Whooping Cough Vaccine – Doesn’t Work – GSK Says “We Never Bothered to Check”

STOP PRESS 21/5/12:

See update: Major Whooping Cough Epidemics – Vaccine Not Working

ORIGINAL ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW

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According to a recently published paper not only does whooping cough vaccine “wear off” within as little as three years of administration [assuming it ever “wore on” in the first place] but [according to Reuters] the original manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline never bothered to check whether it worked.  And 81 percent of recent whooping cough cases in California were in children fully vaccinated and teenagers and adults are now put at risk when they would have had lifelong immunity contracting the disease naturally:

Witt MA, Katz PH, Witt MJ, Unexpectedly Limited Durability of Immunity Following Acellular Pertussis Vaccination in Pre-Adolescents in a North American Outbreak.

Whooping cough vaccine fades in pre-teens: study – By Kerry Grens Thompson/Reuters NEW YORK | Tue Apr 3, 2012 2:13pm EDT

The Reuters report states:

A spokesperson for GSK, one of the pertussis vaccine makers, …  GSK has never studied the duration of the vaccine’s protection after the shot given to four- to six-year-olds, the spokesperson said.  ……

“We have a real belief that the durability (of the vaccine) is not what was imagined,” said Dr. David Witt, an infectious disease specialist at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in San Rafael, California, and senior author of the study.  …….

In early 2010, a spike in cases appeared at Kaiser Permanente in San Rafael, and it was soon determined to be an outbreak of whooping cough — the largest seen in California in more than 50 years.  …..

Witt ….. What was very surprising was the majority of cases were in fully vaccinated children. ….. Of the 132 patients under age 18, 81 percent were up to date on recommended whooping cough shots …. “

Isn’t that fraud?  And if so by whom?  Isn’t it at the very least unethical and illegal to promote and sell a medical product, especially for children, making health claims that it will protect them from disease and [of course the much touted] death which are false and no one bothered to check in the first place?  Who in the US where this study was done is responsible for suing GlaxoSmithKline and/or the US Centers for Disease Control over this?

In the rare event that a child dies from something like whooping cough the people to blame are clearly identifiable.  They are doctors and drug companies and government health officials.  Instead of the US National Institutes of Health spending its US$30 billion annual budget on treatments for those rare cases, they pretend vaccines are OK.  Well it is now time parents who want to avoid their children being harmed by vaccines fought back and put the blame squarely where it deserves to rest.

In the 21st Century there is no effective treatment for measles – difficult to believe.  We must demand that effective treatments be developed for these basic childhood diseases and within the next three years.  US presidential hopeful Senator “Newt” Gingrich wants to spend billions of dollars on a moonbase and ridiculous excursions into space.  Well “Newt”, why not spend money on something useful and save all those third world children who die from measles and other basic childhood diseases because they have malnutrition.  No?  Ah, so presidentially, might you always be “hopeful” but never President?  Odd that.

The study authors wrote:

This first detailed analysis of a recent North American pertussis outbreak found widespread disease among fully vaccinated older children. Starting approximately three years after prior vaccine dose, attack rates markedly increased, suggesting inadequate protection or durability from the acellular vaccine.  Witt MA, Katz PH, Witt MJ, Unexpectedly Limited Durability of Immunity Following Acellular Pertussis Vaccination in Pre-Adolescents in a North American Outbreak.

But what do they conclude – that with our sophisticated 21st Century medical “science” we should protect you and your children by developing effective treatments for the minority of cases where symptoms might be problematic rather than pursue the approach of vaccination?  No chance.  Here are the conclusions – yep – give em more vaccines more often – so we will all end up getting loads of vaccines every few years even as adults – good news for the drug companies – but then the authors are all employed by Kaiser Permante [so what else can you expect]:-

Conclusions Our data suggests that the current schedule of acellular pertussis vaccine doses is insufficient to prevent outbreaks of pertussis. We noted a markedly increased rate of disease from age 8 through 12, proportionate to the interval since the last scheduled vaccine. Stable rates of testing ruled out selection bias. The possibility of earlier or more numerous booster doses of acellular pertussis vaccine either as part of routine immunization or for outbreak control should be entertained.

