Have you heard that the MMR package insert “contains 42 paragraphs of warning and adverse reactions?”
And some of those warnings include “seizures, encephalitis, pneumonia, deafness, death and MEASLES?”
Measles? From the measles vaccine?
Myths About Warnings and Adverse Reactions in the MMR Package Inserts
Is that really in the MMR package insert?
Package inserts aren’t so scary once you learn what’s really in them.
Let’s see, 42 paragraphs of warning and adverse reactions???
Nope.
Anti-vaccine propaganda is not informed consent.
The Warning Section, which lists all adverse reactions and safety hazards that may occur after getting a vaccine and what you should do if they occur, actually only contains five paragraphs!
There are 23 more paragraphs in the Adverse Reactions section, but as most folks understand, this section includes clinical trials experience, postmarketing experience, and voluntary reports, so it is not always possible to establish a causal relationship to vaccination for the adverse effects listed here.
What does the MMR package insert say about seizures, encephalitis, hearing loss, and death?
“Measles is also known as rubeola. It is a serious illness. Measles virus can be passed to others if you have it. Measles can give you a high fever, cough, and a rash. The illness can last for 1 to 2 weeks. In rare cases, it can also cause an infection of the brain. This could lead to seizures, hearing loss, mental retardation, and even death.
Mumps can also be passed to others. This virus can cause fever and headache. It also makes the glands under your jaw swell and be painful. The illness often lasts for several days. Sometimes, mumps can make the testicles swell and be painful. In some cases, it can cause meningitis, which is a mild swelling of the coverings of the brain and spinal cord.
Rubella is also known as German measles. It is often a mild illness. Rubella virus can cause a mild fever swollen glands in the neck, pain and swelling in the joints, and a rash that lasts for a short time. It can be very dangerous if a pregnant woman catches it. Women who catch German measles when they are pregnant can have babies who are stillborn. Also, the babies may be blind or deaf, or have heart disease or mental retardation.”
So the package insert is telling folks to get vaccinated and protected to avoid seizures, encephalitis, and death. Why don’t anti-vaccine folks ever mention that part of the package insert?
Many people remember that two young children died in Samoa in early July, shortly after getting an MMR vaccine.
Two toddlers died after being vaccinated at Safotu Hospital in Samoa.
Both incidents happened on the same day in the same hospital on the island of Savai’i.
“Until the investigations have been completed and reported on we cannot say what did happen.
However, given the batch of vaccine involved had been in use in that country since August last year, and given the same batch of vaccine has been used in South American countries and the Caribbean island nations without incident, it seems unlikely that there was anything wrong with the vaccine.
The reports from the parents of the children affected on Friday indicate the reactions occurred within minutes after vaccination. This would preclude a response to the vaccine viruses as this takes at least a week. While anaphylaxis occurs within minutes and can be fatal when not treated the odds of seeing this twice in a day at the same place, given a chance of 1 in a million doses, is literally astronomical.”
Dr. Helen Petousis Harrison on What happened in Samoa?
And while many people have speculated on what had happened, we haven’t heard anything since then.
Until now, when the Attorney General Lemalu Herman Retzlaff issued a press statement:
It can be confirmed that one of the nurses involved with the vaccination injections of the two babies who passed away 6th July 2018, was charged by police on Saturday 4th August 2018. She is set to appear in Court 14th August 2018, where the charges will be confirmed publicly.
According to AG Lemalu, “the file was referred to this office for advice last week, after swift and hard-working investigations by the CID section of the Ministry of Police both in Apia and Savaii, which is to be commended.”
“And the decision to charge was thereafter supported by advice; and it is also confirmed by Police, that investigations are still active and on-going.”
Unfortunately, the latest update from Samoa still leaves a lot of unanswered questions.
What is the nurse being charged with?
What have the autopsy reports from the two infants revealed?
Apparently, the investigation into the deaths of the two toddlers has been adjourned until September 12, as they are still waiting on the the post mortem reports from the pathologist in Australia.
So, we still don’t know what happened. Were the vaccines contaminated somehow? Was an error made?
“This particular vaccine batch lot arrived to Samoa in August 2017 and has been in use since then. The same vaccine batch lot used in Samoa is also in use in a number of South American and Caribbean countries (Belize, Ecuador, St. Vincent, Trinidad Tobago, Chile, Aruba, Dutch Antilles, St. Kitts & Nevis and Cuba) with no reports of adverse events from those countries.”
