March 30, 1999
Edward J. Furton, M.A., Ph.D.
Editor, Ethics and Medics
The National Catholic Bioethics Center
159 Washington Street
Boston, Massachusetts 02135-4325
Dear Dr. Furton,
Being a regular reader of Ethics and Medics, I am usually pleased with the quality of the analyses presented in this publication. However, your article, “Vaccines Originating in Abortion” (Ethics and Medics, vol. 24, no. 3, March 1999, p. 3-4), makes unsubstantiated and, in some cases, inaccurate assertions that deserve rebuttal.
I am a practicing Catholic and a registered pharmacist with a Ph.D. in biopharmaceutics, which involves research and training in pharmacology, toxicology, and drug kinetics. I am also founder and director of the Vaccine Policy Institute, a national, non-profit, 501 (c)(3) organization which researches vaccine safety and efficacy issues. Since 1991 I have researched vaccines in the medical and legal literature, and regularly monitor federal vaccine policy- making commission meetings in Washington, D.C. and Atlanta, Georgia, the home of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Your article raises two basic issues. I am aware of the ongoing controversy regarding the issue of material cooperation in the use of vaccines derived from human fetal tissue, and will leave others to address that issue. (See “Medical Cannibals: Moral Implications of Fetal Tissue Vaccines,” Social Justice Review, March/April 1999, p. 46-49 and “The Never Ending Wrong: Aborted Babies, Childhood Immunizations–and Beyond” by Suzanne Rini.) A significant problem I see in your article is that you assert parents have a moral obligation to provide vaccinations to their children. As I see it, that conclusion is based upon an unproven minor premise.
That is, you seem to argue from a major premise that parents have a moral obligation to do what is best for their children within their capabilities. Agreed. Then you assume the minor premise that vaccinations are always in the best interest of their children, which is simply not the case. This letter will make the case that too many weaknesses exist in your minor premise to arrive at the conclusion that parents are morally obliged to vaccinate their children.
Please permit me to respectfully point out weaknesses in your argument:
1. “Should a person who has been immunized encounter the virus at full strength, his body is ready to fend off the infection” (p. 3, col. 1, par. 2).
Critique: This is a simplistic view of a complicated process. First, the act of receiving a vaccine, i.e., vaccination, does not necessarily equate to immunization, the latter referring to complete protection from disease. The CDC readily admits that no vaccine is 100 percent effective, and sadly, some vaccines don’t even come close.
For example, in Cincinnati’s highly publicized 1993 pertussis (whooping cough) epidemic, more than 75 percent of cases occurred in vaccinated children. No children died, and the disease was described as “not severe” (New England Journal of Medicine 331: 16-21, 1994). This study concluded, “Since the 1993 [pertussis] epidemic in Cincinnati occurred primarily among children who had been appropriately immunized, it is clear that the whole-cell pertussis vaccine failed to give full protection against the disease.” Similar pertussis vaccine failures occurred across the country that year.
Likewise in 1989, nearly three-fourths of the 2,720 reported cases of measles in Ohio occurred in vaccinated persons. However, of the 3,394 Ohio measles cases reported between 1987 to 1991, there were zero deaths and no serious complications reported (source: Ohio Department of Health). With Ohio being the seventh most populous state, these data reflect those of the nation as a whole. [Note: The high number of measles cases in 1989 occurred elsewhere across the country. A fact never mentioned by public health authorities is that more than half the measles cases occurred in those previously vaccinated, many of them teens and young adults (college students). The 1989-1990 U.S. measles outbreak showed that Merck’s live measles vaccine wore off after about ten years, in contrast to earlier claims that the vaccine would provide life-long immunity.]
Similarly, the mumps vaccine is known to be highly ineffective, with many reported mumps cases occurring in prior vaccinees. Influenza vaccine (flu shot) has a poor history of efficacy. (See enclosed yellow brochure, “Flu Shots: Do They Really Work.”) I could cite many more examples of vaccine failures, but they would make this letter too long.
2. “‘Havrix’ guards against scarlet fever, rheumatic fever, kidney inflammation, and other hepatitis A infections” (p. 3, col. 1, par. 4).
