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Between the recent decision of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Division of Vaccine Injury Compensation in the Hannah Poling case and the media splash earlier this summer that accompanied actress Jenny McCarthy’s “Green Our Vaccines” march on Washington, D.C., groups that have long espoused the underlying dangers of the U.S. immunization program believe they have reason to feel vindicated.

Not so fast, counters the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and other provider groups.

“Hannah Poling does not equal a landmark study in the New England Journal of Medicine,” Ari Brown, MD, a spokesperson for the AAP and a practicing pediatrician in Austin, TX, stated flatly. “Despite the brouhaha, this is not the smoking gun for autism. This is a mitochondrial disorder.”

Brown added Poling’s condition is very rare and said that in her 13 years of practice, she has only had one patient with a mitochondrial disorder. Unfortunately, she continued, these children are like ticking time bombs. The little girl did have a fever after her vaccinations, which could have triggered her deterioration.

“Vaccines are not 100 percent safe,” Brown said. “There are side effects. There are adverse events. We tell people that up front.”

However, Brown said, the recommendation for children with mitochondrial disorders is still to vaccinate since diseases such as chicken pox or the flu could be deadly.

Brown added, “She is not representative of the other 4,900 who are suing. As a matter of fact, her case was thrown out as a test case. Unfortunately, it serves as a sounding board for concerned parent groups.”

Wendy Fournier is president of one of those groups — the National Autism Association (NAA), which was established five years ago.

“We are a group of parents who all thought our children regressed into autism after vaccinations,” she said, adding that no national advocacy group in existence at that time was willing to address vaccine safety issues.

The NAA was one of a number of sponsors for the “Green Our Vaccines” event in June. Fournier said the rally was Jenny McCarthy’s idea based on her heartfelt belief that “her son suffered a very severe vaccine injury” that resulted in a diagnosis of autism. Fournier said the goal of the actress and her partner, Jim Carrey, is to make sure this type of injury doesn’t happen to other families.

“Part of attending the rally was setting up meetings with our legislators,” Fournier continued. “We were heard that day.”

She added the hope was to get additional Congressional sponsors to sign on to three key pieces of federal legislation the NAA hopes will become law. Congressman Dave Weldon, MD, FACP, R–Fla., and Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, D–N. Y., have been the driving forces behind the bills.

The Mercury Free Vaccines Act of 2007 calls for virtually eliminating mercury from all childhood vaccines. Thimerosal, which is 50 percent mercury, remains in some vaccines including flu shots. The resolution would ultimately demand that no more than one microgram of mercury be present in any pediatric or adult vaccine. The second piece of legislation calls for the creation of a new and separate agency for the oversight of vaccine safety outside of the CDC, which is responsible for vaccine promotion and therefore could be perceived to have an inherent conflict of interest. Fournier said a third bill would require the NIH to conduct a large-scale study on a vaccinated population v. an unvaccinated population to measure general health outcomes.

Fournier said the NAA wants government officials to provide the safest vaccines possible to children and to look at the vaccine schedule. A major concern among parents in her organization is the increase in the number of vaccines over the past 20 years.

“We’ve gone from 10 vaccines by the age of six to 36 vaccines by the age of six,” she pointed out. “There have been no safety studies done at all on the cumulative effects of those vaccines or on giving vaccines at the same time. The goal of the rally,” she continued, “is to get away from this one size fits all vaccine schedule because it may be too much for kids that are susceptible (to vaccine injury).”

“It’s a great sound bite,” Dr. Brown countered. “But thank goodness they are getting so many shots … eight of them are for bacterial meningitis,” she continued, noting that parents now in their forties weren’t protected from the condition like their children are today.

She also refuted the notion there hasn’t been ongoing safety studies for immunizations. “The truth is the ingredients in these vaccines have been used since the 1940s. The ingredients were studied not only before (being approved) but are continually updated.” Brown added, “Our parents took much greater risks. The immune load was much higher just in the smallpox vaccine than the entire schedule today.”

As for the “Green Our Vaccines” movement, Brown said the amounts of vaccine ingredients such as aluminum, which raises a flag among parents just like thimerosal, are negligible compared to continuing exposure from other sources. Several vaccines include approximately 250 micrograms of aluminum. However, Brown pointed out, mother’s breast milk typically contains 50 micrograms per liter and formula has 500 micrograms per liter.

The NAA, Fournier said, advocates for more research to see if certain vaccines should be separated in the schedule, spaced out more, or reformulated. She also stressed the need to find a way to test kids prior to vaccination and adjust the schedule accordingly.

“If we can find the biological triggers that make kids susceptible, then maybe we can find some answers,” she said.

Despite the misgivings, Fournier said the group isn’t calling for an immunization ban.

“We’re not saying people shouldn’t vaccinate their kids against vaccine-preventable diseases, but give us a safe vaccine schedule … and give us vaccines that are as safe as they can possibly be and free of toxins.”

Of concern to Brown, however, is that the message touted in the media frightens parents. There has been a slight increase in numbers of those who have opted out of giving their children vaccines. While Brown said the mainstream media has often portrayed the increase as a large jump, the reality is the portion of the population that has chosen not to vaccinate their children – ostensibly for religious reasons – has increased from 1.5 percent to 2 percent.

Still, she said, “The numbers are going up, which is troublesome … I’m not going to lie.”

Brown likened germs to rain, saying the showers are going to come. “If your child has a raincoat, they have some protection. The best way to be protected from the rain is to have a raincoat and an umbrella, but you can’t buy the umbrella. The community has to buy it.”

Although she said the current level of immunization provides “herd immunity,” it wouldn’t take a lot more parents opting out for the nation to be endangered. “If 10 percent of the population chose not to vaccinate, we’re at risk for a major epidemic,” she noted.

“The diseases will come back,” she warned. “The only vaccine preventable disease that we’ve eradicated is smallpox.”

She added, “People are more afraid of vaccines than the diseases.” However, she continued, it’s because many of today’s parents don’t remember the deaths and chronic conditions that were commonplace half a century ago.

“That,” she pointed out, “is because vaccines have done their job.”



August 2008

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