The Vaccination Myth

Sex With Recent Smallpox Vaccine Recipient Can Lead to Illness

CDC reports case of woman who contracted vaccinia virus, main ingredient in the shot

By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter

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THURSDAY, July 1 (HealthDay News) — After having sex with a soldier recently vaccinated against smallpox, a young woman in Washington state developed an illness caused by the vaccinia virus used in the shot, U.S. health officials report.

This type of viral transmission, while rare, is not unheard of, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“The patient visited an urgent care clinic with painful, ring-shaped vaginal swelling,” explained Andrea McCollum, an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer with the CDC. “A few days before that, she had sexual contact with her boyfriend who was a recent smallpox vaccinee via the military.”

Although smallpox is now almost eradicated, U.S. military personnel have been vaccinated in recent years as a precaution against the potential use of the virus in a biological attack. The smallpox vaccine comes in the form of a live vaccine, so there is always some risk of infection, McCollum said. “The vaccine is not smallpox virus,” she stressed, “but it’s a closely related virus called vaccinia.”

Although the woman told her doctor about her possible exposure to smallpox vaccine via sexual contact with her recently vaccinated boyfriend, the doctor tested her for common STDs but did not test for vaccinia, according to the report published in the July 1 issue of the CDC journal Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Despite taking the antibiotics and antiviral medications that the doctor had prescribed, the woman continued having lesions and pain for the next three days, McCollum said.

A second doctor then sent her to an infectious disease specialist who confirmed that she had the vaccinia virus.

Vaccinia is relatively mild compared to smallpox, and the woman did not need any specific treatment. She did suffer some pain, soreness and irritation, which eventually resolved, McCollum said.

However, “we were quite concerned that she might transmit it to her household contacts,” McCollum said, because one of her roommates had had a kidney transplant. The transplant patient was immunosuppressed and taking a lot of medication. “A vaccinia virus infection, particularly in an immunosuppressed individual, can be very serious and life-threatening,” McCollum noted.

McCollum noted that there have been other cases of this infection transmitted from smallpox-vaccinated individuals to others. “At CDC, we don’t know about every case of vaccinia that occurs,” she said.

Including this case, the CDC is aware of five similar cases occurring over the past year, she said. “All the cases were women presenting with genital lesions that had had recent sexual contact exposure to military vaccinees.”

In addition to military personnel, others who are vaccinated include some health care workers and laboratory personnel who work with the virus, McCollum said.

In terms of immunizations generally, McCollum said the danger of transmitting a virus via a recent vaccination is present with vaccines that contain what’s known as live virus. Most vaccines — including most childhood and flu vaccines — are made from the killed virus, and therefore pose no such danger, she said.

Infectious disease expert Dr. Marc Siegel, an associate professor of medicine at New York University in New York City, said that “smallpox vaccine being a live virus, there is a two-to-three-week period when you are still infectious from the vaccination site and you have to be very careful to cover it.”

The oral polio vaccine is another live-attenuated vaccine, which has in very rare instances been associated with causing polio, Siegel noted.

However, the vast majority of vaccines utilize killed virus so this is not a problem with them, he reiterated. “One exception is the inhaled flu vaccine. You could transmit influenza in a very weakened form to an immunocompromised person,” he said. “But vaccinia is more infectious than that.”

“This is a reminder that live virus vaccines, which are increasingly in disuse, carry their own risk of minor infection and should not be used in immunocompromised people,” Siegel said.

Live virus vaccines do have one advantage, in that they create a stronger immune response than do killed virus vaccines, Siegel added.

More information

For more information on smallpox, visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

SOURCES: Andrea McCollum, Ph.D., Epidemic Intelligence Service officer, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Marc Siegel, M.D., associate professor, medicine, New York University, New York City; July 1, 2010, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report

Copyright © 2010 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

“Virus Shedding” is one of the safety concerns for live virus vaccines, such as Smallpox. The side-effects, then, are not necessarily only limited to the vaccine recipient.

How can “they” consider to make the flu vaccine mandatory, when by their own standards, it’s clear that safety testing has never been done?

I think it is becoming clearer by the day that there are no longer any fundamental human rights in North America.