For them, it is an easy choice. They know that vaccines work, that vaccines are safe, and that vaccines are necessary.
Making the Right Choice About Vaccines
Some folks aren’t so sure though. They may either be against vaccines or might still be on the fence, not knowing for sure what to do.
“When my third child was born, I had more questions than answers and a huge reluctance to choose immunizations without certainty that the benefits outweigh the risks.”
Suzanne Walther on A Parent’s Decision on Immunization: Making the Right Choice
Mark Zuckerberg posted a photo when he took his daughter to their pediatrician for her vaccines.
Parents can be confident that all of the evidence points to the facts that:
Vaccines are effective at preventing disease. Vaccines work.
After they are approved, there are ongoing clinical trials and safety systems in place to rule out the possibility that vaccines could cause diseases later in life.
With all of the anti-vaccine information that is regularly posted on Facebook and anti-vaccine books listed on Amazon, it is no surprise that some parents would be scared though.
“I have discovered along the way that it is easy for parents to be misinformed. It is a real challenge to be well informed.”
Suzanne Walther on A Parent’s Decision on Immunization: Making the Right Choice
Vaccines work to prevent at least 2 to 3 million deaths each year worldwide.
Tragically, either because of errors or contamination, vaccines can sometimes actually cause people to get sick.
This can happen when health workers:
use a reconstituted vaccine after six hours – live vaccines can quickly become contaminated if they are kept and used for too long a time
mixup diluents – in addition to using the wrong diluent vaccination tragedies can occur when a dangerous medication is used instead of a vaccine’s standard diluent
improperly handle vaccines – breaking the cold chain
With billions of doses of vaccines being given each year, it is likely not surprising that we see some problems. But when many of those vaccines are being given to kids, even one mishap, especially if it leads to life-threatening complications, is too many.
That’s why many safe guards have been put in place in the manufacturer and distribution of modern vaccines, so that we don’t see these types of vaccine tragedies:
the Cutter Incident, when, in 1955, at least 56 people developed polio and 5 children died after being vaccinated with inactivated polio vaccine that was poorly manufactured by Cutter Laboratories and still contained live polio virus
hepatitis-contaminated yellow fever vaccines – some lots of yellow fever vaccines used in the military in 1942 were unintentionally contaminated with the hepatitis B virus
the Lubeck Disaster – 75 children died and others got tuberculosis in 1929 Germany after there was a mixup between the BCG vaccine and the strain of Mycobacterium tuberculosis that causes tuberculosis. The BCG vaccine was supposed to be made with a weakened strain of Mycobacterium bovis bacteria instead.
the Bundaberg incident – 12 children died in Australia in 1928 after being given contaminated diphtheria vaccine from a multidose vial without preservative
tetanus contaminated smallpox vaccine in the 1890s and early 20th century
Although vaccines are much safer now, some rare incidents still occur.
Fifteen infants died and 75 children got sick in Syria in 2014 after they received a neuromuscular blocking agent, atracurium, instead of the measles vaccine they were supposed to get. How? The measles vaccine that was being used is mixed with a diluent, but instead of using the proper diluent, the health worker unintentionally used a bottle of atracurium instead.
In 2015, at least two kids died and 29 got sick in Chiapas, Mexico, among 52 children who were vaccinated. The children were reportedly given a BCG vaccine, the rotavirus vaccine, and/or a hepatitis B vaccine that day. However, the only vaccine that all of the sick children received in common was the hepatitis B vaccine. Since 130,000 doses from the same batch of vaccines had been given in the area, it was not thought to be a manufacturing problem or widespread issue. It was instead bacterial contamination of hepatitis B vaccine vials at that one clinic.
Fifteen children died in 2017 in a village in South Sudan after a poorly trained team that wasn’t adhering to WHO immunization safety standards used the same syringe to reconstitute measles vaccines over a four day period. They also didn’t keep the vaccine vials refrigerated.
“A single reconstitution syringe was used for multiple vaccine vials for the entire four days of the campaign instead of being discarded after single use. The reuse of the reconstitution syringe causes it to become contaminated which in turn contaminates the measles vaccine vials and infects the vaccinated children.”
