By Dr. Tim O'Shea

Part 1 of 2

They finally did it. After years of lobbying and angling, GlaxoSmithKline finally got their new vaccine for Hepatitis A tacked onto the mandated schedule as of Jan 2002, with no public fanfare. (www.aap.org)

The vaccine is called Havrix, and is delineated on p.1544 of the 2002 Physicians Desk Reference, which incidentally was printed much earlier last year. Merck also has a hepatitis A vaccine - Vaqta.

The CDC's mandated schedule is the brass ring that all vaccine manufacturers are going for - approval of a vaccine can mean annual revenues of $1 billion or more, which is about what Merck pulls in for their current Hepatitis B vaccine.

Hepatitis A vaccine appears in a brand new category on the mandated schedule called the 'high risk' category. The significance of this new category will soon become apparent. But before we get into that, let's take a look at Hepatitis A the disease and assess the necessity for a mandated vaccine.

What Is Hepatitis A?

As every doctor knows, Hepatitis A is an acute viral disease of the liver. Hepatitis A virus (HAV) has supposedly been isolated:

"a 27-nm RNA picornavirus (enterovirus) with only one serotype..."
- American Academy of Pediatrics, Dec 1996

The infectious agent is passed from human to human either through

• the oral - fecal route, waterborne, often from raw shellfish or dirty water
  
• blood and body secretions

Hepatitis A is a mild, self limiting disease, resolving on its own with no treatment in 4-8 weeks. Most infections are subclinical, meaning that most people who get the disease never even know it because they never manifest symptoms. (Merck Manual, p 377) The journal Pediatrics agrees:

"Most HAV infections in young children are asymptomatic... Clinical hepatitis occurs in fewer than 10% of infected children."

This disease is so mild that 90%of kids who get hepatitis A never even know it. Even the National Institutes of Health states that:

"Most people who have Hepatitis A get well on their own after a few weeks." - NIH Manual: What I Need To Know About Hepatitis A

Most cases of hepatitis A are found in Third World areas, outside the US. The question pops up: then why are we the only country in the world who recommends the vaccine on a mass scale?

That billion dollars hanging in the balance wouldn't be in the equation, now would it?

Diagnosis of hepatitis A is supposedly by IgM antibody. But more often, diagnosis is by symptoms alone.

Symptoms Of Hepatitis A

According to Merck Manual, the chief symptoms of hepatitis A are

• loss of appetite
  
• NVD
  
• hives
  
• joint pain
  
• dark urine

Hardly life-threatening situations. Jaundice may also occur, but it usually indicates the beginning of recovery. By the time these symptoms appear, the disease is no longer infectious.

Unlike hepatitis B, Type A hepatitis disappears completely after acute infection, and does not contribute to chronic liver disease or to cirrhosis. It is important to note that after the patient recovers, he has lifetime immunity. True immunity.

Hepatitis A is a disease of poor personal hygiene, bad sanitation, poverty, overcrowding - Third World scenario. Even well-groomed, well-fed junkies are not high risk for Hepatitis A. They're more apt to get Type B. Medline indicates the lack of sewers in Third World locales as the biggest contributor to Hepatitis A. Again from the journal Pediatrics we find that:

"The major method for prevention of HAV infections is improved sanitation and personal hygiene"

Bottom line here: Hepatitis A is not common in most of the United States.

Other Causes

It's shocking to discover that hepatitis can be caused by both hepatitis B and hepatitis C vaccines!

This fact is found in a disclaimer that GlaxoSmithKlein makes about Havrix, that it can't cure the hepatitis caused by these other 2 vaccines. So can we infer from this that Havrix itself also causes hepatitis? We don't need to infer it.

The manufacturer states it on p 1545 of the 2002 PDR: a possible side effect of Havrix is hepatitis!

Another source of hepatitis A for children is nososcomial infection. That means infants in hospital intensive care units pick it up there. We never hear about it because the new literature is leaving it out. (AAP Policy Statement, 1996)

So Then What's The Vaccine For?

The question arises - did we really need another vaccine beyond the 40 already mandated for school kids, and specifically did we need a vaccine for a rare disease that resolves by itself in a few weeks?

To answer the first, we must ask were there any studies done which prove that the new vaccine is safe when Havrix is added to the other 40 mandated vaccines?

No, there are none.

This concept of the cumulative viral load is discussed at length in the 2002 edition of The Sanctity of Human Blood.

Secondly, to substantiate the necessity for any vaccine, we must look at two criteria:

• incidence of disease
  
• severity

How Many Cases Really Are There?

