This is a continuation of Part one of Vaccine Myths. We will continue our discussion, with a special focus on MMR vaccine side effects and the “cervical cancer” vaccine.
The Cervical Cancer Vaccination
It was painful for me to write the title to this section. The vaccine manufacturers, like any other marketing company, are always looking for the “hook” to get more people to accept and buy their product.
And since cancer is the disease feared by everyone, it makes for a nice scare factor. But there’s a problem.
This vaccination is not a cancer vaccine. Rather, it vaccinates against the human papilloma virus, or HPV. HPV increases the risk of cervical cancer, but is not the only factor in cervical cancer. Much like smoking is a risk factor for lung cancer. There are smokers who don’t get lung cancer and there are non-smokers who do develop lung cancer.
There is little argument that HPV does play a role in cervical cancer, but while there are over 100 types of HPV that infect humans, only a small handful are the ones known to contribute to cervical cancer. It is 4 of the most dangerous of these types that the HPV vaccination Gardasil targets (types 6, 11, 16, 18–hence the term “quadravalent”).
So far, everything sounds good. Identify the most carcinogenic HPV types and create a vaccine to protect against these types. Then promote this vaccination to adolescent girls before they get infected with the virus and life is good and Merck makes lots of money.
Of course, this is where the fun ends. There are several reasons why this idea became a problem right out of the gate.
HPV Vaccine’s Effect on PAP Testing
The ability of PAP screening to identify abnormal cells in the cervix very early (since cervical cancer is a very, very slow growing type of tumor) has been very well documented. It’s a good thing with no real downside.
But human nature being human nature, there has been evidence that the rates of PAP smear testing have been dropping. This is because medicine has promoted the idea that HPV vaccination is a cervical cancer vaccination and women are skipping out on getting regular PAP screenings because of this false sense of security (more on this in a minute).
You can bet this will not be a good thing in the long run.
HPV Vaccination and Other HPV Types
Mother Nature never likes being challenged in her attempts to cause disease. HPV vaccination is no exception. As we’ll see with the pneumococcal vaccine discussed later, when you vaccinate against only a small number of serotypes, the other types rise up in place of the vaccinated types.
One study looking at this exact question found that the infection rates for the 4 types of HPV in Gardasil dropped by 32% after the vaccination was introduced. At its surface, this seems like a good thing. But when you dig a little deeper researchers found that there was a 61% increase in infections caused by the other types that the vaccine was not designed for.
Kind of like a giant Wac-a-mole game.
But don’t worry—you can bet that Merck is already hot on the trail of a vaccination that covers more than 4 types of HPV. Once they do that, you’ll begin to see the research publicized that points out this shortcoming on the quadravalent vaccine. This will then set the stage for everyone to be RE-vacccinated with the new one, generating even more profits for the drug companies (keep in mind that Gardasil is already a very expensive vaccination).
How Well Does Gardasil Protect Against Cervical Cancer?
Seems like a logical question to ask. After all, nothing is perfect when it comes to protecting against chronic diseases like heart disease and cancer. So just how well does HPV vaccination protect you and your children from developing cervical cancer?
At the time the “cervical cancer” vaccine was launched, and TO DATE (at the time of this writing) the HPV vaccine has not been proven to lower cervical cancer rates.
Yes—you read that right. The world has been promoting this as preventing cervical cancer, but this vaccine has NOT BEEN PROVEN TO LOWER CERVICAL CANCER RATES.
So what gives? How can that be right?
Like many other interventions in modern medicine, the drug company used surrogate end markers. This concept is all too common in medicine; since it takes way too long to see if the HPV vaccination can lower cancer rates 20 or 30 years later, researchers looked at whether or not the HPV vaccine could lower the rates of pre-cancerous lesions, identified under the CIN classification used with PAP testing.
All of the studies done on the HPV vaccine were done to see if it could lower the risk of PRE-cancerous lesions, NOT cancer itself. Those studies have not been done yet.