Statement regarding findings of joint investigation of 15 deaths of children in Nachodokopele village, Kapoeta East County in South Sudan
As you can imagine, the conditions that led to these tragedies aren’t present when most kids get vaccinated.
Even in developing countries, most children get vaccinated by people adhering to WHO immunization safety standards. Why did they happened then? Both Syria and South Sudan have been rocked by war for years, leading to a breakdown in the ability to provide routine health care, even as basic as getting kids vaccinated. And Comunidad La Pimienta, Simojovel, Chiapas is a very poor part of southern Mexico.
These kinds of tragedies aren’t going to happen at your pediatrician’s office, as they don’t even have drugs like atracurium.
What Happened in Samoa?
Two toddlers died after being vaccinated at Safotu Hospital in Samoa.
In Samoa, four years after the deaths of the children in Syria, we are once again hearing about reports of deaths after kids were vaccinated with the MMR vaccine.
Two children in Samoa, both one-year-olds, died within minutes of being vaccinated on the same day in the same hospital on the island of Savai’i.
Not surprisingly, as health officials investigate the cause, use of the MMR vaccine had been suspended in Samoa.
So what happened?
“Until the investigations have been completed and reported on we cannot say what did happen.
However, given the batch of vaccine involved had been in use in that country since August last year, and given the same batch of vaccine has been used in South American countries and the Caribbean island nations without incident, it seems unlikely that there was anything wrong with the vaccine.
The reports from the parents of the children affected on Friday indicate the reactions occurred within minutes after vaccination. This would preclude a response to the vaccine viruses as this takes at least a week. While anaphylaxis occurs within minutes and can be fatal when not treated the odds of seeing this twice in a day at the same place, given a chance of 1 in a million doses, is literally astronomical.”
Dr. Helen Petousis Harrison on What happened in Samoa?
Since it happened so quickly, it sounds like it could have been a mix-up with the diluent, as happened in Syria. A five dose vial of MMR is used in Samoa, which means that unlike premixed vaccines, it does have to be mixed with a diluent.
What about contamination? It is known that vaccine vials can be contaminated with Staphylococcus bacteria if they are mishandled. Although Staphylococcus bacteria can directly cause infections, they can also release a toxin that can cause toxic shock syndrome (TSS).
Considering how quickly these children got died though (within minutes), it isn’t likely that the vaccines became contaminated with Staphylococcus toxins. There have been reports of TSS following vaccination in the past, usually with vaccines that don’t use preservatives, but symptoms typically develop over four to 24 hours.
“This particular vaccine batch lot arrived to Samoa in August 2017 and has been in use since then. The same vaccine batch lot used in Samoa is also in use in a number of South American and Caribbean countries (Belize, Ecuador, St. Vincent, Trinidad Tobago, Chile, Aruba, Dutch Antilles, St. Kitts & Nevis and Cuba) with no reports of adverse events from those countries.”
Could this be related to what happened to two other children in Samoa who had died after getting their MMR vaccines?
Almost certainly not. Those children, siblings, died years earlier, one in 2015 and the other in 2017. Neither died immediately after being vaccinated and there are reports that they may have had some kind of an immunodeficiency syndrome that contributed to their deaths.
“A number of media outlets are already covering these tragic events, speculating on the cause of death before the investigation is completed, and the stories have been picked up by the anti-vaccination movement.”
That some folks would use these rare tragedies to scare parents from vaccinating and protecting their kids is shameful. But that’s the modern anti-vaccine movement…
What to Know About Vaccination Tragedies
Kids shouldn’t get sick or die after getting vaccinated. Fortunately, they rarely do, except in extreme circumstances that can make it more likely for errors to occur.
As someone who has always understood that vaccines are safe and necessary, who vaccinates his children, I’m asking you to hear me out.
I don’t think that you are either stupid, uneducated, crazy, or that questioning vaccine safety is always associated with believing in conspiracy theories.
I understand and appreciate that you do care about your children, that you care about their health, and that you want what’s best for your family.
I actually do get that. I really do.
But I know that while you believe that you have done years of research and investigation to help you decide that the potential benefits of vaccines don’t outweigh their risks, going out of your way to find information to support your decision and ignoring all of the rest that says you are wrong, isn’t really doing research.
Whether you have never set foot on a college campus, you have a PhD in immunology, or you are a toxicologist, I know that you are still vulnerable to the same cognitive biases, heuristics, and logical fallacies as everyone else, and those can keep you from coming to a truly informed decision.
