Recent measles cases in the United States have been used to push for legislation to remove personal and/or religious exemptions to vaccination. ICWA opposes the removal of exemptions for any reason. There are non-invasive alternative measures responsible individuals can take to prevent the spread of infection.
Vaccination policies must alway include protection of informed consent, and must always be made with the full understanding of the products individuals would have to accept in order to comply.
There is no monovalent measles vaccine licensed in the United States. There are three measles vaccines available, which all underwent inadequate testing and include questionable ingredients.
One of the three products is Merck’s highly controversial MMR II. Here are key issues with it:
Effectiveness
- Merck is on trial for falsifying the effectiveness of the mumps portion of MMR.
- Primary and secondary failure of the measles portion of the MMR. A significant portion of individuals never mount an immune response to the measles vaccine in the MMR, and for those who do, protection does not last a lifetime.
“Multiple studies demonstrate that 2–10% of those immunized with two doses of measles vaccine fail to develop protective antibody levels, and that immunity can wane over time and result in infection (so-called secondary vaccine failure) when the individual is exposed to measles. For example, during the 1989–1991 U.S. measles outbreaks 20–40% of the individuals affected had been previously immunized with one to two doses of vaccine. In an October 2011 outbreak in Canada, over 50% of the 98 individuals had received two doses of measles vaccine. The Table shows that this phenomenon continues to play a role in measles outbreaks. Thus, measles outbreaks also occur even among highly vaccinated populations because of primary and secondary vaccine failure, which results in gradually larger pools of susceptible persons and outbreaks once measles is introduced. This leads to a paradoxical situation whereby measles in highly immunized societies occurs primarily among those previously immunized.”
Poland, Gregory A, and Robert M Jacobson. “The re-emergence of measles in developed countries: time to develop the next-generation measles vaccines?.” Vaccine vol. 30,2 (2012): 103-4. doi:10.1016/j.vaccine.2011.11.085
See also: LeBaron CW, Beeler J, Sullivan BJ, et al. Persistence of Measles Antibodies After 2 Doses of Measles Vaccine in a Postelimination Environment. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2007;161(3):294–301. doi:10.1001/archpedi.161.3.294
Studies show a third MMR dose will not extend protection. “While a third MMR dose may successfully immunize the rare individual who did not respond after 2 doses, MMR3 is unlikely to solve the problem of waning immunity in the United States.” Any small rise in antibodies are only temporary and plummet after a few months. While the authors recommend attempting to push 2-dose MMR rates as high as possible, any increase cannot compensate for waning and will only increase the number of susceptible adults in the future. Public health must use other tools.
Parker, Amy, et al.“Measles Virus Neutralizing Antibody Response, Cell-Mediated Immunity, and Immunoglobulin G Antibody Avidity Before and After Receipt of a Third Dose of Measles, Mumps, and Rubella Vaccine in Young Adults.” OUP Academic, Oxford University Press, 23 Nov. 2015, academic.oup.com/jid/article/213/7/1115/2912150.
Safety
- Clinical Trial data recently made public through FOIA requests reveal studies lasted at most six weeks, involved very few subjects, and showed troubling safety issues, including gastrointestinal reactions, upper respiratory infections, arthritis, and more. Six weeks is insufficient time for monitoring autoimmune or neurological outcomes. No drug would be approved with these trials.
- Senior Research Scientist Dr. William Thompson turned whistleblower in 2014 regarding fraud committed in 2004 in an MMR safety study.
- Dr’s Kelley and Zimmerman of John Hopkins University, top pediatric neurologists, have recently testified under oath that some children can have adverse reactions to vaccination that lead to injury and a diagnosis of autism.
- Robert F. Kennedy Jr., of Children’s Health Defense, has recently filed a fraud complaint with the DOJ inspector general against the DOJ attorneys involved in cover-up and misrepresentations in the Omnibus Autism Proceedings (OAP). The OAP established hearings that addressed 5,400 injury-autism cases through test casesused to test three theories of autism causation via vaccine injury: 1) Did thimerosal mercury preservative used in vaccines cause autism? 2) Did the MMR vaccine cause autism 3) Did a combination of thimerosal/MMR cause autism?
- The Federal Vaccine Injury Table, manufacturer inserts, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), and Vaccine Injury Compensation awards include a broad range of possible injuries, including death.
- Arthritis, listed on the Federal Vaccine Injury Table for the rubella portion of the MMR, occurs at a rate of 1 in 100 according to an article in JAMA Pediatrics in 2005. The CDC reports that there are currently about 10 million doses given per year in the U.S. The Arthritis National Research Foundation reports there are 300,000 case of Juvenile arthritis per year in the US. Using this information of 1,000 cases per 100,000 doses and with 10 million doses per year, that equals 100,000 cases of Juvenile Arthritis Per year that are estimated from the MMR. That is 1/3 of the total cases per year. In the adult population the CDC estimates the cost of treatment for arthritis to be approximately $140 billion dollars a year.
- The rubella portion of the MMR contains fetal DNA fragments which many oppose for religious, philosophical, moral, and scientific reasons, including the danger of insertional mutagenesis, autoimmune reactions, and more.
