Rassmussen – Vaccinations are common requirements for children all over the country in order to attend public school and college. However, half of American adults (52%) say they are concerned about the safety of vaccinations for children, including 27% who are Very Concerned. A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey finds that 44% are not concerned about the safety of vaccines for children. But this includes just 13% whoa re Not At All Concerned. Read article
Daily Mail – Family rights campaigners have called for a change in the law after it was revealed that girls as young as 12 can be given the cervical cancer vaccine without their parents’ consent. Doctors and nurses have been told they are under no legal obligation to seek the permission of the parent or guardian. Read article
Daily Mail – A mother whose son suffered severe brain damage after he was given the controversial MMR vaccine as a baby has been awarded £90,000 compensation. The judgment is the first of its kind to be revealed since concerns were raised about the safety of the triple jab. Robert Fletcher, 18, is unable to talk, stand unaided or feed himself. Read article
Sify – The government Friday denied that Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines were responsible for the reported deaths from Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat. ‘In Andhra Pradesh among 14,091 vaccinated girls, five deaths have been reported whereas in Gujarat two deaths were reported among 10,686 girls,’ Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha. Read article
WeeklyBlitz – Vaccine programmes grind to a halt in India once more, when four children died after they received the measles vaccination in Lucknow. The four children were reported to have fainted soon after they were vaccinated and witnesses reported seeing the children’s eyes roll back as they began to have seizures. The Indian Express stated in their article 4 children die within minutes of vaccination. Read article
Times of India – A day after four children died in Mohanlalganj during an immunization drive, a team from Union ministry of health and family welfare, headed by deputy commissioner, immunisation, Dr Ajay Kheda, inspected the community health centre, even as an FIR was lodged on Sunday against the health team which administered the vaccine to the four children who died. The officials have been booked for culpable homicide. Read article
Helsinki Times – The Finnish National Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) on Tuesday recommended that the use of the Pandemrix vaccine is suspended. The recommendation is a precautionary measure. A possible connection between the swine flu vaccine and narcolepsy is currently being investigated. The THL has stopped the use of Pandemrix until the narcolepsy cases have been studied thoroughly. Read article
Med News – Global vaccine sales “grew by a healthy 16 percent last year, when sales shot up to $22.1 billion, healthcare market research publisher Kalorama Information reported Friday,” according to the Associated Press. Kalorama is also forecasting sales “will rise at a compound annual rate of 9.7 percent during the next five years,” (Johnson, 8/14).
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Sydney Morning Herald – The West Australian government will overhaul the way vaccination information is collected after a review of its suspended free childhood seasonal influenza vaccination program. The WA government launched an inquiry in May into the flu vaccinations that caused adverse reactions in hundreds of children across Australia. Read article
Editorial Note: Over a year after the event the WHO finally releases its list of the committee members who declared the worldwide pandemic that never was, but that greatly enriched the pharmaceutical industry to the tune of billions of dollars. When reading the list of declared interests of the members note the frequent mention of GSK, Novartis, Roche, Baxter and Sanofi Pasteur
To read the WHO press release CLICK HERE
PressTV – FDA officials have approved vaccines against 3 strains of influenza, including the 2009 H1N1 pandemic swine flu virus, for the 2010-2011 flu season, a report says. New guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) urged physicians to vaccinate everyone aged 6 months and older, even the low-risk population aged 19 to 49 years, against seasonal influenza. These flu shots, however, should be changed based on the circulating flu viruses collected from different parts of the world in order to remain effective. Read article
Daily Mail – The £1.2billion spent on tackling the swine flu pandemic that never was may have saved as few as 26 lives at a cost of up to £46million each, an astonishing study has found. The vast sum spent on vaccinations, anti-virals and facemasks prevented such a paltry number of deaths because the virus turned out to be far less deadly than normal flu. The £46milllion cost of saving each life is enough to pay the salary of almost 2,000 nurses. Read article
Daily Telegraph – Doctors should stock alternative vaccines for under fives who are due to have the seasonal flu vaccine this winter, a letter from the head of immunisation at the Department of Health has said. The action is being taken as rate of convulsions caused by high fever among children in Australia given the jab was ten times higher than normal. Read article
AFP — The Netherlands is destroying more than 17 million unused doses of swine flu vaccine that were nearing their expiry date and that it could not resell, the health ministry said Tuesday. “We have started destroying” the vaccines, health ministry spokeswoman Inge Freriksen told AFP. “In the coming months, 17.8 million doses will be destroyed because the expiry date is approaching.” Read article
