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How did such vaccines pass their safety trials to begin with? Exactly how dangerous are they? Is the use of such vaccines justified? Are these dangerous vaccines necessary in the first place?
Many doctors and governments think so. They cite World Health Organisation statistics, which show that pneumonia afflicts 155 million children (below 5 years old) in the world each year, killing 1.8 million of them.
Surely, such a major problem needs to be tackled?
Yes! But do dangerous vaccines like Prevnar offer a viable solution?
Who needs protection?
Let's look closer at the WHO figures... A more detailed analysis shows that 98 percent of childhood pneumonia deaths occur in poor nations, particularly in Africa and South Asia. In developed nations, the number of childhool pneumonia deaths is very low.In Singapore, for example, there were only five cases of pneumonia deaths affecting children under five years old between 2000 and 2008. That's fewer than one death a year. Yet the Singapore government recently made the Prevnar PCV7 vaccine part of the National Childhood Immunisation Programme.
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Alternatives to vaccines
Are there cheaper, safer alternatives to dangerous vaccines like Prevnar? Definitely. According to both the WHO and UNICEF, the United Nations Children Education Fund, the best ways to prevent pneumonia in children include:
Zinc supplementation is both cheaper and safer then administering dangerous vaccines like PCV. Studies have found that zinc supplements effectively prevent pneumonia in children as well as seniors. In addition, those already suffering from pneumonia will recover faster if given zinc as a nutritional supplement. |
However, these children who need protection cannot be given the vaccine, which is only given to normal healthy children who don't really need it. And a few of them die from it. This was what happened in the Netherlands recently, when three normal, healthy babies died within a two week period, shortly after receiving the Prevnar vaccine.
What about the children in poor nations? Well, they face another problem. For the PCV vaccine is also one of the most costly. Each dose costs over US$100. And a child needs four doses! For many people in poor nations, the cost of vaccinating a child would be equivalent to the entire household income for a few months or even more than a year! They simply cannot afford the vaccine.
Well, one way for people in poor nations to get such vaccines is to participate in vaccine trials. And some pay even more dearly. In mid-2008, a vaccine trial in Argentina by GlaxoSmithKline, for the pneumonia vaccine Synflorix, resulted in 12 unexplained infant deaths, plus another two deaths in neighbouring Panama. In November 2008, a vaccine trial in India by Pfizer, for the Prevnar PCV-13 vaccine, was suspended after one child died.
No. Poor nations don't need costly and dangerous vaccines either.
How do vaccines get approved?
A popular way to explain how dangerous vaccines get approved by governments is to point out that there is big money involved, thereby implying some sort of impropriety. In the case of Prevnar PCV 7, it is one of the most costly vaccines ever introduced. Each dose costs abut US$100 and a child needs four doses. Multiply that by millions of chidren and you will realise how large the sums are.
I don't rule out such theories. The parmaceutical industry involves big money and its lobby groups are known to be highly influential.
To me, however, there is a more straight forward explanation... To the majority of doctors, there are no such things as "dangerous vaccines" to begin with. They learned in medical school that vaccines are "very safe" and it is very hard for them to unlearn such lessons. Only a small number of doctors, such as retired neurosurgeon Dr Russell Blaylock, have been outspoken against vaccination.
With the mindset that there are no dangerous vaccines, researchers who study vaccines - and are paid by vaccine makers to undertake such studies - will not recognise the dangers. If a person were to die or suffer any other serious effects following vaccination, the immediate, automatic response of the researcher is to look for other reasons that might possibly cause the adverse event. Or to dismiss the event as a "coincidence".
Barbara Fisher, Co-founder & President of the US National Vaccine Information Center, has strong words for this. Of the Prevnar vaccine study, she said: "What's scientific about that? That every time something bad happens after vaccination it's 'coincidence'? That's not science, that's politics."
How are vaccines studied?
It is also important to understand how these studies are conducted and how the "medical experts" classify vaccines are classified as safe or dangerous vaccines. Without any background information, the average lay person would assume that if a vaccine has been declared to be "safe" it means that studies show it does not produce any serious side effects.
No so. Vaccine studies do reveal adverse side effects, including death in the case of particularly dangerous vaccines. But as long as the experimental vaccine is no worse than the control vaccine that is is being compared with, it is considered "safe".
Here is where vaccine trials differ from regular drug studies. In normal drug trials, the experimental drug is compared to a placebo, a "dummy drug" that is usually made from sugar. In the case of a vaccine trial, the experimental vaccine is compared, not to a "dummy" but to another vaccine.
Moreover, the experimental vaccine does not even have to be compared to a vaccine that is already known to be safe. In the Prevnar vaccine study, Prevnar was compared to another experimental vaccine, for meningitis. And it so happened that the other experimental vaccine produced even more deaths - although fewer of the other less serious side effects - than Prevnar. And so Prevnar was pronounced "safe".
This may seem outrageous. But this is the way things are done. The medical profession already decided long ago that all vaccines are safe; there are no dangerous vaccines. Any studies that they conduct are designed to affirm what they want to believe. Not to discover the truth.
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