Shots in the dark - Hepatitis B Vaccine

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From The American Spectator
By Tom Bethell

"Lyla Rose Belkin was a lively, alert five-week-old baby when I last
held her in my arms," said her father, Michael Belkin, a financial
analyst in New York City. "Little did I imagine as she gazed into my
eyes that she would die that night. At her final feeding she was
agitated and feisty -- then fell asleep and didn't wake up. The autopsy
ruled out choking. A swollen brain was the only abnormal finding. Most
doctors I spoke to said it must have been Sudden Infant Death Syndrome,
a catch-all diagnosis for unexplained death." This happened last September.

For weeks, Belkin and his wife agonized over what they might have done
differently. What he couldn't get out of his mind was that a few hours
before Lyla's death, she had been inoculated with the Hepatitis B
vaccine. Most doctors he spoke to scoffed at the idea. The vaccine is
safe, they said. But he began his own investigation, and he became
disturbed by what he found.

He spoke to Bonnie Dunbar, a molecular biologist at Baylor College of
Medicine in Houston. Five years earlier, her brother had experienced
multiple sclerosis-like symptoms following vaccination. "His problems
have been attributed to the Hepatitis B vaccine by over a dozen
different specialists of unquestionable medical expertise," she
testified before the Texas Public Health Board. "He has now been rated
permanently and totally impaired. His health care has cost the state of
Texas around half a million dollars to date." Then disaster struck
again. A student in her lab, who was required to take the vaccine,
"went partially blind following her first booster injection, a
medical condition that was exacerbated by her second booster
which resulted in long-term hospitalization."

Only a few years ago, Dr. Dunbar was honored by the National Institutes
of Health for her vaccine work. Nonetheless, she began her testimony
with this eye-opener: "I am not here today as an official representative
of Baylor College of Medicine but as a concerned citizen of Texas and
the United States. In fact, I am sure that some of my colleagues would
not approve of my appearance. Especially those that are benefiting
handsomely from pharmaceutical company income as consultants
and expert witnesses while carrying out vaccine clinical trials."

Merck & Co. derives $900 million per annum from vaccine sales. Its
Hepatitis B vaccine is the first in the country to use recombinant DNA
technology. Since 1991, Hepatitis B inoculations have been given
routinely to infants in the US, and 36 states now require that a series
of three shots be given to infants as a condition of attending school.
Although many are now getting the vaccine, hardly anyone in the general
population is at risk for the disease. The Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention in Atlanta says that in 1996 a total of 10,637 cases of
the disease were reported in the US, of whom 279 were below age 14.
In 90 percent of cases, antibodies are naturally produced and after a
flu-like illness the patient recovers and is immune for life.

To drum up a Hepatitis B scare, and justify the massive vaccination
program, the CDC has arbitrarily multiplied the number of reported
cases by 20, using the argument that most go undiagnosed. The general
population is not at risk for Hepatitis B. The profile of those who are
is similar to those at risk for AIDS. CDC identifies the hepatitis risk
groups as: drug addicts, homosexuals and heterosexuals with multiple
partners, children of immigrants from certain areas, health-care
workers, and infants born to infected mothers. So how come everyone is
urged to get the vaccination, including newborns, and why are state
health departments playing along, agreeing that children can't go to
school if they don't get their shots?

The CDC explains that it has "generally not been feasible" to identify
people "engaged in high-risk behaviors." Instead, the agency
recommended "making hepatitis B vaccine a part of routine vaccination schedules for
infants." In other words, the risk of adverse events must be borne by
innocent infants, who can be singled out on the maternity wards,
because the sex and drug addicts can't be expected to identify themselves. Jane
Orient, executive director of the Association of American Physicians
and Surgeons, and a practicing physician, commented: "It's outrageous to be
forcing this upon children, the great majority of whom are not at risk.
But all are at risk of adverse reactions to the vaccine." She doesn't
recommend the shots for those not in risk groups.

"I am horrified by what I am seeing on this issue," said Baylor's Dr.
Dunbar. "I can't believe this is happening in this country." "Public
health" is being used as a rationale to undermine individual responsibility and to
legitimize intrusion on family autonomy. Several times I phoned Sidney Wolfe of
the Naderite Health Research Group, not normally one to sit still for drug-company
profiteering. But there was no call back from him on this issue.

The Food and Drug Administration set up a system for reporting adverse
reactions to the vaccine, and by October 1998 almost 25,000
vaccine-related adverse-events had been reported, many of them
life-threatening. The FDA has also said that as many as 90 percent of
such reactions are never reported at all, so we should multiply these
totals by ten. Michael Belkin estimates that, in addition to his own
daughter, at least 1,400 people have died throughout the country from
an adverse reaction to Hepatitis B immunization.

Many such cases involve what is called auto-immunity. It is believed
that the genetically engineered vaccine sometimes confuses the body's
immune system into attacking itself. Many of the responses resemble
multiple sclerosis. The bad effects may unfold over weeks. One
scandalous feature of this vaccine is that the drug companies used
safety studies that monitored children only for four or five days after
vaccination. Now, a long-term study of the effects on nurses (who must
get the shots) is underway.

