In
recent years, pregnant women have been told to get an increasing number
of vaccinations, even though there’s a shocking lack of studies to
confirm the safety for mother and child
In
2009, reports of miscarriage following receipt of the pandemic H1N1
swine flu vaccine (pH1N1) started emerging. Now, a study has found that
women who had received a pH1N1-containing flu vaccine two years in a row
were more likely to suffer miscarriage within the following 28 days
Most
miscarriages occurred during the first trimester, but several also took
place in the second trimester. Median fetal term at the time of
miscarriage was seven weeks
In all, pregnant women receiving concurrent pH1N1-containing flu vaccines had a nearly eightfold higher risk of miscarriage
On
August 28, 2017, the AAP recommended that newborns who weigh at least
2,000 grams (4.4 pounds) should receive their first dose of hepatitis B
vaccine within 24 hours of birth
By Dr. Mercola
Most pregnant women know to abstain from alcohol, tobacco and other
obvious toxins to protect the child growing in their womb, but what
about vaccines? In recent years, pregnant women have been told to get
an increasing number of vaccinations, even though there’s a shocking
lack of studies to confirm the safety for mother and child.
As noted by Barbara Loe Fisher, president of the National Vaccine
Information Center (NVIC) in her 2013 article, “Vaccination During
Pregnancy: Is it Safe?”:1
“Although since the 1970s public health officials have
recommended influenza vaccinations for pregnant women in the second or
third trimester,2
relatively few obstetricians promoted the vaccine until the past decade
when, in 2006, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) strengthened
recommendations that all pregnant women, healthy or not, should get a
flu shot in any trimester.3
[C]urrent vaccine recommendations4,5,6 are endorsed by the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG)7,8 the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and other medical trade associations.9,10
With these recommendations, the time-honored rule of avoiding any
potential toxic exposure that might interfere with the normal
development of the fetus has been suspended and replaced with an
assumption that vaccination during pregnancy is safe.”
Vaccinations During Pregnancy Have No Basis in Science
Fisher goes on to list no less than 10 vaccine facts pertaining to
the lack of evidence of safety in pregnant women. For starters, drug
companies did not test the safety and effectiveness of giving influenza
vaccine to pregnant women before the vaccines were licensed in the
U.S.,11,12
and data on inflammatory and other biological responses to vaccination
during pregnancy that could affect pregnancy and birth outcomes is
still lacking.13
As far as the scientific evidence is concerned, it’s still unknown whether the influenza vaccine can cause fetal harm or affect your reproductive capacity,14
which is why the vaccine manufacturer product inserts state that the
influenza vaccine should only be given to a pregnant woman if it’s
“clearly needed.”
Pregnant women are essentially expected to stick to recommendations
out of sheer faith, since vaccine recommendations are not based on
weighty scientific evidence. In fact, health statistics suggest there’s
something very wrong going on in the U.S., seeing how we have one of
the highest maternal and infant mortality rates in the world.
As of last year, global rates for maternal mortality had fallen by
half — except in the U.S., where the number of women who die from
pregnancy-related complications has significantly increased.15
Infant mortality rates are also far higher in the U.S. than in any of
the other 27 wealthy countries surveilled by the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC).16
Could this be related to the fact that American babies and pregnant
women receive the greatest number of vaccines? While there’s no
research clearly proving this, there’s also no evidence to refute the
hypothesis that excessive vaccinations may be part of the problem.
Flu Vaccine May Be Associated With Increased Risk of Miscarriage
In 2009, reports of miscarriage following administration of the H1N1 swine flu vaccine started emerging.17
Dozens of women claimed they lost their babies just hours or days after
getting the vaccine, which had not been tested on pregnant women or,
if it was, the evidence was never published. Not surprisingly, these
instances were passed off as coincidental. After all, miscarriages do
happen, and for any number of different reasons.
Now, a paper18, 19,20 published in the journal Vaccine is yet again raising questions about whether it is safe to give pregnant women flu vaccine.
They found that women who had received a pH1N1-containing flu vaccine
two years in a row were more likely to suffer miscarriage within the
following 28 days.
