SIDS and Seizures
© Harris L. Coulter, Ph.D.
Article copied from http://www.geocities.com/HotSprings/1158/vaccine_sids.htm
Crib death was so infrequent in the pre-vaccination era that it was not even mentioned
in the statistics, but it started to climb in the 1950s with the spread of mass vaccination
against diseases of childhood. It became a matter of public and professional concern
and even acquired a new name, “sudden infant death of unknown origin, or, for short,
SIDS.
This name is significant, in the light of subsequent controversies, since of
unknown origin” means exactly that. So, when the medical establishment assures us
that SIDS is unrelated to vaccinations, the obvious response is, How do you know?,
if it is defined as "of unknown origin"? At this (as with most common-sense questions
about vaccinations) the medical establishment prefers to retire from the debate in
dignified silence.
So we have witnessed a steady rise in the incidence of SIDS, closely
following the growth in childhood vaccinations. But information on the progress of
this epidemic has been radically suppressed in the official literature. Whereas in
earlier decades -- up to the end of the 1950s -- the medical establishment could
recognize the fact of death after vaccination, more recently, as the official position
has hardened, the earlier concessions have been withdrawn, and vaccinations of all
kinds are now declared absolutely safe at all times and in all places. This has required
some fancy footwork with the epidemiologic statistics, as we will see below.
And since
no physician or scientist with a normal IQ could really believe this “epidemiology,”
one is forced to conclude that the medical establishment, in its wisdom, has decided
that 7000-8000 cases of crib death every year are a reasonable price to pay for a
nice steady flow of vaccines with all their concomitant benefits for the public health
(except, of course, for these same 7000-8000 babies each year who have already enjoyed
all the possible advantages of childhood vaccines).
After all, they say to themselves,
you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs. But the the eggs being broken are
small, helpless, and innocent babies, while the omelette is being enjoyed by the
pediatricians and vaccine manufacturers.
Death after whooping-cough vaccination was
first described by a Danish physician in 1933. Two Americans in 1946 described the
deaths of identical twins within 24 hours of a DPT shot (on the background and history
of SIDS see H. Coulter and B. Fisher, DPT: A Shot in the Dark). E. M. Taylor and
J. L. Emery in 1982 wrote: "we cannot exclude the possibility of recent immunisation
being one of several contributory factors in an occasional unexpected infant death."
But
the early 1980s were a turning-point in the official line. In that same year of 1982
matters came to a crisis when William C. Torch, M.D., Director of Child Neurology,
Department of Pediatrics, University of Nevada School of Medicine, at the 34th Annual
Meeting of the American Academy of Pediatrics, presented a study linking the DPT
shot with SIDS. Torch concluded: “These data show that DPT vaccination may be a generally
unrecognized major cause of sudden infant and early childhood death, and that the
risks of immunization may outweigh its potential benefits. A need for reevaluation
and possible modification of current vaccination procedures is indicated by this
study.
Torch's report provoked an uproar in the American Academy of Pediatrics. At
a hastily arranged press conference he was soundly chastised for using "anecdotal
data," meaning (will you believe it?) that he actually interviewed the families concerned!
This mistake was not made again. Gerald M. Fenichel, MD, chairman of the Department
of Neurology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, in 1983 published an article
on vaccinations entitled “the danger of case reports,” and the pro-vaccination literature
produced in profusion in later years and decades has generally steered away from
and around any such thing as a "case report." These researchers will examine with
minute precision hospital card files, medicare cover sheets, even physicians’ records,
but God preserve us from contact with the children themselves or their families!
Another sign of the hardening official position was a two-part article by Daniel
Shannon, M.D., in a 1982 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. Shannon was
Director of the Pediatric Pulmonary Unit at the Massachusetts General Hospital and
a “principal investigator” of SIDS. His article on the causes of SIDS (financed by
the U.S. Public Health Service) never mentioned vaccination even though, at a 1979
FDA meeting on "The Relation between DPT Vaccines and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome,"
Shannon had described 200 infants with severe breathing difficulties after a DPT
shot, such that they required resuscitation. In 1979 he had said: “We do have all
this data. It is all recorded on tabular sheets, and we have it on nearly 200 infants
that we have evaluated this way. It is in a capacity that it can be pulled, but in
1982 he preferred not to pull this information after all.