“What if doctors never actually learn about vaccines, their ingredients, or adverse events, in medical school? What if the medical textbooks are written with an enormous amount of funding from the pharmaceutical industry? What if the CDC owns patents on vaccines? What if the pharmaceutical industry is corrupt and funds studies which conveniently stop monitoring test subjects before adverse effects begin to manifest? What if vaccines contain toxic substances at levels which can cause chronic illness when children are repeatedly injected with them? What if we are trading temporary illness for the development of autoimmune and neurological disease later in life? What if the threat and danger of these “preventable” diseases has been inflated to push more vaccines? What if these vaccines are not even truly effective as we have been led to believe and we will always need more booster shots to try to make up for that fact? What if there is evidence for all of the above, you just haven’t seen it yet?”
Ashley Everly Cates
Listen.
If you don’t want to vaccinate your kids, then don’t.
Please take caution and know that I don’t do this to be popular. I don’t do this to make friends, get likes on my Facebook page, or sell vitamins and supplements in an online store.
Truly. The only reason I speak out is to protect my children and your children from unnecessary harm.
After all, is it really so hard to believe that the great majority of pediatricians, infectious disease specialists, immunologists, toxicologists, and public health experts in the world and throughout history are right about vaccines?
Can a child be fine one day and then die the next?
Tragically, they can.
There is even a name for it – sudden unexplained death in childhood.
Sudden Death in Children
Although 10% of deaths in children over age 12 months are classified as sudden death, most have explanations, such as asthma, epilepsy, or a heart problem (congenital malformations and arrhythmias). Unfortunately, some of these conditions, especially some infections and heart problems, aren’t discovered until after the child dies.
“Most sudden cardiac deaths that remain unexplained after necropsy are probably caused by primary cardiac arrhythmias.”
Sudden death in children and adolescents
About 16% of these sudden deaths don’t have any explanation though.
Surprisingly, these types of sudden, unexplained deaths are the 5th leading cause of death in children between the ages of 1 and 4 years. That adds up to about 400 deaths a year in the United States alone!
Vaccines and Sudden Unexplained Death in Children
Have you guessed the connection with vaccines?
If up to 16% of children who die suddenly don’t have a good explanation for why they died, then that leaves some to blame vaccines, often with a little help with myths and misinformation from anti-vaccine folks.
“…making general assumptions and drawing conclusions about vaccinations causing deaths based on spontaneous reports to VAERS – some of which might be anecdotal or second-hand – or from case reports in the media, is not a scientifically valid practice.”
Miller et al on Deaths following vaccination: What does the evidence show?
That’s despite the fact that both our safety monitoring systems and other studies have shown that vaccines are not associated with sudden unexplained deaths. In fact, deaths after vaccines are very rare.
“As for vaccines causing death, again so few deaths can plausibly be attributed to vaccines that it is hard to assess the risk statistically.”
WHO on Six common misconceptions about immunization
“At the present time there is not enough known about the underlying mechanisms of death in SUDC to allow prediction of which children might die suddenly and unexpectedly. Additionally, there is no way to prevent SUDC since its cause is unknown. Through research, we strive to discover the risk factors and underlying causes of SUDC that will lead to its prevention. In the meantime, optimal pediatric care recommendations, including attending well child visits, maintaining current vaccinations, and obtaining appropriate health care when clinically indicated, should be followed.”
SUDC Foundation on Frequently Asked Questions
And it’s not just SIDS. We also see a “healthy vaccinee effect” in older kids, who have lower mortality rates than the general population, which includes some folks who aren’t vaccinated.
We don’t know what causes sudden unexplained death in children, although with continued research we hopefully soon will, and can then learn to prevent them. Until then, parents should feel confident that it is not caused by the vaccines, which are safe and necessary and work to protect them from many life-threatening vaccine-preventable diseases.
What to Know About Vaccines and Sudden Unexplained Death in Children
Vaccines are not associated with sudden unexplained death in children.
More on Vaccines and Sudden Unexplained Death in Children
My son started to have migraines when he was about 11 years old.
Must be stress, BPA, poor eating habits, all of the screen time, or vaccines, right?
