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The PREPARED statements of many of those who testified.
This is not their actual word-for-word testimony but their prepared statements submitted to the committee but you will get the idea.
FULL HEARING TESTIMONY BELOW
Incluing Wakefield, O'Leary, Singh and others - those testifying at beginning of document
Departments of Medicine and Histopathology, Royal Free and University College Medical School, Hampstead, London NW3 2PF, UK
Sir--Hypothesis testing and presentation of the outcome--either positive or negative--is a fundamental part of the scientific process. Accordingly we have published studies that both do,1 and do not2 support a role for measles virus in chronic intestinal inflammation: this is called integrity. The latest of these studies was strongly positive,3 and was accepted by the MRC Review in February, 1998. By contrast, Brent Taylor and colleagues (June 12, p 2026)4 have ignored the rules. They are inappropriately didactic in their conclusions, despite the weakness of their method and the contradictions in their data. A case-series analysis is unlikely to identify a relation between exposure and disease, in which the onset is insidious and in which, very often, there is diagnostic delay.
Taylor et al tested the hypothesis that there should be no temporal clustering of first parenteral concerns with measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccination. They identified a statistically significant excess risk by 6 months after MMR, which they dismiss, post hoc, as indicating parental recall bias. Had this been the case it should have been seen in both of their vaccine groups--those receiving MMR and those receiving any measles-containing vaccine. The excess risk was seen only in the MMR group; this is a fundamental flaw.
Temporal trends for autism in the USA (California*) and the UK (north-west London)
In 1998 the expected numbers of newly diagnosed autistic children in California should have been 105-263 cases, according to DSM-IV; the actual figure was 1685 new cases. The temporal trend in north-west London is almost identical, although the rise is delayed by about 10 years. The two countries use the same diagnostic criteria. The sequential trends are consistent with the timing of introduction of MMR to both regions.
*Data from Department of Developmental Services, Sacramento, 1987-98 (www.dds.ca.gov).
However, it pales into insignificance compared with their failure to declare the fact of an MMR catch-up campaign that was initiated in 1988 with the introduction of this vaccine. This campaign was targeted at children, whatever their age, who presumably had not received either monovalent mumps or rubella vaccine whatever their exposure status. As such it was a novel and, in terms of safety, untested policy. On the basis of Taylor and colleagues' inclusion criteria, and taking account of the catch-up campaign, then those first birth cohorts who actually received MMR (circa 1986) were precisely those in whom a doubling of the numbers of cases of autism were seen. Thereafter these numbers continue to increase strikingly. Omission of this essential fact--the catch-up campaign--requires explanation lest it be misconstrued.
Can the dramatic increase in autism be ascribed to change in diagnostic practice? Data from the recent California report from the Office of Developmental Services belie this contention. The figure juxtaposes the data from California with those from north-west London. Identical temporal trends are shown, with the rise in autism from a steady baseline value, coinciding with the introduction of MMR vaccine as the single strategy in both countries that use the same diagnostic criteria for autism.
These data expose the danger of not only setting out to prove, rather than to test, hypotheses but also presenting the data whether they are supportive or not. The full story has yet to unfold. In a timely BMJ newspeice,5 Begg who is described as a leading virologist, calls for MMR research to be terminated on the basis of Taylor and co-workers' report and a non-peer-reviewed so-called analysis in Current Problems of Pharmacovigilance. Clearly there are some things that may end-up being terminated as a consequence of these events: research into the possible link between MMR, autism, and bowel disease is not one of them.
Andrew J Wakefield
Departments of Medicine and Histopathology, Royal Free and University College Medical School, Hampstead, London NW3 2PF, UK
1 Lewin J, Dhillon AP, Sim R, Mazure G, Pounder RE, Wakefield AJ. Persistent measles virus infection of the intestine: confirmation by immunogold electron microscopy. Gut 1995; 36: 564-69. [PubMed]
2 Chadwick N, Bruce IJ, Schepelman S, Pounder RE, Wakefield AJ. Measles virus RNA is not detected in inflammatory bowel disease using hybrid capture and reverse transcription followed by polymerase chain reaction. J Med Virol 1998; 70: 305-11. [PubMed]
3 Montgomery SM, Morris DL, Pounder RE, et al. Paramyxovirus infections in childhood and subsequent inflammatory bowel disease. Gastroenterology 1999; 116: 796-803. [PubMed]
4 Taylor B, Miller E, Farringdon CP, et al. MMR vaccine and autism: no epidemiological evidence for a causal association. Lancet 1999; 353: 2026-29. [Text]
5 Bower H. New research demolishes link between MMR vaccine and autism. BMJ 1999; 318: 1643.
Poor ascertainment of measles vaccination status is likely to reduce the statistical significance of any relation between vaccination and subsequent disease, so that a small systematic bias is more likely to obliterate any such relation. There is a risk that by replacing controls, but not patients with IBD who had inadequate vaccination records, systematic bias may have been introduced into this study. Feeney and colleagues have attempted to address the issue of unobserved heterogeneity by looking at the uptake rates for vaccination against pertussis and diphtheria/tetanus. Although examination of vaccinations other than against measles provides more evidence about reliability of these data, it cannot provide conclusive evidence of homogeneity among cases and controls. The significantly higher uptake rates for pertussis and diphtheria/tetanus indicate that there could be a less significant relation between socioeconomic circumstances and vaccine uptake when compared with vaccination against measles. When this is coupled with the uncertainty of vaccination records, it renders them inadequate as indicators of childhood circumstances and characteristics. It is important that trials such as this are conducted and reported, but they cannot be a substitute for adequate safety trials of procedure that might cause severe iatrogenic damage, even if only in a few cases.
*Scott M Montgomery, D L Morris, R E Pounder, A J Wakefield
University Department of Medicine, Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine, University of London, London NW3 2PF, UK
1 Feeney M, Clegg A, Winwood P, Snook J. A case control study of measles vaccination and inflammatory bowel disease. Lancet 1997; 350: 76466. [Text]
2 Thompson NP, Flemming DM,Pounder RE, Wakefield AJ. Crohn's disease, measles, and measles vaccination: a case control failure. Lancet 1996; 347: 263.
MARCH 9, 1998 ISSUE #39B by Harold E. Buttram, MD Townsend Letters Dec. 1997
Childhood autism is the result of encephalitis affecting primarily the limbic system of the brain, located below the cerebral cortex. A relatively few number of cases are due to genetic causes, but officially the great majority are of unknown causes.
Bernard Rimland, PhD, founding director of the Autism Research Institute, estimates that there are now a minimum of 250,000 autistic children in America, a 10 to 15-fold increase in the past 50 or so years. Dr. Rimland, internationally recognized as a leading expert in the field of autism, has publically stated that he believes current childhood vaccine programs are one of the major causes for the current epidemic of autism.1
The US Committee on Children, Youth, and Families has estimated there are now 7.5 million American children with developmental delay compared with 4.8 million in 1991. Of these, 30% are thought to be autistic or have autistic tendencies .2 It is true that statistics are subject to question, but the real scope of the problem can be gained by talking with veteran elementary school teachers, and I have talked with many of them. Without exception in my experience, they emphatically confirm that there has been a dramatic and widespread increase among school children in learning and behavioral disorders attention deficit and hyperactivity, and children requiring special education. These changes appear most notable since the 1970's. Dawbarns Law Firm of England has published a paper in which they report on over 600 instances of side effects following the MMR and MR vaccines, which were introduced in England in 1988.3 These include 202 cases of autism, 97 of epilepsy, 40 with hearing and vision problems, and 41 with 100 behavioral and learning problems, the latter in older children. Although British health officials deny a relationship of these conditions with the vaccines, Dawbarns has accounts of over 200 parents who believe that their children were normal before they were vaccinated, and who can point to nothing (other than the vaccine) which could account for the deterioration in their children's conditions.
