Pertussis Vaccine aka Whooping Cough Vaccine

Pertussis vaccine: crib death (SIDS) and brain damage?

Reports of death and brain damage from the pertussis vaccine (the P in the DPT/TDaP shot) appeared in medical journals right after the shot began to be used. In 1933, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a paper describing two babies that died a few hours after they had been vaccinated.

Madsen T. Vaccination against whooping cough. JAMA. 1933;101(3):187-188.

As DPT vaccination increased, the number of dead and damaged children increased. This reached the British newspapers that began describing brain injury, mental retardation and death following DPT vaccine. The public outcry was intense and UK vaccination rates dropped from 80% to as low as 15%.*

*Vaccination is not compulsory in the UK. As a result of the drop in vaccination, the medical profession predicted an epidemic of pertussis deaths. Yet the opposite occurred; Britain’s pertussis death rate dropped to the lowest in recorded history.

Across the pond, on April 19, 1982, NBC affiliate WRC-TV (Washington, D.C.) ran a documentary by investigative reporter and producer Lea Thompson entitled “DPT: Vaccine Roulette.” Children who suffered brain damage following the pertussis vaccine were interviewed. Hailed by parents and viciously attacked by the medical profession (who called her “amoral” and “psychopathic”) the documentary won an Emmy award.

Many parents watching had an “aha” moment: “So that’s why my child has problems.” “Is that why my child died?” The documentary inspired the creation of the National Vaccination Information Center (NVIC) and (indirectly) to the publication of DPT: A Shot in the Dark by Barbara Fisher and Harris Coulter (one of the best books ever written on the subject).

In the making of the documentary, producer Thompson searched for pertussis victims:

I remember calling every children’s hospital in the country and asking whether they had pictures of a roaring case of whooping cough. There wasn’t a picture in the country! I kept saying, “If this is such a monster problem, why don’t we have any pictures of it?”

The only pictures in this documentary that we could finally get were what we call kinescopes. It was a picture of a child in 1936 and that is the only picture we could find.

 For the next ten years, I told the heads of every children’s hospital that complained (of our documentary) … that I would come in an instant if they could find … a child really in distress, because I wanted to show pictures to the American public of what it really looked like and in ten years I never got that phone call.

Lea Thompson. Presentation at the National Vaccine Information Center’s First International Public Conference on Vaccination. September 13-15, 1997, Alexandria, Virginia.

 What the U.S. CDC says 

Before the availability of vaccine, pertussis was a common cause of morbidity and mortality among children. During the 6-year period from 1940 through 1945, more than 1 million cases of pertussis were reported, an average of 175,000 cases per year…. Following introduction of whole-cell pertussis vaccine in the 1940s, pertussis incidence gradually declined, reaching 15,000 reported cases in 1960… By 1970, annual incidence was fewer than 5,000 cases per year, and during 1980–1990, an average of 2,900 cases per year were reported (approximately 1 per 100,000 population).

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) publishes a “Pink Book” for all the childhood diseases. Home page: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/index.html The pertussis section is here: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/pert.html

Yes, there was more pertussis before the vaccine, but that is misinformation because If you look at the data you’ll find that death from pertussis was dropping for decades before the pertussis vaccine was in mass usage (late in the 1960s). Deaths dropped over 99% before vaccination.

Why did mortality drop? From the pertussis vaccine?

Improvements in living conditions, improved nutrition, clean hot and cold water, proper toilets, waste disposal and other benefits of Western civilization have done more to reduce death and disease than any medical intervention.

McKinlay JB, McKinlay SM. The questionable contribution of medical measures to the decline of mortality in the United States in the twentieth century. Milbank Mem Fund Q Health Soc. 1977 Summer;55(3):405-428.

Pertussis is higher since the pertussis vaccine

There is more pertussis than before vaccination and pertussis continues to increase especially amongst infants. Infants are the most vulnerable and have the highest mortality.

With mandatory vaccination and 5 doses of DPT vaccine, pertussis occurs at a far higher rate now than before the introduction of the vaccine…. There is substantial underreporting of pertussis … including hospitalizations.

Sutter RW, Cochi SL. Pertussis hospitalizations and mortality in the United States, 1985-1988. JAMA. 1992;267(3):386-390.

Ironically, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) continues to recommend that every child receive five pertussis (DTaP) shots (at 2, 4, 6, 15-18 months and 4-6 years). Ironically things have gotten worse.

Pertussis vaccine: crib death and brain damage!

The pertussis vaccine is suspected of causing infantile encephalitis and sudden infant death syndrome (crib death). It has also been implicated in bacterial infections including meningitis. Sweden banned the pertussis vaccine because of these dangers and Japan delayed the vaccine until after two years of age.

Is the pertussis vaccine effective?

Epidemics of pertussis have occurred in fully vaccinated populations; therefore, we must ask at what cost are we preventing what has become a largely harmless condition?