There’s a BIG risk with using surrogate end markers that we see time and time and time again. When drugs are approved based on surrogate markers only, everyone ASSUMES that this means the drug or vaccination will be good for the end outcome we really care about (such as a heart attack, diabetes, stroke or cancer).
So the drug is approved and marketed to the unsuspecting public under the assumption that it will work for the actual outcome, even though it has only been proven to affect the surrogate marker. It is not until later when the studies are published looking at how the drug or vaccine actually helps the actual outcome we are concerned about.
Sometimes, the studies don’t exactly turn out the way everyone thought they would. Many times the protection we thought would occur didn’t. Or, the protection was not nearly as strong as we thought it was.
A good example of this is the statin class of drugs—while they do a great job at lowering cholesterol levels, they kind of suck at prevent heart attacks. But it took years to figure this out, and by that time the idea of using statins to prevent heart attack was so entrenched that medicine couldn’t conceive of treating heart disease without them.
Until the trials are completed, we just don’t know whether or not HPV vaccination is going to actually prevent cervical cancer.
Natural History of HPV
When it comes to determining if a vaccination is effective, we really need to know what happens in the natural course of an infection. After all, the human body has an immune system that can clear out many types of infections, be they bacteria, viruses, fungi or parasites.
Human papilloma virus is no difference. Actually, about 2/3 of high-risk HPV infections are cleared spontaneously without any type of help from outside. And if they are cleared spontaneously in a large chunk of women who are infected, then we are vaccinating a huge number of women for no benefit.
Which would be fine, if there was not a significant cost. Oh…and side effects…
HPV Vaccination Side Effects
There is not a single medical intervention that is not without side effects. The HPV vaccine is no exception. In a pretty big way.
There are always reports of side effects from vaccination. Some are pretty “standard” like injection site reactions, fevers and fatigue. Rare, but not unexpected side effects can also include immune system breakdowns (Guillian-Barre, for example).
Some of the more grave concerns with HPV vaccination center around a potentially serious neurological condition called POTS as well as reports of the more long-reaching side effect of sterility.
So Should I Give My Child HPV Vaccination?
In the end, like all the other vaccinations, this is a very personal choice. And not just a choice that you need to make for your daughter—there has been a big push for boys to get the HPV vaccination as well.
Personally, I think there is much more research to be done to see if the side effects are balanced out by the benefits.
That’s not to say that cervical cancer is something to be taken lightly. But, much like every other cancer, there are distinct lifestyle choices that can be made to lower you and your family’s risk of developing cervical cancer. This list can include:
- No smoking
- A multivitamin containing folic acid
- Avoiding unprotected sex
THESE options are choices that will lower the risk of cervical cancer, all without side effects. Contrast this with the HPV vaccination, which has yet to be proven to be safe and effective in the long run.
The Pneumococcal Vaccine…Prevnar
Bacteria are all around us. And in us (which is a WHOLE ‘nother article…). Some of these bacteria are wonderful and are critical for good health. Others can wreak havoc.
In general, the pneumococcal family of bacteria create more problems than they help. In particular, Streptococcus pneumoniae is the bacteria that causes ear infections, pneumonia and meningitis. And it can be pretty nasty. According to the WHO, it kills about 1.6 million children every year worldwide with 0.7–1 million of them being under the age of five. Most of these are in developing countries.
Much like HPV, this bacteria has over 90 different types, some more dangerous than others. In the US, these dangerous bacterial types of S. pneumoniae cause a pneumonia that kills about 45,000-67,000 people per year and 3,700 deaths from meningitis and bacteremia. More than 95% of these deaths occur in adults.
Luckily, there are two vaccinations in the US that protect against pneumococcal diseases:
- The pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (Prenvar 13) is mainly given to children under 2 and adults over 65.
- The pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine (PPSV23) is given to adults 65 years or older, as well as children and younger adults with certain high-risk conditions.