While most of the miscarriages occurred during the first trimester,
several also took place in the second trimester. The median fetal term
at the time of miscarriage was seven weeks. In all, 485 pregnant women
aged 18 to 44 who had a miscarriage during the flu seasons of 2010/2011
and 2011/2012 were compared to 485 pregnant women who carried to term.
Of the 485 women who miscarried, 17 had been vaccinated twice in a
row — once in the 28 days prior to vaccination and once in the previous
year. For comparison, of the 485 women who had normal pregnancies,
only four had been vaccinated two years in a row. While the study could
not establish direct causation, the researchers call for more research
to assess the link. Commenting on the study, which was funded by the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Amanda Cohn, CDC
adviser for vaccines stated:
"I think it's really important for women to understand that this
is a possible link, and it is a possible link that needs to be studied
and needs to be looked at over more [flu] seasons. We need to
understand if it's the flu vaccine, or is this a group of women [who
received flu vaccines] who were also more likely to have miscarriages.”
At present, the CDC is not making any changes to its recommendation
for pregnant women, which states they should get vaccinated against
influenza no matter which trimester they’re in.21
This is reprehensible public health policy at its worst. Sacrifice the
health of women and their unborn children so corporations can profit.
Remember the former head of the CDC, Julie Gerberding, left the
CDC in 2009 to later become president of Merck Vaccines, a position she
held until December 2014, when she became Merck’s executive vice
president of strategic communications, global public policy and
population health.
Washington Post Tries to Minimize Impact of Its Report
Not surprisingly, vaccine industry shills are up in arms about the
findings, and already, there are signs suggesting industry pressure is
being applied to stifle the news. The original story published by The
Washington Post, written by Lena Sun, was headlined “Researchers Find
Hint of a Link Between Flu Vaccine and Miscarriage.” That headline was
quickly changed to “What to Know About a Study of Flu Vaccine and
Miscarriage.”22
Notably, this edit was done without disclosing the edit made, which
is standard practice. I would not be at all surprised if the study
actually gets retracted in coming weeks for some perceived shortcoming
or flaw, even though it’s virtually impossible to find a published
study that isn’t impervious to such critique. As noted by J.B. Handley,
co-founder of Generation Rescue:23
“The mainstream media is doing their best to minimize a
devastating study showing a high correlation (7.7-fold) between flu
vaccines and miscarriages. A review of the scientific literature shows a
body of evidence that supports the new study’s conclusions.”
Commenting specifically on The Washington Post’s obvious tiptoeing around the issue, he writes:
“[W]hile I’ve seen a number of different ways for reporters to
try and minimize the implications of damaging studies, Ms. Sun’s
headline may just take the cake: ‘Researchers find hint of a link
between flu vaccine and miscarriage’ … “hint” is not a statistical term nor does “hint” in any way provide a specific assessment of risk.
“Hint” is more like a word that you hope might keep people from
reading your article … [T]he actual conclusions by the study authors
were deeply troubling … [A]n odds ratio is ‘a measure of association
between an exposure and an outcome. The OR represents the odds that an
outcome will occur given a particular exposure, compared to the odds of
the outcome occurring in the absence of that exposure.’
In plain English, an odds ratio greater than 1 would tend to
imply that two things are in fact linked (like tobacco use and lung
cancer). What was the odds ratio for spontaneous abortion for women who
had received an H1N1 shot in 2010–2011 and then a flu vaccine in
2011–12?
The study says 7.7 … that’s not a “hint,” that’s a giant
disturbing alarm (which is why the damage control is being rolled out en
masse today). Women who had received the two flu shots in successive
seasons were almost 8x more likely to have a spontaneous abortion than
those who had not …”
Safety of Flu Vaccine Has Not Been Established in Pregnant Women
Sun’s article deserves further critique, which Handley also
addresses, and that is her statement that the CDC’s advice to vaccinate
pregnant women is “based on a multitude of previous studies.” This
simply isn’t true, and you can verify this for yourself (which is what
Sun should have done).
While you can certainly take the time to pore through the medical
literature, available on PubMed for example, all you really have to do
to confirm or refute this particular statement is to look at a flu
vaccine package insert, which will tell you that safety and
effectiveness have NOT been established in pregnant women. This means
there are no studies showing pregnant women will benefit from flu
vaccination. Nor are there any studies to support the claim that
getting vaccinated during pregnancy is in fact safe.
