Susan <nevermind@nomail.com> wrote:
>If I'm not mistaken, didn't the French discontinue use of the HepB
>vaccine that's mandatory in the U.S. due to an uptick in diabetes
>associated with it?
Here's the news story from 1999. Note that the scare was about MS, not
diabetes, and it came from someone (Classens) who is a well-known
anti-vaccination loon with his own commercial cure business. Also note
that with hundreds of millions of doses any real connection with MS
should have been obvious. You can also see that the French didn't
"discontinue use", they just stopped vaccination adolescents. The
vaccination of infants continued. The French childhood vaccination
schedule can be seen at
http://www.ssi.dk/euvac/vaccination/france.html
There doesn't seem to be any confirming research published since 1999
indicating any link between HepB and MS, and the CDC's own site says
that results of some large-scale studies carried out by the French
were expected at the end of 1999. The fact that nothing has appeared
is strong evidence that there was nothing to announce.
http://www.cdc.gov/nip/vacsafe/concerns/hepb/q&a.htm
Don't believe everything you see on a "vaccine warning" site. Oops,
did I say "everything"? I meant "anything". There's a reason I list
hem under the heading "Anti-vaccination Liars".
January 1999
http://www.infectiousdiseasenews.com/199901/france.asp (registration
required)
GENEVA - On Oct. 1, 1998, the French Ministry of Health announced it
would suspend routine hepatitis B immunization of adolescents in
French schools, but that it would continue the immunization of infants
and high-risk adults.
This decision followed concerns, despite a lack of scientific evidence
establishing a causal relationship, that hepatitis B (HepB)
immunization might be linked to the development or flare-up of
demyelinating diseases such as multiple sclerosis (MS) and comes in
the wake of enormous pressure from anti-vaccine groups, according to a
statement from the World Health Organization (WHO).
Although France will continue with infant and high-risk adult
immunization, WHO is concerned the decision may lead to loss of public
confidence in this vaccine and other countries which desperately need
the vaccine could suspend or delay introduction of the vaccine.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is also concerned
that France's action could negatively affect adolescent HepB
immunization levels in the United States; however Walter A. Orenstein,
MD, director of the National Immunization Program and a member of the
Infectious Diseases in Children editorial board, said the CDC is not
currently aware of any declines in adolescent HepB vaccinations.
Following the decision by French health authorities, WHO, with
assistance from external experts in neurology, epidemiology,
immunology and public health, reviewed the scientific evidence on
whether HepB vaccine can cause demyelinating diseases such as MS.
From this review, WHO concluded that available scientific data does
not demonstrate a causal association between HepB immunization and
central nervous system diseases.
However, the available evidence is for the most part inconclusive in
proving either point, according to chief of the Vaccine Safety and
Development Activity at the National Immunization Program Robert T.
Chen, MD, who was present for the data review by the Viral Hepatitis
Board, which took place at the WHO headquarters.
Chen said French health authorities based their decision to suspend
the adolescent HepB program on preliminary results from two
unpublished case-control studies commissioned by French authorities.
One study is taking place in France using neurology referral centers
for sources of cases and controls, while the second study is underway
in the United Kingdom using a large-linked database with about 4
million patients enrolled in general practice.
Both studies had an approximate relative risk around 1.5 with a 95%
confidence interval overlapping 1 - which indicates this was not
statistically significant. The sample size was too small, however, to
permit ruling out a true association, Chen said.
he extensive pre-licensure clinical trials of the HepB vaccine did not
document an association with MS, and hundreds of millions of people
worldwide have been immunized without developing MS or other
autoimmune diseases. However, not all rare adverse events are
discovered in clinical trials which can involve only a few thousand
volunteers, and adverse event surveillance is not always present in
areas like Africa where the clinical trials took place, Chen said.
Prospective studies of MS patients have shown that exacerbations
appeared to be more frequent after nonspecific viral illnesses. This
is may be done due to generalized stimulation of the immune system
that occurs with such infections. However, whether vaccinations
actually cause an overall excess of MS in the population can only be
evaluated in a population-based study.
It is possible that these MS case reports are purely coincidental to
hepatitis B vaccination, and carefully controlled studies are
currently underway to determine the nature of these reports.
At the recent Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices meeting,
William Shaffner, MD, professor and chairman of the department of
preventive medicine, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine,
Nashville, Tenn., spoke on behalf of the Infectious Diseases Society
of America (IDSA). "It's important to understand that the French made
this decision without a scientific study that identifies such a risk,"
he said. "Of even greater concern is that this decision came only days
after the WHO review of this subject by independent specialists that
determined there was no causal link between HepB vaccination and
demyelinating disease."
The U.S. National Multiple Sclerosis Society also released a statement
that said it saw no evidence of such a link, he added. IDSA sponsors
the Vaccine Initiative, a vaccine communication project of the IDSA
and the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society.
More than 1 billion doses of HepB have been used since 1981 with a
good safety and efficacy record, and the vaccine is 95% effective in
preventing the chronic carrier state of HBV, according to WHO. It is
the chronic carriers of HBV who are at high risk of death from
cirrhosis and liver cancer. There are more than 350 million at-risk
chronic carriers of HBV. Ceasing immunization could only increase the
number of chronic carriers.
WHO strongly recommends that all countries already using HepB vaccine
as a routine vaccine continue to do so, and that countries not yet
using the vaccine begin as soon as possible.
The CDC states that any presumed risk of adverse events associated
with HepB vaccination must be balanced with the expected 4,000-5,000
liver disease deaths that would occur without HepB immunization,
assuming a 5% lifetime risk of hepatitis B virus infection.
Additional data from France associates immunization against HepB to
the development of autoimmune rheumatoid diseases such as lupus and
rheumatoid arthritis. The rise of autoimmunity following hepatitis B
immunization has become a major public health concern, according to
data from the recent 62nd annual meeting of the American College of
Rheumatology in San Diego.
John B. Classen, MD, immunologist at Classen Immunotherapies, has
published papers associating HepB immunization and other diseases to
the development of
insulin-dependent diabetes. However, a National
Institutes of Health (NIH) expert panel found there should be no
change in immunization policies or practices, based on a review of the
Classen data, as an etiologic relationship has not been proven.
The CDC agrees that additional evidence since that time is not
sufficient to change the NIH conclusion, said Frank DeStefano, MD,
with the CDC Vaccine Safety and Development Activity.
--
Peter Bowditch aa #2243
The Millenium Project
http://www.ratbags.com/rsoles
Australian Council Against Health Fraud
http://www.acahf.org.au
Australian Skeptics
http://www.skeptics.com.au
To email me use my first name only at ratbags.com
Sometimes I feel like a motherless child 
It's a shame some of these anti