This is in contrast to children in developed countries who, while supposedly protected from the usual childhood diseases by vaccination, go on to suffer a range of allergy related (atopic) conditions in increasing numbers.

Earlier research has indicated that the childhood diseases, such as measles, mumps and German measles (rubella), might provide natural desensitization against atopy.

Now researchers from Southampton General Hospital in England have discovered that measles may well prevent atopy after studying 262 young people, aged between 14 and 20, from Guinea Bissau. All of them had had measles, and the researchers tested their levels of sensitivity with skin prick tests.

Just 12 per cent were atopic compared to 26 per cent in another group who had been vaccinated against measles and so had not caught the disease.

Researchers also noted that children who had been breastfed for more than a year were less likely to have a positive skin test to housedust mite, thought to be one cause of asthma.

Interestingly, the scientists were only able to prove what the mothers knew from observations. The mothers seemed to know exactly who had contracted measles during an epidemic in the country in 1979 just by seeing who suffers from allergies today. Tests showed that they were invariably right (The Lancet, June 29, 1996).

Three cases of Guillain Barre syndrome, which causes nerves to inflame, have been reported following the UK’s measles, mumps mass vaccination programme in 1994. Scientists had expected at least seven cases, which may indicate an under reporting of the reaction

!ABMJ, June 8, 1996.

The IOM report, produced by a group of leading pediatric figures in America, who scoured hundreds of scientific papers, found evidence of a causal relationship between damage and the diphtheria, tetanus, measles, measles-mumps-rubella, oral polio vaccine, hepatitis B and Hib vaccines.

This latest report follows one in 1991 which found evidence of adverse effects from the whooping cough and rubella vaccines. Both studies were requested by the American Congress in the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, passed in 1985. In its latest report, the committee concluded that there is a causal relation between:

* Diphtheria and tetanus shots and anaphylactic shock

* Measles vaccine and death from measle-vaccine-strain infection

* Measles-mumps-rubella vaccine and thrombocytopenia (a blood condition characterized by a decrease in blood platelets) and anaphylactic shock

* Oral poliovaccine and poliomyelitis and death from poliovaccine-strain infection

* Hepatitis B vaccine and anaphylactic shock.

The committee also said that the evidence ‘favours acceptance’ of a causal relation between:

* Diphtheria and tetanus vaccines and Guillain-Barre paralysis and brachial neuritis (inflammation and breakdown of nerves of the upper spine)

* Measles vaccine and anaphylactic shock

* Oral poliovaccine and Guillain-Barre syndrome

* Unconjugated Hib vaccine and early-onset Hib disease in children 18 months or older whose first Hib immunization is this variety.

The committee could not rule out a causal relationship between measles vaccines and cases of subacute sclerosing panencephatitis, a fatal wasting disease very rarely caused by measles itself. In the earlier report, the IOM concluded that evidence shows a causal relationship between administration of the whooping cough vaccine and anaphylactic shock, extended periods of inconsolate crying or screaming, acute inflammation of the brain and shock. The committee also found evidence that the rubella vaccine could cause short- and long-term arthritis.

A recent issue of the British Medical Journal predicted that in the next few years, a booster dose of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine will be given in the second decade of life. This would follow on the heels of the Americans, who recently introduced a booster shot at age 11 in an attempt to counter the epidemics of measles it has been suffering lately.

Also expected is the introduction of the Haemophilus influenzae (Hib) vaccine, probably at the same time and in combination with the diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus shots.

After many months of attempting to discredit the work of Andrew Wakefield and co of the Royal Free Hospital in London, the people who have steadfastly maintained that there may be a link between the triple measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) jab and autism, the government has suffered a defector among its ranks.

Dr Ken Aitkin, an authority on autism, commissioned by the government to allay fears about the link between the condition and the vaccine, has blown the whistle on the government’s damage limitation exercise.