This is tricky - research roulette. In the 2002 Physicians Desk Reference, the manufacturer of Havrix cites 13-year old studies which supposedly show the incidence of hepatitis A and state that the case death rate is six-tenths of one per cent. (p 1545)

This is claiming that about six out of a thousand who get hepatitis A die from hepatitis A. It seems like a rather high death rate until one realizes that these are not US figures, but global figures, meaning that they were taken primarily from Third World countries because that's where the majority of hepatitis A is found!

So that means that these patients are trying to recover from a disease of poverty, filth, and malnutrition in an environment of poverty, filth, and malnutrition. Hardly applies in the rare instance of a patient in most of America. But these are the studies and figures that the vaccine manufacturer has used to convince the FDA that Hepatitis A is such a serious disease in the US that a vaccine is necessary.

Numbers, numbers, numbers. Different sources, different stats. From the American Academy of Pediatricians website we see only half the death rate reported by the PDR:

"Mortality is rare, especially in children. The case-fatality rate has been estimated as 3 per 1000 clinical cases in the United States.." - http://www.aap.org/policy/01207.html

Looking at the true incidence of the Hepatitis A in the US is an academic artifice, a daunting challenge indeed. A standard government reference for epidemiology is Statistical Abstracts. On p 137 of the most recent edition (2000), we find that the overall incidence of Hepatitis A has been declining for the past 2 decades:

• 1980 -- - 29.1 cases per 100,000
  
• 1998 -- - 23.2 cases per 100,000

This decline is good news, and of course has nothing to do with the vaccine. The vaccine just came out. But the figures still seem a little high, don't they? On closer inspection, getting out the magnifying glass and reading the microprint footnote on that same page, we read:

"Includes cases imported from outside the United States"

Huh? 'Cases imported from outside the United States'? We're not talking Pinot Noir here. No one doubts that the vast majority of hepatitis A cases are foreign. It's a disease of poverty, filth, and malnutrition.

Unfortunately in a disease which only manifests symptoms less than 10% of the time, and with the immense amount of immigration and international travel going on, there is simply no way to separate foreign from domestic origin.

To further illustrate the low credibility of government figures for hepatitis A cases, we need only look at a CDC report which claimed more than 10 times higher incidence: 30,000 cases, which is about 300 cases per 100,000. (Hepatitis Surveillance Report No. 55)

That's a little different from 23 cases per 100,000. So which study is right?

Who knows? Results depend on who funded it, who wrote it, and who was responsible for verification.

The truth is no one can really say with authority how many cases of hepatitis A occur in the US annually.

The Real Number Of Deaths

In an earlier part of that same reference - Statistical Abstracts, p 90 - we find that the total number of annual US deaths from all 3 types of viral hepatitis put together (Types A, B, and C) in 1998 was only 4700.

Remember this 4700 also includes complications of autoimmune diseases, terminal infectious diseases, and other serious illnesses, most in communities of poverty and malnutrition, alcoholics, drug addicts - individuals of this nature. This lowest common denominator of life supposedly represents the necessity of a vaccine for all.

Looking at the PDR's global figures above - a mortality of 6 out of 100,000 - we see the usual attempt by the vaccine manufacturers to grab the credit for saving us from an already declining disease.

As we learned from the Michael Alderson figures cited in The Sanctity of Human Blood (p 45), virtually every infectious disease of the past century had almost disappeared by the time vaccines came on the market.

This is the perfect time to make the same claim for Hepatitis A, before it disappears completely on its own. Masterful PR in action, a la The Doors of Perception.

We may be sure that future studies on US hepatitis A incidence will show vast decreases, for which the vaccine will doubtless be given credit. Just remember the virtual impossibility of determining incidence at this time, when the vaccine is being introduced.

Stats game aside, almost all sources agree that children are not the group dying from hepatitis A:

"hepatitis with mortality occurs mostly in people with underlying conditions, such as chronic liver disease, and in older age groups" - http://www.aap.org/policy/01207.html

The Vaccine Itself

This is fun. Hepatitis A vaccine is made from infected human connective tissue cells.

Not kidding.

Not from just one guy, but rather each batch of vaccine is made from an infected mass of cells which had 1000 donors. (Pediatrics) Imagine that party. They are infected with hepatitis A virus, the causative vector presumed to be present in every case of hepatitis A disease.

The agents are filtered, and attenuated with aluminum, formaldehyde, and phenoxyethanol - a synonym for ethylene glycol - a component in antifreeze.

Someday we're gonna pay for this.......