When Barbara Fisher and
I queried him on this in a 1982 letter, he replied: "I did not mention DPT shots
in my review article on SIDS in the New England Journal of Medicine because there
are no data collected in a scientific way [no anecdotal data, if you please!] that
support an association. This includes Dr. Torch’s report."
So the cat was let out
of the bag by Dr. Torch, who has been effectively silenced by his colleagues since
that memorable date. In his editorial attacking “case reports” as a basis for evaluating
vaccine damage, Gerald Fenichel alluded to an ongoing study by the NIH on “risk factors”
in sudden infant death syndrome which, Fenichel asserted, "excluded DPT as a causal
factor in sudden infant death syndrome."
Let us take a look at this study, published
some years later as "Diphtheria-Tetanus-Pertussis Immunization and Sudden Infant
Death: Results of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Cooperative
Epidemiological Study of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome Risk Factors," coauthored by:
Howard J. Hoffman, Jehu Hunter, Karla Damus, Jean Pakter, Donald R. Peterson, Gerald
van Belle, and Eileen G. Hasselmeyer (Pediatrics 79:4 [April, 1987], 598-611.
This
"retrospective case-controlled study" involved finding 838 children whose deaths
had been classified as SIDS by the attending physician and/or the coroner and comparing
them with 1514 "controls."
The 800 "cases" were selected from among all children who
died with a diagnosis of SIDS between October, 1978, and December, 1979, at or near
certain designated centers. Excluded from the group were: (1) those on whom an autopsy
was not performed or was performed with deviations from the standard protocol, (2)
those younger than 14 days or older than 24 months, (3) those who died after more
than 24 hours in a hospital, and (4) those for whom the parents refused permission
to perform an autopsy.
The selection was made by a panel or panels of pathologists
who examined the records of the children’s deaths and autopsies and who decided whether
or not the child had really died of SIDS or from some other cause.
There are two major
objections to this procedure. The first is that the "case" group contained some children
who were vaccinated and some who were not. The second is that we are not given the
criteria by which the panel of pathologists decided whether or not to include a child
as one of the "cases."
On the first objection, the investigators are searching for
a tie with vaccination in a group of 800+ infants, some vaccinated and others not.
This is contrary to common sense. Why water down the sample with babies who were
never vaccinated? At this point the whole methodology for determining whether a previous
vaccination may or may not have contributed to the SIDS death in question rapidly
becomes incoherent.
This leads to objection #2, which is that we are not given the
criteria according to which children were accepted as “cases” by the panel of pathologists,
and we cannot judge whether or not this was done correctly.
A typical SIDS post-vaccination
case would be the baby with a slight bacterial or viral infection who is vaccinated
and then dies of the infection. These cases are invariably classified by attending
physicians and coroners as “death from an infection” without taking into account
the fact that vaccinations are known to lower resistance momentarily (for a day or
two).
In this state of lowered immunity the baby might well die from the infection
which would otherwise have been innocuous. So such a case would not even be classified
as SIDS (since the infectious “cause” is known), and certainly not as “SIDS after
a vaccination,” even though the baby would not have died in the absence of a vaccination.
How many such cases were rejected by the "panel of pathologists"? We are not told.
The combination of (1) mixing vaccinated and unvaccinated babies with (2) failure
to provide the criteria for acceptance into the “case” group taints this same “case”
group irredeemably and, in itself, should prevent any further consideration of this
study.
The next step in the investigation was to select two live "controls" for each
"case." Control A was "matched" for age with the corresponding "case," meaning that
he or she was born as close as possible to the same day. Control B was “matched”
not only for date or birth but also for birth weight and race. Again, as with the
"cases," these "controls" were mixed with respect to vaccination status, some yes
and some no.
The obvious criticism here is that date of birth is simply not relevant
to whether or not a baby is vulnerable to the effects of a vaccine (unless the selection
is being made on astrological grounds!). Birth weight and race are slightly more
relevant, since children of low birthweight and black children (who are more often
of low birthweight than white children) are more likely to be affected adversely
by vaccination.
However, sex was not included as a criterion, even though males die
of SIDS, and are adversely affected by vaccinations, five times more frequently than
females. This was a peculiar oversight.
The only comment to be made about this "control"
group is that it was selected on entirely incomprehensible grounds. It stands to
reason that, when one group is being compared with another group, the two groups
must be "matched" with respect to the variable being studied. In this case the variable
being studied is “tendency to die after receiving a vaccination. Date of birth has
nothing at all to do with this variable, whereas weight and race are only marginally
related to it. Sex of the baby, which is related, was not included in the analysis.
