Jacob, with reference to the first article that you mention, about Sudden Infant Death syndrome (SIDS): "There were 217 deaths within 72 h after
DTP was administered (to 45 million infants) and 237 deaths within 72 hours following PV (given to 25 million infants)"
It would be good to have an idea of the base rate of
SIDS in local populations India. As it only counts the infant death rate within 72 hours of vaccine?
It would also be good to have an idea of the total infant death rate, including from other infections, ideally in the vaccinated population and in the unvaccinated.
However I am aware that in general, as Prof Peter Aaby writes: "surprisingly few studies examined the introduction of vaccines and their impact on child survival"
His article on the Introduction of Diphtheria-Tetanus-Pertussis and Oral Polio Vaccine Among Young Infants in Guinea-Bissau suggests that "Between 3 and 5 months of age, children who received DTP and OPV early had 5-fold higher mortality than still unvaccinated children." "Hence, a vaccine may have non-specific effects (NSEs) on susceptibility to other infections"
Could it be that the infants immune system is primed in a disadvantaged way, causing SIDS, or being vulnerable to other infections or the emergence of non-communicable diseases (NCD), like cancer, depression, ASD and NCDs like those recorded in the ISAAC studies (by the way, these world wide ISAAC studies have systematically ignored vaccines as environmental risk factor - see page 25 "optional" http://isaac.auckland.ac.nz/phases/phasetwo/phasetwomodules.pdf )
And that brings me to your critique of the Revised World Health Organization (WHO)’s causality assessment of adverse events following immunization. You describe the struggle (also as you write possibly due to conflict of interests) around the wording of what qualifies as an Adverse Event Following Immunisation (AEFI). It is foremost concentrated on a time relationship - which is also the focus of the Uppsala monitoring centre.
However, to me the demanded (limited) temporal relationship is rather surprising because normally in pharmacovigilance side effects over a life time and monitored, for example Aspirin, NOACs, statins, steroids, etc. Side effects from pills are recognised irrespective of timescale but for vaccines the criteria is reduced to a limited time scale, from the moment of having been given the vaccine?
Something else I noticed in your critique is that the WHO does not use the word vaccinovigilance.
With reference to the third article that you mention - My question, relating to the United Kingdom, is why the hexavalent vaccine (which add Hepatitis B vaccine to the vaccine schedule) has recently been started in the UK?
The hepatitis B vaccine is introduced not at the request from the public, because there is no Hepatitis B epidemic in the UK. I suspect that it has been introduced because of "eminence" based medicine which does leave no room for shared decision making (SDM).
It is similar to the introduction of the Rotavirus vaccine in the UK, where the responsible committee (JVVI) admitted it probably doesn't save any lives in the well nourished and sanitised UK population. https://www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.f2792/rr/645591 So are we now starting to vaccinate for economic reasons? Is the increase in vaccines due to pharmaceutical lobbying groups?
Wouter
W. Havinga, locum GP (family doctor) South West England. UK