How many cases of crib death, brain injury and autism occurred during the injection of this dangerous, ineffective vaccine?

He Q, Vijanen MK, Arvilommi H et al. Whooping cough caused by Bordetella pertussi and Bordetella parapertussis in an immunized population. Journal of the American Medical Association. 1998;280:635-637.

Chen RT, Goldbaum GM, Wassilak SG et al. An explosive point-source measles outbreak in a highly vaccinated population. Modes of transmission and risk factors for disease. Am J Epidemiol. 1989;129(1):173-182.

Putting babies in danger

Vaccines interfere with transplacental immunity

Why do we call measles, mumps, chickenpox and pertussis childhood diseases? This is not a trick question. They are called that because you get them when you are a child; the best time to get them. They aren’t called adult diseases or teen diseases and they certainly aren’t called diseases of infancy.

Infants don’t get these diseases because they are immunized by their mothers. It’s nature’s natural immunization—while in-utero they receive immunity from their mothers through the placenta. That is referred to as transplacental immunity or passive immunity.

But transplacental immunity can be interfered with; ironically the baby will be born without this immunization if the mother was vaccinated as a little girl.

When little girls get vaccinated and get pregnant years later they have less protection to pass on to their unborn babies. Now babies are unprotected and “diseases of childhood” are appearing in newborns and infants when the death rate is much higher.

Young infants are at highest risk for acquiring pertussis-associated complications…. In 2008 … children 3 months of age or younger accounted for 83% of [pertussis] deaths…. During 2001-2003, the highest average annual pertussis incidence was among infants younger than 1 year of age (55.2 cases per 100,000 population), and particularly among children younger than 6 months of age (98.2 per 100,000 population). In 2002, 24% of all reported cases were in this age group.

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/pert.html

Vaccination interferes with the natural age of occurrence in the other direction; we are now seeing measles, mumps and pertussis outbreaks in high school and college.

The epidemiology of pertussis has changed in recent years, with an increasing burden of disease among fully-vaccinated children and adolescents….

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/pert.html

Vaccinated mothers pass on less protection

In one study, 71% of nine-month-olds and 95% of 12-month-olds had no detectable neutralizing measles antibodies in their blood if they were born to mothers who were vaccinated. All infants with detectable measles antibodies had mothers who were not vaccinated.

Maldonado YA et al. Early loss of passive measles antibody in infants of mothers with vaccine-induced immunity. Pediatrics. 1995;96(3 Pt 1):447-450.

From acute to chronic—creating a generation of sick children

The greatest part of all chronic disease is created by the suppression of acute disease by drug poisoning.
Henry Lindlahr, M.D.

The cause of most disease is in the poisonous drugs physicians superstitiously give in order to effect a cure.
Charles E. Page, M.D.

Vaccines do not eradicate disease, they drive disease deeper.

Vaccination injects toxins deep into our children’s bodies, so deep they are not able to generate symptoms (fever, rash, etc.) to expel or express toxins. Children cannot generate a symptom crisis—they may be too deeply ill. This is because our medical culture views symptoms as bad and not beneficial manifestations of a body struggling to maintain balance (homeostasis).

As a result of suppressing acute illness, we now have an epidemic of chronically ill children (and adults).

It bears repeating that we no longer have epidemics of measles, mumps or pertussis— those diseases dropped in intensity (morbidity) and death (mortality) to almost zero before vaccination. Remnants of those diseases are like the ubiquitous “stomach virus,” “24-hour virus,” “48-hour virus” or similar conditions that may be annoying but are largely benign (harmless) and acute (temporary). These rites of passage are considered beneficial detoxification reactions that leave a healthier, stronger child in their wake.

Let your children get sick—they’ll be healthier their entire lives 

A child not permitted to struggle with symptoms is weaker. The child now faces more chronic illness, even cancer and heart disease. In our desire to protect children from the discomfort of a largely benign condition lasting a few days we are producing a weaker, more sickly child—in body and in mind—for life.

The person who takes medicine must recover twice, once from the disease and once from the medicine.
William Osler, M.D.

As all parents know (or should know), sick or feverish children need to be well-hydrated and rested and their body symptoms respected. Fevers, coughs, rashes, diarrhea, vomiting, malaise and other symptoms are beneficial expressions that work to cleanse, detoxify and heal. This has been known for millennia.

But we have now been ignoring that wisdom. Instead, we have a generation of children who are drugged up—fevers are artificially lowered, coughs artificially suppressed, skin eruptions are pushed deeper with creams and lotions, and more or less their bodies are not permitted to “do their things.”

Drugs never cure a disease. They merely hush the voice of nature’s protest and pull down the danger signals she erects along the pathway of transgression. Any poison taken into the system has to be reckoned with later …  pain may disappear but the patient is left in a worse condition.
Daniel H. Kress, M.D.