Shouldn't legislatures at least wait for the results before they make
shots compulsory? The problem is that most legislators, like most
journalists, are cowed by assertions of medical expertise, and by
threats that any delay will jeopardize the nation's health. The New
York Times in particular has acted as an uncritical conveyer-belt from the
CDC to the general public. One politician who has stood firm is New
Jersey's Christie Todd Whitman. She refused to sign into law a mandate
rushed to her desk by gullible legislators. In France, a similar
mandate was rescinded last October because doctors saw what was happening and
sued.

Having studied FDA's reports of adverse reactions in infants, CDC
concluded that there were "no unexpected events." A leaked internal CDC
memo suggests otherwise. A meeting at the agency in 1997 discussed
"possible association" between the vaccine and MS and recommended a
"case control study" with 60 days as a "reasonable time limit to use
for the onset of MS post-vaccination." (Five days were enough to get the
vaccine approved.)

Another CDC claim, that "studies show that these side effects are
reported no more frequently among those vaccinated than among persons
not receiving vaccine," cited only references dated ten years before
the vaccine was available. Thus is science put at the disposal of politics.
An Institute of Medicine report refutes CDC's claim. At least 100
published reports by physicians have attributed serious adverse effects
to the vaccine. The truth is that CDC is a political agency which has
become accustomed to disseminating public-health scares as a way of
protecting and expanding its budget. Not for nothing was "Prevention"
added to its title.

State health departments have a budgetary interest in mandating shots.
According to Barbara Fisher of the National Vaccine Information Center
in Vienna, Virginia, amendments to the Childhood Immunization Act of
1993 gave states financial incentives to set up tracking registries,
and a "performance-based grant program," offered up to $100 a head
depending on the number of shots delivered. "A bounty is put on children's
heads," Fisher said. "Our children now get 33 doses of ten different vaccines
by kindergarten; our grandparents got only one -- smallpox. The CDC hasn't
yet done the studies showing whether all these shots are safe." Marian
Wright Edelman, where are you now that we need you?

Recently, John F. Modlin, professor of pediatrics and medicine at
Dartmouth and chairman of the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization
Practices, debated the issue at the University of New Hampshire with
Burton A. Waisbren, an immunologist from Milwaukee. Michael Belkin took
along a chart showing that, in New Hampshire alone, the 48 reported
adverse reactions to the vaccine in children aged 0 to 10 in recent
years were 16 times greater than the number of cases of disease (3).
There were four times as many child deaths (11) as there were cases
of disease. Those shocking figures show how out of control the
vaccination program has become.

Modlin said the critics were "uninformed," and flippantly suggested
that attributing deaths to the vaccine was like blaming automobile accidents
on the Cheerios antecedently consumed. "Whatever you do," he said,
"don't let somebody try to tell you that Hepatitis B is uncommon
because only 11,000 cases were reported in this country." In fact, he added, "I
don't care" how many reported cases there are. "What's probably more
accurate is extrapolated data." By which he means "hypothetical." It's
as unscientific to deny causation, without investigation, as it is to
assert it. Meanwhile, Modlin should disclose the financial
relationship between the drug companies benefiting from his indulgence and the
ongoing research at Dartmouth Medical School.

In response to a question, he allowed that there was such a connection. "Scientists are
increasingly supported by for-profit companies," the Wall Street
Journal recently reported, "but a new study shows that critical fact is seldom
revealed in published research." This is especially true in the medical field.

In his response, Burton A. Waisbren said that "the first thing that
should be done is we should stop universal Hepatitis B vaccination." He
added that "doctors, hospitals and scientists who [support this
vaccination program] should be held responsible legally.  If all else
fails, I think there is going to be a congressional investigation."

Without quite reaching his question, he asked: "How could an executive
in a pharmaceutical company that made a billion dollars out of this
experiment, and the director of a government agency impose an
experiment -- they talk about a strategy -- this is an experiment.
Because," he added, "they don't know if this is going to help the situation."

The forum organizer, Gerhard Bedding, is circulating a petition to
rescind the mandate in New Hampshire. He describes the modern medical
attitude as: "Here comes this poor unprotected baby. We need to get at
it immediately to give it the benefit of our protection." It reminds
him of the "Kill all the bugs!" outcry of the 1950's. When he sees today's
CDC officers in their military uniforms, he is reminded of nothing so
much as his childhood in occupied Holland, during World War II. ABC's
"20/20" aired a good program in January. Articles have appeared in
Science (July 31, 1998) Insight, Washington Post, Toledo Blade,
Indianapolis Star, and elsewhere. In Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois,
efforts are underway to rescind the mandate or expand exemptions.
Grassroots opposition is growing.

This article also appears in the May 1999 issue of The American Spectator

source: http://www.spectator.org  Shots in the Dark The American Spectator May 1999

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