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If you read the various flu vaccine package inserts, including those for the latest H1N1 vaccines, you will see it clearly stated that these vaccines have NOT been tested for safety in pregnant women.
Despite the lack of safety studies on flu vaccine and pregnancy, health authorities around the world are actively encouraging pregnant women to get themselves vaccinated. In fact, pregnant women are often given priority in the current H1N1 vaccination programmes.
The results have not been reassuring. Since the H1N1 vaccine was rolled out at end-September 2009, there have been a number of reports about pregnant women suffering miscarriage following vaccination.
Some suffered miscarriages within hours, others after a few days. Some had miscarriages early in their pregnancy, others suffered miscarriage at an advanced stage of pregnancy and gave birth to still borns. Below are some typical reports:
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Last Monday, I got the H1N1 vaccine thimerosal reduced (mercury reduced for pregnant women). On Tuesday morning, I started cramping and on Wednesday I started bleeding heavily. My hcg (a glycoprotein hormone produced in pregnancy) was 50 on Wednesday and I was almost 6 weeks along so it was low. They still thought that I might be pregnant but on Friday my hcg was down to 22. I am an emotional wreck. I feel like I had a healthy baby and I caused this by getting the H1N1 vaccine. My doctors pushed it. I researched online and there have been many miscarriages after the H1N1 vaccine but they haven’t been reported since it is hard to say what caused the miscarriages. I hope that I did not cause this.
I had a healthy heart beat at 6 weeks. then at 7.5 weeks my son got the h1n1 mist vaccine which has live vaccine in it. the nurse said to be careful because it could technically spread if he rubbed his nose and touched a surface etc. The next night I miscarried and five days later was diagnosed with h1n1. I work from home, kids are home, hadn't been anywhere during that time. so the chances that it is all related are very high. The flu mist vaccine warns for immunocompromised patients (which includes prego) to stay away from recipients of the flu mist for 21 days. I got the flu vaccine (regular not H1N1) at 8 weeks pregnant. Three days later I miscarried. I am not going to get the H1N1. I got both vaccines on Thursday. I was 9 weeks pregnant. I miscarried on Sunday. I was told by several doctors to get these vaccines. Now I wish I followed my gut feeling and not get them at ALL! i work in a hospital like setting and was told ‘the benefits outweigh the risks” 1 a.m. I got the vaccine, 3 a.m. I started bleeding and craming, 3 p.m. miscarried. You decide. |
And so on. And so on.
These reports did not appear in medical journals that publish studies on the flu vaccine and pregnancy. No, Sir. They are all "anecdotal" and therefore unscientific. Because they appeared merely in blogs and Internet forums, not in so-called prestigious peer-reviewed journals.
You see, doctors will not even consider studying a possible link between the flu vaccine and pregnancy adverse effects, such as miscarriages. In fact, a common element of the above reports is that the doctors concerned have all dismissed them as being not related to the flu vaccine. All have been brushed off as "coincindences".
As far as most doctors are concerned, vaccines are safe. That is what they studied in medical school and therefore any adverse effects that takes place after vaccination, be they miscarriages, severe allergic reactions or even deaths, are most likely coincidental. Even with flu shot side effects that are acknowledged to be linked to vaccines, such as Guillain Barre Syndrome, not all cases are thoroughly investigated and the immediate, automatic response of doctors and health authorities would be again to say it was a coincidence.
In the case of miscarriages, there is no even acknowledgement that there could be a link between flu vaccine and pregnancy termination.
At the same time, what doctors say can be quite different from what they do or what they recommend. Despite all their assurances that flu vaccines are safe during pregnancy, doctors also routinely recommend that pregnant women be given vaccines without immune adjuvants like squalene. This is tacit acknowledgement that, perhaps, vaccines with adjuvants are potentially more harmful.
But until the medical profession changes its attitude, which could take years or decades, if at all it happens, the idea that flu vaccines might cause miscarriages will forever remain "unscientific". It's not because scientists studied the matter and found it to be untrue. Rather, it is because they stubbornly refuse to study the subject,
And women will continue to suffer in silence.
Besides flu vaccine and pregnancy, click here, here and here to read more about other flu vaccine side effects, including Guillain Barre Syndrome and anaphylactic shock and even flu vaccine deaths.