Four infant deaths trigger vaccines halt

[The Straight Story]

Four infant deaths trigger vaccines halt
Kyodo News

The health ministry has decided to suspend the use of two types of publicly subsidized vaccines following the deaths of four children.

Municipal governments were notified of the decision.

The two types are the Hib vaccine, which prevents bacterial meningitis, and a vaccine against streptococcus pneumonia.

There have been no reports so far from the doctors who treated the children that there is a causal relationship between the vaccines and the deaths, according to the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110306a3.html

[Ilsa]

1. Very sad. I wonder what has happened to cause this, or

if it is a statistical anomaly happening all at once. These are very important vaxes.

"All four children were administered a vaccine against streptococcus pneumonia made by Pfizer Inc., and all except the girl in Nishinomiya received ActHIB, an Hib vaccine made by Sanofi Pasteur Inc."

I dont think the Hib vaccines in the US are made by Sanofi Pasteur Inc.

[WatsonT]

2. Uh-oh

this is going to give the anti-vaccers a major boost.

Nevermind that millions of children died every year prior to vaccines. These 4 will be used to prove that vaccines lack value and must be banned.

[ananda]

3. I'm an anti forced vaccer.

I think vaccination should be a choice on the part of the parents.

[Name removed]

4. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[AllyCat]

5. Not an idiot. People who make the best health choice for their kids are not idiots.

whether they vax or not. Four deaths could easily be (and probably is) something else. The Pc and Hib vaccines are among the safest, and are usually the first given for those of us doing an alternative vax schedule.

There are those of us who look at the risks and benefits and decide that we all had chicken pox and despite a few scars, are doing just fine. Kids don't die of rubella or Hep A. What is the benefit of vaccinating a one day old baby against a blood-borne/sexually transmitted disease (Hep B)? I didn't get this vaccine until adulthood.

People make reasonable decisions when presented with the good information. Those who choose not to vaccinate are making the best decision possible for their situation. They are not idiots.

It will be interesting to find out what happened here. So sorry for the families who lost their little ones.

[Name removed]

6. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[WolverineDG]

9. I'm so glad to see someone else wondering about the chicken pox vaccine

I got raked over the coals for suggesting I didn't think that particular one was necessary for most kids. Relatively mild childhood disease, along with lifetime immunity v. a vaccine that you have to remember to get boosters for with a chance that you'll get it as an adult.

dg

[wellstone dem]

11. This I wonder about too, as

I know adults who wish they'd had it as kids.

[HuckleB]

16. Try again.

http://www.babycenter.com/0_the-chicken-pox-vaccine_1725.bc

Further, if people make such good decisions when given good information, why are there schools in my area with 15-25 percent vaccine refusal rates?

[cleanhippie]

43. "People who make the best health choice for their kids are not idiots" - Fully agree, but anti-vax

parents are NOT "People who make the best health choice for their kids." They are making the WORST health choices for their kids.

[Name removed]

7. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[wellstone dem]

10. I agree, if those who do not vaccinate

keep their kids away from sick kids who can't get vaccines. I knew a family with a child with some type of cancer, who could not vaccinate, and were terrified about the kids who could get vaccines and did not.

Sometimes I think we are too far removed from the days of my parents. My mother tells stories of how frightened she and other parents were during the early 50's and then the polio vaccine was available. I remember going to a school gym where all the kids in the area were vaccinated, and I remember my mother's relief.

[varkam]

23. "Sometimes I think we are too far removed from the days of my parents."

I agree, though maybe not for long if anti-vaccination lunacy wins the day.

[WatsonT]

13. As long as they also choose to keep their kids

away from other children.

Perhaps they have a right to murder their own children through neglect, but I don't feel they have the right to do so to any other kids.

[laconicsax]

14. Why should parents be able to choose whether other children are exposed to disease?

Vaccination doesn't just affect your children, it affects everyone. A parent who declines to vaccinate their children aren't just putting their children at risk, but everyone who comes in contact with their children.

