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Smallpox Alert!

Shot in the dark
Heartbroken woman wonders if vaccines killed her infant son

With Several 200 word Letters to the Editor
Story: Shot in the dark...
Editorial One
Editorial Two
Editorial Three
Editorial Four


Shot in the dark
Heartbroken woman wonders if vaccines killed her infant son


By JoNel Aleccia
Staff writer
December 23, 2007

Source: http://www.spokesmanreview.com/breaking/story.asp?ID=12892

Federal health officials are reviewing whether routine immunizations contributed to the deaths of as many as three North Idaho babies this fall, a spokesman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said this week.

The agency has requested autopsy reports and medical records for at least two children and could seek them for a third Kootenai County infant, all of whom died in September and October, apparently within days of receiving recommended vaccines.

There's no clear link between the vaccines and the deaths, which were classified as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, or SIDS, said Curtis Allen, a spokesman for the CDC. "There is nothing so far to indicate that there is a particular problem other than these children died in the same city," Allen said. But the mother of one of the children said it's no coincidence that her 4-month-old son died within days of receiving injections to prevent serious childhood illnesses, including diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, hepatitis B, polio, rotavirus and invasive pneumococcal disease.

"My baby was so healthy," said Shelly Walker, 39, of Hayden. "He was extremely full of life, energy and vitality." Nevertheless, early on the morning of Sept. 15, less than three days after Vance Vernon Walker received a round of vaccines at Lakeside Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine in Coeur d'Alene, his mother awoke to a nightmare.

"It was about 5:15 a.m. I woke up and thought, 'He's not making any noise!' " Walker recalled. "I went to pick him up and then I screamed."

Her 16 1/2-pound boy was warm and his lips were still pink, but he wasn't moving. Blood was crusted beneath his eyes, and his clothes and toys were covered with a bloody froth. As her husband, Brian, 46, called 911, Walker worked frantically to resuscitate their child. But in the emergency room at Kootenai Medical Center, doctors said Vance had been dead for several hours.

"I grabbed my baby in my arms and held him up and I screamed, 'How in the hell did this happen?' " Walker said. "Was it the vaccines?"

Medical officials from the CDC and the federal Food and Drug Administration are working to answer that question for the Walkers and for families of two other babies who died within six weeks of each other.

Two of the deaths have been logged in the voluntary Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System –VAERS – jointly operated by the CDC and FDA, agency officials said. But Dr. Robert West, the Kootenai County coroner, confirmed that three infants died this fall within days of immunization.

Parents of the other babies could not be reached for comment. Autopsies failed to detect any specific vaccine reactions, West said, forcing a determination of SIDS – a "diagnosis of exclusion," he noted.

He said he welcomes the federal review. "It is a little bit unusual but not totally unheard of," West said. "It deserves the investigative clout of the CDC."

Walker confirmed that her son's death was one of the Idaho cases reported to VAERS. The other reported child likely was also under the care of the Coeur d'Alene pediatric group, Allen said. That raises the possibility the children received vaccines from the same batch.

If the CDC receives three reports of deaths or 10 reports of serious non-fatal injuries related to the same lot of a vaccine, it launches a review, Allen said.

In Vance Walker's case, the immunizations included a dose of Pediarix, a combined vaccine that contains DTaP, hepatitis B and inactivated polio vaccines. His mother's records indicate the lot number of the vaccine manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline was AC21B124B.

He also received a dose of Prevnar, lot number B54007C, a vaccine manufactured by Wyeth Pharmaceuticals.

Allen, of the CDC, said it would be up to the medical practice to decide whether to suspend use of the vaccine. Dr. Brian Hickok, the pediatrician for Walker's son, did not return calls about the issue. A representative for the medical practice declined to comment.

Those two vaccines are the most likely to be implicated in any adverse events, said David Terzian, a Virginia lawyer who specializes in vaccine injury cases. Terzian said the Walkers have a good chance of receiving compensation for their son's death through a federal program because it occurred so soon after immunization, well within the 72 hours required by federal rules.

Information provided by drug manufacturers and attached to the vaccines reports low numbers of associated deaths. In 14 clinical trials of Pediarix, five deaths were reported among 8,088 recipients of the vaccine, including two cases of SIDS. In a study of more than 34,000 children in which about half received Prevnar and half received a control vaccine, a dozen deaths, including five SIDS deaths, occurred in the Prevnar group. By contrast, 21 deaths occurred in the control group, including four SIDS deaths, according to manufacturer data. Immunization specialists acknowledge that any death following vaccination is a tragedy. But they emphasize that far more children died or fell ill in the era before vaccinations. "For the most part, disease is always going to be more risky than getting a vaccine," said Nicole Pender, health educator for the immunization program at the Washington state Department of Health.

