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"Protecting
the health and informed consent rights of children since 1982."
Contact: Barbara Loe Fisher
703-938-0342
For Immediate Release
July 8, 1999
VACCINE SAFETY GROUP ENDORSES GOVERNMENT ACTION
TO ELIMINATE MERCURY IN CHILDHOOD VACCINES AND ROLL BACK HEPATITIS B VACCINATION
FOR MOST NEWBORN INFANTS
Washington, D.C. - The National Vaccine
Information Center NVIC), the oldest and largest organization in the U.S.
representing vaccine consumers and parents of vaccine injured children, is
calling July 7, 1999's joint statement issued by the U.S. Public Health Service
(USPHS) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) to eliminate the mercury
content in hepatitis B vaccine and other childhood vaccines and to roll back the
universal recommendation that all newborn infantsreceive hepatitis B vaccine at
birth as an important step in improving the safety of childhood vaccines and
vaccine policies.
The cumulative effects of ingesting mercury can
cause brain damage. Thimerosol, a mercury compound, is used as a preservative in
hepatitis B, diphtheria, pertussis and acellular pertussis, tetanus and HIB
vaccines. Most infants have received a total of 15 doses of these mercury
containing vaccines by age six months.
The surprise announcement late yesterday
afternoon came just seven weeks after a May 18 hearing on the safety of
hepatitis B vaccine and vaccine policies in the U.S. House subcommittee on
Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources chaired by Congressman John
Mica (R-FL). At the May 18 hearing, parents of children, who were injured or
died from reactions to the hepatitis B vaccine, as well as scientists critical
of hepatitis B vaccine policies, questioned the scientific evidence used to
license the vaccine for use in all newborn infants born to hepatitis B negative
mothers.
Prior to the hearing, NVIC co-founder and
president Barbara Loe Fisher filed Freedom of Information Act requests with both
the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC)
to obtain scientific data used by the FDA to license the hepatitis B vaccine for
use in all children and by the CDC to recommend that all newborn infants receive
the first dose in the newborn nursery at 12 hours of age.
"Eliminating mercury from childhood vaccines
is an important safety initiative and we hope that further evaluation of the
cumulative toxic effects of other vaccine ingredients, such as aluminum used as
an adjuvant, will also be undertaken in compliance with the FDA Modernization
Act of 1997," said Fisher. "Unfortunately, current CDC policies allow
doctors to give young infants multiple vaccines simultaneously. There is a real
question as to whether current stocks of childhood vaccines containing mercury
should be used and whether vaccination of babies under six months of age with
multiple vaccines containing mercury should be delayed. However, the CDC's
decision, for whatever reason, to roll back the recommendation to vaccinate all
newborn infants born to hepatitis B negative mothers and to delay the
vaccination of premature or underweight infants is the right thing to do and
will result in the deaths and injury of fewer babies." she said.
Michael Belkin, a New York City father and Wall
Street financial advisor, whose newborn daughter, Lyla Rose, died in 1998
following a hepatitis B vaccination, called yesterday's action "a long
overdue first step in reforming the unscientific, conflict-ridden bureaucracy
that established the infant hepatitis B vaccination policy." Belkin, who is
the director of NVIC's Hepatitis B Vaccine Project, told members of the CDC's
Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) at a February 1999 meeting
that "I hold each one of you who participated in the promulgation or
perpetuation of that mandated newborn vaccination policy personally responsible
for my daughter's death and the deaths and injuries of all the other beautiful,
healthy babies who are victims of the hepatitis B vaccine."
At the May 18 congressional hearing, he
criticized the CDC's policy of vaccinating newborn infants born to healthy
mothers who are not infected with hepatitis B. The only newborn infants at risk
for hepatitis B infection are those born to hepatitis B positive mothers. In a
June 1999 hepatitis B study conducted in North Carolina, the hepatitis B
seroprevalence rate in new mothers was found to be only 0.2 percent, 25 times
less than the 5 per cent seroprevalence rate estimate for the US population used
by the Centers for Disease Control to justify universal hepatitis B vaccination.
The National Vaccine Information Center, a
non-profit organization founded in 1982 by parents of vaccine injured children,
worked with Congress to develop the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of
1986 (PL99-660) and played a leading role in obtaining a purified, less toxic
pertussis vaccine for American babies, which was licensed by the FDA in 1996.
The goal of the organization is to prevent vaccine injuries and deaths through
public education. For more information, access www.nvic.org or call
703-938-0342.
The National Vaccine
Information Center is a non-profit educational organization founded by parents
of vaccine-injured children in 1982.
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