History of the Prevnar 7 vaccine
There’s a little bit of background you need to understand the bigger picture.
You see, when it was first introduced, the Prevnar was called the Prevnar 7 because it only vaccinated for 7 of the 90 known serotypes of S. pneumoniae. These were considered the most dangerous.
As we’ve covered before, Mother Nature does not like to be thwarted. Prevnar 7 was no exception. After just a few years, as expected, the vaccine was doing its job and lowering the number of infections caused by these 7 serotypes.
What may have come as a surprise, however, was that there were other types of S. pneumoniae that were up and coming, leading to hospitalizations with bacterial types that were harder to kill with antibiotics. Even worse, the overall number of infections in adults were going up due to these other serotypes becoming stronger and more common.
In Comes Prevnar 13
Luckily Wyeth Pharmaceuticals had the Prevnar 13 waiting in the shadows to cover 13 of the types instead of just 7 serotypes. The recommendations now changed, suggesting that everyone who had been previously vaccinated with Prevnar 7 should come back in for more vaccinations with Prevnar 13.
Can you say “financial windfall???”
Pneumonia and meningitis can be deadly. It is not something I would ever want my son to have to go through (especially meningitis). This is always something to consider when it comes to whether or not you are going to vaccinate yourself or your child with the pneumococcal vaccine. I would never want my son to have to fight off meningitis.
But, as a parent, I also have grave concerns over the vaccination developing superbugs that are resistant to antibiotics and cause more severe disease. At the same time there are countless things you can do for your family to boost their immune systems to prevent bacteria from gaining a hold in the first place.
None of these immune-boosting approaches will lead to superbugs and the end of the world as we know it.
MMR Vaccine Side Effects; the Big Controversy
Measles, mumps and rubella. MMR. Who would’ve thought 3 initials could’ve let to such confusion on the part of parents.
Dr. Wakefield’s Research on the Autism Link
It all started with Dr. Andrew Wakefield in England. Few people have been the focus of more reverence, disdain and hatred as Dr. Wakefield.
In 1998 in the medical journal the Lancet a paper was published that was authored by Dr. Wakefield that rocked the world of immunizations. The paper identified the measles virus in the lymph nodes of autistic children.
Thus was born the links, real or not, between the MMR vaccine side effects and autistic spectrum disorders.
Dr. Wakefield’s name was dragged through the mud and his professional credentials were ripped apart to the point where he had to leave his home country. Despite all of this and all the critics, there are a few things that never seemed to make it to the limelight.
First, despite Dr. Wakefield being pegged as the anti-vaccination poster boy, he never had an issue with vaccination. Rather, he had an issue with the use of the combination vaccine. In interviews, he continued to reinforce this—he wanted more research on the potential problems with the combination of the three. But this was lost in the controversy.
Next, and much larger, was that aspects of Dr. Wakefield’s research have been reproduced by other researchers. Yes, the research that the measles virus is somehow linked to autism and other developmental disorders has been reproduced. Many times over (measles virus in cerebral spinal fluid, measles virus and the brain, measles virus and gut inflammation, just to point out a few). Given that the only source of the virus would’ve been the vaccine, it certainly points a damning finger at the vaccination.
The link between finding the virus in the lymph nodes lining the gut and autism is concerning enough, but there’s more.
Timing of MMR Vaccination and Illness in Children
Whether or not to vaccinate is question enough for any parent. After much deliberation and education, you decide you’re going to vaccinate your child. Think that was complicated enough? What about complicating the story a little more?
Is it possible that the timing of vaccination could make things worse?
Yes.
In a study looking at how vaccination schedules affected the risk of hospitalization for illnesses in almost a ½ million children. The study was done in Denmark using the recommended vaccination schedule (DTaP-IPV-Hib given at ages 3, 5, and 12 months and MMR at age 15 months).
Here’s what they found:
- For those children who were vaccinated following the recommended schedule and received MMR after the third dose of DTaP-IPV-Hib, there was a 14% lower risk of an admission for infection.