Even
though these two groups are not comparable, Drs. Hoffman et al. compared them anyway,
finding that "only" 39.8% of the "cases" had received at least one DPT shot, while
55% of Control A infants and 53.2% of Control B infants had received at least one
DPT shot. Since fewer “cases” than "controls" had received the shot, the authors
concluded that “DTP immunization is not a significant [what do they mean by "significant?"]
factor in the occurrence of SIDS.
This sort of attempted comparison can only be described
as a shambles, a grotesque imitation of scientific method designed to fool the public
(and the journalists who are supposed to be monitoring precisely this sort of intellectual
dishonesty). It would have made as much sense to interview the first 1600 people
they could pick up in the Greyhound Bus Station and ask them about their vaccination
status.
But this article had its effect. Dr. Torch was effectively silenced, and for
years this pseudo-science has been cited as one of the medical establishment’s principal
weapons in its drive to extend childhood vaccination programs.
How do you react when
your own government lies to you systematically about life-and-death questions? As
I have noted earlier, the answer is political action in the state legislatures, and
one weapon in the hands of the public is an understanding of the pseudo-science and
pseudo-epidemiology represented by articles like this one.
Another article on the
SIDS-vaccination relationship, fortunately of far superior quality, is Larry J. Baraff,
Wendy J. Ablon, and Robert C. Weiss, "Possible Temporal Association Between Diphtheria-Tetanus
Toxoid-Pertussis Vaccination and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome." (Pediatric Infectious
Diseases 2:1 [January, 1983], 7-11). The authors adopted a simpler, intuitively obvious
method of investigation and concluded that there is, indeed, a "temporal association"
between the DPT shot and sudden infant death.
They found that 382 cases of SIDS were
recorded in Los Angeles County between January 1, 1979, and August 23, 1980, and
they simply interviewed the parents of 145 of these cases, either in person or by
telephone. They asked: 1) the baby’s sex, 2) the age at death, 3) the last visit
to a physician or nurse prior to death, 4) the date of the last vaccination, 5) the
name and telephone number of the physician or nurse, and 6) the type of immunization
given.
They found a statistically significant excess of deaths in the first day and
the first week after vaccination, i.e., a "temporal association."
They rejected the
use of a "control group," and instead relied on the intuitively obvious assumption
that "there should be no temporal association between DPT immunization and SIDS were
there no causal relationship between these two events." I have not found any criticism
of this article for relying on “anecdotal evidence.
This study was not financed by
the US Government but apparently by the UCLA School of Medicine and the Los Angeles
County Department of Health Services.
Another respectable study of the SIDS-vaccination
connection is "Diptheria-Tetanus-Pertussis Immunization and Suddent Infant Death
Syndrome" by Alexander M. Walker, Hershel Jick, David R. Perera, Robert S. Thompson,
and Thomas A. Knauss, published in the American Journal of Public Health 77:8 [August,
1987], 945-951.
This study supports a link between the DPT shot and “sudden infant
death syndrome. The authors examined the records of all children born in the Group
Health Cooperative of Puget Sound between 1972 and 1983 to see how many had died
of SIDS. Total births recorded during this period were 35,581, but of them only 26,500
were eligible for the study. Not all deaths of infants during this period were considered
to be SIDS. All deaths which on the basis of death certificate diagnosis, hospital
discharge data, and pharmacy use taken together could be clearly ascribed to causes
not related to immunization were excluded.” Ultimately, “SIDS was defined as any
death for which no cause could be discerned among infants of normal birthweight and
without predisposing medical conditions. But, despite these exclusions and restrictions,
the authors found “the SIDS mortality rate in the period 0-3 days following a DPT
shot to be 7.3 times that in the period beginning 30 days after immunization.
They
called the results of this study “worrisome” but consoled themselves with the thought
that “only a small proportion of SIDS cases in infants with birthweights greater
than 2500 grams could be associated with DPT.” A particular criticism to be made
of this study is that children with “predisposing medical conditions” were excluded
and their deaths were not considered to be SIDS, whereas in actuality children with
“predisposing medical conditions” are routinely vaccinated.
Another study by the same
group, of "neurologic events" following vaccination, is slightly more ambiguous than
the preceding one but nonetheless raises a red flag about vaccines. Alexander M.
Walker, Hershel Jick, David R. Perera, Thomas A. Knauss, and Robert S. Thompson.