HealthDay News — Almost half of HIV-negative people who participate in clinical trials for HIV vaccines end up testing positive on routine HIV tests — even though they’re not actually infected, a new study shows. The reason: They underwent what experts call “vaccine-induced seropositivity/reactivity” (VISP), meaning that they possess immune system antibodies to the virus but not the virus itself. That’s an important distinction, since routine HIV screening looks for virus antibodies only. Read article
NY Times – Columbia University has quietly suspended research at a nationally prominent brain-imaging center and reassigned its top managers after federal investigators found that it had routinely injected mental patients with drugs that contained potentially dangerous impurities. The investigations found that the center — regarded by experts as the nation’s leader in the use of positron emission tomography, or PET, for psychiatric research — repeatedly violated Food and Drug Administration regulations over a four-year period. Read article
The Australian – AUSTRALIA’s drug regulator waited until US authorities blew the whistle on CSL vaccine production before launching its own investigation. The Therapeutic Goods Administration yesterday said it discovered discolouration of the nation’s stockpile of swine flu vaccine only after the US Food and Drug Administration alerted it in April. A TGA spokeswoman said the remaining 9.4 million doses of Panvax in the federal government stockpile did not pose a safety risk. Read article
AP — About a quarter of the swine flu vaccine produced for the U.S. public has expired — meaning that a whopping 40 million doses worth about $260 million are being written off as trash. “It’s a lot, by historical standards,” said Jerry Weir, who oversees vaccine research and review for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The outdated vaccine, some of which expired Wednesday, will be incinerated. The amount, as much as four times the usual leftover seasonal flu vaccine, likely sets a record. And that’s not even all of it. Read article
PhysOrg.com – The combination vaccine for measles, mumps, rubella and chickenpox (MMRV) is associated with double the risk of febrile seizures for 1- to 2-year-old children compared with same-day administration of the separate vaccine for MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) and the varicella (V) vaccine for chicken pox, according to a Kaiser Permanente Division of Research study appearing online in the journal Pediatrics. A febrile seizure is a brief, fever-related convulsion but it does not lead to epilepsy or seizure disorders, researchers explained. Read article
The Economic Times – HONG KONG: Around 2.8 million doses of unwanted swine flu vaccine worth $28.2 million are to be thrown away, officials said on Thursday. The vaccines are part of a batch of three million ordered at the height of the pandemic when it was feared the H1N1 virus was a serious threat and could mutate into a more deadly form. Read article
FoxCharlotte – This Friday will mark the one year anniversary of the start of the H1N1 pandemic. But a new joint report from the British Medical Journal and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism questions the pandemic and alleged conflicts of interest between confidential World Health Organization advisors and their reported financial ties to pharmaceutical companies producing the vaccines. Here in Charlotte [North Carolina], people are torn on whether the pandemic was all hype… Read Article
NZ Herald – The HPV vaccination could have the unintended consequence that more women with cervical cancer will not be diagnosed, the Ministry of Health has warned.
The ministry’s national screen unit is concerned that young women believe they are protected from the disease once they are immunised. But the vaccine does not protect against 30 per cent of HPV types that can lead to cervical cancer. Read article
The Australian – DEAD swine flu cells used to make the seasonal flu vaccine could be triggering a nine-fold increase in febrile fits among toddlers, Nobel Prize laureate Peter Doherty said yesterday. The head of Australia’s investigation into the spate of serious side-effects from the suspended pediatric vaccine said one hypothesis was that the killed-off cells were causing a “cytokine storm” — a severe overreaction to the vaccine by healthy children’s immune systems. Read article
Reuters – Rotavirus vaccines made by GlaxoSmithKline Plc and Merck & Co Inc are safe to use despite being contaminated with a pig virus, U.S. health regulators ruled on Friday. The agency said there was no evidence the contamination caused any harm and the vaccines were important in preventing hospitalizations and death. Rotavirus can cause fatal diarrhea. Both vaccines target the virus, but pieces of DNA from porcine circovirus (PCV) have been found in both companies’ products. Read Article
The Sunday Telegraph – PARENTS are enrolling children as young as nine months in drug trials in exchange for hundreds of dollars. The cash payments, which could breach national ethical guidelines, will ignite debate over how much should be paid to cover “reasonable expenses” of trial participants. An industry whistleblower alerted The Sunday Telegraph after some parents were netting $900 by enrolling three children at a time into an H1N1 flu vaccine trial. Read article
