Tag: sudden death

Does the CDC Determine Medical Exemptions for Vaccines?

California’s new vaccine law has some folks arguing about medical exemptions again.

Yes, the CDC does not determine medical exemptions for vaccines. That's not news.
Yes, the CDC does not determine medical exemptions for vaccines. That’s not news.

Some want very broad guidelines and are confused about how doctors determine who should get a medical exemption.

Does the CDC Determine Medical Exemptions for Vaccines?

Bob Sears even thinks he has a bombshell revelation that clears everything up.

An email from the CDC!

You can be sure that the "medical provider's prerogative" does not include any reason they think up, even those that have no evidence to back them up.
You can be sure that the “medical provider’s prerogative” does not include any reason they think up, even those that have no evidence to back them up.

The thing is, no one has ever said that ACIP contraindications and precautions to vaccination are the one and only factor that should determine whether or not a child should get a medical exemption.

“If a child has a medical exemption to immunization, a physician licensed to practice medicine in New York State must certify that the immunization is detrimental to the child’s health. The medical exemption should specify which immunization is detrimental to the child’s health, provide information as to why the immunization is contraindicated based on current accepted medical practice, and specify the length of time the immunization is medically contraindicated, if known.”

Dear Colleague letter regarding guidelines for use of immunization exemptions

So no one should really be surprised by an email that says the CDC does not determine medical exemptions.

What Qualifies as a Vaccine Medical Exemption?

What are the other big factors, in addition to ACIP contraindications and precautions?

“A medical exemption is allowed when a child has a medical condition that prevents them from receiving a vaccine.”

What is an Exemption and What Does it Mean?

Medical exemptions for vaccines should be based on AAP and ACIP guidelines, current accepted medical practice, and evidence based medicine.

“Medical exemptions are intended to prevent adverse events in children who are at increased risk of adverse events because of underlying conditions. Many of these underlying conditions also place children at increased risk of complications from infectious diseases. Children with valid medical exemptions need to be protected from exposure to vaccine-preventable diseases by insuring high coverage rates among the rest of the population. Granting medical exemptions for invalid medical contraindications may promote unfounded vaccine safety concerns. Although states may wish to allow parents who make decisions based on poor science or perceptions to withhold vaccines from their children, these exemptions should be distinguished from valid medical exemptions.”

Salmon et al on Keeping the M in Medical Exemptions: Protecting Our Most Vulnerable Children

For example, in addition to kids who may have had a severe allergic reaction to a vaccine, there are often children with immune system problems or who have a moderate or severe illness who can’t get one or more vaccines, at least temporarily.

These are among the common conditions that the AAP says should NOT delay vaccination and which are often mistakenly thought to qualify someone for a medical exemption.
These are among the common conditions that the AAP says should NOT delay vaccination and which are often mistakenly thought to qualify someone for a medical exemption.

Medical exemptions for vaccines should not be based on anecdotes or simply because a vaccine-friendly doctor has scared a parent away from vaccinating and protecting their kids.

There are very few family history issues that would make a child have to skip or delay getting a vaccine.
There are very few family history issues that would make a child have to skip or delay getting a vaccine.

They should rarely be done based on family history of reactions or what some people think are vaccine reactions.

This is what a fake medical exemption will get you - a life-threatening disease.
The child’s medical exemption was for “cytotoxic allergies secondary to immunization,” without any evidence that it was necessary. In addition to a fake medical exemption, he got tetanus.

In general, they should rarely be given, as the AAP states in their policy statement, Medical Versus Nonmedical Immunization Exemptions for Child Care and School Attendance, “only a very small proportion of children have medical conditions prohibiting specific immunizations…”

That’s why rates of medical exemptions should be low.

“Between the 2009-2010 and 2016-2017 school years, the national median prevalence of medical exemptions has remained constant, between 0.2% to 0.3%, with state-level ranges showing little heterogeneity over time, never exceeding the range of 0.1% to 1.6% over this period.”