"Neurologic Events Following Diphtheria-Tetanus-Pertussis Immunization."(Pediatrics
81:3 [March, 1988], 345-349) was an investigation of the same 35,581 children, born
between 1972 and 1983, as in the previous study. The attempt was made to identify
"new neurologic conditions" in this group, not by interviewing the families, as might
have been expected, but by examining hospitalization records and prescription records
for the drugs typically used to treat seizures. Since the pharmacy was “on line”
only on July 1, 1976, any drug purchases made prior to that date by families who
left the Group Health Cooperative before July 1, 1976, would have been missed, as
well as “any child neither hospitalized not treated with drug therapy.
Also excluded
from the study were children with “uncomplicated first febrile seizures, because
these “are not likely to have been hospitalized or treated with drugs.
Also excluded
from the study were children whose first seizure occurred prior to 30 days of age
-- presumably because no vaccinations were given in the first 30 days of life (although
this is not stated).
Also excluded from the study were children in the category “seizure
with possible predisposing cause, such as "trauma, asphyxia, congenital malformation,
disorders of metabolism, birth weight less than 2500g, central nervous system infection,
and neonatal sepsis."
Also excluded were children for whom it was not possible to
identify from the available records a clear date of onset of illness.
Ultimately,
the group was reduced by 25% -- to 26,600. Of course, when studies such as this exclude
whole categories of children -- presumably those who are particularly vulnerable
to vaccine damage -- the question immediately arises whether the study is truly a
representative sample, since in the “real world” all of the above excluded categories
are routinely vaccinated. And if the sample is not “representative,” the study itself
has no predictive value.
The authors found 239 seizures without an apparent predisposing
cause among the children in the target population. One case, in particular, is worth
describing: “The single seizure that occurred within three days of a DPT was in an
11-month old white girl who suffered a 2 * hour generalized tonic-clonic seizure
on the evening of her third DPT-oral poliovirus vaccination. Her temperature during
the seizure was 39 degrees C. (102.2 degrees F.). Results of CSF studies were normal.
There was a transient left hemiparesis and right sixth nerve paresis. She was treated
with phenobarbitol. At 6 years of age, while still taking phenobarbitol, she was
experiencing rare focal left-sided seizures in the absence of fever and continued
to have abnormal EEG tracings.
However, this and the other 238 cases were explained
away by the authors as part of the “expected incidence” of seizures in this population,
a "background incidence", as it were.
If a "background incidence"is stipulated, one
would assume that it had been ascertained in a non-vaccinated population. Instead,
somewhat surprisingly, the "background incidence"is defined as the incidence in the
vaccinated population later than 30 days after a vaccination. The assumption seems
to be that any seizure provoked by a vaccination will necessarily occur within the
first 30 days after a vaccination; those occurring later than 30 days post-vaccination
are thought to be God-given, a part of Nature, as it were. However, there is no evidence
for this.
No study of natural seizure incidence, or natural crib-death incidence,
in an unvaccinated group of Americans has ever been performed, as far can be determined.
Mass vaccination began in the late 1940s, and the medical establishment became concerned
about vaccine damage only in the 1970s. Thus they were vaccinating children for over
thirty years before they got interested in statistical comparisons; today it is difficult
or impossible to locate a group of unvaccinated children sufficiently large to have
any statistical value.
Also there seems to be the feeling that not vaccinating a child
is “unethical,” and that medical research should not venture into “unethical” areas.
If that is how they feel, well and good, but they then should not discourse glibly
about the “background incidence” of this or that disease or neurologic condition.
These
sorts of unfounded assertions about the “natural” or “background” incidence of seizures
or other kinds of vaccine reactions bedevil nearly every study of this subject.
Another
trick used by the medical establishment to manipulate public opinion is to cite some
study as supporting its arguments when, in actuality, the study came up with contrary
conclusions. Sometimes one finds a conflict within the article itself -- for instance,
the summary or the abstract will make claims which are not supported in the body
of the article. Both of these criticisms can be levelled at: W. Donald Shields, Claus
Nielsen, Dorte Buch, Vibeke Jacobsen, Peter Christenson, Bengt Zachau-Christiansen,
and James D. Cherry. “Relationship of Pertussis Immunization to the Onset of Neurologic
Disorders: a Retrospective Epidemiologic Study.” J. Pediatrics 1988; 113, 801-805.