Take a glance over here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=222x102137

An infant (too young to be vaccinated) contracted measles overseas, and spread it to an unvaccinated kid who then put everyone he came in contact with at risk. This is just one example of how declining to vaccinate your children puts others at risk.

[cleanhippie]

42. Certainly, but only if they keep their kids away from all other kids and are held responsible

for the pain, suffering and even death of their kids when they contract easily preventable diseases.

[SheilaT]

8. My question about these vaccines -- and about a lot

of the vaccines that are being pushed as absolutely necessary -- is just how great is the risk of an infant getting these specific diseases?

Maybe they would be more appropriate for children or adults known to actually be at risk for these illnesses. They're not exactly like the old childhood diseases we all got back in the day. I am highly skeptical of claims that everyone needs all these many vaccines or we're all going to die.

[AllyCat]

12. I question the current vaccine SCHEDULE more than anything

at the 2 month check up, babies get NINE different vaccines. Mercury really is no longer an issue, but aluminum (needed to make the vaccine work) is in all kinds of stuff and is REGULATED when administered to adults through a needle (IV or intra-muscular). Yet no studies have been done on aluminum content in vaccines with babies and small children. None. Aluminum toxicity looks quite a bit like Alzheimer's and mild autism.

We spread ours out for our youngest. Didn't have a clue with the first child...thankfully, he seems to be okay.

Everything some drug company tests as a vaccine ends up on the schedule with little question. I just worry about that a bit. Seems like we give way too much stuff, way too young, to kids who are not at risk (especially breast fed babies).

Again, each parent needs to decide what is best in their situation.

[trotsky]

15. Why do we hate experts in this country?

I don't get it.

[laconicsax]

18. Because experts are "elitist"

[trotsky]

22. It's the weirdest thing.

And the Dunning-Kruger effect is real and scary.

[laconicsax]

26. That too.

[mhatrw]

24. Because they sometimes practice faith-based science?

We'd like to the see the science showing which levels of aluminum adjuvants are generally safe to inject in mammals and which levels are not generally safe.

We'd like to see the science demonstrating that an infant getting 5 or 6 vaccines at once is perfectly safe.

Can you show us this science?

[trotsky]

25. You have already demonstrated that you will not accept ANY evidence...

that goes counter to what you already want to believe.

No sense wasting any more electrons on you.

[mhatrw]

31. The evidence I asked for doesn't exist and you know it.

But nice move by you to pretend that this evidence does exist and that you have shared it repeatedly and I am to blame for not believing it.

[trotsky]

33. What's been shared with you is data.

You have chosen to ignore the data. No, there has never been an experiment in which we take human subjects and keep injecting MASSIVE amounts of aluminum into them until they die. No, there will never be such an experiment. I am so sorry that you have chosen THAT completely unethical and ridiculous bar as your standard.

But there ARE facts about aluminum, and its presence in our bodies and our environment, and you have chosen to ignore those facts.

[mhatrw]

36. Where are the basic toxological studies of injected aluminum hydroxide on rabbits, mice and rats?

You pretend I am asking for something that is impossible. These studies are not only not impossible, they are basic and fundamental measurements that exist for tens of thousands of other compounds.

Where are the primate studies on the entire recommended vaccination schedule?

[HuckleB]

32. +1,000,000,000,000 ... 000 ... 000 !!!!!!!!!

[mhatrw]

37. Show me the basic toxicological experiments that have been done to determine

which levels of intramuscularly injected aluminum hydroxide are generally safe for mammals and which levels are generally deadly and/or debilitating.

Let's see these basic studies please.

[HuckleB]

38. Show me your usual red herring!

Oh, wait. You just did.

As has been noted repeatedly, you clearly don't care about actual evidence, and all you can do is change the goal posts over and over again.

Your game has long been known. Sorry, I don't play!

[AllyCat]

35. I don't question experts. I question the money that's behind the scenes

[HuckleB]

39. And...?

How does questioning that support what you posted above about the vaccine schedule?