That is no comfort to Shelly Walker. She hopes her experience inspires parents to educate themselves about the risks of vaccines and prompts them to monitor any reaction, however slight. She plans to file a claim through the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, which provides a maximum of $250,000 after a vaccine-related death.

In return, all records related to her son's injury and death will be sealed by the drug manufacturers. Walker is optimistic that they'll use the data to improve product safety so other families won't experience her tragedy.

"My hope is they're compiling data and statistics to make things better," she said. "I'm trying to believe in the inherent goodness of something here.



Feel free to modify any of these editorials for your own use.


Editorial reply:

Your headline Saturday "Did Vaccines Kill?" was an eye opener as to the numbers of families affected by SIDS. I had the pleasure of attending Dr. Viera Scheibner's lecture on this topic in Post Falls in 2000. Dr. Scheibner, a retired research scientist with the Australian government and her husband, Leif Karlsson, an electronics engineer specializing in patient monitoring systems, developed an infant monitor dubbed "CotWatch" that recorded the breathing patterns of infants. During trials of CotWatch, Scheibner and Karlsson realized that their monitor was sounding alarms when babies were being affected by stressful events.

They learned that post-vaccination stress was the most common factor triggering Cotwatch breathing monitor alarms. Cotwatch indisputedly established the link between vaccine injections and SIDS. In 1988 Dr. Scheibner shared the results of Cotwatch with the medical community in Australia. Many pediatricians acknowledged the connection between vaccination and SIDS, but medical community as a whole ignored the evidence.

Being unfamiliar with the controversy, she researched 30,000 pages of medical papers dealing with vaccination. The results of her impeccable research culminated in the publishing of her book, “Vaccination - 100 Years of Orthodox Research shows that Vaccines Represent a Medical Assault on the Immune System.”



Editorial reply:

Thank you for your headline, "Did Vaccines Kill?" Hopefully, parents will do a bit more independent research on the real risks of bolus doses of vaccines given to such young infants versus the real risk of them contracting and then actually dying of the disease. Your revealing article mentioned the fact that the data for vaccine trials comes from the manufacturers themselves. One might ask, are there any real independent studies conducted on infants before the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices adds more vaccines to the annual recommendation of shots infants are expected to receive? The answer is NO. We have a case of the fox guarding the henhouse. Vioxx had similar safety studies cited before approval by the FDA.

We suggest that parents read the package insert that comes with each vaccine versus the information sheet provided by the CDC, AAP and vaccine manufacturer. How about taking a look at the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System and see what less than 10 percent of doctors and their patients have to say about vaccine reactions at www.MedAlerts.org ? Shelly Walker should be thankful she wasn't charged with Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS) since retinal bleeding is a symptom associated with SBS.



Editorial reply:

Editor: After learning of little Vance Walker's death so soon after a multiple-viral-load vaccine round, I remind you that it is our media's express job to investigate and report facts to the public.

Here are a few: Never in nature will a person encounter multiple viruses at once. Vaccines deal a devastating blow to a child's immune system by exposing it to multiple viruses all at once, which is compounded by the toxic metals also present in vaccines. Drug companies have convinced parents that Thimerosal (the mercury additive) is no longer a problem, but parents remain unaware of the high levels of aluminum -- a neurotoxin -- in the vaccines their children receive. Did Shelly Walker know that Pediarix has up to 850 micrograms of aluminum hydroxide in one shot containing five pathogens: polio, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis and Hepatitis B? Her baby also received Prevnar, which contained 125 micrograms of aluminum. Do the math. That's 128 micrograms per kilogram of 4-month-old Vance's body weight.

As they become informed, many parents are choosing not to vaccinate. So why not inform your reading public of the very real and serious risks vaccines pose?



Editorial reply:

To the editor:

Did incidence of infectious diseases decline after compulsory vaccinations? Does increased CO2 cause global warming? Do vaccines kill?

Your article "Did Vaccines Kill?” prompts one to ponder political v. actual cause and effect.

With his award-winning film "An Inconvenient Truth," Al Gore claims that Arctic ice core samples prove increased CO2 levels precedes warmer global temperatures. However, the chart actually shows that warmer temperatures precede elevated CO2 levels.

We are told that incidence of infectious diseases declined after the introduction of mass and mandated vaccination. In reality, incidence of infectious diseases were already declining BEFORE mass and mandated vaccination due to improved public sanitation, cultural advances in personal hygiene and year round access to fresh fruits and vegetables.

What we can prove is that modern epidemics of chronic illness, developmental delays, permanent neurological damage AND annual waves of acute infections have increased dramatically since mass and mandated vaccination--and they worsen as more vaccines are added to the schedule.

When you do the scientific research; when you consult the historical record, the answer to your headline, in the immediate as well as the historical sense, is “Yes.”