This,
conducted in Denmark, was of two groups of children who received pertussis and other
immunizations at different ages, to see if this affected the dates of onset of neurological
conditions. Before April, 1970, Danish children got the DPT shot (together with the
Salk polio vaccine) at 5, 6, 7, and 15 months of age. After this date children received
the monovalent pertussis vaccine at 5 weeks, 9 weeks, and 10 months of age, and the
diphtheria, tetanus, and Salk polio vaccines at 5 months, 6 months, and 15 months.
At the time of the change the potency of the pertussis vaccine was reduced by 20%,
and the aluminum adjuvant (a frequent cause of reactions) was removed.
This study
compared 82,518 births in the 1967-1968 period with 73,390 in the 1972-1973 period.
Records
of all hospital admissions for seizure disorders and related conditions were examined
and “patients whose cases were appropriate for the study were entered into the computer
data base. This is the first criticism to be made: the authors do not give further
information on the criteria of inclusion.
The authors found that the incidence of
neurological diseases increased with the new vaccine schedule: epilepsy went from
0.35% (286 cases) to 0.37% (268 cases); febrile convulsions went from 1.01% (830
cases) to 1.87% (1369 cases), and central nervous system infections rose from 0.16%
(136 cases) to 0.29% (214 cases).
This could not have been a very welcome finding,
and it had to be explained away somehow.
Take CNS infections, which almost doubled
. The authors write: “there was no relationship between the time of the scheduled
administration of pertussis vaccine” and these infections, whereas the accompanying
table shows that there was a relationship. They then state that it "appeared to represent
a change in the referral pattern"but gave no further details. Furthermore, in the
"Discussion" section at the end, the authors went from “appeared to represent” to
“was due to”: “for CNS infections the change in rate was due to a change in referral
patterns.” This appears to be simple prevarication.
The same occurred with respect
to epilepsy. The authors write: “there was no relationship between the age of onset
of epilepsy and the scheduled age of administration of pertussis vaccine,” whereas
the table on the very same page shows that there was such a relationship.
With respect
to febrile seizures, they admitted a statistical correlation between the occurrence
of first febrile seizures and the scheduled date of pertussis vaccination (p = 0.004).
This occurred at the time of the third shot in the 1967-1968 cohort and the fourth
shot in the 1972-1973 cohort. They note: “Thus at each period after the usual age
of onset of febrile seizures, there was a significant increase in the incidence of
febrile seizures in the group receiving pertussis immunization ... 5.9% of all children
who developed a first febrile seizure between 28 days and 24 months of age had it
as a consequence of fever caused by pertussis immunization.
Then they soften the impact
of this finding by claiming: "The majority of convulsions that occur within a few
days of pertussis immunization are febrile seizures and therefore are only rarely
associated with long-term seizure disorders." What does "only rarely" mean?
This
study has, of course, been cited numerous times in the subsequent literature in support
of the total innocuousness of the pertussis vaccine.
Further Studies Two studies by
teams of epidemiologists headed by Marie R. Griffin represent perhaps the absolute
worst I have encountered in many years of reading this literature (Marie R. Griffin,
Wayne A. Ray, John R. Livengood, and William Schaffner, "Risk of Sudden Infant Death
Syndrome after Immunization with the Diphtheria-Tetanus-Pertussis Vaccine." NEJM
319:10 [Sept. 8, 1988], 618-622. Marie R. Griffin, Wayne A. Ray, Edward A. Mortimer,
Gerald M. Fenichel, and William Schaffner, "Risk of Seizures and Encephalopathy After
Immunization with the Diphtheria-Tetanus-Pertussis Vaccine." JAMA 263:12 [March 23/30,
1990], 1641-1645). For those who are still interested I will attempt to show the
reasons for my conclusion.
The first article, on "sudden infant death," was presumably
written to refute the conclusion reached earlier by Alexander Walker et al.: "we
found the SIDS mortality rate in the period zero to three days following DTP to be
7.3 times that in the period beginning 30 days after immunization ... only a small
proportion of SIDS cases in infants with birthweights greater than 2500 grams could
be associated with DTP" ("Diphtheria-Tetanus-Pertussis Immunization and Sudden Infant
Death Syndrome." American Journal of Public health 77:8 [1987], 945-951).
So Walker
et al. did find that the DPT shot was apparently causing "sudden infant death." And
these deaths were not associated with just the first DPT shot, but with each succeeding
shot.