Hepatitis A is not reported to cause scarlet fever, rheumatic fever, and kidney inflammation. Rather, these conditions are related to infection with Streptococcus pyogenes (group A streptococcus). Hepatitis A is a virus; Streptococcus pyogenes is a bacterium (Mandell, Douglas, and Bennett’s Principles and Practice of Infectious Diseases, Fourth Edition, Churchill Livingstone, 1995, chapters 176 and 177). Do you have a reference to support your statement that the above conditions are indeed related to hepatitis A infection?
Basically, hepatitis A is a temporary nuisance, described as “mostly benign.” While the severity of hepatitis A increases with age, “there are never long-term sequelae as a direct result of these [hepatitis A] infections.” While death due to hepatitis A can occur, “it is an unusual event” (Mandell, Douglas, and Bennett’s Principles and Practice of Infectious Diseases, Fourth Edition, 1995, chapter 150).
3. “Those in the medical profession who refuse to be immunized with tainted vaccines often suffer harm to their careers. Health care facilities require that all employees be properly immunized against infectious diseases. When health care employees refuse to do so, they can expect to be dismissed from their posts” (p. 4, col. 1, par. 3).
Critique: While this observation is correct, it reflects the coercive nature of U.S. vaccination policy, where informed consent, a basic tenet of ethical medical practice, is discarded. (See “Jacobson v. Massachusetts: Impact on Informed Consent and Vaccine Policy.”) Your term “properly immunized” refers to the standard set forth by the CDC, with advisory and policy committees populated by many with direct financial interest in advocating vaccine use.
This is the same CDC which ignores vaccine adverse reaction reports, because they interfere with its goal of vaccinating every man, woman, and child with whatever vaccine the agency deems “proper.” The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), with the CDC, collects approximately 12,000 vaccine adverse reaction reports per year from across the country, with 15 percent of reports classified as “serious.” The FDA acknowledges that less than 10 percent of physicians report vaccine adverse reactions. By its own admission the FDA follows up on very few vaccine adverse reaction reports.
Where few physicians recognize and report vaccine adverse reactions, and the FDA follows up on very few of the reports it does receive, how do we know that the benefits of vaccines really outweigh the risks? We don’t know what the true risks are! Even two Congressionally commissioned studies by the Institute of Medicine (National Academy of Sciences; 1991 and 1994) lamented the inadequacy of published research on vaccine safety.
State legislatures in Ohio and Indiana are currently reconsidering their 1998 laws which mandated three shots of hepatitis B vaccine for all kindergarteners, a CDC recommendation. In the U.S., hepatitis B is mainly an adult lifestyle liver disease of promiscuous homosexuals, heterosexuals, and intravenous drug abusers. Under the assumption that all babies may grow up to be drug addicts or prostitutes, the CDC recommends that all babies receive hepatitis B vaccine within twelve hours of birth, before leaving the hospital, with two more doses before the first birthday. (See enclosed hepatitis B vaccine news articles.)
CDC vaccine advisors have also expressed their desire to vaccinate all babies with AIDS vaccine (when one becomes licensed) and other sexually- transmitted disease vaccines to prepare these children for teenage fornication. (See enclosed press release “Babies and Schoolchildren Targeted for AIDS and Venereal Disease Vaccines,” February 24, 1997, and “Vaccinations Against Future Loose Living,” The Wall Street Journal, January 24, 1997.) At the same time the CDC advocates abortion on demand, contraceptive use for unmarried teens, and distributes grants to state departments of health and education (nearly $1 million in Ohio alone) to fund school sex-ed programs which teach children how to use condoms and dental dams to facilitate “safer” oral sex.
4. “Refusal also involves some risk that one will contract a serious and perhaps even fatal disease, though the danger is lessened when most others in a given society are properly immunized” (p. 4, col. 1, par. 5).
Critique: As noted above, one can contract serious disease in spite of vaccination. The second half of your statement refers to so-called “herd immunity,” a term which does not uniformly apply to all vaccines. For example, tetanus is not contagious from one person to another. Therefore, the herd immunity concept would not apply. Herd immunity also does not lend itself well to hepatitis B disease in the U.S.. So few people catch hepatitis B in this country because, fortunately, only a small minority choose to practice high-risk lifestyles which predispose to contracting the disease, e.g., promiscuous homo- and heterosexuality and intravenous drug abuse. Even without mass hepatitis B vaccine, more than 95 percent of U.S. citizens will never acquire hepatitis B disease in their lifetimes. The point is, one has to be exposed and be susceptible to a disease in order to catch it.
Another fallacy of government mass vaccination policy is that it treats all individuals like a herd of sheep, ignoring individual differences in size, age, race, genetics, etc.. Does it make sense for everyone to take the same dose of the same vaccine at the same age? This violates recognition of the unique human nature instilled in us by Our Creator. Medicine should be tailored to the individual patient, not the current one-size-fits-all philosophy of the U.S. Public Health Service.
5. “…parents have a moral obligation to provide vaccinations to their children…Nor does it seem appropriate for a parent to refuse [vaccination] on behalf of a child and thereby risk the child’s well-being” (p. 4, par. 2, col. 2).
Critique: For some children, a vaccine may be more dangerous than catching the disease. In 1986 Congress passed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, which established the federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. Since 1988 this program has awarded nearly $1 billion to victims of vaccine injury and death and their attorneys. Instead of telling vaccine manufacturers to make safer vaccines, the government prohibits lawsuits against these companies and funds their liability expenses. Such a system is a disincentive for vaccine manufacturers to improve existing products; thus, more children are injured. (See enclosed articles featuring vaccine injured persons.)
While acknowledging that vaccine injury is a possibility, the federal government feels that a few children can be sacrificed in the “war on disease.” As far back as 1955, Max S. Marshall, past chairman of the University of California Medical Center’s Department of Microbiology, articulated the sacrificial nature mentality of vaccination policy:
“Are we so socialized that we must argue that saving five children at the expense of two who are killed who otherwise would have lived is a legitimate move?…All proper medical men and a large number of others will realize immediately that this outlook…sets up a dictator, a man whose decisions are sacrosanct, the man who decides to kill some to save others.”
Hitler’s Third Reich held to this sort of utilitarian philosophy. Many of its perpetrators were jailed or executed.
Aside from questions about vaccine safety, many parents may decide it is better for their children to catch chickenpox disease when they are young, benifitting from the resultant lifetime immunity. Similar to measles vaccine use, widespread use of the chickenpox vaccine will shift the incidence of chickenpox from younger children, where the disease is usually mild, to adults, where the disease can be more serious. Merck’s and the CDC’s solution to this is to lobby state legislatures to enact chickenpox vaccine mandates for school, daycare, and college admission, with periodic, lifelong chickenpox vaccine boosters. What a cash cow for Merck!
6. “The rubella vaccine, for example is given between the ages of 12 and 15 months, with later boosters” (p. 4, col. 2, par. 3).
Critique: Your reference to the plural “boosters” is incorrect. The standard recommended first dose of rubella vaccine, routinely administered in the combination MMR (measles, mumps, rubella), is between 12-15 months, with a second dose given just before kindergarten or at adolescence.
7. “When [rubella vaccine is] not provided, a child may develop a variety of serious complications, such as encephalitis, which infects 1 in 1,000 to 2,000 rubella victims. A significant percentage of these will suffer permanent brain damage or death” (p. 4, col. 2, par. 3).
Critique: I believe you have confused “rubella” (German measles; 3-day measles) with “rubeola,” so-called “hard measles.” While rubeola is associated with these complications in the incidence range you cite, one infectious disease textbook states, “Encephalitis is an extremely uncommon complication of rubella…reported, during an epidemic, to occur in 1 of 5000 cases” (Mandell, Douglas and Bennett’s Principles and Practice of Infectious Diseases, Fourth Edition, 1995, p. 1461). The Clinician’s Handbook of Preventive Services (U.S. Public Health Service, 1994) reports the risk of encephalitis from rubella at 1 per 6000 cases. Do you have a reliable reference to support your statement that the risk of rubella encephalitis is “1 in 1,000 to 2,000?”
While the figures you cite are standard, accepted risks of rubeola disease, they are not applicable to all age groups or countries. In developed, Western countries, the complication and death rate from rubeola is actually quite low, while in undeveloped, Third World countries, the rate is quite high.
