Vaccine Nuts

I have been moved to write a short post about the ridiculous  anti-vax movement and its claims by a conversation I've had over the last 24 hours with someone on twitter.

I decided to pop over to the sites the chap pointed me to. I don't recommend you visit it because it really is full of nonsense and half-truths, but I thought I'd be able to put to bed some of the psuedoscience contained therein.

The first site is: http://www.whale.to/vaccines/rubella4.html which is a link I clicked on from a few hundred on the main page of this idiotic collection.*

The page lists a few dozen medical studies which investigate illnesses which have appeared to affect people since they were vaccinated against measles/rubella.

The study I have chosen is right up near the top of the list and it concerns the incidence of Immune (form. Idiopathic) Thrombocytopenia Purpura associated with rubella vaccination. The link to the study is broken and PubMed cites, but no longer features, the article itself. However other studies do mention a possible link with the vaccine and ITP, so I thought it was worth giving a little bit of information regarding the condition itself.

ITP is an autoimmune condition which affects around 2 to 5 children out of around 100,000 in any given population, most commonly in pre-school. Its clinical features are a lowered platlet count, a purple or red rash (purpura), significant bruising and persistent nosebleeds. ITP affects children around two or three weeks following a viral infection and in most cases the affects naturally subside within a few weeks to at most six months, less with appropriate treatment. In very rare cases the condition becomes a lifelong problem necessitating frequent blood tests and ongoing review. Patients who suffer ITP in adulthood are often advised to follow a balanced diet and avoid contact sports. Women may find that their menstruation is heavier than average.

Look out for signs of:

A nosebleed which will not stop despite pinching the nose after 30 minutes.
Prolonged bleeding from the gums.
Blood in the poo (stools) or urine.
A heavy blow to the head, especially if the child is unwell afterwards in any way.
Persistent or severe headache.
Sickness (vomiting).
Unexplained drowsiness.

And avoid taking aspirin or ibuprofen.

That's the illness, so on to the problem. The articles I read do mention an association with vaccination with a live vaccine. And this is the source of the confusion.

So, What is a live vaccine?

A live vaccine, most commonly for measles, or rubella, is created by passing a live virus through a nun-human cell culture. We use chicken chicks most often because the virus remains intact, yet loses its ability to infect humans after a relatively few passes through live cell cultures. The advantage here being that our immune responses are triggered by the virus, but it cannot infect us at all.
This immune response is the cause of the ITP problem.

So, is my child at risk of developing ITP from a live rubella vaccine?

The short answer is yes. But, you might be asking why I'd say that if I'm pro-vaccination. Well, it's because I'm an honest chap. Your child is at risk of having an autoimmune response to the rubella vaccine. However, I have as much chance of Kelly Brook suddenly awakening from a dream and declaring her undying love for me by having a sky-writer fly over my house. It could happen, but it's extremely unlikely.

Far more likely is that your child gets infected by the real rubella infection and dies from it.

You see the way rubella works is that between two to three weeks after infection the patient (often a child) starts to develop a pink or red rash which typically spreads downward from the head. Rarely the child will develop symptoms of arthritis, or encephalitis (swelling in the brain) and in very rare cases the child might die.

However the symptoms in children are more often than not very mild, so the real risk is from Congenital Rubella Syndrome... that's when the unborn baby of an unvaccinated mother is infected in utero and develops serious, often life-changing and life-threatening conditions as a result. Rubella vaccination is not indicated for women who are already pregnant, or who intend to become pregnant within four weeks’ time, although CRS has never been reported to be caused by the vaccine.

From 1964-1965, before the development of a vaccine against the disease, a rubella epidemic swept the United States. During that short period there were 12.5 million cases of rubella.

20,000 children were born with CRS:

11,000 were born deaf
3,500 born blind
1,800 born mentally retarded
with 2,100 neonatal deaths

And more than 11,000 abortions occurred as a result of CRS during that time – some a spontaneous result of rubella infection in the mother, and others performed surgically after women were informed of the serious risks of rubella exposure during their pregnancy.

Following an intensive vaccination program rubella was declared to have been eliminated from the USA in 2004, and from the rest of the Americas in 2009.

So, why all the fuss? Why are we vaccinating against an illness which is known to no longer be relevant? Well, you see, there are a number of people who still do not vaccinate their children, or themselves, and because of the herd immunity generated by the millions of others who do, they remain safe... until of course they come into contact with other children who have the illness. Then the trouble starts.

In Europe in 2010, there were 30,367 cases reported with 21 confirmed measles-related deaths. Of those cases 21,864 occurred in Bulgaria, with 17 deaths.

Here we have to compare a small sample of clinical trials indicating that between 2 to 5 out of every 100,000 children can get ITP, with a minute number of people going on to die from the disease with an even smaller number getting it as a result of a measles vaccination, with a recent known sample of 30,367 people being diagnosed with measles across 32 countries resulting in 88 serious complications requiring hospital treatment and one death.

So... and I'm no mathematician here but I'll give it a go... that's a 0.00005% chance of developing a mild rash from the vaccine, or a 0.00077% chance of dying from the illness that the vaccine prevents.

That means that on my very un-scientific poll:

YOU ARE SIXTEEN TIMES MORE LIKELY TO DIE OF THE DISEASE THAN SUFFER SOME VERY MILD  SYMPTOMS FROM THE VACCINATION!

Another uncomfortable fact is that in ALL the recent outbreaks across the globe, in the USA, Israel, The Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, The Netherlands, Bulgaria, Japan, the UK, France and Romania occurred in communities where people were against vaccination, for religious reasons, or simply through stupidity.

So the message... and I want to make this abundantly clear... is no matter what you've been told about vaccinations, from whatever dubious half-truth spilling, short-sighted, dumb-ass, no-good, un-patriotic website that you've chosen to get your information...

ANTI-VAXXERS... YOU ARE WRONG!

Vaccines are safe.
Vaccines save lives.
And the next life you save by getting yourself and your children vaccinated might well be your own!




*I'm not going to endorse that page by making it a hyperlink on my blog... not in a million years!