- For those receiving MMR after the second dose of DTaP-IPV-Hib, there was a 13% lower risk.
- However, in the children who got the third dose of DTaP-IPV-Hib after MMR, there was a 62% higher risk of a hospital admission for infection.
There is something going on here that we don’t quite understand. Why would giving the MMR vaccine after the 3rd dose of DTaP-IPV-Hib make such a substantial difference in immune function? I’m pretty sure we don’t have that answer, but it is concerning. And this is definitely something to keep in mind if you fully vaccinate your child.
As mentioned here in the US, your child will receive 69 doses of 16 vaccines over the next 18 years. If this study only looked at 4 vaccines in 4 doses in a little over a year, there is NO WAY medicine has figured out the optimal vaccination schedule. It is just impossible.
The studies done on when and how often your child should be vaccinated are all done on single vaccines. The bottom line is that we have NO idea what the combination of vaccines and the timing of these vaccinations are doing to the immune system as a whole. Vaccination for every communicable disease known to man is not what Mother Nature intended.
The Fear Mongering to Push Vaccination
The principal tool that mainstream medicine uses to push the full vaccination is fear. Fear of catching the disease in question, be it the flu, chicken pox or the measles.
In case you think this is a little dramatic, consider what happened last year (2014) in December in Disneyland. It would be hard to not have heard of an outbreak that occurred there and how it spread across the country like wildfire.
The fear was enough to get Congress involved, triggering the discussion on making laws to remove vaccine exemptions nationally. In California, the fear was enough to drive the legislature to remove individual parental decisions on whether or not to vaccinate their children, with a medical exemption being the only way out.
The discussions in the blogosphere were quite heated as well, with some bloggers going so far as to suggest that non-vaccinating parents were the cause of the bloggers’ children’s own health dilemmas. Pediatricians were kicking parents out of their offices if they refused to follow the recommended vaccination schedule.
So what was the real story behind the Disneyland outbreak?
There are some 24 MILLION visitors to Disneyland/California Adventure annually. Broken down daily, this would be almost 66,000 per day (with December part of the busy season). You get the idea: it’s a LOT of people.
The measles virus can survive up to two hours just hanging out in the air. If you do the rough math, it’s likely that several thousand people may have been exposed. Or, at the very, very least, hundreds.
I have read many media reports and medical opinions stating that ALL unvaccinated people exposed to the measles virus will contract the measles, although not a single one of these opinions were backed up by any research that I was able to find.
Given just how wildly contagious everyone states the measles virus is (despite no research to back up this claim), you would predict that thousands were infected over the course of a couple of days at Disney. Going incredibly conservative you would predict hundreds of people infected.
While the exact number of primary cases that came out of Disneyland is hard to find, it seems like the actual number was 51.
Fifty-one out of potentially thousands exposed.
When the dust settled, the total number of people infected with measles that were directly related to the Disneyland outbreak was 131. Deaths associated with the Disneyland outbreak? A big fat ZERO.
Zero deaths, which would include zero deaths in children. To put this into perspective, 650 children die annually in the US from car accidents. Yet there has never been an uproar over this statistic.
After the initial media frenzy on the “epidemic,” the topic pretty much dropped off the face of the planet, including information being released from the CDC or MMWR. But the push for more difficult to obtain immunization exemptions never died down. Interesting…
Another interesting thing about the Disneyland meases outbreak was the constant repetition that this outbreak was spread by unvaccinated kids. But, according the CDC in their own review, there were 18 out of 110 patients who were unvaccinated children. That’s 16% for the math wizzes out there claiming that this outbreak was directly the fault of unvaccinated children.
Safety of the MMR Vaccination
No discussion of the benefits of a medical intervention is fair without a discussion on the side effects. This seems to be a little tidbit by the pro-vaccination groups. The ASSUMPTION is that all vaccines are safe. And if they’re not safe, than at least they’re safe ENOUGH for the “herd.”
