Vaccination Disinformation

This piece is both a “newsy” item and a saga about battling media disinformation, specifically vaccination disinformation. The first point is that I chose the word “disinformation” intentionally. Willful dissemination of false information is not misinforming. It is dis-informing. Here is the story: There is new, very very bad news for believers in pertussis vaccination. You might recall my postings about the ineffectiveness of the whooping cough vaccine (pertussis) here or on Facebook over the last several years. You might also recall my other efforts to combat vaccination disinformation, including comments about mandatory vaccination and measles vaccination. My previous comments about the pertussis/whooping cough vaccine were generally about the vaccine’s proven inability to prevent spread through the community, confirmed by the FDA. In the last few weeks a Kaiser study here in California demonstrated that the whooping cough vaccine simply does not work. As little as four years after pertussis vaccination, only nine percent of children studied retained immunity to whooping cough. That is simply horrible, as even the authors’ purposefully restrained comments expressed. The following is a quote from the study itself (which won’t be published until next month): “Routine Tdap did not prevent pertussis outbreaks. Among adolescents who have only received DTaP vaccines in childhood, Tdap provided moderate protection against pertussis during the first year and then waned rapidly so that little protection remained 2-3 years after vaccination.” Hang on to your hats. One response to this would be increasing the frequency of vaccination for pertussis/whooping cough. Considering these data, it is hard to imagine recommending pertussis vaccination any less often than EVERY YEAR OR TWO. Soon after the Kaiser pertussis study came out, the editor of my local paper wrote an editorial that galled me. I was upset because of the comments in this editorial regarding SB 277. As he has done before, the Editor of the Press Democrat blamed thoughtful parents for the rise in whooping cough: The law was needed because so many parents were failing to have their children vaccinated — either because of personal beliefs or procrastination — that school districts were losing what’s known as the herd immunity, resulting in a rise in preventable diseases such as measles and whooping cough. I was angry because the editor had the facts wrong and was disrespectful of parents who in this case were apparently better informed than he. Confronting ignorance combined with arrogant disrespect always disturbs me, much more so when the issue is medical. This Editor has become a fount of vaccination disinformation. So, I submitted the following letter to the editor: Monday’s...

School Start Times

The ancients knew that children of a certain age pass through a change that is profound. In their metamorphic transition from childhood to adulthood, they become different beings. For a long, long time now we have known that the change increases their need for sleep and shifts their biological clocks. The consequence is that they tend to fall asleep late and then wake up much later. Despite the presumptions of some early-rising adults, it isn’t laziness. In our world this transformation takes place from middle school through high school. As you might then imagine, early school start times are a problem. In my practice, the most common complaint of children of this age and their parents, has been that they get sick a lot. Their illnesses don’t tend to be serious but the children get sick again and again and again. Also, their in school performance suffers, leading to poorer grades. On any given day, twenty percent of high school students fall asleep during class. Several years ago, it came to light that high school students whose biological clocks made them early risers, got better grades than their more physiologically typical classmates For most adolescents, the years they are working as hard as possible so that they can get into the college of their dreams, are the same years that the physiological demands of their bodies are directly in conflict with those efforts. This school-generated chronic sleep deprivation also leads to mood problems. Hmmm, moody teenagers? I bet that sounds familiar. Sleep deprivation also make it difficult to concentrate. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) anyone? Just like adults, teens then fall into patterns of chemical abuse, turning to coffee and other stimulants to stay awake and drugs like alcohol to help them fall asleep. This is not a trifle. It is a serious health issue. One of every six car crashes in this country has been linked to sleep deprivation. The majority of those involve drivers under age 25. The Minnesota Medical Association responded to these discoveries with a resolution calling for recognition, education and behavioral changes to addresses the individual and societal health consequences. Promoted by the MMA, the American Medical Association adopted a similar resolution. In 1999, the US Congress considered legislation (H.R. 1267 Sponsored by California Representative Zoe Lofgren) recommending that high schools start classes after 9 am providing additional funds to school districts implementing this change. The bill did not pass at that time and, despite attempts, the bill was never passed. Despite inaction at...