3 good tips from a parent on how to speak to an autistic child:

don’t make these 3 mistakes:

1. speaking too fast – slow down and ennunciate
2. using sentences which are too long – keep in the range of your child’s sentence length
3. Using words unknown to the child

When considering vaccination, the issue of “virus shedding” from live vaccines, such as Pertussis, is one of the questions that comes up under the general issue of ‘vaccine safety’.

See more news releases in: Insurance, Medical Pharmaceuticals, Surveys, Polls and Research, Domestic Policy

 

Majority Support Parental Vaccination Choice According To New Harris Poll

 

Over Half Of Parents Say Pharmaceutical Industry Has Too Much Influence Over Government Vaccine Mandates and Support More Safety Research

CHICAGO, May 24 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — A new Harris Interactive poll shows a majority of American parents believe they, rather than the government, should have the final say in which vaccines their children receive.

The poll, commissioned by the Center for Personal Rights, queried a representative sample of American parents about vaccination.  The survey was conducted online within the United States by Harris Interactive on behalf of the Center for Personal Rights, Inc. from May 5-11, 2010 among 1,144 parents of children age 17 years or younger.

Poll results indicate a majority of American parents, 52%, believe that “parents should have the right to decide which vaccines their children receive without government mandates.”  

Parents answered other questions consistently.  54% of parents are “concerned that the pharmaceutical industry has undue influence over government vaccine mandates.”  54% agree that “the government should fund an independent scientific study of fully vaccinated vs. unvaccinated individuals to assess long-term health outcomes.”  48% of parents are “concerned about serious adverse effects of vaccines.”  This poll answer on adverse events is slightly less than the number found in a recent study published in Pediatrics magazine that found that 54% of parents are concerned about serious adverse effects (http://tinyurl.com/2dmx63q). 42% of parents agree that “all children should receive 69 doses of 16 vaccines before age 18, as recommended by the federal government.”

These parental views are broadly consistent across gender, age, income, number of children, educational levels and regions of the country.  Notably, older parents, aged 35 and above (57%), are significantly more likely than their younger peers (47%) to agree that the pharmaceutical industry has undue influence on vaccine mandates.  Single parents are more likely to agree than parents in two-parent families across the range of vaccination questions, perhaps reflecting their greater vulnerability to the risks from vaccination adverse events.

“These poll data should be a wake-up call to the government and the media that a majority of American parents believe that parents, not the state, should decide when and whether to vaccinate their children,” said Mary Holland, co-founder of the Center for Personal Rights.

The American Rally for Personal Rights in downtown Chicago on May 26 www.americanpersonalrights.org reinforces what the Harris poll shows – that parents are concerned about how the government’s vaccine policy may be affecting their kids, according to rally organizer, Louise Kuo Habakus. “Parents who question vaccine mandates and vaccine safety are routinely marginalized or depicted as fringe in the mainstream media, but this Harris poll proves just the opposite. This poll shows that the majority of American parents believe that parents, not government, should make these decisions; that we need more science and that pharma has undue influence.”  

Information on Survey Methodology

This survey was conducted online within the United States between May 5-11, 2010 among 1,144 parents of children age 17 years or younger by Harris Interactive on behalf of the Center for Personal Rights, Inc. via its ParentQuery omnibus product. Figures for age, sex, race/ethnicity, education, region, household income, and age of children in household were weighted where necessary to bring them into line with their actual proportions in the population. Propensity score weighting was used to adjust for respondents’ propensity to be online.

Respondents for this survey were selected from among those who have agreed to participate in Harris Interactive surveys. The data have been weighted to reflect the composition of the parent population. Because the sample is based on those who agreed to participate in the Harris Interactive panel, no estimates of theoretical sampling error can be calculated.

For poll results and complete survey methodology, including weighting variables, see the 78-page full statistical report available at http://tinyurl.com/2da43dr or contact Kitty Kurth at 312-617-7288.  For information on the May 26th rally, contact Louise Kuo Habakus at 917-553-4634 or louise@americanpersonalrights.org.

Contact: Cheri Jacobus
202-547-7358
CheriJacobus@aol.com

SOURCE Center for Personal Rights, Inc.

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RELATED LINKS
http://www.americanpersonalrights.org

This poll illustrates the deeper, wide-spread feeling that most people have about the excessive control and manipulation we suffer at the hands of the pharmaceutical industry and the Government.

Individual free choice is such a fundamental need in terms of living in a healthy inner and outer environment, and the question of vaccines is increasingly a hot button for many people.