The dangers of suppression

Suppressing dramatic yet temporary (acute) symptoms drives them deeper creating a generation of children with permanent or lifelong (chronic) disease. Kids were never so sick as now. Look at these statistics:

• In 1960 4% of children suffered from a chronic health condition
• In 2007 54% of children suffer from a chronic health condition
• One in five teens has a severe mental disorder (37% drop out of school)
• One in six children has a developmental disability
• 1 in 8 children needs special education services
• 1 in 11 children has ADHD
• 1 in 12 children has asthma
• 1 in 13 children has a food allergy (including deadly peanut allergy)
• 1 in 36 children has autism
• 1 in 285 children will be diagnosed with cancer by age 20
• We now have the first generation of children who will not outlive their parents.

Bethell CD, Kogan MD, Strickland BB et al. A national and state profile of leading health problems and health care quality for US children: key insurance disparities and across-state variations. Academic Pediatrics. May-June 2011;11(3, Suppl):S22–S33. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acap.2010.08.011

Additionally, Michel Odent, the French obstetrician, found that children receiving the pertussis vaccine (whooping cough vaccine) were six times more likely to develop asthma than children not receiving this vaccine.

Odent MR et al. Pertussis vaccination and asthma: is there a link? (Letters). JAMA. August 24/31 1994;272(8):592-593.

The power of fever and symptoms

I would cure all diseases if I only could produce fever.
Parmenides, Greek physician, 510 BC

The power of fever and other symptoms cannot be underestimated. Pediatricians suffer from fever phobia.

Doctors do a great disservice to you and your child when they prescribe drugs to reduce fever…. Fever phobia is a disease of pediatricians, not parents, and to the extent that parents are victimized by it, doctors are at fault…. They don’t tell you that reducing his temperature will do nothing to make the patient well or that our bodies have a built-in mechanism, not fully explained, that will prevent an infection-induced temperature from reaching 106 degrees F (41 degrees C).

Mendelsohn R. How to Raise a Healthy Child…In Spite of Your Doctor. Chicago: Contemporary Books. 1984:80.

Nature’s way

Fever and infectious diseases, even colds and flu, protect us from cancer and chronic illnesses; they are nature’s way to cleanse, detoxify and strengthen the child’s (and adult’s) immune system.

• Those who had experienced infections and colds had a 70% lower risk of cancer.
  Schlehofer B, Blettner M, Becker N et al. Medical risk factors and development of brain tumors. Cancer. 1992;69:2541-2547.
• Cancer was six times higher in patients who never had a common cold and fifteen times higher for those who had never had a fever.
  Remy W, Hammerschmidt K, Zander KS et al. Cancer patients rarely have a history of infection. Med Klinik. 1983;78:95-98.
• Those with carcinomas of the stomach, colon, rectum, breast, and ovary were interviewed…. A history of common colds or influenza was found to be associated with a decreased cancer risk.
  Abel U, Becker N, Angerer R et al. Common infections in the history of cancer patients and controls. J Cancer Res Clin Oncol. 1991;117(4):339-443.
• Subjects who reported a history of infectious diseases (e.g., colds, flu) showed a 30% reduction in risk [of brain tumor].
  Schlehofer B, Blettner M, Preston-Martin S et al. Role of medical history in brain tumour development. Results from the international adult brain tumour study. Int J Cancer. 1999;82(2):155-160.
• Having two childhood viral infections reduces the risk of developing heart disease later in life by 40%; four infections was associated with a 60% decreased risk, and six infections lower the risk of heart disease by 90%.
  Erkki Pesonen, MD, University Hospital in Lund, Sweden. Presentation at IV World Congress of Pediatric Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery. September 23, 2005, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

It’s not really about vaccination

Vaccination (including the pertussis vaccine, of course) is part of a larger issue—how we view disease symptoms. Are symptoms bad or good for us? Should we fear them and try to destroy (actually suppress) them or work with them and comfort the patient as they having a healing crisis?

When it comes to childhood diseases—pertussis, measles, mumps, chickenpox and scarlet fever—we have noticed that they had all largely disappeared before vaccination. (There never was a scarlet fever vaccine and yet it also dropped to nearly zero.)

Why were vaccines (including the pertussis vaccine) developed? They were developed, researched and tested when these diseases were widespread and creating much serious illness and death. At the time, medical doctors did not understand the relationship between standard of living and mortality. Nor did they understand the benefits of properly managed fever and infections. So, by the time the vaccines were brought to the market they weren’t needed even if they had worked. As they say, “Generals fight the last war” and MDs fight the last disease.

In our battle to use vaccines to fight infectious disease we have created a nation of patients—children and adults forever sick with physical and mental disorders, forever taking medications to dull the pain and relieve the symptoms. All the while they drive their diseases ever deeper.

It’s time we learn to work with the body and respect its wisdom.

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Want to know more about vaccination? Read Dr. Koren’s book, Childhood Vaccination: Questions All Parents Should Ask.

Other related blog posts: The Real Measles Outbreak, Vaccine Research and more.

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