[Confusious]

46. There is very little money in most vaccines

especially the childhood ones.

I went for an MMR booster and the nurses 5 minutes was more then the vaccine itself.

[HuckleB]

17. Why do you think there is a problem with the vaccine schedule?

The Infection Schedule versus the Vaccination Schedule
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=289

[LeftishBrit]

19. 'kids who are not at risk'

If kids have siblings or even just meet a variety of people, then they are at potential risk. I know someone who got whooping cough at the age of one week; she survived but has significant physical disabilities.

Breastfeeding reduces the risk (especially for illnesses to which the mother is immune), but doesn't abolish it.

It's up to the individual, so long as the parents are responsible about not letting unvaccinated kids near vulnerable people; but if people were as anxious about everything as some seem to be about vaccines, they would keep their kids (and themselves) in a bubble for life to prevent germs, and never cross streets, etc. The diseases are much more hazardous than the vaccines.

[trotsky]

20. "The diseases are much more hazardous than the vaccines."

By orders of magnitude! It's sad how many people don't realize this.

[bemildred]

21. Well said.

It is a case of making informed judgement based on incomplete information, each case is different. Life is a risky business, even when done well.

[SheilaT]

27. Yep.

I am heartily sick of the militant pro-vaccines no matter what end of the spectrum. And I agree that the schedule of vaccines needs to be looked at carefully. Our immune systems evolved to respond to various challenges, and vaccines challenge the immune system in a different way from natural diseases.

What's lost to the "everyone must be vaccinated against every possible disease" crowd is that a lot of people out there are at vanishingly low risk to certain diseases. And while I should be more sympathetic to those with very weak or inadequate immune systems, I want to point out that natural selection used to remove those people, and I know it sounds totally heartless of me to even bring that up.

Plus, it's not as though vaccines never have any bad consequences. I'm quite old enough to recall the swine flu fiasco in 1976, when there was this ungodly rush to bring the vaccine to market, while cooler heads kept on pointing out that it didn't seem to be that great a risk. I feel the same way about a lot of the vaccines that are out there now. I also wonder if what seems to be a rise in auto-immune diseases isn't directly linked to vaccines.

[laconicsax]

30. Do you understand why "a lot of people out there are at vanishingly low risk to certain diseases?"

I wonder why most people in the US are at vanishingly low risk to polio...

[trotsky]

34. "vaccines challenge the immune system in a different way from natural diseases"

Yeah, they do.

They challenge the immune system to make antibodies to a disease-specific antigen WITHOUT causing the (often fatal) symptoms of the disease.

How DARE they. Clearly the better option here is to just let the natural disease run its course. If you manage to survive, congrats!

a lot of people out there are at vanishingly low risk to certain diseases

Yeah - BECAUSE OF VACCINATION. Do you think that we'd magically be rid of smallpox today if we hadn't vaccinated against it?

And while I should be more sympathetic to those with very weak or inadequate immune systems, I want to point out that natural selection used to remove those people, and I know it sounds totally heartless of me to even bring that up.

That doesn't sound heartless. It sounds INHUMAN. I can't believe I'm reading such ridiculous eugenicist bullshit on a PROGRESSIVE message board. So much for caring about your fellow human beings. Jeebus fracking cripes.

[Confusious]

47. I want to point out that natural selection used to remove those people

I guess we get to the heart of the matter with anti-vaccine people.

[trotsky]

49. Pretty damn disgusting when it's all laid bare, huh? n/t

[Confusious]

50. yep.....

[LeftishBrit]

48. Would you REALLY want to go back to a time...

when one in four children died before the age of five, which is what is meant by people with weak immune systems being 'eliminated from the gene pool'?!?

This still happens in parts of the world. Do you think it's a good idea?

