Although we have published information about the down side of vaccinations for nearly 20 years, it is only a small minority of parents, even a minority of our readers who conscientiously object to vaccinations. Many more want to be informed and to make wise choices when choice is available, but for the most part want to comply with the standard recommended vaccination policy.

It was because of these parents, these readers, that we departed from our usual editorial coverage of vaccinations and published a look at "both sides" of the vaccination issue in our Summer 1996 special edition. Where we had usually printed personal interest stories and scientific philosophy, here we did statistical analysis and scientific and medical debate. We published this coverage because we saw that parents who normally went along with the status quo were finding it nearly impossible to evaluate vaccinations.

Our vaccinations special edition was very helpful to parents. However, in the last year there has continued to be an outstanding diversity of contradictory material published on vaccinations. Just when I felt that parents had some tools for understanding vaccinations, intensified compliance efforts, new vaccines, and bad press conspire to further confuse parents.

On the one hand, I have seven press releases on my desk from the Centers for Disease Control, Every Child By Two (The Nurses Foundation), Merck, and so forth announcing recent outbreaks of contagious disease and encouraging vaccination. On the other hand, I read the Money Magazine article (December 1996) suggesting the profit motive in vaccination manufacture and reporting on past contamination of polio vaccines with cancer-related viruses.

As a parent myself and someone who reports for parents, I don't know what to think anymore. I know that the article mentioned above presented a sensational view, but increasing questions are being raised for parents. We need to participate in some open and civilized dialogue about vaccinations that includes parents as well as members of the healthcare, scientific, and ethics community. I think parents are on the verge of a panic.

To better understand vaccinations, let's talk about disease in general. Disease is caused by either a virus or a bacterium. The ability of the virus or bacterium to hurt the body is related to the overall health and well-being of the body itself Some viruses and some bacteria are more virulent than others. The presence of a virus or a bacterium in an organism is not necessarily proof of disease; in fact, many viruses and bacteria coexist peacefully with humans.

Vaccinations, first developed for smallpox, rabies, and yellow fever in the late 1800s, were developed to act against viruses.

Antibiotics, first developed in the 1940s, act against bacteria. Most antibiotics are produced naturally from soil organisms.

Antiviral drugs, first distributed in the 1970s have not been developed to the same extent as antibiotics because they are toxic.

Because of the difficulty producing successful antiviral drugs, scientists have developed vaccinations against specific viral diseases. Since the 1960s, vaccines have been developed for measles, mumps, rubella, chicken pox, meningitis, and hepatitis B.

More than 200 viral and bacterial vaccines are currently being created by federal health agencies and vaccines manufacturers.

No information is available on plans for use or distribution of these vaccines.

Vaccine development has become big business. Worldwide revenues of nearly $3 billion are expected to more than double to $7 billion over the next five years as more vaccines are developed. How did this happen? In the 1960s, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) researched viruses as possible cancer triggers. At the same time, the Department of Defense was experimenting with inducing triggers for cancer as biological weaponry.

In 1969, biological weaponry was outlawed, and the United States Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRID) changed its mission from biological weaponry research to developing protective vaccines and controlling lethal microorganisms and infectious diseases. Other government and private research facilities followed suit. Vaccine industry revenues are estimated at more than $1 billion a year in the US alone. This is up from $500 million in 1990, a 200% increase over six years. The cost to fully immunize a child has risen from $107 in 1986 to $367 in 1996, a 243% increase over ten years.

Many health-related products make a profit. What confuses parents about vaccinations and profit is that vaccinations are required. What further confuses parents is that two vaccines can be on the market for the same disease and be administered equally when one is, in fact, less reactive than the other and thus safer in the eyes of the parent.

The acellular pertussis vaccine has only recently been approved for use in the US even though it has been in use in Japan since 1981. Studies show it to be less reactive than the whole cell pertussis vaccine and, in some cases, twice as effective in preventing pertussis. Even so, the whole cell pertussis vaccine is still administered to most babies in the US. Make sure and request the acellular vaccine if you choose the pertussis vaccination.

Similarly, a new and safer polio vaccine, the injected polio vaccine (IPV) is now available. While wild polio is no longer present in the Western hemisphere, the oral polio vaccine has been known to cause polio a few times a year. The injected polio vaccine does not carry this risk.

And while this new safer injected polio vaccine is available, the oral polio vaccine continues to be given to over 90% of all babies. And, the safer injected polio vaccine is more expensive, more than twice as expensive as oral polio vaccine. The manufacturers of oral polio vaccine, a $230 million per year business, lobbied against the injected polio vaccine.

It's bad enough that parents have to worry about possible reactions to vaccinations. The Money magazine article tells us that vaccines themselves may be contaminated with viruses that can trigger cancer. Who knew that the development of vaccinations has been fraught with such controversy?