Dr Aitkin formed part of a 37 person strong Medical Research Council panel to study evidence between the triple jab and autism. Last spring, the findings of the panel were cited by then chief medical officer Kenneth Calman as a reason to definitively rule out any link.

Recently, however, Dr Aitkin admitted that the Department of Health did not accurately put forward the conclusion reached by the MRC. “We did not conclude that autism was not linked to MMR,” he said recently. “The view was that there was a problem which needed to be looked at very carefully and there was not enough evidence to rule out a link.”

Even worse, as far as government is concerned, Dr Aitkin is now sleeping with the enemy. He agreed to act as an expert witness on behalf of the 100 parents of autistic children seeking compensation from three manufacturers of the MMR vaccine for allegedly damaging their children. The case came to trial a month ago.

Dr Aitkin’s apparent defection is all the more interesting considering that he was part of a panel that was handpicked by the government. General members of the public concerned about vaccine safety were not allowed to nominate their own members.

Despite assembling a large panel of independent experts, the government and the Public Health Laboratory put their own spin on the results of an independent committee to back up their desired conclusion.

And now the government’s latest move is to ban single vaccines, with the spurious argument that the vaccines on their own are dangerous.

One has to compare this finger in the dyke approach with America, which is also in the midst of national debate about the safety of the MMR vaccine. When alarm bells have been sounded by the public, at least those in charge are willing to listen. No less than Walter Orenstein, director of national immunisation programme of the Centres of Disease Control and Prevention in the US, has indicated that although he is cannot uncategorically accept the autism link, yet he is not outright dismissive. Marie Bristol-Power, coordinator of The Network on Neurobiology and Genetics of Autism, of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development within the National Institutes of Health, again supports further research. Congressional hearings have recently been held.

There is much we don’t know about the MMR vaccine. We don’t, for instance, know, whether the single jabs are any safer than the triple one. That is only a theory which needs to be tested further, as does the supposed autism link, by being subjected to further scientific trials. But you’d never know we don’t know. Every day I read more information about this vaccine which is blatantly untrue but written with absolutely certainty.

And we’re not ever going to know if the people responsible for vaccination refuse to find out.

!ALynne McTaggart

I was at it again in mid-October, when the British government announced that all children approaching school age are to be given a booster jab against whooping cough.

The plan is that children will be offered this jab at the age of five, at the same time they are given their measles-mumps-rubella and polio boosters.

With the announcement came the claim that this new preschool whooping cough injection is the new improved version – an ‘acellular’ vaccine which magically avoids the feverish reaction in children over six months old, which was largely the problem, the government says, with the old one.

In other words, while you might have had to reach for the Calpol with the old jab, this one has been formulated to save you that little annoyance and your child that minor discomfort.

Just to set the record straight, the problem with the old jab wasn’t simply a bit of fever. This was the jab with the worst track record of side-effects of all. According to the American Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System, set up in the US to identify the side-effects of vaccines, the overwhelming majority were due to the DPT vaccine.

According to a study of 100,000 children conducted by the US Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia, children receiving the old jab trebled their chances of suffering a convulsion. After carefully sifting through the medical evidence on all vaccines, the US Institute of Medicine concluded that the DPT vaccine causes 17 health problems, including anaphylactic shock, inconsolable crying or screaming, encephalopathy (inflammation of the brain), acute neurological illness, lasting brain damage and even death. Certain evidence has linked this jab to sudden infant death syndrome, and other studies show that a child getting the DPT jab is six times more likely to develop asthma.

But why are they offering a booster jab if the first one, which has been around since 1912 (in the same crude formula as then), works so well?

The answer, of course, is that it doesn’t. A study of an outbreak of whooping cough in Cincinnati showed that the vaccine failed to protect children of all ages (N Engl J Med, 1994; 331: 16-21). Indeed, research from Sweden and Italy showed that the old vaccine was effective in less than a third to less than a half of the time (J Am Med Assoc, 1995; 274: 446-7).

