical community maintains a posture of denial. Coroners don't check the vaccination status of SIDS victims, and unsuspecting families continue to pay the price, unaware of the dangers and denied the right to make an informed choice.

FDA and CDC admissions about the lack of adverse event reporting suggests that the total number of adverse reactions actually occurring each year may actually fall within a range of 100,000 to a million (with "serious" events being approximately 20% of these).

This concern is underscored by a study revealing that 1 in 175 children who completed the full DPT series suffered "severe reactions," and a Dr.'s report for attorneys stating that one in 300 DPT immunizations resulted in seizures.

England actually saw a drop in pertussis deaths when vaccination rates dropped to 30% in the mid 70's.

Swedish epidemiologist B. Trollfors' study of pertussis vaccine efficacy and toxicity around the world found that "pertussis-associated mortality is currently very low in industrialized countries and no difference can be discerned when countries with high, low, and zero immunization rates were compared."

He also found that England, Wales, and West Germany had more pertussis fatalities in 1970 when the immunization rate was high than during the last half of 1980, when rates had fallen.

Vaccinations cost us more than just the lives and health of our children. The US Federal Government's National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP) has paid out over $1.2 billion since 1988 to the families of children injured and killed by vaccines, with money that comes from a tax on vaccines that vaccine recipients pay.

Meanwhile, pharmaceutical companies have a captive market; vaccines are legally mandated in all 50 US states (though legally avoidable in most; see Myth #9), yet these same companies are "immune" from accountability for the consequences of their products. Furthermore, they have been allowed to use "gag orders" as a leverage tool in vaccine damage legal settlements to prevent disclosure of information to the public about vaccination dangers.

Such arrangements are clearly unethical; they force an uninformed American public to pay for vaccine manufacturer's liabilities, while ensuring that this same public will remain ignorant of the dangers of their products. This arrangement also diminishes any incentive that manufacturers might have to produce safer vaccines (after all, when the vaccine causes a death or injury, they don't have to pay for it; they still get their profit).

It is important to note that insurance companies, who do the best liability studies, refuse to cover vaccine reactions. Profits appear to dictate both the pharmaceutical and insurance companies' positions.

Vaccination Truth #1:

"Vaccination causes significant death and disability at an astounding personal and financial cost to uninformed families."