Griffin et al. set out to refute this conclusion -- not, indeed, by visiting
these children and their parents but, in the new style, by leafing through computerized
immunization records for children born between 1974 and 1984 in the state of Tennessee,
"augmented through linkage of records with state vital statistics and Medicaid files."
The major problem with an epidemiologic study is always that of ensuring that the
sample picked is representative of the larger group. It is logistically difficult
to include all children, despite the availability of computerized records. Therefore,
how the sample is selected is of paramount importance.
Griffin et al. found that,
out of 280,000 children born in four Tennessee cities between 1974 and 1984, 180,000
had records in Public Health clinics.
Oddly enough, for over 41,000 of these 180,000
children no immunizations had ever been recorded. But instead of looking into SIDS
incidence in this sizable group, Griffin et al. simply excluded them from the study.
Another
3000 children were excluded because their immunization records were confused.
This
left 130,000 children in the cohort. And it is legitimate to ask if these 130,000
were truly representative of the 180,000 with public health service records. And,
even more to the point, are they representative of the 280,000 children born in these
same cities who did not have Public health clinic records?
Next they found that 204
children had died during days 29 to 365 of life. But they excluded 95 of the 204
because "a cause of death was listed [on the death certificate] that was clearly
not SIDS." But what were these causes that were clearly not SIDS? Griffin et al.
do not vouchsafe us that information, even though causes of death on death certificates
are not necessarily reliable. At the very least, the chronological relationship between
these deaths and a preceding vaccination should have been provided. Two of the 95
deaths had actually been coded SIDS by the attending physicians, but Griffin et al.
knew better and changed the diagnoses: one baby had pneumonia (as if there is no
connection between pneumonia and a vaccine reaction), while the other had heart disease
(as if babies with congenital heart disease are never vaccinated).
By this time the
SIDS sample has been so restricted as to be entirely unrepresentative of anything,
and we are not surprised to find that Griffin et al.found the incidence of SIDS to
be identical with the expected background incidence ("marginal rate of SIDS for that
age group," as it is called).
As we might expect, no published references are given
in support of the concept of "marginal rate of SIDS for that age group."
Griffin et
al. dismiss the results of the Alexander Walker study above (7.3 times as many SIDS
deaths in the first 3 days after vaccination as 30+ days after vaccination) as follows:
"Since the first DTP immunization is usually given near the age when the incidence
of SIDS peaks, the results of such case-series analyses are biased toward finding
an apparent association between SIDS and DTP immunization." But Walker had found
that SIDS was clustered not only around the first DPT shot, but around each succeeding
shot. So Griffin et al. are hypothesizing that the background incidence of SIDS "peaks"
every two months (!!).
It is amazing that such a study could be accepted by a reputable
scientific journal. The reason was doubtless that the study was funded by the CDC
and the FDA, and that two of the coauthors (Griffin and Ray) were at the time "Burroughs
Wellcome Scholars in pharmacoepidemiology" (whatever that is). Burroughs-Wellcome
is, of course, a major producer of the pertussis vaccine. Have these people never
heard of conflict of interest?
The second article by this same group of authors is
equally typical of the kind of epidemiologic research conducted by those who work
with government funding. Marie Griffin et al., "Risk of Seizures and Encephalopathy
after Immunization with the Diphtheria-Tetanus-Pertussis Vaccine" is a retrospective
analysis of 38,171 Tennessee children enrolled in Medicaid who received DPT immunizations
during the first 3 years of life.
These constituted 29% of all children immunized
in the public sector and 12% of all children born in the area during the study years,
so the problem of "representativeness" of the sample is just as significant here
as in the earlier study.
The "event" monitored was the "first nonneonatal seizure
or episode of encephalopathy that resulted in a Medicaid reimbursement for a medical
encounter, between the first DPT immunization" and the child's attainment of 36 months
of age.
Griffin et al. found that 1187 study children had a potential "outcome of
interest," meaning a seizure, but hold on, we can't just throw all these cases into
the hopper, as it might lead us to the wrong (right!) conclusion. So Griffin et al.
started whittling down the sample.
Records were "unavailable" for 359 (30%!!), and
they were excluded! Just like that! And even though half of these, in the authors'
estimation, would have met their criteria for inclusion! How about some good old
shoe-leather epidemiology? Sorry, that's not how we do things these days.
Of the remaining
828 children 470 more (43%!!) were excluded as not meeting the "case definition."