Bednarczyk et al on Current landscape of nonmedical vaccination exemptions in the United States: impact of policy changes

And why you shouldn’t have schools with high rates of medical exemptions or doctors writing a lot of medical exemptions.

More on Vaccine Medical Exemption Guidelines

Why Would Vaccines Be Designed to Kill People?

If you are playing devil’s advocate with anti-vaccine folks, trying to figure out how they think, it isn’t a terrible question.

Remember, many anti-vaccine folks think that vaccines never work and that they always cause injuries – to everyone that gets them.

Why Would Vaccines Be Designed to Kill People?

We can start with Larry Cook‘s “answer,” which was in the form of another question:

“Why do doctors and medical examiners deny vaccine injury and death?”

Larry Cook

Wait, do doctors and medical examiners deny vaccine injury and death?

Uh, no they don’t.

They are often skeptical that each and everything that happens after someone gets a vaccine, even if it is months or years later, is a vaccine injury though. But we do know that although rare, vaccine injuries are real and can sometimes be life-threatening.

But why would vaccines actually be designed to kill people?

Makes sense, right?

  1. Make vaccines that kill people.
  2. ?
  3. Profit.

Actually, it doesn’t make any sense, does it?

Vaccine-preventable diseases kill people. In the pre-vaccine era, they killed a lot more people.

If you want to control the population or make life-long customers, why not just let them get smallpox, measles, chicken pox, hepatitis B, and HPV?

“Results revealed a significant negative relationship between anti-vaccine conspiracy beliefs and vaccination intentions. This effect was mediated by the perceived dangers of vaccines, and feelings of powerlessness, disillusionment and mistrust in authorities.”

Jolley et al on The Effects of Anti-Vaccine Conspiracy Theories on Vaccination Intentions

And if you wanted to do that, you could just push a lot of conspiracy theories about vaccines to scare folks away from getting vaccinated…

So, could bacteria and viruses be controlling the minds of these disease-friendly, influential anti-vaccine folks, helping to make sure people are intentionally unvaccinated, so that they can spread among us more easily?

Since I’m too skeptical to go down that rabbit hole, it is probably a safer bet to think that most are just doing it to sell supplements in their stores, get commissions from pushing online seminars, and ads from folks visiting their sites.

“Conspiracy beliefs are therefore associated with common motivations that drive intergroup conflict. Two social motivations in particular are relevant for conspiracy thinking. The first motivation is to uphold a strong ingroup identity, which increases perceivers’ sense‐making motivation when they believe their group is under threat by outside forces. That is, people worry about possible conspiracies only when they feel strongly connected with, and hence care about, the prospective victims of these conspiracies. The second social motivation is to protect against a coalition or outgroup suspected to be hostile”

van Prooijen et al on Belief in conspiracy theories: Basic principles of an emerging research domain

Will any of this help anti-vaccine folks see that these anti-vaccine conspiracy theories aren’t true?

Unfortunately, it probably won’t.

Like vaccine-injury stories, conspiracy theories are one of the things that hold up, and hold together, the modern anti-vaccine movement.

More on Why Would Vaccines Be Designed to Kill People?

The Latest Anti-Vaccine Bombshell on Infanrix Hexa is Just Another Dud

There are a lot of things about the latest anti-vaccine bombshell that won’t surprise you…

For one thing, the “bombshell” isn’t recent. Anti-vaccine folks are just re-posting it now because a new hexavalent vaccine just got FDA approval.

The Latest Anti-Vaccine Bombshell on Infanrix Hexa is Just Another Dud

What about the 1,271 page confidential GSK document that was leaked to the press?

It was actually a document that was submitted as part of an Italian court case.

What about the idea of “missing deaths” and under-reporting of vaccine deaths?