Fish Oil Prevention of Mental Illness

Not infrequently, some very important medical studies don’t get the attention they deserve. A long term study about fish oil prevention of mental illness, in this case psychosis, came out in August. The results of that investigation should have been shouted from the roof tops. Its time again to raise my voice. Imagine a short term treatment, lasting only 3 months, that significantly reduced the likelihood of perhaps the most severe form of mental illness and continued to do so for the next SEVEN YEARS! If you imagined a bottle of fish oil, you nailed it. The original article was published 5 years ago. Psychiatrists at a hospital in Austria gave a fish oil supplement to a group of young adults with “ultra high risk” of developing psychosis. That risk level was determined by applying criteria that are strongly linked with psychosis (on average 40% with those characteristics develop psychosis within 12 months). The subjects were given the fish oil supplement for just 3 months. After one year, only two of the forty one subjects in the fish oil group developed psychosis. In contrast, eleven of the of forty in the placebo group became psychotic. The new investigation continued to follow those individuals over seven years. There was no further fish oil supplementation or other intervention. What did they learn? Quite impressively, they found that only four of forty one in the fish oil group had developed psychosis vs sixteen of forty in the control group. The investigators found more positive impacts. For example the fish oil group had improved social functioning compared to the others. When I think about this, the “C” word cross my mind, Cure. If you do something for 3 months and stop, but you never develop the problem, in a way that means something was cured; something was fixed. That would be amazing. The evidence so far tells us that that is exactly what happened to these young people. There have been many other important discoveries about fish oil as well as some controversies and concerns. However, these results of this safe treatment are so very impassive, with such wide spread impacts, that everyone ought to know about fish oil prevention of mental...

Mandatory Vaccinations

Let me begin with a disclaimer.I give vaccinations in my office. I mean I personally administer them, not a nurse, me. I believe that vaccinations are useful at times.State Bill 277, the mandatory vaccination law bringing California into line with Mississippi and West Virginia has passed. I really don’t like it. I really don’t like the word mandatory, when it comes to health care. That is because it means someone else has taken upon themselves to decide what is good for you. They know that it really is for the best.The huge problem with that attitude is that it has proven wrong and is proven wrong every day in medicine. They absolutely do not know.Do you remember Fen-Phen, Vioxx, Bextra, DES or thalidomide? They were all common drugs that killed people. How about Seldane, the first antihistamine that didn’t make people sleepy? It caused fatal heart arrhythmias.These medication worked well for most people. The problem is that rare bad reactions do happen and if enough people use a treatment, some of them will die from the treatment.Bringing this back to immunizations, unanticipated and rare, but devastatingly bad responses to vaccinations do occur. One example is the paralytic disease Guillaine Barre that has been associated with influenza and hepatitis vaccines. The newest example of an unforeseen bad effect from a vaccination is the HPV vaccine for venereal warts. The government of Denmark has asked the EU to investigate adverse reactions in the 87 million europeans who have received the vaccine.Why?Some unusual and debilitating nervous disorders might be caused by this vaccine.One is a chronic pain condition. The other is a disorder that throws a monkey wrench into a body’s heart and blood pressure regulation system (POTS). I know of a young man with this disorder, who has gone from competing for a spot on the Olympic team to collapsing after he tries to exercise. His case is not related to the HPV vaccine but it demonstrates just how disabling this syndrome is and how bad the consequences can be from using a vaccine that authorities proclaim as perfectly safe. Other unanticipated, but significant consequences of vaccinations occur. One example is the vulnerability of infant to measles now because their mother’s breast milk can’t protect them. That was not true in the past when mothers were immune to measles because of their own exposure to the disease. Another example is the massive increase in the painful, sometimes disablingly so, disease called shingles among the elderly. Before the chicken pox vaccine, only a...