As for the acellular vaccine, it is no safer and no more effective than the old one. Research demonstrates that one dose of it works less than three-quarters of the time (N Engl J Med, 1995; 333: 1045-50), and two doses, a little more than half the time.

At least one major study found that the rate of serious adverse reactions – seizures, developmental delay, life-threatening reactions and even death – hardly differed between old and new vaccines (Lancet, 1996; 347: 209-10).

On an anecdotal level, we are hearing of many more cases of ‘atypical asthma’ – the new appelation given to whooping cough by doctors who have been brainwashed into thinking that whooping cough has been more or less eradicated through vaccination.

So what we’re being asked to do is to bring forward our five year olds to receive a new vaccine, even though the old vaccine was perfectly safe, to combat a disease that no longer exists.

My guess is, like the measles booster of 1994, the ‘new, improved’ vaccine has been introduced in booster form because the old one isn’t very protective and the Public Health Laboratory Service is being inundated with loads of cases that look, to anyone other than a doctor, like good old common or garden whooping cough. The new vaccine is here to distract us from the fact that your child risked all those side-effects for a vaccine that couldn’t, in the end, protect him.

If I’m right, once again, the PHLS is throwing worse vaccines after bad.

Lynne McTaggart

The first statistic demonstrating this isn’t surprising. Between June 1991 and June 1992, cases of measles among 10 to 14 year olds in Britain more than quadrupled, from141 to 578. As a result of human interference, in Britain, like America, measles is becoming a teenage disease, when the childhood vaccine wears off and the disease can do greater harm.

Most mystifying of all, though, is that even though this vaccine has been around for six years, cases of measles have gone up by nearly one fourth, or 22 per cent, according to a report from the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys.

In America, on the other hand, after the great measles resurgence of 1989-1991, cases of measles are drastically dropping. The Centers for Diseases Control happily attributes this to the tremendous push given the measles and combined vaccines at the height of the recent epidemic; vaccine coverage increased from an average of 66 per cent in the years before 1985 to 78 per cent in 1991.

However, a few statistics confuse this optimistic assumption. First of all, the CDC estimates that, based on retrospective surveys of coverage, approximately 800,000 to 2 million babies and toddlers who hadn’t got their shots should have been susceptible to measles. In reality, however, only 9300 cases were reported among this age group. Although the average age of children catching measles is dropping (from a median age of 12 in 1989, the beginning of the epidemic, to an average last year of 4.9), nearly half of all reported cases are still among children over 5 most of whom should have been protected.

The CDC has to admit that the sudden drop in cases could have something to do with “an overall decrease in the occurrence of measles in the Western Hemisphere”. It also may have something to do, they say, with the cyclic nature of the disease.

American medical critic Dr Robert Mendelsohn once said “diseases are like fashion, they come and go”. This seems to be the case with polio, which is making an appearance in Canada.

These statistics provide more possible evidence that many vaccine programmes claim the credit for what is simply the tendency of illnesses to wax and wane. And that far from science having anything to do with finally stamping out polio or smallpox, both diseases that have decided, for the moment, to take a breather.

A Crohn’s disease is an inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). It is an autoimmune condition, which means that the immune system is attacking and causing damage to the body’s own tissues. Crohn’s disease involves all the layers of the bowel, but it can affect any part of the gastrointestinal tract – from the mouth to the anus – whereas ulcerative colitis, another IBD, affects only the colon and rectum.

Medicine’s response is basic and primitive. Steroids form the mainstay drug therapy, but they’re very powerful. In particular, the immunosuppressant drug ciclosporin (which used to be spelled ‘cyclosporin’) can cause kidney damage, even at low initial doses (Dig Dis Sci, 1993; 38: 1624-30).

Surgery is the drastic next stage, and it’s a very aggressive procedure, often removing half of the small intestine. This will certainly stop the symptoms but, like most things in medicine, it fails to address the underlying cause (Int Surg, 1992; 10: 2-8). It can also create other problems such as malabsorption and diarrhoea (Postgrad Med J, 1997; 73: 225-9).

