http://neuro-www.mgh.harvard.edu/forum_2/ALSF/hepBvaccines.html
hep B vaccines
This response submitted by posted in other forum on 8/11/99.
Email Address:
This is the statement I sent to every member of the Government Reform
Committee who will oversee the hepatitis B vaccine hearings. You have
permission to use any part of it and my name as a District Health Services
Coordinator (Registered Professional Nurse) who is very concerned with what
I am witnessing in the children coming into our schools. This statement is
also supported by the Missouri Central District School Nurse Association. I
hope this may help in some small way. Thank you so very much for all you do.
All the nurses in my district will be praying for you on Tuesday. Thank you
for having the courage to fight for the health of our children.
Subject: Hepatitis B Vaccine: School Nurse Perspective
This is a school nursing perspective for the congressional hearings on May 18
regarding the safety of the hepatitis B vaccine that is being mandated for
newborns and now older children in America. Our Central District School
Nurse Association asks you to please consider the following information and
submit it into the congressional testimony. We continually see more and more
damaged children entering our schools, and are very concerned that a major
portion of that damage is due to the hepatitis B vaccine's assault on the
newborn neurological and immune system.
I am a registered professional nurse and the district health services
coordinator for a large school district. I am writing on behalf of all the
school nurses in our district. We have very grave concerns about the
hepatitis B vaccine. For the past three or four years our school districts
have noted a significant increase in the number of children entering school
with developmental disorders, learning disabilities, attention deficit
disorders and/or serious chronic illness such as diabetes, asthma and seizure
disorders. Each of the past four years has been worse than the year before.
There is only one common thread we can identify in all these children: they
are the children who received the first trial hepatitis B injections as
newborns in the early 1990s. As the hepatitis B compliance rate in newborns
has gone up in our community, so has the percentage of damaged children. This
is very alarming.
Because of having so many damaged children we have tried to find the long
term clinical trials that ruled this vaccine "safe and effective". We
discovered through an exhaustive Medline search that the FDA based its
decision to approve hepatitis B vaccine for administration in the first hours
of a newborn baby's life upon clinical trials and upon post-marketing
surveillance studies in which patients and their doctors were asked to report
any adverse effects they noticed within 4-5 days after each injection [4 days
for SmithKline and 5 days for Merck]. The problems being reported in
increasing numbers as occurring after hepatitis B vaccination appear to be
autoimmune and neurological in origin. Such problems take weeks to months to
produce noticeable symptoms, and cannot be spotted in a 4-5 day observation
period. These are the only clinical studies that have been done by Merck or
SmithKline. There is not one long-term study that we could find. The CDC and
FDA have no idea what the long term effects will be on the newly developing
neurological and immune systems of the infants who are injected with this
vaccine. They seem to only be concerned with denying the connection between
these damaged children and the hepatitis B shot they received within a few
hours of birth. The CDC even admits the lack of study and states they do not
even know how long the vaccine will be effective. We found this amazing since
the vaccine was developed for a population at risk for hepatitis B: IV drug
users, high risk medical professionals and those who are involved in high
risk sexual practices.
In 1950 (before mass immunizations began), the USA had the third lowest
infant mortality rate in the world. By 1986, the USA dropped to 17th place.
In 1995 the USA dropped to 23rd and now the USA has dropped to the appalling
position of 24th in the health of its children (but the USA is now first in
vaccine compliance through government mandates). Does this make you nervous
too?
The elementary grades are overwhelmed with children who have symptoms of
neurological and/or immune system damage: epilepsy, seizure disorders,
various kinds of palsies, autism, mental retardation, learning disabilities,
juvenile-onset diabetes, asthma, vision / hearing loss, and a multitude of
new conduct/behavior disorders. We have come to believe the hepatitis B
vaccine is an assault on a newborns developing neurological and immune
system. Vaccines are supposed to be making us healthier, however, in twenty
five years of nursing I have never seen so many damaged, sick kids. Something
very, very wrong is happening to our children. The census of ill children
seen in our health rooms each day has increased by 300% in only four years.
It had remained relatively constant in all the years before.