At the very least, there should be strong evidence establishing the safety of each vaccine before we put it on the list of mandatory vaccinations.
So what does the research say on the safety of the MMR?
Before we get into this, you need to understand about the Cochrane Collaboration. The Cochrane group is a worldwide non-profit medical research think tank. They do reviews of the evidence on a wide variety of topics looking at conflicts of interest and poor statistical analysis. While there is always more to look at in the research, this group cuts through all the bad research to come up with what the research REALLY says.
That being said, the Cochrane Collaboration did a review of the current available research data on the MMR vaccine side effects. This means that they looked at all the research that was available on the MMR vaccination as it relates to safety concerns.
The summary by the Cochrane group?
“The design and reporting of safety outcomes in MMR vaccine studies, both pre- and post-marketing, are largely inadequate. The evidence of adverse events following immunization with the MMR vaccine cannot be separated from its role in preventing the target diseases.”
So what does this mean? Despite all the studies done on the MMR vaccination, we don’t know that MMR vaccine is safe for our children.
Go back and read that again. One of the most well-renowned think tanks in medical research, in looking at the research available, has stated that we cannot say whether the MMR vaccine is safe or not.
That’s not to say that it isn’t safe. It’s just that, despite millions in research, the studies have not proved safety. That’s a big concern if you’re a parent being FORCED to give your child a vaccination.
It’s also not something that your pediatrician is likely to share with you.
Haemophilus influenza B (HIB) vaccination
Haemophilus influenza B is a bacteria that is known to cause bacterial infections principally in the pharynx, lungs (pneumonia) and brain (meningitis). In developed countries, infections are not as problematic as they are in other areas of the world.
To be perfectly honest, this is a vaccine that I have not really come across a whole lot of information on, either pro or con. Most has to do with the usual stuff, like mercury exposure from the thimerosal or from waning effectiveness of the vaccine over time.
For this vaccination, the National Vaccine Informational Center (NVIC) has an excellent, very comprehensive overview of this vaccination—far deeper than anything I would be able to cover here. You can find their HIB page by clicking here.
Vaccination Summary and Final Notes…
Hopefully this overview has given you some better understanding with which to approach the topic of vaccination in your children and yourself. As I mentioned in the beginning, this is not an “all or nothing” topic where you either vaccinate or you do not.
For me, avoiding some vaccinations are a no-brainer because the benefits are not strong and the risks far outweigh any benefits. That is a personal decision in raising my kids and also comes with the responsibility of raising healthy kids who typically do not eat junk food, take vitamins, take probiotics and will use natural methods to boost immune function during any illness.
I feel that, if you choose not to follow the full vaccination schedule proposed by your pediatrician, then you also have the responsibility to make the right health choices for your kids as well.
There has been increasing pressure from governing bodies to remove your ability to make health decisions for your family. California has recently tightened up the exemption rules for vaccination if you want your child to attend public school.
This is a very slippery slope. As I’ve demonstrated in this article, the benefits are NOT black and white. Yet, many of those making the decisions seem to think that the issue is black and white. Almost none of these decision makers are aware of many of the topics covered in this article that raise concerns over things like side effects and serological shifts to more dangerous infectious agents and poor effectiveness of certain vaccinations.
The idea of someone forcing me to do something to my child that I have concerns over because my depth of understanding is FAR greater than those doing the forcing, runs contrary to freedom of choice and the ideals this country was founded on.
This applies to vaccination, education, medications for my child or surgeries. And I’m sure many other things would fall under this umbrella if I thought about it hard enough.
Don’t EVER let someone make a decision for your child (or yourself, for that matter) that you do not agree with based on education and gut feelings. Period.
Kristofer Young DC says
Dr. Bogash
Thank you for this thoughtful article. I appreciate your attention to facts. Thank you for your fair comments about Dr. Wakefield.