If something has not been established, the issue is still wide-open
for debate. To claim anything else is simply to spout opinions. Handley
provides the following screen shot, showing the fine print from a 2016
package insert for Sanofi Pasteur’s Fluzone Quadrivalent vaccine,
which is routinely given to pregnant women.
The company’s patient information sheet24
for this vaccine also points out that “Sanofi Pasteur Inc. is
collecting information on pregnancy outcomes and the health of newborns
following vaccination with Fluzone Quadrivalent during pregnancy.” In
other words, pregnant women everywhere are participating in an
uncontrolled experiment in progress.
They just don’t know it, and articles like Sun’s perpetuate the false
idea that “a multitude” of studies have already established safety and
effectiveness of flu vaccination during pregnancy.
Successive Flu Vaccinations Depress Immune Function
We’ve actually known that successive flu vaccinations take a toll on
immune function, raising your risk of more severe infections as time
goes on — including the possibility of miscarriage if you’re pregnant.
For example, a study25
published in Human & Experimental Toxicology in 2012, based on
reports from the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS)
database during three consecutive flu seasons, starting with the
2008/2009 season, found “an ascertainment-corrected rate of 590
fetal-loss reports per million pregnant women vaccinated (or 1 per
1,695).”
Canadian researchers have also found that people who receive
consecutive flu seasonal vaccinations start to experience declined flu
protection. As reported by CBC News in January 2015:26
“During the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, researchers at the B.C. Centre
for Disease Control originally thought seasonal flu shots from 2008
might offer extra protection against the new pandemic strain. They were
puzzled to find instead, seasonal flu vaccination almost doubled the
risk of infection with pandemic flu.
Dr. Danuta Skowronski and her colleagues went on to do five more
studies during the summer that showed the same effect in people and in
ferrets, which are considered the best animal model of flu.”
Vaccinating Pregnant Women Is Unwise
It has always been a principle of medicine that one should not
vaccinate pregnant women, except in extreme cases, because the risk to
the baby developing in the womb is too high. It’s only in recent years
that this policy is being blatantly violated.
Research has shown that stimulating a woman’s immune system during
midterm and later-term pregnancy significantly increases the risk that
her baby will develop autism27 during childhood, and/or schizophrenia during the teenage years or early adulthood.28 It may also increase the risk of seizures in the baby, and later, as an adult.29
In fact, a number of neurodevelopmental and behavioral problems can
occur in babies born to women immunologically stimulated during
pregnancy.30,31,32
Despite such evidence, ACOG issued a notice September 13, the same
day the featured study was published, saying it’s perfectly safe to
receive the flu vaccine during pregnancy, no matter what the study in
the Vaccine journal suggests. According to ACOGs press release:33
“The safety of vaccines used during pregnancy is of critical
concern to ob-gyns. ACOG carefully tracks pregnancy-related vaccine
safety information through its involvement in the National Vaccine
Advisory Committee (NVAC) through the U.S. Department of Health &
Human Services (HHS) and the Advisory Committee on Immunizations
Practices (ACIP) through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
(CDC).
For many years, ACOG and the CDC have recommended that every
pregnant woman receive a flu shot in any trimester. Multiple published
studies, as well as clinical experience, have all supported the belief
that the flu vaccine is safe and effective during pregnancy.”
As you can see, even ACOG claims there are “multiple published
studies” in existence showing flu vaccination is safe during pregnancy,
despite the fact that vaccine makers actually negate such claims in
their package inserts — and vaccine manufacturers are prevented, by
federal law, from outright lying in their package insert.
The rules are looser, apparently, for everyone else. All in all,
this is one giant experiment on pregnant women and infants — which
Sanofi Pasteur even admits in its patient information sheet — and it is
being driven by pharma greed and institutional power, infected with
denialism.
Why Vaccinate Newborns With Unjustifiable Vaccine?
If vaccinating pregnant women isn’t bad enough, giving newborns,
even preemies and low birth weight babies, a completely unnecessary and
risky vaccination on the first day of life may be even worse. On
August 28, 2017, the AAP recommended that newborns weighing at least
2,000 grams (4.4 pounds) should receive their first dose of hepatitis B
vaccine within 24 hours of birth.34
The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices started
recommending this in October 2016, and the AAP is now following suit. I
cannot think of a more unnecessary and unjustifiable vaccine than
hepatitis B to an infant weighing only 4 pounds. Hepatitis B is
transmitted from IV drug abuse, sexual activity with an infected
partner, a blood transfusion using contaminated blood, or from a
hepatitis B-positive mother.