“Before specifically addressing your analysis, it’s important to note that the issue of whether there is an increased risk of Sudden Infant Death following vaccination generally and following vaccination with DTP-containing vaccines more specifically is one that has been considered and thoroughly evaluated not only by GSK but also by a number of world-renowned regulatory agencies and public health authorities, including the European Medicines Agency, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization. The clear consensus amongst such agencies and authorities is that one cannot reasonably conclude, based on available data and information, that there is a causal relationship between vaccination generally or vaccination with Infanrix hexa and Sudden Infant Death.”

Dr. Norman Begg, Chief Medical Officer, GSK Vaccines on Infanrix hexa and sudden death: a review of the periodic safety update reports submitted to the European Medicines Agency

It’s no bombshell that this is all propaganda and these issues have been thoroughly investigated. Or that someone got a “study” that manipulated and misinterpreted data published in a predatory journal.

The idea that the hexavalent vaccines could be causing unexplained cases of sudden infant death shortly after vaccination began after a few case reports from Germany in 2003. Further studies, including a large study in Italy, found no risk.

What about the idea of “missing deaths” in safety reports from the manufacturer?

If there are so many "missing deaths," then why is the cumulative number of deaths higher in the latest report?
If there are so many “missing deaths,” then why is the cumulative number of deaths higher in the latest report?

Of course, there are no missing deaths.

I found the “missing deaths” that Puliyel talks about in his Infanrix hexa paper – in the GSK report he used to write his “study.”

The GSK report explains that twelve deaths were excluded from analysis, apparently eight from the first year (101 cumulative) and three from the second year (five cumulative), which is why the cumulative deaths dropped from eight to five.

Why?

“A cumulative review of Sudden Death (SD) since launch has been performed. Follow-up information received for older cases was taken into account. Design of the below observed to expected analysis was revisited in view of comments EMA expressed in the assessment report of PSUR 15-16 (dated 26 April 2012).”

GlaxoSmithKline Biological clinical safety and pharmacovigilance’s confidential report to the EMA: PSUR 19, page 440

Keep in mind that these are cumulative deaths since they began using the vaccine in 2000, and which are below the expected background rates of SIDS.

Vaccines are safe.

Hexavalent vaccines are safe.

Do your research before buying into the next anti-vaccine bombshell that try to throw at you to scare you away from vaccinating and protecting your kids.

More on the Latest Anti-Vaccine Bombshell

The Moral Outrage of the Anti-Vaccine Movement

It doesn’t take much to outrage folks these days.

It seems like there is always someone, someplace that is outraged about something.

Ironically, the latest faux outrage comes from anti-vaccine folks.

The Moral Outrage of the Anti-Vaccine Movement

What do anti-vaccine folks have to be outraged about, besides the idea that they think we are forcing them to vaccinate and protect their kids against life-threatening vaccine-preventable diseases?

“Report this Doctor – Laughing At Injured is not acceptable”

Apparently, they think that a doctor was making fun of autistic kids during a flu shot clinic at a hospital:

T: So after this shot, am I going to be good at math, Z?

Z: You’re going to be really good, because you’re going to be fully autistic, instead of just partially….

Z: You know Tom, I’m wondering if we’ve just been hit with placebo, because I didn’t feel the needle, I didn’t feel the autism coming on. None of it.

This was similar to an unscripted routine Zdogg did last year:

Z: Thomas is getting autistic as we speak, because he is full of mercury right now.

T: I can do math now. It’s awesome.

Z: That’s right. He’s gonna go gamble on the strip and clean house.

In the videos, they also talk a lot about how the flu shot is a scam by the government to control our thoughts…

Are they making fun of autistic kids or adults?

“It was a dumb joke, probably in poor taste, but it didn’t occur to me at the time because it was a live show and we were trying to be funny.”

ZDogg

It wasn’t funny and I’m glad he took down the video, even if it was under pressure from hospital administration and not because he really wanted to.

Joking about vaccines causing autism is offensive and no one should be doing it, even if it is call out and making fun of the folks in the anti-vaccine movement who try and associate vaccines with autism and do actually hurt autistic families.