Now if GSK was a supplier of herbal medicines and alternative medicine remedies, it might be panned across the internet by the so-called “skeptics” or even subject to legal action.  Is this a new thing for GSK?  No.  Not at all:  

Glaxo chief: Our drugs do not work on most patients The Independent [UK] By Steve Connor , Science Editor, Monday 08 December 2003

But what of the US CDC?  It is officially a “waste of space” and money. According to the US Senate the CDC “cannot demonstrate it is controlling disease“.  “CDC Off Center” is an extraordinary 115 page review published in June 2007 by the US Senate on the US Centers for Disease Control:-

A review of how an agency tasked with fighting and preventing disease has spent hundreds of millions of tax dollars for failed prevention efforts, international junkets, and lavish facilities, but cannot demonstrate it is controlling disease.” 

“CDC OFF CENTER“- The United States Senate Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information and International Security, Minority Office, Under the Direction of Senator Tom Coburn, Ranking Minority Member, June 2007.

And if you want to know some really interesting “stuff” about whooping cough [pertussis] and its vaccines you should go over to Inside Vaccines and read up:

An InsideVaccines blog entry about pertussis

Click here to read all about what the pertussis vaccine does (or doesn’t, as the case may be) do in terms of herd immunity.

What does pertussis “look like” in unvaccinated infants and children?

Manufacturer’s Inserts and efficacy statements:

Daptacel– Efficacy of the DTap ranged from 59-89%.

The Tetanus portion of the vaccine has never been tested for efficacy.

Interestingly, the CDC’s Reported Cases and Deaths from Vaccine Preventable Diseases,United States, 1950-2005 shows Pertussis cases at the highest reported rates since 1959. (Vaccine became available in the 1940s).

In the Journal of Theoretical Biology they discuss the failure rate of the pertussis vaccine in New Zealand.

The obtained figures indicate that in New Zealand the effective vaccination rate against pertussis is lower than 50%, and perhaps even as low as 33% of the population. These figures contradict the medical statistics which claim that more than 80% of the newborns in New Zealand are vaccinated against pertussis (Turner et al., 2000). This contradiction is due to the mentioned unreliability of the available vaccine. The fact that the fraction of immune population obtained here is considerably lower than the fraction of vaccinated population implies a high level of vaccination failure.

The Official Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics addresses the issue of investigator bias affecting efficacy trials.

In the course of a large pertussis vaccine efficacy trial we realized that investigator compliance could have a major impact on calculated vaccine efficacy.

Conclusions. Our data suggest that observer compliance (observer bias), can significantly inflate calculated vaccine efficacy. It is likely that all recently completed efficacy trials have been effected by this type of observer bias and all vaccines have considerably less efficacy against mild disease than published data suggest.

A study completed on vaccinated children in Israel concluded that the pertussis vaccine does not prevent transmission, it merely prevents the subjects from getting or feeling ill and makes them a source of infection – ie no herd immunity – the disease propagation is not prevented by vaccination – it just makes the carriers of the disease invisible (ie. the vaccine makes the pertussis infection subclinical) and therefore just as much a threat to those children who cannot be vaccinated as if they had the disease naturally [thereby defeating the big argument put up by health officials about parents’ duty to protect other children by having their children vaccinated]:-

We tested 46 fully vaccinated children in two day-care centers in Israel who were exposed to a fatal case of pertussis infection. Only two of five children who tested positive for Bordetella pertussis met the World Health Organization’s case definition for pertussis. Vaccinated children may be asymptomatic reservoirs for infection.   ………….

Vaccinated adolescents and adults may serve as reservoirs for silent infection and become potential transmitters to unprotected infants (3-11). The whole-cell vaccine for pertussis is protective only against clinical disease, not against infection (15-17). Therefore, even young, recently vaccinated children may serve as reservoirs and potential transmitters of infection:

Srugo I, Benilevi D, Madeb R, et al Pertussis infection in fully vaccinated children in day-care centers, Israel.  Emerg Infect Dis. 2000 Sep-Oct;6(5):526-9. [Department of Clinical Microbiology, Bnai Zion Medical Center, Haifa, Israel]

Granted, we are using the acellular pertussis now in the US, but it’s widely acknowledged that the whole-cell was in fact more efficacious (but more reactive). So, even this vaccine which “worked better” than what we are currently using, didn’t prevent transmission/infection. It prevented the symptoms.

Interesting discussion of how the pertussis toxin prevents/delays appropriate antibody response, thus allowing infection of immune hosts: Kirimanjeswara GS, Agosto LM, Kennett MJ, Bjornstad ON, Harvill ET: Pertussis toxin inhibits neutrophil recruitment to delay antibody-mediated clearance of Bordetella pertussis Research article, The Journal of Clinical Investigation 2005: 115:12, 3494 December 2005 [Department of Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences and Department of Entomology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, USA.]

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