By Tim O’Shea, D.C.
After years of lobbying and angling, GlaxoSmithKline finally got its new vaccine for hepatitis A tacked onto the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s mandated schedule of vaccination (www.aap.org), as of January 2002, with no public fanfare. The vaccine, Havrix, is described in the 2002 Physicians Desk Reference.(1)
Merck also has a hepatitis A vaccine, Vaqta.
The CDC’s mandated schedule is the brass ring targeted by all vaccine manufacturers. The approval of a vaccine can mean annual revenues of $1 billion or more, which is about what Merck pulls in for its current hepatitis B vaccine.
Hepatitis A vaccine appears in a brand new “high-risk” category on the mandated schedule.
What Is Hepatitis A?
Hepatitis A, an acute viral disease of the liver, has supposedly been isolated as “a 27-nm RNA picornavirus (enterovirus) with only one serotype,” according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.(2)
The infectious agent is passed from human to human through: the oral-fecal route, waterborne means—often from raw shellfish or dirty water, or through blood and body secretions.
Hepatitis A is a mild, self-limiting disease, resolving on its own with no treatment in 4-8 weeks. Most infections are subclinical, meaning that most people who get the disease never even know it because they never manifest symptoms.(3)
The journal Pediatrics agrees: “Most HAV infections in young children are asymptomatic … Clinical hepatitis occurs in fewer than 10 percent of infected children.”
This disease is so mild that 90 percent of children who get hepatitis A never even know it. Even the National Institutes of Health states, “Most people who have hepatitis A get well on their own after a few weeks.”(4)
Most cases of hepatitis A are found in Third World areas, outside the U.S. The question is: Why is the U.S. the only country in the world which recommends the vaccine on a mass scale?
Symptoms Of Hepatitis A
Diagnosis of hepatitis A is supposedly by IgM antibody. But more often, diagnosis is by symptoms alone.
According to the Merck Manual, the chief symptoms of hepatitis A are loss of appetite; nausea, vomiting and diarrhea (NVD); hives; joint pain and dark urine.(3)
These are hardly life-threatening situations. Jaundice may also occur, but it usually indicates the beginning of recovery. By the time these symptoms appear, the disease is no longer infectious.
Unlike hepatitis B, type A hepatitis disappears completely after acute infection, and does not contribute to chronic liver disease or to cirrhosis. It is important to note that after the patient recovers, he has true lifetime immunity.
Hepatitis A is a disease of poor personal hygiene, bad sanitation, poverty and overcrowding—a Third World scenario. Even well-groomed, well-fed junkies are not high risk for hepatitis A. They’re more apt to get Type B. Medline indicates the lack of sewers in Third World locales as the biggest contributor to hepatitis A.(5,6) From the journal Pediatrics we find that: “The major method for prevention of HAV infections is improved sanitation and personal hygiene.”
The bottom line: Hepatitis A is not common in most of the United States.
What Is The Vaccine For?
Two questions arise: First, do we really need another vaccine beyond the 40 already mandated for schoolchildren, and secondly did we need a vaccine for a rare disease that resolves by itself in a few weeks?
To answer the first, we must ask whether there were any studies done which prove that the new vaccine is safe when Havrix is added to the other 40 mandated vaccines? The answer is no. Secondly, to substantiate the necessity for any vaccine, we must look at two criteria: incidence of disease and severity.
How Many Cases Exist?
In the 2002 Physicians Desk Reference, the manufacturer of Havrix cites 13-year old studies which supposedly show the incidence of hepatitis A and state that the case death rate is six-tenths of 1 percent.1 This means that about six out of a thousand who contract hepatitis A die from the disease. It seems like a rather high death rate until one realizes that these are not U.S. figures, but global figures, meaning that they were taken primarily from Third World countries, where the majority of hepatitis A cases are found.
That means that these patients are trying to recover from a disease of poverty, filth and malnutrition in an environment of poverty, filth and malnutrition. This hardly applies in the rare instance of a hepatitis A patient in most of America. But these are the studies and figures that the vaccine manufacturer has used to convince the Food and Drug Administration that hepatitis A is such a serious disease in the U.S. that a vaccine is necessary.
From the American Academy of Pediatricians web site (www.aap.org/policy/01207.html), we see only half the death rate reported by the PDR: “Mortality is rare, especially in children. The case-fatality rate has been estimated as 3 per 1000 clinical cases in the United States.”