In our last regional school nurse meeting we discussed whether the
combination of so many viruses at one time (hepatitis B vaccine at the same
time of the DPT, OPV and MMR) is causing the infants immune system to be
overwhelmed and unable to mount a sufficient defense response. We are
advocating clinical studies to determine: Is the combination of all these
viruses at one time an assault on an infant's immune and neurological system
that increases the chances for adverse reaction AND what are the long-term
neurological and immune system responses to these vaccines. We are all
continuing to research this issue and will be happy to share the many
resources we have found with you. I hope you will do the same as you open up
this issue.
We (nurses, principals and teachers) have talked many times about the
possible cause(s) of the continuing increase in pervasive developmental
disorders (PDD), such as autism. From the literature we have found, we should
expect a rate for PDD of about 1 in 10,000. In our community the rate in
Kindergarten, 1st and 2nd grade is more like 1 in 150. The teaching staff is
overwhelmed.
As school nurses, we have had many parents calling and asking how they can
exempt their children from the hepatitis B vaccination (HPB). Many of them
have spent long hours in study and research perplexed over this issue. For
the past six months we have been studying documents, books and research
articles published by internationally respected doctors and scientists that
cause us grave concern. You must understand that we began this study to
reassure our parents and show them the truth about how safe vaccines are.
Unfortunately, our sincere, honest, dedicated study has caused a complete
reversal of our once strongly held beliefs. Instead of being able to reassure
the parents, we have found ourselves being drawn deeper and deeper into this
unbelievable controversy over vaccines that is raging among physicians,
scientists, researchers, parents, and the government. We pray you will have
the courage to shine the light on this controversy through these hepatitis B
hearings.
My daughter's own experience with the hepatitis B vaccine made me much more
open-minded to the information we have been receiving from parents, teachers
and other nurses in our community. I personally have had to research this on
my own to determine if I have been enforcing a policy that is actually
harming more children than it will ever help. I have spent countless hours
reading books, vaccine-hearing testimony, research papers, medical journal
articles and Internet web-sites from around the world. I did not come to my
decision easily or lightly, I assure you. Twenty-five years of total belief
in something does not shake that easily. I have repeated the well-rehearsed
refrain "Be Wise & Immunize" thousands of times during those years and
reassured countless parents that they were doing the right thing by
vaccinating their precious children . . . even the ones who came to me with
serious doubts and reservations. I will now have to live with that.
We are all now faced with a moral dilemma: will we protect the "sacred cow of
conventional vaccine philosophy" or will we stand up and speak out for the
"health and well being of innocent children"? We choose children. We
wonder, which will our government choose?
Because the hepatitis B vaccine was developed for those at risk of disease,
including IV drug users and sexually promiscuous individuals, efforts to
require administration of the vaccine to most, if not all of the U.S.
population is very controversial. The increasing number of adverse reaction
reports connected with this vaccine exacerbates the controversy. The
controversy stems to a great extent from our lack of understanding of the
mechanisms of the immune response to the hepatitis B surface antigen and lack
of long term follow-up of individuals who have received the vaccine. In a
January 27, 1999 press release, the National Vaccine Information Center
(NVIC) released figures which show that the number of hepatitis B
vaccine-associated serious adverse event and death reports in American
children under the age of 14 outnumber the reported cases of hepatitis B
disease.
During our research we discovered a copy of the grant proposal submitted
recently to the National Institute of Health by Dr. B. S. Dunbar, who has
worked in autoimmunity and vaccine development for over twenty years and was
honored two years ago by the National Institute of Health. Dr. Dunbar is
working with a team of veteran vaccine researchers from all over the world.
Their grant is requested for the purpose of studying the hypothesis that:
hepatitis B recombinant vaccine does cause adverse autoimmune reactions in
genetically susceptible individuals. This study will also provide new
insights into the predictability of determining adverse side effects of the
hepatitis B vaccine in individuals at risk as related to their
histocompatability subtypes. Their study of auto-immune diseases/symptoms
caused by the hepatitis B vaccine include: lupus erythematosus, rheumatoid
arthritis, vascular disorders, Guillain Barre syndrome, demyelinating
disorders such as optic neuritis (blindness), Bell's palsy, demyelinating
neuropathy (multiple developmental disorders), multiple sclerosis, diabetes
mellitus and chronic fatigue syndrome to mention the most common.
This group of internationally respected vaccine researchers headed up by Dr.
