A Name Can Be Misleading

Harold Buttram, MD

A name can lend credibility to an organization, when it really shouldn’t. The International Medical Council on Vaccination posted an article earlier this year written in 2011 by Harold Buttram, MD and Catherine Frompovich stating that vaccines are turning children’s immune systems inside out. Citing the research of Russell Blaylock, the article claims that repeated stimulation of the brain’s immune system results in intense reactions. All of this is completely false.

The International Medical Council on Vaccination sounds like a legitimate organization, but looking through the history of their site, Vaccine Watch found they aren’t. They have a history of not publishing debates and articles that don’t support their views. Many of the professionals on the International Medical Council on Vaccination site, chiropractors, homeopaths, and doctors, are anti-vaccine activists.

Buttram has been advocating against vaccines for years. Earlier in his career, he blamed Shaken Baby Syndrome on vaccines. The first three sources of the article are all from Russell Blaylock, MD, who claims on his personal website that alphabet organizations like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) can’t be trusted.

The article details cellular and humoral immunity. Buttram contends that vaccination establishes the humoral system as dominant, which he claims is the reverse of the natural immunologic scheme that humans evolved with. He further claims that immune systems may be going through progressive atrophy from disuse without the challenges of “minor childhood diseases.” 

Buttram goes on to state, “As a matter of opinion, vaccinations for chickenpox and mumps were totally uncalled for, as they were almost always benign illnesses that likely were serving a useful and positive role in priming and strengthening cellular immunity and response mechanisms.” Buttram never had to deal with the painful and uncomfortable situation children with mumps or chicken pox face.

He then states that death from diseases like measles and whooping cough declined before the vaccines were introduced and that improvements in sanitation and the introduction of antibiotics were more important than vaccines. Again, this is a false statement.

The CDC addresses many of the misconceptions Buttram brings up on their website. For instance, looking at a graph on the rate of measles in the United States from 1950-2001 you see peaks and valleys and the disease rate holding steady in the range of 500,000 cases per year.  When the vaccine was introduced the rate dropped down to near 0 and has remained there.

Every day, the immune systems of babies and children successfully fight off millions of antigens.  Vaccines have antigens from a weakened or killed germ in a fraction of the number that the normal child encounters every day. Vaccination saves lives and prevents serious disease outbreaks. Distorting facts and spreading misinformation like the article in International Medical Council on Vaccination is irresponsible.  Parents with questions about vaccination should speak with their child’s physician.

Get Vaccinated: It's the Law

A growing number of parents in Oregon aren’t vaccinating their children against deadly diseases because they believe vaccines can have irreversible adverse health effects. Oregon leads the national exemption list, with 5.8 percent of kindergartners (or more than 2,600 children) being exempt from vaccines last year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

However, the Oregon Court of Appeals ruled in April that eight young children who were taken into state custody last year could be vaccinated. Their parents have claimed that religious beliefs exempt the children from vaccination. The Oregon Department of Human Services (DHS) has argued and carried the point that because the state has custody of the children, the state can also make medical decisions for the children.

DHS had checked with a doctor to make sure the children didn’t have allergies or other medical conditions. The doctor recommended immunizations, and DHS turned to a judge for permission when the parents refused. The Oregon appeals court noted that North Carolina and Georgia courts have also denied parents without custody of their kids a say in immunizations. Conversely, Arizona ruled in favor of a mother who didn’t want her child vaccinated.

Oregon continues to represent ground zero in the childhood vaccine debate with the state Senate voting in May on a bill that would require parents to be educated about vaccines before they can exempt their children from them. The number of unvaccinated kindergarteners increased to 6.4% this year and officials fear a public safety disaster similar to the recent measles outbreak in Wales.

The bill stipulates that parents enrolling unvaccinated children in school would have to prove they consulted a physician for information, or show a certificate verifying they watched an online educational video about the risks and benefits of immunization. In 2011, Washington passed similar legislation. Although Oregon has debated both sides of this bill, it was passed by the Oregon Senate on Thursday, June 6th and is now in the Oregon House.

“The more people you have that are unvaccinated, the more likely you are to have those diseases spread,” Dr. Jay Rosenbloom, a spokesman for Oregonians for Healthy Children stated. “The percentage of Oregon parents signing personal-beliefs vaccine exemptions has been rising steadily since 2001, but declining a vaccination doesn’t just affect the individual.”

The vaccine debate will continue, both with parents of young children and in other areas. Vaccine Watch urges those concerned about vaccines to speak with a doctor about the risks and benefits before making a decision.

Vaccine Confidence Project

Dr. Heidi Larson

The internet and its rapid spread of information can magnify and expand a vaccine scare in a short amount of time. Now, the internet can also combat misinformation. Dr. Heidi Larson of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a team of colleagues adapted the HealthMap automated data collection system to track rumors and online sentiments about vaccines on the internet. HealthMap was originally developed to track disease outbreaks.

“The internet has sped up the global spread of unchecked rumors and misinformation about vaccines and can seriously undermine public confidence, leading to low rates of vaccine uptake and even disease outbreaks,” Dr. Larson said.

The surveillance system covers 144 countries and looks at online articles, blogs and reports about vaccines and vaccine-preventable diseases. By identifying the first signs of the negative reports, Dr. Larson and her colleagues hope to take preventative action on anti-vaccine sentiment before it becomes a larger problem like the recent measles outbreak in Wales or the polio outbreak in Nigeria that re-introduced polio to 20 countries that had been free of the disease.

The original data collection for the Vaccine Confidence Project took place from May 1, 2011 to April 30, 2012 and identified 10,380 online mentions of human vaccines. 3,209 of these reports, or 31%, were negative and included fears about adverse events and vaccine distrust. The negative reports focused on vaccination programs, disease outbreaks, attitudes about vaccine believes, awareness and perception and vaccine safety.

“Bad news stories damage vaccination programs as much as biological hazards, and these stories evolve over minutes or hours, needing immediate action,” said University of Toronto public health specialists Natasha Crowcroft and Kwame McKenzie. “By the time a detailed specific analysis of vaccine safety issue is completed, the story is no longer newsworthy.”

Ideally, the Vaccine Confidence Project will identify early signs of vaccine misinformation in real time and enable public health officials to act immediately to dispel unfounded fears. “Public health systems need to move beyond passive responses to vaccine safety events towards active preparedness,” Crowcroft and McKenzie continue. “It is important for researchers to discover how to make communities resilient to bad science and interest-driven scare stories.”

By continuing to build public belief and trust in vaccines, health officials can avoid unfortunate situations like the recent measles outbreak and Nigeria’s polio epidemic. HealthMap and other tools available will be beneficial in containing vaccine fear tactics and enhancing education systems.