“Americans spend the least on food, the most on health care, have the most highly vaccinated kids, and have the sickest kids of any industrialized country. More kids than not are now chronically ill, developmentally delayed, and eating or injecting prescription medications from cradle to grave – which is going to be a quicker trip for them than it was for their parents, according to data on life expectancy in the US. We are inured to childhood autism, epilepsy, allergy, asthma, diabetes, obesity, Crohn’s disease and cancer. We are dying younger. We are going backwards.”
Judy Converse on America’s New Normal: Chronically Ill Kids
That likely seems like a young age to get migraines and would fit well with the narrative that kids today are part of the unhealthiest generation ever.
Except that I started to get migraines at about the same age, and so did my mother. Like many of the other conditions that seem to be ballooning today, migraines have a genetic component.
The Unhealthiest Generation?
The CDC has long kept statistics on everything from asthma and cancer rates to diabetes and life expectancy rates and helps folks see how healthy kids really are today.
Who says that today’s kids are part of the unhealthiest generation ever?
Mostly anti-vaccine folks who blame vaccines for making kids unhealthy and alternative medical providers who think their holistic remedies will fix all of the problems they see in our unhealthy kids who they claim are full of “toxins.”
Toxins? If you are going to believe that our kids are all sick, then you have to buy into the narrative that toxins are everywhere, especially in vaccines, and they are making kids sick.
Of course, none of that is true.
Vaccines are safe and work to prevent us from getting sick and there are 2 to 3 million fewer deaths in the world each year because people are vaccinated and protected.
“From developing groundbreaking treatments for deadly chronic diseases to saving babies who are born premature, pediatric researchers have increased the ability of children to live full and fulfilling lives that only a few decades before would have been tragically cut short.”
Sandra G. Hassink, MD on the 7 Great Achievements in Pediatric Research
And today’s kids, all 73.6 million of them in the United States, aren’t the unhealthiest. They are actually a very healthy generation, being born with the lowest child and infant mortality rates ever, low rates of hospitalizations, and one of the highest life expectancies in history.
Our Healthy Kids
How do we know today’s kids are healthy?
One easy way is to compare them to kids in the past…
If you have only been listening to the alarmists who talk about the unhealthiest generation all of the time, you likely wouldn’t know that:
while 2.6% of kids were thought to be in fair or poor health in 1991, that is down to just 1.8% today (2015)
fewer kids today (4.5%) report having had an asthma attack in the previous year than they did in 1997 (5.4%), and that fewer kids have asthma today (8.5%) than in 2003 (8.7%)
since 1997, fewer children, whether or not they have insurance, are visiting the emergency room
fewer children are requiring overnight hospital stays, down from 5.5% to just 2.1% today (2015)
rates of hay fever or respiratory allergy are down since 1997, from 17.5% of kids to 15.6% of kids today (2015)
rates of epilepsy have been stable in children for at least 40 years
fewer kids have multiple ear infections since 1997, when 7.1% of kids had 3 or more ear infections, to just 5% of kids today (2015)
fewer kids are being prescribed antibiotics
childhood cancer rates have been rising, but only slightly, and mortality rates have been declining
suicide rates are rising, but only from historic lows – they used to be about the same or higher in the early 1990s
Of course, some conditions are on the rise, including ADHD, type 1 diabetes, food allergies, eczema, obesity, and most autoimmune diseases.
“A few conditions have decreased because of prevention (eg, lead encephalopathy), a few represent relatively new conditions (eg, human immunodeficiency virus type 1 infection), and some have increased after dramatic improvements in survival for individually low-prevalence childhood conditions that previously had high fatality rates (eg, leukemia, cystic fibrosis, congenital heart diseases). Most growth, however, reflects dramatic increases in incidence of a few high-prevalence conditions.”
James M. Perrin, MD on The Increase of Childhood Chronic Conditions in the United States
And autism rates have been up, but we mostly know why.
“…the numbers of people born with autism aren’t necessarily increasing dramatically. It’s just that we’re getting better and better at counting them.”
Although we don’t know why most other conditions are trending up (it isn’t vaccines), we will hopefully continue to develop new theories and reverse those trends.
It should be reassuring that many of the trends do show that our kids are indeed healthy.
What to Know About Our Healthy Kids
From gun violence and climate change to the threat of emerging infections, out children do face many threats and are certainly under a lot of stress. There is no evidence that this is the unhealthiest generation though. If anything, they are on track to be one of the healthiest.