In childhood, rubella (German measles) is usually an inocuous disease, often with symptoms so mild that infection can go unnoticed. The major concern with rubella is if pregnant women are infected during the first three months of pregnancy, the baby may be adversely affected. (See enclosed press release, “Aborted Babies Used as Source for Rubella Vaccine.”) Before widespread use of rubella vaccine, 85 percent or more of females reached childbearing age having already contracted rubella, which confers lifelong immunity and protection from the disease during pregnancy. With routine rubella vaccination, many women now reach adulthood with no rubella antibodies. Worse yet, the rubella vaccine adverse reaction rate increases significantly with the age of the vaccinee, especially in adult females.
8. “Clearly a parent takes a significant risk when he refuses to have a child immunized” (p. 4, col. 2, par. 3).
Critique: As stated above, for some children and adults, a greater risk is taken by vaccinating than not vaccinating. If one of your children were killed or injured by a vaccine, would you vaccinate your other children? As a parent, I would certainly think twice. However, federal vaccine policy-makers tell you to do just that. I can cite numerous cases where multiple children in the same family were killed or injured by vaccines.
9. “Any widespread effort to force the hand of vaccine manufacturers would require considerable human suffering” (p. 4. col. 2, par. 4).
Critique: Why shouldn’t we force the hand of vaccine manufacturers to make better and safer vaccines? They make hundreds of millions of dollars every year selling these products, with no fear of liability. Aren’t children worth it? My Catholic faith and pro-life convictions tell me that children are worth the effort.
Looking at it from another side, when a child is injured or killed by a vaccine, it is the vaccine manufacturer who has caused “considerable human suffering.” Live for just one day with a child crippled or brain damaged by a vaccine, and you’ll see what “considerable human suffering” is.
10. “…parents have a moral obligation to secure the life and health of their children” (p. 4, col. 2, par. 4).
Critique: For some families, this may involve withholding selected or all vaccines. As with all medical procedures, informed consent should be the rule. A thorough study of each individual vaccine’s pros and cons should be made before blindly permitting these products to be injected into our or our children’s bodies. When we purchase a new car or refrigerator, don’t we consult Consumer Reports and comparison shop? Our children deserve no less when it comes to medical care.
Lastly, do parents have a moral obligation to enroll their children as guinea pigs in massive medical experiments? Babies and pre-adolescents are targeted for hepatitis B vaccination because, according to the CDC, “efforts to vaccinate persons in the major risk groups [promiscuous homosexuals, heterosexuals, and intravenous drug abusers] have had limited success.” The CDC emphasizes that it will take 20 to 30 years of routine infant and pre-teen hepatitis B vaccination to determine if the campaign actually results in decreased incidence of disease. (And, what about the cost in vaccine injuries?)
The Catechism of the Catholic Church affirms that medical experimentation on human subjects “does not conform to the dignity of the person if it takes place without the informed consent of the subject or those who legitimately speak for him” (#2295). In the context of organ transplantation, the Catechism states it is “morally inadmissible directly to bring about the disabling mutilation or death of a human being, even in order to delay the death of other persons (#2296). Should this be any less true when applied to the compulsory vaccination issue? (The government acknowledges that vaccines will injure some people.)
Likewise, in its November 1994 “Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Services, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops emphasized, “No one should be the subject of medical or genetic experimentation, even if it is therapeutic, unless the person or surrogate first has given free and informed consent” (#31).
Traditional Catholic teaching supports the right of parents to protect and nurture their children without government interference. However, even Church authorities have been swayed by government pressure to vaccinate children, as reflected in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati’s “Decree on Child Abuse.” This document lists “a child’s lack of…immunizations” as a “sign of neglect,” possibly setting up the family for an intrusive investigation by the local children’s protective services, with potential loss of parental custody and forcible vaccination.
Given all the above uncertainties about vaccine safety and efficacy, equating failure to vaccinate with child abuse is unwarranted. (See “How Safe Are Vaccinations,” Catholic Twin Circle, June 29-July 5, 1997, p. 10-11.)
Thank you for considering another viewpoint regarding vaccines. I look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Kristine M. Severyn, R.Ph., Ph.D.
Director
Vaccine Policy Institute