Aluminum And Formaldehyde

Just for the sake of argument, let's make the colossally irresponsible concession that the attenuated viral agent in this vaccine is necessary to stave off the "epidemic" of Hepatitis A about to sweep through our children's bloodstreams.

All right, we'll concede that unlikely situation. So do the science wizards then want to explain the additional presence of one of the most potent of all human neurotoxins and also of a well known carcinogen in this supposed life-saving elixir?

Of course I am now referring to the aluminum and formaldehyde which GlaxoSmithKline thought so vital to the composition of Havrix. (PDR, p 1544)

As Drs. Russell Blaylock and Theo Colburn have well explained, it is not just the connection with Alzheimer's that makes aluminum such a danger to human physiology. It's that aluminum can interfere with the formation, development and survival of virtually any human nerve tissue in an unpredictable fashion, beyond any timetables yet devised. (Excitotoxins, Our Stolen Future) We simply don't know.

As for formaldehyde, let's just ask how much danger of cancer is an acceptable risk in the pure, perfect blood of a newborn? Cancer occurs first in just one cell. So where are the studies that prove that this "trace" of formalin or antifreeze will not be sufficient to cause that first cell mutation that develops into cancer? Where are they?

As long as we're talking about scientific probability here, let's take the discussion one step further. This single causative viral agent that has been identified for hepatitis A is a presumption.

Remember - diagnosis is often by symptoms and by the presence of IgM in the blood. Viral infections are not cultured for diagnosis - it's largely theoretical. So then doesn't the isolation, concentration, and dissemination of an infectious viral agent seem at least a little presumptuous if not enormously reckless, especially when we're talking about the unformed immune systems of the newborn infant population?

That seems like a reasonable question, doesn't it?

Mass Dissemination Of An Unproven Agent

Here's the key point -- is it really necessary to introduce an attenuated infectious vector into our entire population of children in order to theoretically prevent a disease which is extremely rare in the vast majority of US communities, and getting rarer?

And is self-limiting, does not contribute to chronic liver disease, and confers lifetime immunity to the ones who get it? What are we doing?

Even the manufacturer does not claim that the vaccine confers immunity, but only delay of the disease.

Thus the need for boosters.

Get the idea - if the vaccine worked, we wouldn't need boosters after 6 months or a year. Following this shaky logic, if the immunity only lasts a year, the child should get boosters every year for the rest of his life.

Now, the booster shot and the first vaccination shot are identical. So why does the first shot supposedly last for a year but the last one is going to be effective for the rest of the patient's life?? Anybody ever think of that??

The other big issue is that the Hepatitis A virus is supposedly a specific agent that has been photographed, sequenced, and catalogued, and occurs the same in every case of the disease. Classical diagnosis is by symptoms and the presence of the antibody, remember? IgM.

But acute viral liver infections can be of a variety of completely different agents and disease scenarios. To pretend that they can all be cured by the dissemination of one single type of attenuated viral agent is disingenuous at best and scientifically ludicrous, even criminal, at worst. Mass inoculation must be absolutely proven to be necessary, beneficial and free from side effects, or else it shouldn't even be considered. Havrix meets none of these criteria.

The New High Risk Category

The most disconcerting - make that horrifying - aspect of the new Mandated Vaccine Schedule that has just sneaked up on us will prove to be the creation of this new High Risk category, in my opinion.

As we would expect, this ingenious addition was tacked onto the program with no fanfare, no general public attention. Suddenly the most vaccinated children in the history of the world are still not getting sufficient injections, even at 40 vaccines now mandated.

So for further protection, the CDC has now created the new High Risk category that they'll christen with just 2 vaccines: Hepatitis A and influenza. Now folks, these extra shots aren't really part of the mandated schedule, but are intended for the child who needs that extra protection because he is what we doctors call 'high risk.'

Which according to the American Pediatrics Association means any child who seems to have a tendency to get colds, asthma, allergies, the flu, or is generally sick.

What percentage of kids does that include? Like, all of them?

Step right up. It's such a slick set-up. The script will go something like, well, little Johnny and little Suzie just got their regular shots, so they should be fine. By the way, Mrs. Jones, do these children have a tendency to get allergies, colds, or the flu?

Oh, they do?

Well, then the newest recommendations, just to be on the safe side, are that for extra protection for Johnny and Suzie we should add just two more shots today, while they're here. And that's the new Hepatitis A shot and the flu shot. Yes, and then they should be good for a year. Yes, all the other kids are getting the 2 extra shots. You can't be too careful these days, you know.

Who's going to argue with a rap like that? Only the most informed.

Please see our next issue for the continuation of this article.