The Physician's Desk Reference, in its section on the MMR vaccine, states that complications from MMR, such as encephalitis and optic neuritis, occur "very rarely." This is the conventional view, sincerely held by a majority of doctors, but where does the truth lie? Could it be that adverse consequences to MMR vaccine are occurring on a larger scale than officially recognized?
Hypothetical model for MMR vaccine as a cause of encephalitis Nerve cells of the brain function by conducting nerve impulses, Much like electrical wiring, these cells require insulation to function normally. This insulation is provided by myelin sheaths, made up largely of fatty material. For the most part myelination of nerve cells of the brain does not commence until after birth. Most is laid down during the first 5 years of normal development. It is now generally thought that the process of encephalitis, whether from wild viruses of live-virus vaccines, is associated with an interference with the myelination process brought about by the development of antibodies against myelin basic protein, a constituent of the myelin sheaths .4
In theory there are several mechanisms whereby the MMR vaccine could have increased potency to induce harmful autoantibodies (antibodies which attack the body's own tissues and organs, including the myelin sheathes), once injected into the human system. First and perhaps foremost, MMR is incubated in chick embryo culture medium, which necessarily includes precursors of all the organ systems of the chick, including myelin basic protein. Merck Pharmaceuticals, which produces MMR vaccine, claims that all traces of the chick embryo are removed before the vaccine is released for use. This may be true, but it is probably irrelevant as it does not take into account the process of mobile genetic elements, more commonly referred to as "jumping genes." Viruses being made up entirely of genetic material, they are highly susceptible to this process. It has been shown that viruses are genetically changed by accepting genetic material from cell cultures.
The genetic imprint of the chick myelin basic protein, which is foreign to the human system because of its chick origin, may be programmed to induce antibodies against human myelin basic protein, once injected into the human system. This in turn, potentially resulting in encephalitis. The second theoretical reason is that the MMR vaccine is injected by needle directly into the system. This differs, from the natural infections which are "cushioned" or buffered by the mucosal immune system (Secretary IgA) of the respiratory tract. By passing this mucosal immune system, the injection may carry greater potency for harmful autoantibody formation. Third, measles virus carries protein similar to those found in myelin sheaths 6 so that antibodies induced by the measles vaccine may cross-react harmfully with myelin.
Carrying this line of thought further, in 1993 Vijendra Singh, PhD University of Illinois, published a study in which they found antibodies to myelin basic protein in 50 to 60% of autistic children tested.4 Recently at a public meeting Dr. Singh presented information on an unpublished, preliminary study of 27 autistic children in which he found nearly 50% correlation between MMR antibodies and antibodies to myelin basic protein in serum drawn from the children.7 Dr. Singh emphasized that this study was very preliminary and that no conclusions could be drawn from it. However, it does raise a higher index of suspicion that the MMR vaccine may result in encephalitis and its various complications on a fairly large scale. Once again, this leads us to question whether or not many vaccine reactions are passing unrecognized and therefore unreported by the US medical community.
Reasons for under-reporting of adverse vaccine reactions in the USA As reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1990, there is a general malaise among American physicians in reporting adverse drug (and vaccine) reactions;.8 ,9 Based on this report, the present voluntary reporting system appears to have resulted in very low levels of adverse reaction reports.
The original screening studies for measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine were limited to short periods of time such as 6 weeks observation for adverse affects. This limited time did not take into account the possibility of delayed reactions, which may outnumber those occurring within the 6 or so week period. In the case of cancer, we know there may be periods of years between the original body insult and onset of cancer. In the case of the vaccines, it is possible that slow and subclinical process of encephalitis may be initiated which may not manifest until much later an therefore remain unrecognized as having been caused by the MMR vaccine.
It is possible that MMR vaccine reactions are now occurring on a much larger scale than they did in the original screening studies, because many children today are second generation vaccinees; that is, they are born mothers previously vaccinated with MMR. The mothers having been vaccinated with genetically contaminated MMR, as previous described, the children may have heightened susceptibility to adverse reactions when rechallenged with the vaccine.10 Further confirmation of this concept is found in a recent report from Japan where it was demonstrated that live virus from measles vaccine do persist in mononuclear cells of the body in children with autoimmune hepatitis.16 Doctors, having been conditioned by the rarity of adverse reactions in the original screening studies, are generally inclined to dismiss these reactions as due to other causes.
The decline of childhood diseases before vaccination There is a generally held concept that mass vaccine programs were largely responsible for control of former epidemic diseases, but with the probable exception of the polio vaccine, in most instances this was not the case. From 1911 to 1935 the 4 leading causes of death among those aged 1 to 14 years, covered by Metropolitan Life Insurance policies, were diphtheria, measles, scarlet fever and whooping cough.11
However, by 1945 the combined rates from these 4 diseases had declined by 95%, before mass vaccine program began in the United States .12 By far the greatest factors in the decline were better housing with less crowded conditions, better nutrition, and other public health, hygienic, and medical measures.
Discussion The conventional view is that adverse vaccine reactions are relatively uncommon. At variance with this are internationally recognized authorities such as Dr. Bernard Rimland. Also at variance are many parents whose children have developed medical complications following vaccines where no other cause was evident. Time may prove that one of the basic flaws in American childhood vaccine programs is that it is increasingly compulsory and mandatory. Once considered the fountainhead of freedom, in the enforcement of vaccine programs, America has become one of the most stringent and arbitrary of all nations. Parents refusing to have their children vaccinated, often for religious reasons, are subject to charges of child abuse.
Public health officials contend that such compulsory measures are necessary for control of infectious diseases which, they maintain, would increase along with childhood death rates if the vaccine mandates were lifted. In my opinion, this argument does not bear up to scrutiny for the following reasons:
**In 1979 Sweden banned the pertussis (whooping cough) vaccine, considering it both ineffective and dangerous. In spite of the banning, or perhaps because of it, Sweden maintains one of the lowest infant mortality rates in the world. In 1975 Japan raised the age of pertussis vaccine to 2 years of age, considering it dangerous in infancy. Since that time, sudden infant death syndrome (cot deaths) have largely disappeared in Japan.13
**Other nations with either voluntary vaccine programs, such as England, or less stringently enforced programs have lower infant mortality rates than the US. With few exceptions, they have not had a return of deadly epidemics (with high mortality). One researcher has estimated that, in the case of autism, it may take 15 years to reach the standards of scientific proof that MMR vaccine is causing autism in a large portion of children with the condition. Can we afford to wait 15 years?
For sake of argument, let us assume that scientific proof is eventually gained that MMR is causatively related to a significant portion of children with autism and developmental delay. If we continue to enforce vaccine programs as at present, one shudders to think what the future generations will think and write about us. Mistakes might be forgiven, but not the enforcement of these mistakes. If such does prove to be the case, we can rest assured that they will be neither kind nor charitable in their judgments of us.
Conclusion
As previously mentioned, time may prove that vaccine programs went awry
when
they deviated from the most basic of traditional medical ethics: the
right of a patient to choose or reject medical therapy, or the right of
parents to accept or reject medical procedures such as vaccines for
their children. The right of free choice provides a system for checks
and balances now lacking. As a result, present vaccine programs are
going to extremes and are possibly causing more disease than they are
preventing. The remedy? Parents should be allowed the right of free
choice to accept or reject vaccines for their children.
Addendum Of related interest to the subject of MMR vaccine as a potential cause of encephalitis is the report of Dr. Sudhir Gupta and coworkers in which they found marked abnormalities of the immune systems of autistic children.10 Could the MMR vaccine have been a contributing factor for these abnormalities? In 1991 there was a report of significantly higher child mortality following high-tittered measles vaccines compared with standard measles vaccines among children in Senegal.14 Subsequently a study was undertaken to assess immune responses to the high tittered vaccines.15 The results showed suppression in lymphoproliferation; that is, suppression in lymphocyte production (lymphocytes are a class of white blood cells which play a major role in governing the immune system).
In the above study report it was stated, "the effect of measles immunization on immune responses in infants has not been systematically studied." The study was valuable but it tested only two strains of high red measles vaccines, not the standard vaccine. As a result we do know that the high-tittered vaccine does cause immune disturbances, but we do not know the effects of the standard measles vaccine, studies not having been done. If such studies are not already in progress, let us hope that they soon will be.
