BABIES AND VACCINES

BABIES + VACCINES

There is a great debate about vaccinating babies and children. This is a section all about this subject looking into the pros and cons of both conventional treatment and natural alternatives. We look at each baby vaccine one by one offered by the National Health service, summarising the disease, the type of treatments available and the pros and cons of each one.

picture of baby sitting in laundery basket
DTaP/IPV/Hib This is offered to babies at 2 months and covers Diptheria, tetanus, pertussis (whooping cough), polio,and Haemophilus influenza type b.

Tetanus or lockjaw, is caused by bacteria which enters via skin wound and is generally found in the soil, manure and in animal and human digestive sysytems. Symptoms: headache, irritability, fever, chills and muscular stiffness of neck and jaw. In later stages the body becomes rigid and the patient often finds it difficult to open the jaw.
Diptheria is a contagious disease caused by infection with Corynebacterium diphteriae. Symptoms; sore throat, fever, malaise, hoarseness, breathing and swallowing difficulties.In severe cases diptheria can cause death by suffocation, heart failure, muscle weakness and vision problems.
Pertussis is caused by infection with Bordetella Pertussis and generally lasts about 6 weeks. Symptoms: an uncontrollable, and violent cough (often accompanied by a "whooping" sound)with breathing difficulties, possibly vomitting and loos of consciousness, a nasal discharge and diarrhea. In extreme cases it can cause convulsions, brain damage and mental retardation.
Polio is caused by the poliovirus which can enter the central nervous system and lead to muscle weakness, flaccid paralysis and eventually death.
The Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) bacterium causes around 386,000 deaths a year according to the World Health Organisation either directly through meningitis or indirectly by causing pneumonia. It also causes mental retardation and deafness. Symptoms: a soft spot on the baby's head, a high pitched crying sound, and extreme tiredness, breathing problems, coughing, chest pain, painful/inflamed joints and possibly a painful inflammatory skin condition.

MMR
This is a vaccine against measles, mumps and rubella.
Measles or rubeola
is highly contagious and spread by coughing and sneezing. Life long immunity follows after recovery from the disease itself, and this is passed on to babies who get protection in the first year of life; but this is not the case for vaccinated mothers and babies are therefore at risk. Measles sufferers generally recover without any complications; but in severe cases can cause inner ear infections, bronchitis,, pneumonia, hepatitis, convulsions deafness, brain damage and even death. Symptoms: light cough, low fever, runny eyes and nose. These symptoms tend to worsen before the rash appears 4 or 5 days later often behind the ears , then over the neck, shpulders and arms, before spreading down to the feet.
Mumps
A viral infection again spread through coughing and sneezing, it generally affects teenagers and adults more severely, but recovery in the vast majority of cases occurs within about a week. There can be rare complications such as meningitis, brain damage and death. Symptoms; fever, headache, inflammation of the salivary glands which can make eating painful.
Rubella (German Measles)
People usually recover completely from Rubella within a few days, but it can produce complications for teenagers and adults( rare brain damage, and chronic arthritis). The most serious concern is for expectant mothers in the first 3 months of pregancy as there is a 20-25% chance of giving birth to a deformed child or miscarrying. Symptoms: first a low grade fever, swelling around the neck, coughing and runny nose. Later a pink rash appears over the face and shoulders, chest and possibly the legs, but this disappears within 3 or 4 days.

Pneumococcal Vaccination
This is a vaccination to immunize against the various strains of pneumococcus bacterium which can cause pneumonia, septicaemia and meningitis. Babies are given what is known as the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV).

MenC Vaccine
This is the meningococcal conjugate vaccine which protects against meningococcal group C bacteria which can cause septicaemia and meningitis. Symptoms: high fever, severe headache, neck stiffness, nausea, vomitting, unconsciousness, irritability, photophobia, and convulsions.