In the early days of vaccine research, three scientists: Hilary Koprowski, Jonas Salk, and Albert Sabin, worked simultaneously and independently on the development of the polio vaccine.

The polio virus was first isolated in liquid in 1908, but no one knew how to keep a virus alive outside of the body. Viruses can only reproduce in living cells. Outside of living cells, they are nonliving and can be stored as chemicals are stored. In 1948, Dr. John Enders and two coworkers grew the polio virus in cells cultured from human placentas cast away at birth. They won the Nobel Prize for this work. In 1955 Wendell Stanley crystallized the poliovirus in his Berkeley lab.

As part of the development of the polio vaccine, Koprowski, Sabin, and Salk held field tests and vaccine trials in the US and other countries. During the 1935 trials, vaccines from viruses cultured in monkey organs accidentally caused polio in several children.

Dr. Jonas Salk, who worked for the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (NFIP) founded by Franklin Roosevelt, created a vaccine from chemically inactivated viruses grown in monkey cell tissue. In a field test in 1954, 400,000 received the vaccine. The secretary of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) officially licensed the vaccine soon thereafter.

By the summer of 1955, however, the story had changed. Reports came pouring in of children who became paralyzed from the vaccine itself, the components of which had apparently not been fully inactivated. More than 200 people were hit with vaccine-induced polio the summer of 1955 and 11 died.

Vaccine production stopped, and a complete political shake-up hit HEW. The secretary Of HEW, the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and several other officials resigned. The polio vaccine was restarted after screening procedures were tightened and was eventually replaced by another version.

In another incident, between ten and thirty Salk vaccines and Sabin sugar cubes were found to be contaminated with SV40, a simian virus from Asian rhesus monkeys, mainly from India. In 1954, Bernice Eddy, a doctor of bacteriology, discovered live monkey viruses in supposedly inactivated polio vaccines developed by Salk. Her discovery led to the discovery of SV40 by Laurelia McClelland and Maurice Hilleman at Merck's vaccine division. SV40 is a simian retrovirus. Monkeys are used in scientific experimentation in viral, cancer, and vaccine research and have a high incidence of retroviruses. At least 40 simian viruses have been identified.

Between 1959 and 1965, research on pregnant women showed the incidence of brain tumors in children of Salk-vaccinated mothers to be 13 times greater than in children of mothers who hadn't received the Salk vaccine. German scientists have found evidence of SV40 in 30 out of 110 brain tumors. Brain tumors have increased 30% in the US over the last 20 years. Anyone who has received polio vaccine, particularly before 1964, could be at risk for carrying SV40.

In 1961, Congressional hearings before the House Health and Safety Committee were called to investigate the SV40 contamination of some lots of vaccines. In written testimony, Hilary Koprowski, whose polio trials in what is now Zaire were also suspected of being contaminated, admitted that human cells, even with the risk of cancer, are safer than the unknown risks of monkey cells for vaccine research.

All major infectious diseases have apparently been eliminated from the Western world. Only noninfectious diseases like cancer, emphysema, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's and osteoporosis have not yet yielded to medical control. These noninfectious diseases have taken the place as causes of death and illness that infectious diseases once had.

As parents we are increasingly asked to vaccinate our children against diseases that we seldom see and about which we are not worried. We wonder why hepatitis B is given to babies when it is a sexually transmitted disease. The three recommended doses of hepatitis B vaccinations costs $40 or more. The duration of protection is unknown, and booster shot requirements are undefined. We wonder why more reactive vaccines stay on the market when safer vaccines are available. And, we wonder if there are still contaminants in vaccines.

As parents, we want our concerns taken seriously. The public health crusade to eradicate disease does so sometimes at the expense of our children. This is not acceptable to us as parents nor should it be acceptable in a civilized society.

When the Institute of Medicine attempted to verify particular vaccine reactions, they found a lack of studies on vaccine reactions in general. The National Institutes of Health spends approximately $415 million a year promoting vaccines and new vaccine research. None of that budget is allocated to the study of vaccine reactions, and vaccine contaminants.

I wish there were some answers here. Instead I present you with a plate of wriggling questions and I call for a public airing of all of these questions. It is unethical in a time of so many questions about vaccinations or in any time to deny philosophical exemptions. It is unjust to ask parents to become medical experts in order to protect their children. And, it is immoral to risk the health of even one child in order to save the lives of many.

We need a better way.
 

Further information:

National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC)
NVIC assists parents whose children have suffered vaccine reactions, promotes research to evaluate vaccine safety and effectiveness, and monitors vaccine research, policymaking and legislation.

Vaccine Information & Awareness (VIA) 
VIA offers an information package with package inserts for each vaccine, informed consent information, a comprehensive list of  books, and links to state statutes and exemptions and state health departments.

Related book: Vaccination: The Issue of Our Times by Peggy O'Mara