Correspondence: Harold E. Buttram, MD 5724 Clymer Road Quakertown, Pennsylvania 18951 USA 215-536-1890
References
1. Statements by Bernard Rimland, PhD, were given at a conference on
autism, sponsored by the Autism Research Institute in Chicago, June,
1996.
2. Information from the Developmental Delay Registry, 6701 Fairfax Road, Chevy Chase, Maryland 20815, Tel. 301652-2263.
3. From a paper distributed by Dawbarns Law Firm, Bank House, Kingrs Staithe Square, Lingrs Lynn, Norfolk PE30 IRD, Great Britain, Tel. 01553. 764373, Fax 01553-765226.
4. Singh VJ et al., Antibodies to myelin basic protein in children with autistic behavior, Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, Vol. 7, 97-1203, 1993.
5. Kumar S & Miller LK, Effects of serial passage of Autographs Californica nuclear polyhidrosis virus in cell culture. Virus Research, Vol. 7, 335-349, 1987.
6. Jahnke U et al., Sequence homology between certain viral proteins and proteins related to encephalomyelitis and neuritis, Science, Vol. 29, 282-284, July 19, 1985,
7. Presentation by Dr. Vijendra Singh, 8/16/97, Allegro School, Cedar Knolls, NJ.
8. Scott HD et al., MD reporting of adverse reactions: results of the Rhode Island adverse drug reaction reporting project, JAMA, Vol. 263, No. 13, 1785-1788, 4/4/90.
9. Reporting side effects: signals or noise? (Editorial), ibid, page 1823.
10. Gupta S et al., Dysregulated immune system in children with autism; beneficial effects of intravenous globulin on autistic characteristics, J ofAutism and Develop Disorders, Vol. 26, No. 4, 439-452, 1996. (In this article on page 450, it is stated, "We theorized that the high titers of rubella antibody ... present in mothers of children with autism would be transplacentally transferred and may persist for a prolonged period in the child. When such a child gets MMR immunization, rubella antigen may complex with preexisting antibodies and such complexes might play a role in pathogenesis of autistic features.")
11. Dublin L & Lotka A, Twenty-five Years ofHealth Progress, New York: Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, 1937, page 48.
12. Dublin L, Health Progress 1936-1945, New York: Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, 1948, page 12.
13. Vaccination. 100 Years of Orthodox Research Shows that Vaccines Represent a Medical Assault on the Immune System, Viera Scheibner, PhD., 1993 (from pages 33 to 49 the author extensively reviews the Swedish and Japanese experiences with the pertussis vaccine, book available from New Atlantean Press, P.O. Box 9638-925, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87504).
14. Garenne M et al., Child mortality after high-titre measles vaccines; a prospective study in Senegal, Lancet, Vol. 338, 903-907, October 12, 1991.
15. Hussey GD et al., The effect of Edmonston-Zagreb and Schwarz measles vaccines on immune responses in infants, J ofInfect Diseases, Vol. 173, 1320-1326, 1996.
Many people don't realize they need to research the dangers of the single vaccines too. Very serious problems with them also. I strongly encourage you to do that also.
I know children damaged in a variety of ways including autism from any of the vaccines, single or combos, but of course combos even more of a risk. Also death from any.
Lots on my webpages
Let me know if I can help further. I also moderate an email list for parents - If you would want to join the email list
send blank email to
vaccinations-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
EVERY vaccine has its serious danger and most people don't realize that until it happens to them.
Measles vaccine alone has been implicated in bowel problems called Crohn's Disease (and more)
Mumps vaccine implicated in meningitis and more
Rubella vaccine in chronic arthritis
Rarely are these diseases life threatening in a culture such as ours
Also homeopathic treatment is widely available in the UK & US which is EXTREMELY helpful in measles or any childhood or any illness to prevent complications
If you want a variety of articles on the dangers of rubella or measles or mumps vaccines as singles or more on homeopathic treatment, let me know