Ultimately, only 358 of the children remained in the study -- 30% of the initial
number!!
The 470 excluded cases consisted of: 34 seizures in the first 30 days of
life ("neonatal"), 150 cases of chronic preexisting neurological abnormality without
seizures, 18 "spells" "that were not clearly seizures," 82 diagnoses of "failure
to thrive," 121 other nonneurological events, and 65 miscoded records. There is no
way in the world that Griffin et al. could reliably conclude that these cases were
unrelated to vaccination merely by examining Medicaid records and without interviewing
the families. We must take these exclusions on faith, and such faith or confidence
in the conclusions reached by government-funded epidemiologic surveys of vaccine
damage is today in pretty short supply.
Griffin et al. conclude: "no child had the
onset of encephalopathy, epilepsy, or other serious neurological disease in the first
week following DPT immunization." But this is entirely disingenuous, since the "event"
of interest has been defined as a neurological illness resulting in a medical encounter.
The parents would have had to take the child rather quickly to the "medical encounter"
to qualify under the terms of this study. If a parent left the baby in peace for
a few days, just to see what was happening, or if the parents just did not notice
a seizure in the baby (seizures are not very evident in small babies), this would
not qualify as an "event" worth reporting.
Furthermore, the authors seem to assume
that a seizure must occur within three days after vaccination to qualify as vaccination-related.
There is no evidence for this anywhere in the vaccination literature. But it allows
them to ignore a few unpleasant, and even potentially disastrous, outcomes, viz.:
"Four children who were previously normal and had no prior seizures developed some
neurological or developmental abnormality following the index seizure. In only one
was the index event a febrile seizure, and this occurred more than 30 days following
immunization. The other 3 occurred after acute symptomatic seizures. An additional
11 children who were previously normal developed epilepsy. One of these children
had an initial afebrile seizure in the 8-14 days following immunization; the initial
seizures for the other 10 were all in the period 30 or more days after immunization."
Or: "Two children were hospitalized with encephalopathy between their first DTP immunization
and 36 months of age. The 2 children withencephalopathy both had their onset of illness
more than 2 weeks following DPT immunization, and neither had permanent sequelae.
These 2 children will not be considered further."
Or, "There were six febrile seizures
in the 0-3 days following immunization ...
Other events in the 0- to 3-day interval
following DTP immunization included one afebrile seizure, zero symptomatic seizures,and
six potential seizures, with no evidence for an increased rate of occurrence compared
with the control period of 30 or more days following DPT immunization."
Amazingly,
the authors think that seizures or other neurological events occurring more than
30 days after a vaccination are unrelated to the vaccination and part of the "background
incidence." Hence the period commencing 30 days after vaccination is apparently used
as a "control period," allowing the authors to conclude that the incidence of afebrile
seizures in the 3 days following vaccination was no greater than in the "control
period."
They do find, however, that the incidence of febrile seizures (generally
thought to be less serious than the afebrile ones) is 50% higher in the period 0-3
days after vaccination than in the period 30+ days following vaccination.
The inherent
difficulty of making sense of this article is due in part to the authors' tendency
to contradict themselves from one paragraph to the next. For instance, after stating
that afebrile seizures are 50% more common in the period 0-3 days post vaccination,
they then say: "Indeed, there was no significant increase in febrile, afebrile, or
acute symptomatic seizures in the early post-immunization period, compared with the
control period of 30 or more days following DTP immunization."
In sum, this article
eliminates 70% of the cases which initially presented, without giving any justification
for such elimination. The authors then excuse the neurologic illnesses and disabilities
which occurred on the ground that they are part of a background incidence (whose
existence and magnitude in an unvaccinated population has never been demonstrated).
And this article appeared in the "peer-reviewed" Journal of the American Medical
Association!
These kinds of articles bring the Public Health Service, the CDC, the
FDA, the "peer-reviewed" journals, and the rest of the medical-industrial-government
complex into disrepute. Physicians can swallow this garbage if they want, since they
make their living from it, but parents who expect at least elementary honesty from
those who call themselves "scientists," and whose children are being maimed and crippled
by the very vaccines which are proclaimed innocuous by authors such as Griffin et
al. are already taking steps to put this invalid out of its misery.
The relations
between the public and the vaccine establishment are surely going to get a lot worse
before they start getting any better.
© 1996 Harris L. Coulter, Ph.D.
www.slimeylimeyjustice.org