Arguments for the Vaccine: The Hib vaccine has been in existence since 1992, and it is estimated that over a period of 16 years it reduced the number of cases by over 11,000 and deaths by over 400. The National Network for Immunisation Information states that approximately 5% of people who become infected with Diptheria consequently die; it goes on to say that there were 100,000-200,000 cases reported annually during the 1920s befofre immunization and presently that has reduced down to a single annual case. Pertussis can cause serious health problems: 1 in 5 get a lung infection, 1 in 100 have convulsions, 1 in 300 develop brain disease and 1 in 100 die ( Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). According to the Health Protection Agency, the incidence of Tetanus is much smaller in countries where vaccine coverage is greater.The National Health website states that since 1961 babies and youger children have been immunized, there have only been 198 reported cases and 65% of those were over 65 (this is in the sector where people were not immunized in childhood). The British Polio Fellowship states that there are no longer any new cases of polio reported in the UK thanks to the immunisation programme.
There has been concern about the connection between vaccines and the increased occurrence of autism; a study reported in Pediatrics vol. 126, no.4, October 2010 concluded that prenatal and infant exposure to Thimerosal from vaccines and immunoglobulins does not increase the risk of autism.
According to the National Health website some of the rare side effects of vaccination are an allergic reaction (a rash and/or itching); there is a one in a million more severe reaction (anaphylactic shock),which can cause difficulties in breathing and possibly collapse.
The same website also suggests that it is a myth that homeopathy can be used instead of a vaccination, and that there is no evidence to support it.
The statistics show that cases of measles, Rubella and mumps have all but disappeared over the last 30 years or so, and this can be in large part attributed to the uptake of the vaccine.
There was a study published in May 2003 about the efficacy of the PCV:"Decline in invasive pneumococcal disease after the introduction of protein-polysaccharide conjugate vaccine". The New England journal of medicine 348 (18): 1737–46.
The MenC vaccination has been very successful in reducing the incidence of meningitis type C since 1999; the occurence is now down to around 20 per year (a 99% reduction). The safety record for this vaccine has been very good: one case of serious allergic reaction per half million and no fatalities.

The Anti-Vaccine case: There is some debate about whether the vaccination programmes are responsible for decreases in infection rates;a report in the Pediatrics Journal in 2000 indicated that many of the outbreaks in U.S.A. of diseases such as polio, tetanus, whooping cough and measles were declining before World War 2 and the introduction of immunization .This was put down to improved living conditions.
A study in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology (April 2005) concluded that immunized children had the highest rates of allergies, asthma, eczema and hay fever.
An article by michael MacDonald and John Paul of the National Health and Environmental Effects Research Labiratory( January 20100) stated that there was a rapid increase in the prevalence of autism in people born after 1987.This corresponds with increases in levels of immunization, and this is now being seriously investigated by the Institute of Medicine with the help of the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.
The efficacy of vaccines has been called into question on a number of occasions. Eg. in a study by G. Stewart "Vaccination against Whooping Cough: Efficacy v Risks,"Lancet 1977, p. 234 when over half a fully vaccinated group contracted the disease. In 1989 there was a polio outbreak 6 months after a 100% vaccination programme.
Data from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Authority (MHRA)indicates that 2,100 serious adverse reactions to vaccines have occured since 2003, and 40 children are suspected to have died . The MHRA states that these figures have to be put into context, in the sense that this is a low rate of incidence for 90 million plus injections.
Despite the ongoing debate about the connection between vaccines and autism, the American Federal Vaccine Court has compensated over 1,300 parents for vaccine related brain damage.
There are serious concerns about the MMR vaccine: 1981 the British National Childhood Encephalopathy Study determined that there was a connection between measles vaccination and the onset of serious neurological disorders; in the early 1990s the Institute of Medicine found that Rubella vaccine could cause chronic arthritis, the measles vaccine anaphylaxis and death, and the MMR vaccine can lead to thrombocytopoenia(1 in 30-40,000 vaccines) and death.
A large number of vaccine failures with MMR were found in measles outbreaks in USA in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
There is some concern over the effects of the PCV: "Childhood Pneumococcal Disease - information on the disease and the Prevnar vaccine, from the Victoria State (Australia) government." This showed that a number of children carried an increased rate of serotype 19A bacterium which is more virulant and more difficult to treat.

Natural Alternatives
There has been very little research about natural therapies as alternatives to vaccination, but there is one outstanding study by the Finlay Institute in Cuba (a World Health Organization recognised facility) outlining the results of a homeopathic immunization programme against Leptospirosis in Cuba in 2007 and 2008. This disease caused thousands of deaths and illnesses annually, and in 2007 due to the early onset of the disease that year, the Cuban Ministry of Public Health used a homeopathically produced vaccine product made from 4 strains of Leptospirosis. 2.1 million people received the homeopathic treatment, 11 million had no treatment and 15,000 had the orthodox vaccine. It was found that the incidence of the disease went down in the areas where the homeopathic treatment was used by 84%, but actually increased by 21% in the other area. The full article can be read at: http://www.nationalcenterforhomeopathy.org/content/landmark-
research-for-homeopathy
An Australian homeopath, Dr Isaac Golden, used homeopathic immunization on 2342 children between 1988 and 2003. He found that the homeopathic treatment had a 90.4% rate of effectivity.
A Brazilian study in 1974 observing over 18,000 children treatment with homeopathic immunization products, showed that the homeopathic treatment was 95% effective in protecting against meningococcal infection.

BACK TO NATURAL HEALTH 4 BABY