And apart from the fact that most people in the past died much younger than now, there's another thing that's being omitted: most of evolution took place at a time when people didn't live in large groups in crowded cities. It CERTAINLY took place at a time when people didn't travel here, there and everywhere, picking up and transmitting germs between many locations. We have *not* evolved to deal 'naturally' with the variety of germs that we get exposed to nowadays. I am very glad that we have vaccines to help us deal with them!

[laconicsax]

52. Right on! Fuck those anti-disease wankers! Let's bring back polio, smallpox, etc!

:puke:

[SheilaT]

28. deleted as dupe

[SheilaT]

29. deleted as dupe

[Confusious]

45. If no one gets them, or you only immunize a few

Then we all fall into the "at risk" category.

These diseases aren't defeated. They're ready to come back at the moment we let our guard down.

[SheilaT]

51. My point is that we're immunizing against diseases

that aren't ones everyone gets in the normal course of events. I'm not convinced everyone should be immunized against them.

For what it's worth, I don't get flu shots. Someone here once accused me of therefore being an asymptomatic carrier, which is total b.s. I have a firm belief that the immune system ought to be allowed to do its work in a more normal way, and not just through vaccination.

If vaccinations were so wonderful, as so many here believe, then why are booster shots needed? The first generation of kids who got the MMR were then coming down with at least one of those (maybe all of them, I forget the details) when they headed off to college. Surprise, surprise, the vaccination did not confer permanent immunity, unlike getting the actual disease. Yes, I understand there's a trade-off, and that some small number who get one of those the old-fashioned way will have bad aftereffects, and some will die. I think the risk we're taking is that somewhere down the road we'll discover that our immune systems have been compromised in bad ways.

[laconicsax]

53. We immunize against diseases that still exist.

Do you really not understand this?

[Confusious]

54. Like I said, if we don't immunize

Then we are all going to be getting these diseases as the "normal course of events"

If vaccinations were so wonderful, as so many here believe, then why are booster shots needed?"

Because we're tricking our immune system into having a reaction, and it kills off the vaccine before a good amount of immunity has been built up. Of course, if you actually had the disease, you would have full immunity, if you survived. Then there would be other complications from the disease, such as infertility with the mumps, or blindness with measles.

Yes, I understand there's a trade-off, and that some small number who get one of those the old-fashioned way will have bad aftereffects, and some will die."

I think you should volunteer to tell the people, "yes, we could have prevented this, but we did nothing. Some of you were meant to be blind, some of you were meant to die, so sorry." I would get a good laugh out of that riot and the eventual drawing and quartering.

I think the risk we're taking is that somewhere down the road we'll discover that our immune systems have been compromised in bad ways."

Hogwash. Bullshit. I for one am thankful I didn't have to live in a time of rampant disease. As a history buff, I've read about it (Thank Salk I only had TO READ about it), and the world YOU want to return to IS NOT PRETTY. I rather go with what's proven then some bullshit "gut" feeling you have.

Vaccines just make our immune systems do it's job. They protect all of us.

[HuckleB]

40. Update: 4 deaths in Japan not tied to shots: panel

http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/story/2011/03/08/japan-vaccine.html

[mhatrw]

44. Update to your update: Suspension will continue, more study needed

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/08/japan-vaccine-idUSL3E7E816R20110308

Japan to continue Pfizer, Sanofi vaccine suspension

Japan's health ministry said on Tuesday it would continue suspending the use of vaccines made by Pfizer Inc (PFE.N) and Sanofi-Aventis SA (SASY.PA) that prevent meningitis and pneumonia, after a meeting of an expert panel.

The ministry halted the use of the vaccines in response to the deaths of four children shortly after receiving the vaccines.

The expert panel found no clear direct link between the vaccines and the deaths but said further studies were needed, Kyodo news agency said. A health ministry official said the suspension would continue but declined to comment further.

[HuckleB]

41. U.S. sees no problem with Pfizer, Sanofi vaccines

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/07/us-japan-vaccine-usa-idUSTRE72651Y20110307?feedType=RSS&feedName=domesticNews