But did he mock the father of a child who died of SUDC, within a day of getting vaccinated? A father who was carrying a copy of JB Handley’s autism book, who claims that “there is no money in dead babies,” and who is banging on the studio window during his interview with Paul Offit?

No.

He is simply pointing out, and seemed a little excited, that he had anti-vaccine protesters at his studio for the first time.

At a screening for Vaxxed, Paul Thomas, MD, joked that kids with autism were brain damaged. And everyone laughed.
At a screening for Vaxxed, Paul Thomas, MD, joked that kids with autism were brain damaged. And everyone laughed.

But if anti-vaccine folks really feel outrage over this, why is it so selective?

Where is the outrage when the comments don’t come from someone who supports vaccines?

“I want to thank the warrior moms and dads. Those of you who have an autistic child, or a child who is otherwise damaged, you know the damage isn’t always clear-cut autism. Some times it is just some variation – your kids just not quite right.

That’s why I didn’t stand and say that I have an autistic child, because my kids, I tease them and say that they are brain damaged. Uh. Sorry son.”

Paul Thomas

I don’t remember any outrage over Paul Thomas’ comments or when Del Bigtree said “Eve is autistic, that’s right, otherwise, why would she have eaten the apple,” and made this statement on his show:

“When I go visit my grandma, why don’t I see any autistic people flapping in the corner of the room.”

Apparently, the idea of autistic adults doesn’t fit into their narrative that vaccines are associated with autism.

But that isn’t even the worse thing Del has been recorded as saying…

“But I would think when you have a child with autism, you know, or on the spectrum, you have no reference point. You have no…

I don’t want this to sound wrong, but it’s a little bit more like having a dog or a Doberman or something that you don’t understand how it thinks, you don’t know. I mean, I mean a better figure than animal reference except… you don’t have their brain.

Or you hear about stories of people that bring home of exotic you know of chimpanzee or something where they can’t, and this is not sounding right.”

At least he didn’t want it to sound wrong…

“They get the shot. That night they have a fever of 103. They go to sleep, and three months later their brain is gone. This is a holocaust, what this is doing to our country.”

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr

The anti-vaccine world is full of talk of autistic kids being broken and damaged, they push dangerous and expensive “cures” on parents, and spread propaganda to scare parents away from vaccinating and protecting their kids.

Dr. Jerry is a pediatrician who practices Translational Medicine and wrote the forward to Jenny McCarthy's autism book.
Dr. Jerry is a pediatrician who practices Translational Medicine and wrote the forward to Jenny McCarthy’s autism book.

And they hijack every disease, story, and tragedy to make folks think that everything is a vaccine injury.

As a physician, I assure you this story isn’t believable at any level. In my opinion, the “health officials” are conjuring meningitis fairy tales about an “unvaccinated” boogeyman to cover for the much more probable cause of this child’s death: VACCINES.

The much more likely cause is right in front of us: “The child had just received his 4-month-old vaccinations two days beforehand.”

Jim Meehan

Jim Meehan, for example, is so upset that he thinks Zdogg should lose his medical license, but he had no problem harassing the family of an infant who had just died of meningitis, claiming it was a cover up for a vaccine injury.

This is the modern anti-vaccine movement.
This is the modern anti-vaccine movement.

Have I mentioned that some of them lie about religious and medical exemptions to avoid getting their kids vaccinated and protected? And others sell those vaccine exemptions?

“A Clallam County woman in her 20s died this year from an undetected measles infection discovered only after an autopsy, state health officials said Thursday. The case is the first confirmed measles death in the U.S. in 12 years.

The woman was likely exposed to the highly contagious infection at a local medical center during a recent outbreak in Clallam County. She was at the site at the same time as someone who later developed a rash and was determined to be contagious for measles.”

Undetected measles led to death of Clallam County woman in her 20s

Where is the outrage when someone dies from a disease that could have easily been prevented by a safe and effective vaccine?

Those of us who understand the hypocrisy of the anti-vaccine movement know exactly where it is.

More on The Moral Outrage of the Anti-Vaccine Movement