Dunbar also point out that, "The studies (for the approval of HPB) were not
designed to assess serious, rare adverse events; the total number of
recipients were too small; and the follow-up was too short to detect rare or
delayed, serious, adverse reactions." Finally they point out that "overall
the number of examples of adverse neurologic outcomes following receipt of
hepatitis B vaccine are of concern, particularly those resulting in
demyelinating neurologic disease."
They continue, "In view of these observations. . . it is medically crucial to
evaluate the nature of the autoimmune reactions (i.e. risks) associated with
the hepatitis B vaccine and to determine if individuals who will have these
adverse reactions can be identified in advance of receiving the vaccine".
There are critical questions that must be addressed to establish the
risk/benefit of the current hepatitis B vaccines in the United States. These
questions are particularly important in view of recent mandates to vaccinate
all children including newborn infants."
You may read this grant proposal at
http://webpages.netlink.co.nz/~ias/dunbar.htm
Many groups have called for a moratorium on hepatitis B vaccination until
some of these questions can be answered adequately. The NVIC reported
"Newborn babies are dying shortly after their shots and their deaths are
being written off as sudden infant death syndrome. Parents should have the
right to give their informed consent to vaccination and Congress should give
emergency, priority funding to independent scientists, who can take an
unbiased look at this vaccine, instead of leaving the search for truth in the
hands of government officials who have already decided to force every child
to get the vaccine". We agree completely. The NVIC can be contacted at
http://www.909shot.com for further information.
In Dr. Coulter's book, "Vaccination, Social Violence, and Criminality" the
thesis is developed that the "sociopathic personality" which has emerged on a
mass scale in recent decades; and which is responsible for a disproportionate
amount of crime and violence;is causally linked to the childhood vaccination
program. Vaccination frequently causes encephalitis and neuropathy that in
turn leads to these post-encephalitic states and conditions. In his book, Dr.
Coulter presents a time line of increase in developmental disability related
to vaccine introduction that is indeed frightening. Dr. Coulter believes
about 20% of our children are suffering from this neurological vaccine
damage. We believe some of these vaccine experts should be on the
President's Youth Violence task force.
Our own school district's confidential health statistics show at least 20% of
our children (K-3) have significant neurological damage and/or chronic
illness. The last three years have shown an acceleration in the numbers of
children who are entering our schools with these "developmental disorders".
(Could these be the same infants who received the first trial doses of
hepatitis B as only a few hour-old newborns?) As school nurses, working
with these damaged children on a daily basis, we pray this is not true. If
it is, the ramification to this generation of children is unthinkable!
Should we not pause, call for a moratorium on these poorly tested, rapidly
approved vaccines, and allow independent American physicians and researchers
to study them before blindly injecting an experimental vaccine into an entire
generation? (We have found the only ones declaring the vaccine's safety are
the ones who are making millions of dollars from its sales, whose employment
depends on it or the ones being funded by the drug companies vast number of
grants and fundings. The independent researchers seem to be coming up with
an entirely different report.) Vaccine producers have nothing to lose since
our U.S. Congress has made them immune from responsibility or liability for
injuries caused from their vaccines. The push is on for them to create more
and more vaccines. There are huge amounts of money being made by these people
who no longer worry about the consequences of their inadequate clinical
trials. The United States government has had to pay out nearly a billion
dollars in damages to families who can prove their children have been damaged
or killed by vaccines, and there are thousands more cases pending. I just
read that there are so many vaccine damage claims that Secretary Shalala
changed the rules to try to limit adverse reaction claims. Could this be
true? If so, shame on our government.
We believe, as medical professionals, that we are doing a great disservice to
our country by forcing government mandated vaccines on all children. Please
research this and we pray you have the courage to speak out and tell the
nation what you find.
Sincerely,
Patti White, RN
School Health Services Coordinator
Warrensburg R-VI School District
Warrensburg Mo 64093 and
Missouri Central District School Nurse Association
[email hidden]
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Karin Schumacher
Vaccine Information & Awareness (VIA)
12799 La Tortola
San Diego, CA 92129
619-484-3197 (phone/voicemail)
619-484-1187 (fax)
[email hidden] (email)
http://www.909shot.com (NVIC website)
http://www.access1.net/via (VIA website)
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We Must Have The Freedom To Choose & Respect Everyone's Choice