Vaccine Propaganda -- Bias creates illogical thinking in interpreting stats. Be clear: Any "forced" medical treatment that has such a poor track record can be classified as medical experimentation --especially in light of the fact that there are no longterm safety or efficacy studies done by financially independent sources...... Ingri

Propaganda heats up -- I sure hope parents can see through this BS.

Sheri says.. I love this logic... "The researchers found 45 cases of measles, and 36 of pertussis, among exempt children, compared with 137 and 346, respectively, among those who'd been immunized. But since far more children get vaccinated than don't, their relative risk of infection was far lower than their exempt classmates. "

AND this one... ""It's unclear why parents take personal exemptions," says Feikin, who notes that for adults with long-standing objections to vaccination the latest study likely won't sway their opinion. "But maybe there are other parents trying to decide what to do. We're hoping that this type of information may show them that there are risks in not vaccinating your children against these diseases." "

DUH!!!!

And this one... "The number of inoculations for each child is expected to triple, from 11 to 35, over the next 25 years. How well the public will accept the future shots is a significant concern, experts say. "

dailynews.yahoo.com

Tuesday January 16 03:06 AM EST
Vaccine Exemptions Put Others at Risk

By Adam Marcus
HealthScout Reporter

TUESDAY, Dec. 26 (HealthScout) -- In what infection experts say is an object lesson in the importance of vaccination, a new study shows that children who don't get immunized against measles and whooping cough are a threat to those who do get the shots.

School-age children in Colorado who didn't get vaccinated had a 20 times greater risk of catching measles than did immunized children, says the study, led by researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And their risk of pertussis -- whooping cough -- was about six times higher than that of their immunized classmates, the researchers say.

And for children ages 3 to 10, who face the highest risks of these two infections, not being vaccinated raised the odds of contracting measles by more than sixtyfold, and of pertussis by sixteenfold.

"These are bad diseases, and I'm not sure if people realize that a generation ago, these were very common diseases," says Dr. Daniel R. Feikin, a CDC epidemiologist and lead author of the study, which appears in this week's issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

All 50 states have laws that say children have to be immunized against measles, but 48 states allow exemptions for religious reasons; 15 states allow exemptions for philosophical reasons; and all allow exemptions for medical reasons, says the CDC. Measles is still a major killer worldwide, but it is all but gone in the United States. Before the measles vaccine was first used in 1963, over 500,000 cases per year were reported; in 1998 and 1999 only 100 cases were reported each year. About 200,000 cases of whooping cough were reported each year before the vaccine; now, 7,000 cases are reported to the CDC each year.

Fiekin's group looked at the rates of respiratory infections (measles can also invade the lungs) among exempted children in Colorado -- and their impact on vaccinated children -- between 1987 and 1998. (For pertussis, the analysis focused on 1996 to 1998). In Colorado, about 2 percent of parents take exemptions for their children, well above the national average of 0.6 percent, Feikin says.

The researchers found 45 cases of measles, and 36 of pertussis, among exempt children, compared with 137 and 346, respectively, among those who'd been immunized. But since far more children get vaccinated than don't, their relative risk of infection was far lower than their exempt classmates.

What's more, the presence of exempt children in a given county raised the risk of measles infection among vaccinated children and nearly doubled their risk of pertussis. Overall, the researchers say, 11 percent of vaccinated children who contracted either disease got it from contact with an "exemptor."

"It's unclear why parents take personal exemptions," says Feikin, who notes that for adults with long-standing objections to vaccination the latest study likely won't sway their opinion. "But maybe there are other parents trying to decide what to do. We're hoping that this type of information may show them that there are risks in not vaccinating your children against these diseases."

Barbara Fisher, co-founder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center, which opposes mandatory immunization, worries that policy makers will use the latest research as a "club" to force parents to vaccinate their children without fully understanding the risks involved.

"Vaccines not only carry a risk, but we have a higher rate of vaccine failure than people probably realize," says Fisher, whose claims her first child, a boy, suffered a serious adverse reaction after being immunized.

Feikin acknowledges that vaccines aren't 100 percent effective. However, he says, the measles shot for instance has become much more potent since its introduction, and now prevents the infection in about 99 percent of people who receive it. Pertussis vaccine, on the other hand, is between 70 percent and 90 percent effective.

What To Do

The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld states' rights to mandate vaccination, holding that such requirements are sufficiently grounded in the public good.

But Dr. Kathryn Edwards, a Vanderbilt University pediatrician, says the clash between private rights and public health is "worrisome."

"Are we comfortable with allowing people to not immunize their children if there is a risk to the children who are immunized?" says Edwards, who wrote an editorial accompanying the journal article.

Opponents of mandatory immunization tend to talk up the alleged -- and largely anecdotal -- risks of vaccines and ignore the much greater health burden of developing preventable infections. Still, she says, it should be up to states to decide whether to permit exemptions, for whom and on what basis.

A recent study by the Institute of Medicine found that as many as 300 children and 50,000 adults die annually because they aren't adequately vaccinated. Those figures do not include outbreaks of vaccine-preventable illnesses such as measles, which killed hundreds during a burst of infections between 1989 and 1991

The number of inoculations for each child is expected to triple, from 11 to 35, over the next 25 years. How well the public will accept the future shots is a significant concern, experts say.

Sheri Nakken, R.N., MA
Vaccination Information & Choice Network, Nevada City CA
530-478-1242
http://www.nccn.net/~wwithin/vaccine.htm
     "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil  is that good men (&
women) do nothing"...Edmund Burke

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Ingri Cassel, President
Vaccination Liberation - Idaho Chapter