Looking at the factual incidence of the hepatitis A in the U.S. is an academic artifice, a daunting challenge indeed. A standard government reference for epidemiology is Statistical Abstracts. In the 2000 edition, we find that the overall incidence of hepatitis A has been declining for the past two decades.(7)
In 1980 there were 29.1 cases per 100,000, and in 1998, that was down to 23.2 cases per 100,000.
This decline is good news, and of course has nothing to do with the vaccine. A footnote reads: “Includes cases imported from outside the United States.” No one doubts that the vast majority of hepatitis A cases are foreign. It’s a disease of poverty, filth and malnutrition. Unfortunately in a disease which only manifests symptoms less than 10 percent of the time, and with the immense amount of immigration and international travel going on, there is simply no way to separate foreign cases from those of domestic origin.
To further illustrate the low credibility of government figures for hepatitis A cases, we need only look at a CDC report, which claimed more than 10 times higher incidence: 30,000 cases, which is about 300 cases per 100,000.(8)
That’s a little different from 23 cases per 100,000. So which study is right? Who knows? Results depend on who funded it, who wrote it and who was responsible for verification.
The truth is no one can really say with authority how many cases of hepatitis A occur in the U.S. annually.
The Real Number of Deaths
In an earlier part of the Statistical Abstracts reference, we find that the total number of annual U.S. deaths from all three types of viral hepatitis (A, B and C) in 1998 was only 4,700.
Remember this also includes complications of autoimmune diseases, terminal infectious diseases and other serious illnesses, mostly in impoverished communities and in alcoholics, drug addicts and other high-risk individuals. This supposedly represents the necessity of a vaccine for all Americans.
Looking at the PDR’s global figures above—a mortality of six out of 100,000—we see the usual attempt by the vaccine manufacturers to grab the credit for saving us from an already declining disease.
We may be sure that future studies on U.S. hepatitis A incidence will show vast decreases, for which the vaccine will doubtless be given credit. Just remember the virtual impossibility of determining incidence rate at this time when the vaccine is being introduced.
Almost all sources agree that children are not the group dying from hepatitis A: “Hepatitis with mortality occurs mostly in people with underlying conditions, such as chronic liver disease, and in older age groups.” (http://www.aap.org/policy/01207.html)
The Vaccine’s Composition
Hepatitis A vaccine is made from infected human connective tissue cells. Each batch is made from an infected mass of cells, which came from 1,000 donors (Pediatrics). They are infected with hepatitis A virus, the causative vector presumed to be present in every case of hepatitis A disease.
The agents are filtered, and attenuated with aluminum, formaldehyde, and phenoxyethanol (a synonym for ethylene glycol, a component in antifreeze).
Just for the sake of argument, let’s concede that the attenuated viral agent in this vaccine is necessary to stave off the hepatitis A “epidemic.” But can scientists defend the presence of one of the most potent human neurotoxins and a well-known carcinogen in this supposed life-saving elixir? Of course, I am now referring to the aluminum and formaldehyde, which GlaxoSmithKline thought so vital to the composition of Havrix (PDR, p. 1544).
As Drs. Russell Blaylock and Theo Colburn, authors of the books Excitotoxins and Our Stolen Future, respectively, have explained, it is not just the connection with Alzheimer’s disease that makes aluminum such a danger to human physiology. It can interfere with the formation, development and survival of virtually any human nerve tissue in an unpredictable fashion.(9,10)
As for formaldehyde, how much danger of cancer is an acceptable risk in the pure, perfect blood of a newborn? Cancer occurs first in just one cell. So where are the studies that prove that this “trace” of formalin or antifreeze will not be sufficient to cause that first cell mutation that develops into cancer?
We aren’t just assuming that there are no studies to see whether Havrix might cause cancer. Again, the manufacturer stated it flatly: “Havrix has not been evaluated for its carcinogenic potential, mutagenic potential, or potential for impairment of fertility.”(1)
Translation: If this vaccine were making children sterile and causing cancer in an epidemic manner, no one would know. The possibility was never investigated.
This single causative viral agent that has been identified for hepatitis A is a presumption. Remember: Diagnosis is often by symptoms and by the presence of IgM in the blood. Viral infections are not cultured for diagnosis; it’s largely theoretical. So then, doesn’t the isolation, concentration and dissemination of an infectious viral agent seem at least a little presumptuous (if not enormously reckless) especially when we’re talking about the unformed immune systems of the newborn infant population?