Doctors are equally confused as to the cause of Crohn’s, though it’s generally agreed that genetics plays a part. If you have a current sufferer in the family, your chances of developing the condition are 3.5 to 10 times greater than someone without such a familial link (N Engl J Med, 1991; 324: 84-8).

But there the consensus ends, and there is strong evidence that points to a range of possible causes. This lends support to the theory that Crohn’s disease isn’t a disease at all, but a response to a range of causes that, in turn, determine the type of Crohn’s you have. Find the cause and you find the key to the cure, it seems.

This suggests that you may well have to be your own medical detective, and investigate the many possible causes that come under suspicion. The most frequently mooted are viral and bacterial agents, especially the human herpesvirus 6 (HHV 6), the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) and cytomegalovirus (CMV) (J Med Viriol, 1992; 38: 183-90).

But perhaps the front-runner of them all is Mycobacterium paratuberculosis, which is known to cause chronic enteritis in animals, and may be a reason for the genetic connection in humans. The standard pint of milk can carry this bacterium, which seems able to survive the pasteurisation process.

Dr Andrew Wakefield, now best known for his theory that the MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) vaccine may cause autism, has also posited that the measles virus – possibly originating from the vaccine itself – could play a part by restricting the blood vessels that feed the gut (Gastroenterology, 1995; 108: 911-6).

There is also a strong link to the NSAID (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug) family of painkillers. In one study, researchers found that 38 per cent of patients who developed an IBD did so while taking an NSAID (Lancet, 1994; 334: 1028).

Finally, consider a food allergy or intolerance. Doctors continue to emphatically rebut the possibility of such a connection, but there’s plenty of evidence that suggests it should be one of the very first places to start looking.
Cr

In order to sell this concept, most doctors and officials have turned what used to be a largely harmless milestone of childhood into a killer disease. Every year, I watch as the statistics get more ludicrous. When the MMR vaccine was first launched, Dr Norman Begg, consultant epidemiologist of the Public Health Laboratory Service, which recommended the vaccine in Britain, cited the then official statistics that one in 5,000 children contracting wild measles will develop acute encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain and one in 5,000 of those will develop SSPE.

This year, Dr Thomas Stuttaford, writing in the Times (2 August 1994), has shrunk that percentage to one in every 500 measles victims who go on to develop encephalitis. One in every 10 of these die and one of every four suffer permanent brain damage, he wrote.

Measles can be a killer, but it doesn’t strike as randomly as medicine would have us believe. In America in 1990, at the height of a recent measles epidemic, among 27,000 cases of measles, 89 died mostly children of low income families, where poor nutrition played a part, as did failure to get complications treated. In Africa, where children are markedly vitamin A deficient, measles does kill children. However, as study after study demonstrates, even third world children with adequate stores of vitamin A or those given vitamin A supplementation are overwhelmingly likely to survive.

These statistics must be set against the serious and potentially deadly side effects of the vaccine, which have been demonstrated to occur in at least one in 400 children.

It is medicine that has turned measles into a killer disease. Dr Viera Schreibner’s trawl through the medical literature has produced devastating proof that the measles vaccine programme has left us far worse off than we were before. Over 30 years, the vaccine has caused vicious mutations of the disease, transformed it into a disease of adults and infants, and left us with inadequate immunity to pass onto our children. Plus we now have substantial numbers of children damaged by the vaccine.

But this is only the merest inkling of the repercussions of our meddling. Dr Michel Odent and the Primal Health Research Centre in a study of long term breastfeeding examined the number of children with asthma. If children were immunized against whooping cough they were six times more likely to have asthma as those who hadn’t been given the jab (The Lancet, 9 July 1994).

Measles may be misery, as the government has been putting it, but it is the easily defeated devil you know.

!ALynne McTaggart

A:Ulcerative colitis is an inflammation of the bowel, either just affecting the rectum or the part or all of the colon. It causes loose, blood filled diarrhea containing mucus and pus; other symptoms include weight loss, anemia, abdominal cramps, fatigue, weakness, and fever.

We don’t know what causes the condition, although many nutritional doctors see a definite link with food allergy or intolerance, possibly to cows’ milk or, in some cases, salicylates (apples, berries, a number of vegetables, fruit juices, etc). There is also a tendency to develop a zinc deficiency. Furthermore, people with Crohn’s disease, a similar condition, tend to have higher intake of sugar and refined carbohydrate. This disease most commonly strikes young people between 20 and 40. It used to be rare in children, affecting perhaps four per million, although that incidence has increased sevenfold in the last 20 years.

One possible cause may have been the measles vaccine, if your son received the measles, mumps, rubella vaccine at 15 months (he appears to developed the condition soon after). Andrew Wakefield, director of the inflammatory bowel disease study group at the Royal Free Hospital in London, says that there is evidence of the measles virus causing a blockage of tiny vessels controlling the blood flow to the intestines. Although it is possible that patients contracted the virus naturally, the vaccine could also be responsible, says Wakefield.

Steroids are highly dangerous in young children. The most common worry is that it can suppress a child’s growth. Paradoxically, children often require higher doses than adults for the drug to work; and these higher doses often leave the child virtually without an immune system. Any opportunistic infection, particularly chicken pox, can be fatal (see our Case Study, vol 4 no 8).

Mesalazine is also given for the treatment of ulcerative colitis. The Data Sheet Compendium has no dosage recommendations for children (leading us to suspect that it is not usually given to them); it also warns that it should not be given to children under two. This drug can also cause gastrointestinal problems like nausea, diarrhea, abdominal pain (the very symptoms you’re trying to treat) and even exacerbate the symptoms of colitis. It can also cause problems with bone marrow function, hepatitis, other liver and kidney disorders, and possibly even kidney failure.

We urge you to continue to refuse azathioprine (see Drug of the Month, p 7, for a full rundown), to get your little boy off this potentially lethal cocktail, to keep him isolated from infection until he is safely off steroids, and to work with a highly experienced nutritional doctor investigating diet and food allergy as possible culprits in his condition. (And see our Alternatives column for a different approach.)

“Those early warnings came in the form of three small outbreaks. Two years ago, five adults in Bombay suffered acute kidney failure and neurological symptoms. Four of the five died. Although none of the victims had a rash, when they were examined by a team from the National Institute of Virology, the measles virus was isolated. In 1998, two highly fatal outbreaks of encephalitis occurred among children under 12 in three states of India. Again, in these cases, the cause was put down to a measles virus.

Perhaps the most frightening aspect of the outbreaks, as far as the virologists are concerned, is the likelihood that mutant strains like these don’t respond to vaccination. “In those previous outbreaks, immunisation seems to have failed to protect against this virus,” admitted Dr Nirmal Kumar Ganguly, director general of the Indian Council of Medical Research. The other worry is that it can be caught so easily. The present outbreak was only contained by barrier nursing and quarantine like measures.

The National Institute of Virology worries that this new type of disease may signal that measles is reemerging despite the vaccination programme and that an epidemic may be on the cards. The news has sent the virologists scurrying into the laboratory to carry out genetic studies on the new strain.

What none of the Indian scientists seem to realise is that vaccination was the probable cause of this disaster. It never fails to amaze me when scientists of this calibre fail to make the mental leap between mutation of viruses and vaccination. We all know that viruses and bacteria are smart. When you wipe out too many of a certain strain through indiscriminate use of antibiotics, stronger and more virulent mutant strains emerge. Microbes are the ultimate Terminator cyborg. You shoot them down and after a short interval, they stand up again but this time angrier, better armed and more deadly than before. What India is experiencing may be yet another microbe backlash against vaccination. All we may have accomplished with the measles vaccine is to trade a relatively benign illness for an invariably fatal one.

!ALynne McTaggart