This recommendation is medically unjustifiable, absolutely
irrational and has no basis in science. The singular threat of this
disease during infancy is if a child is born to an infected mother.
Since that’s the case, why not screen all pregnant women for the
disease and only give the vaccine to those infants whose mothers
actually test positive for hepatitis B?
That kind of revised rational policy would be a lot less expensive,
and far safer for the majority of babies born in the United States. The
AAP admits that “the birth dose of hep B vaccine is a critical safety
net for infants born to infected mothers when the mother’s results are
not obtained, are misinterpreted, are falsely negative, are transcribed
or reported inaccurately, or are not communicated to the infant care
team.”
In other words, because medical records are in such disarray, and
future compliance to questionable vaccines simply can’t be predicted,
let’s just vaccinate all the babies instead of trying to figure out if
the mother might be hep B positive. That kind of attitude really does
not instill confidence in basic medical record keeping — especially if
the mother is indeed tested during pregnancy.
If false negatives are truly of such great concern, just test her
twice, say, at her first obstetrics checkup and then again just before
giving birth. Two false negatives are unlikely, and if they cannot keep
track of test results obtained in the last nine months, then something
else really needs addressing.
Unsurprisingly, the hepatitis B vaccine35 has also been scientifically linked to 69 different diseases and adverse consequences, including death. A 2001 study,36
which assessed adverse events associated with the hepatitis B vaccine
in children under the age of 6, concluded the “hepatitis B vaccine is
positively associated with adverse health outcomes in the general
population of U.S. children.”
Your Body Has Two Different Immune Systems
When it comes to vaccination, it’s important to realize there are two
parts of the immune system that fight disease in your body. One is the
innate immune system that is always ready to work and the other is the
adaptive immune system. The adaptive arm consists of Th1 and Th2. Th1
is commonly known as the cell mediated arm, and Th2 known as the
humoral or antibody arm. Most vaccines preferentially stimulate the Th2
or humoral part of the immune system that produces antibodies.
The benefit of only measuring humoral immunity (antibodies) as a
means of measuring vaccine effectiveness is that it can be easily
determined by drawing blood samples. If specific vaccine-induced
antibodies are present, the person is presumed to be immune to that
infection and protected.
The whole point of vaccines is to stimulate antibody production
without a cell mediated reaction preceding it. The theory goes back to
the early days when it was believed that the humoral (antibody) arm of
the immune system was the most important part of stimulating immunity.
However, research reveals that individuals who, due to a genetic
abnormality are unable to generate antibody production, actually
recover from infectious illness just as well as those able to make
normal antibodies.37 They also usually have protection in the future upon re-exposure.
This demonstrates the importance of the Th1 arm of immunity, and
suggests humoral immunity may only play a secondary role in natural
resistance against targeted “vaccine-preventable” diseases. This, and
the fact that vaccines fail to confer lifelong immunity, suggests that
having a cell mediated response is necessary. What’s more, research
suggests that when Th2 is excessively stimulated through vaccination,
your immune function may be compromised long term, leaving you more
vulnerable to cancer.
Autoimmune diseases involve excessive antibody production while
cancer involves cell mediated immune failure. This is why therapies
that stimulate the cell mediated or innate immune system, such as
Coley's toxins, can be helpful against cancer. What this suggests is
that our modern vaccine policy, which is a full-scale assault on the
cell mediated immune system, is a contributing factor to many of the
chronic diseases we see.
There are also dozens of studies demonstrating that contracting
certain childhood diseases actually protects you against various types
of cancer later in life — everything from melanoma to leukemia.
There's even evidence suggesting childhood diseases help protect
against future heart disease.
These and hundreds of other studies can be found in Neil Z. Miller’s book, “Miller’s Review of Critical Vaccine Studies:
400 Important Scientific Papers Summarized for Parents and
Researchers.” If you’re on the fence when it comes to vaccination, this
is a book not to be missed.
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