Mass Dissemination Of An Unproven Agent
Is it really necessary to introduce an attenuated infectious vector into our entire population of children in order to theoretically prevent a disease which is extremely rare in the vast majority of U.S. communities and getting rarer? A disease that is self-limiting, does not contribute to chronic liver disease and confers lifetime immunity to the ones who get it?
Even the manufacturer does not claim that the vaccine confers immunity, but only delays the disease. Thus, it creates the need for boosters. But if the vaccine worked, we wouldn’t need boosters after six months or a year. Following this shaky logic, if the immunity only lasts a year, the child should get boosters every year for the rest of his life. Now, the booster shot and the first vaccination shot are identical. Why does the first shot supposedly last for a year, but the last one is going to be effective for the rest of the patient’s life?
The other big issue is that the hepatitis A virus is supposedly a specific agent that has been photographed, sequenced and catalogued and occurs the same way in every case of the disease. Classical diagnosis is by symptoms and the presence of the antibody, remember? IgM. But acute viral liver infections can be of a variety of completely different agents and disease scenarios. To pretend that they can all be cured by the dissemination of one single type of attenuated viral agent is disingenuous at best and scientifically ludicrous, even criminal, at worst. Mass inoculation must be absolutely proven to be necessary, beneficial and free from side effects, or else it shouldn’t even be considered. Havrix meets none of these criteria.
The New “High-Risk” Category
The most disconcerting aspect of the new mandated vaccine schedule is the creation of this new “high-risk” category.
As we would expect, this ingenious addition was tacked onto the program with no fanfare, no general public attention. Suddenly the most vaccinated children in the history of the world are still not getting sufficient injections, even with 40 vaccines now mandated. So for further protection, the CDC has now created the new “high-risk” category, which they’ll christen with just two vaccines: hepatitis A and influenza.
These extra shots aren’t really part of the mandated schedule, but they are intended for the child who needs that extra protection because he is what we doctors call “high risk.” According to the American Pediatrics Association, this means any child who seems to have a tendency to get colds, asthma, allergies, the flu or is generally sick.
By that definition, “high-risk” could include almost every child in America.
Propaganda Vs. Information
In 2000, the National Institutes of Health published a booklet to prepare the public for the addition of Hepatitis A vaccine to the 2002 schedule. As a study in language alone, the book is a frightening representation of presumptions about the public’s intelligence.
An excerpt reads: “A vaccine is a drug that you take when you are healthy that keeps you from getting sick.”
First of all, vaccines aren’t drugs, nor do people “take” them. As for keeping people from getting sick, perhaps we should ask the hundreds of VAERS parents whose children have suffered fatal injury or permanent damage from vaccines about how well they kept their child from getting sick. This is classic Edward L Bernays.(11)
Or this gem: “Vaccines teach your body to attack certain viruses, like the hepatitis A virus.”
This myth has survived intact since Edward Jenner first propounded it in 1799. If it were true, we would not have the ridiculous situation where the only cases of diseases for the last 35 years have occurred in the vaccinated population, as with smallpox and polio.(12,13)
Here’s another excerpt from the same NIH booklet: “Children can get the vaccine after they turn two. Children age 2-18 will need three shots. The shots are spread out over a year … adults get two shots over 6 to 12 months. ... You need all of the shots to be protected.”
Yes, two years is the recommended age for the vaccine. Are the studies showing the absolute safety of injecting aluminum and formaldehyde into the unformed neurophysiology of a two-year-old?
Arbitrary Dosage Recommendations
What is shocking about these statements is the cavalier, arbitrary fashion in which dosages are recommended. You assume that an enormous amount of scientific study is behind the very sober recommendation for “three shots over a one-year period.” So why is it that in the PDR, the manufacturer has a totally different dosage recommendation and the AAP still another in its policy statement?
On page 1545 of the PDR, the manufacturer of Havrix states that the child may get an initial dose, and then get one booster shot 6 to 12 months later.
These dose recommendations are just guesswork, not the result of clinical trials. A year from now, they may change completely, as we just saw with other vaccines on the new schedule. That’s why different sources recommend different dosages.
Summary
So what have we learned? Well, there’s a new vaccine for hepatitis A being recommended for most children over 2 years old, as part of a brand new category in the vaccine schedule. Hepatitis A is not a big problem because, in the vast majority of cases, the individual never even knows the disease is present. And even if he gets the disease, it almost always resolves in a few weeks with no permanent after-effects whatsoever.
And there are a few problems with the vaccine, such as: