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To the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and
Human Resources
of the Committee on Government Reform
U.S. House of Representatives
RE: HEPATITIS B VACCINE HEARINGS
SCHOOL NURSE PERSPECTIVE
Submitted by Patti White, RN
May 17, 1999
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee:
This is a school nursing perspective for the congressional hearings to be held
on May 18, 1999 regarding the safety of the hepatitis B vaccine that is being
mandated for newborns and now older children in America. We ask you to please
consider the following information and submit it into the congressional
testimony. As nurses we continually see more and more damaged children entering
our schools, and we are very concerned that a major portion of that damage may
be due to the hepatitis B vaccine's assault on the newborn neurological and
immune system.
My name is Patti White, R.N. I am a registered professional nurse and the
district health services coordinator for a multi-school district. I am writing
on behalf of the school nurses in our district. We have very grave concerns
about the hepatitis B vaccine.
For the past three or four years our school district has noted a significant
increase in the number of children entering school with developmental
disorders, learning disabilities, attention deficit disorders and/or serious
chronic illness such as diabetes, asthma and seizure disorders. Each of the
past four years has been worse than the year before. There is only one common
thread we have been able to identify in these children: they are the children
who received the first trial hepatitis B injections as newborns in the early
1990s.
As the hepatitis B compliance rate in newborns has gone up in our community, so
has the percentage of damaged children. This is very alarming. Because of
having so many damaged children we
have tried to find the long-term clinical trials that ruled this vaccine
"safe and effective". We discovered through an exhaustive Medline
search that the FDA based its decision to approve hepatitis B vaccine for
administration in the first hours of a newborn baby's life upon clinical trials
and upon post-marketing surveillance studies in which patients and their
doctors were asked to report any adverse effects they noticed within 4-5 days
after each injection [4 days for SmithKline and 5 days for Merck].
The problems being reported in increasing numbers as occurring after hepatitis
B vaccination appear to be autoimmune and neurological in origin. Such problems take weeks to months to
produce noticeable symptoms, and cannot be spotted in a 4-5 day observation
period. These are the only clinical studies that have been done by Merck or
SmithKline. There is not one long-term study that we could find.
The CDC and FDA have no idea what the long-term effects will be on the newly developing neurological and immune systems of the infants who are injected with
this vaccine. They seem to only be concerned with denying the connection
between these damaged children and the hepatitis B shot they received within a
few hours of birth. The CDC even admits the lack of study and states they do
not even know how long the vaccine will be effective. We found this amazing since the vaccine was developed for a
population at risk for hepatitis B: IV drug users, high-risk medical
professionals and those who are involved in high risk sexual practices.
In 1950 (before mass immunizations began), the USA had the third lowest infant
mortality rate in the world. By 1986, the USA dropped to 17th
place. In 1995 the USA dropped to 23rd
and now the USA has dropped to the appalling position of 24th in the health of
its children. But the USA is now first in vaccine compliance through government
mandates.
The elementary grades are overwhelmed with children who have symptoms of neurological and/or immune system damage: epilepsy, seizure disorders, various
kinds of palsies, autism, mental retardation, learning disabilities,
juvenile-onset diabetes, asthma, vision /hearing loss, and a multitude of new
conduct/behavior disorders.
We have come to believe the hepatitis B vaccine is an assault on a newborns
developing neurological and immune system. Vaccines are supposed to be making
us healthier, however, in twenty-five years of nursing I have never seen so
many damaged, sick kids. Something very, very wrong is happening to our
children. The census of ill children treated in our health rooms each day has
increased by 300% in only four years.
In our last school nurse meeting we discussed whether the combination of so
many vaccines/viruses at one time (hepatitis B vaccine at the same time of the
DPT, OPV or MMR) is causing the infant's immune system to be overwhelmed and
unable to mount a sufficient defense response. We are advocating clinical
studies to determine: Is the combination of all these viruses at one time an
assault on an infant's immune and neurological system that increases the
chances for adverse reaction AND what are the
long-term neurological and immune system responses to these vaccines. We are
all continuing to research this issue and will be happy to share the many resources
we have found with you. I hope you will do the same as you open up this issue.
We have talked many times about the possible cause(s) of the continuing
increase in pervasive developmental disorders (PDD), such as autism. From the
literature we have found, we should expect a rate for PDD of about 2-5 in
10,000. In our community the rate in 1st and 2nd grade is about 1 in 150 and in
kindergarten, 1 in 100.
As school nurses, we have had many parents calling and asking how they can
exempt their children from the hepatitis B vaccination (HPB). Many of them have
spent long hours in study and research perplexed over this issue. For the past six months we have been
studying documents, books and research articles published by internationally
respected doctors and scientists that cause us grave concern. You must
understand that we began this study to reassure our parents and show them the
truth about how safe vaccines are.
Unfortunately, our sincere, honest, dedicated study has caused a complete
reversal of our once strongly held beliefs. Instead of being able to reassure
the parents, we have found ourselves being drawn deeper and deeper into this
unbelievable controversy over vaccines that is raging among physicians,
scientists, researchers, parents, and the government. We pray you will have the
courage to shine the light on this controversy through these hepatitis B
hearings.
My daughter's own experience with the hepatitis B vaccine made me much more open-minded to the information we have been receiving from parents, teachers
and other nurses in our community. I personally have had to research this on my
own to determine if I have been enforcing a policy that is actually harming
more children than it will ever help. I have spent countless hours reading
books, vaccine-hearing testimony, research papers, medical journal articles and
Internet web-sites from around the world. I did not come to my decision easily
or lightly, I assure you. Twenty-five years of total belief in something does
not shake that easily.
I have repeated the well-rehearsed refrain "Be Wise; Immunize"
thousands of times during those years and reassured countless parents that they
were doing the right thing by vaccinating their precious children . . . even
the ones who came to me with serious doubts and reservations. I will now have
to live with that.
We are all now faced with a moral dilemma: will we protect the "sacred cow
of conventional vaccine philosophy" or will we stand up and speak out for
the "health and well being of innocent children"? We choose
children. We wonder, which will our government choose?
Because the hepatitis B vaccine was developed for those at risk of disease,
including IV drug users and sexually promiscuous individuals, efforts to
require administration of the vaccine to most, if not all of the U.S.
population is very controversial. The increasing number of adverse reaction
reports connected with this vaccine exacerbates the controversy. The
controversy stems to a great extent from our lack of understanding of the
mechanisms of the immune response to the hepatitis B surface antigen and lack
of long term follow-up of individuals who have received the vaccine. In a January 27, 1999 press release, the
National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) released figures which show that the
number of hepatitis B vaccine-associated serious adverse event and death
reports in American children under the age of 14 outnumber the reported cases
of hepatitis B disease.
During our research we discovered a copy of the grant proposal submitted
recently to the National Institute of Health by Dr. B. S. Dunbar, who has
worked in autoimmunity and vaccine development for over twenty years and was
honored two years ago by the National Institute of Health. Dr. Dunbar is
working with a team of veteran vaccine researchers from all over the
world. Their grant is requested for the
purpose of studying the hypothesis that: hepatitis B recombinant vaccine does
cause adverse autoimmune reactions in genetically susceptible individuals. This
study will also provide new insights into the predictability of determining
adverse side effects of the hepatitis B vaccine in individuals at risk as
related to their histocompatability subtypes. Their study of auto-immune
diseases/symptoms caused by the hepatitis B vaccine include: lupus
erythematosus, rheumatoid arthritis, vascular disorders, Guillain Barre syndrome,
demyelinating disorders such as optic neuritis (blindness), Bell's palsy,
demyelinating neuropathy (multiple developmental disorders), multiple sclerosis, diabetes
mellitus and chronic fatigue syndrome to mention the most common.
This group of internationally respected vaccine researchers headed up by Dr.
Dunbar also point out that, "The studies (for the approval of HPB) were
not designed to assess serious, rare adverse events; the total number of
recipients were too small; and the follow-up was too short to detect rare or
delayed, serious, adverse reactions." Finally they point out that
"overall the number of examples of adverse neurologic outcomes following
receipt of hepatitis B vaccine are of concern, particularly those resulting in
demyelinating neurologic disease."
They continue, "In view of these observations. . . it is medically crucial
to evaluate the nature of the autoimmune reactions (i.e. risks) associated with
the hepatitis B vaccine and to determine if individuals who will have these adverse
reactions can be identified in advance of receiving the vaccine". There
are critical questions that must be addressed to establish the risk/benefit of the current hepatitis B vaccines in the United
States. These questions are
particularly important in view of recent mandates to vaccinate all children
including newborn infants."
Many groups have called for a moratorium on hepatitis B vaccination until some
of these questions can be answered adequately. The NVIC reported "Newborn
babies are dying shortly after their shots and their deaths are being written
off as sudden infant death syndrome. Parents should have the right to give
their informed consent to vaccination and Congress should give emergency,
priority funding to independent scientists, who can take an unbiased look at
this vaccine, instead of leaving the search for truth in the hands of
government officials who have already decided to force every child to get the
vaccine". We agree completely. The NVIC can be contacted at http://www.909shot.com for further
information.
Our own school district's confidential health statistics show at least 20% of
our children (K-3) have significant neurological damage and/or chronic illness.
The last three years have shown an acceleration in the numbers of children who
are entering our schools with these "developmental disorders". (Could these be the same infants who
received the first trial doses of hepatitis B as only a few hour-old newborns?)
As school nurses, working with these damaged children on a daily basis, we pray this is not true. If it
is, the ramification to this generation of children is unthinkable!
Should we not pause, call for a moratorium on these poorly tested, rapidly
approved vaccines, and allow independent American physicians and researchers to
study them before blindly injecting an experimental vaccine into an entire
generation? (We have found the only ones declaring the vaccine's safety are the
ones who are making millions of dollars from its sales, whose employment
depends on it or the ones being supported by the drug companies vast number of
grants and fundings. The independent researchers seem to be coming up with an
entirely different report.)
Vaccine producers have nothing to lose since our U.S. Congress has made them
immune from responsibility or liability for injuries caused from their
vaccines. The push is on for them to create more and more vaccines. There are
huge amounts of money being made by these people who no longer worry about the
consequences of their inadequate clinical trials. The United States government
has had to pay out nearly a billion dollars in damages to families who can
prove their children have been damaged or killed by vaccines, and there are thousands more cases pending.
We believe, as medical professionals, that we are doing a great disservice to
our country by forcing government mandated vaccines on all children. Please research this and we pray you have
the courage to speak out and tell the nation what you find.
(The views expressed are my personal beliefs and observations and do not
necessarily reflect those of the school district.)
Patti White, RN
========================================================
Breaking News Archives - each day's breaking news from December 1, 2003 (check here for breaking news you might have missed and breaking news that didn't ever hit the "front page")
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Hot Topics - selected stories, by category
Return to Vaccination News Home Page (for best results, right click to "open in new window")
DISCLAIMER: All information, data, and material contained, presented, or provided here is for general information purposes only and is not to be construed as reflecting the knowledge or opinions of the publisher, and is not to be construed or intended as providing medical or legal advice. The decision whether or not to vaccinate is an important and complex issue and should be made by you, and you alone, in consultation with your health care provider.