(Federal Register of January 2, 2009) by the National Vaccine Program Office
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Public Comment in Response to a Request for Information (Federal Register of January 2, 2009) by the National Vaccine Program Office Includes comments received by February 2 2009, 5:00pm EST Comments are organized by organization/individual and then chronologically in order of receipt. Although our notice soliciting comments provided that all information would be made public, we have chosen to remove individual commenters’ and their children’s names and contact information from comments. We are doing this because potentially sensitive individual medical information was included and some commenters may have been unaware of the potential for disclosure (despite the fact that this was explicitly stated in the Request for Information). If the NVAC Vaccine Safety Working Group wishes to contact any of the commenters, Kirsten Vannice will contact the individual for permission. ORGANIZATION COMMENT #1: Age of Autism Good morning. I am writing as the mother of three GIRLS with autism, ages 14, 12 and 8. My children have documented mitochondrial dysfunction – per tens of thousands of dollars in testing through The Cleveland Clinic with Dr. Marvin Natowicz and Dr. Bruce Cohen. This dysfunction is subtle – in fact, were it not in three kids with severe developmental delays, Dr. N. says he’d never even have taken note of it. Mia, Gianna and Isabella will require full time care throughout their lives. Their father and I will never be able to retire – not will we be able to care for them financially. Autism is a horrible handicap. It is not a gift. It is not special. It is life threatening. We need to determine the role of vaccines in autism. Independently. Outside of CDC. It makes no sense to ask the fox to purchase the locks on the henhouse. I implore you – before our country goes broke caring for the tens of thousands of children with autism – we MUST find out if we are CREATING their autism, in addition to searching for a cure. I thank you. Yours in health, Kim Stagliano Mom to Mia, Gianna and Bella. Kim Stagliano Managing Editor: Age of Autism dot com kimstagliano dot blogspot dot com huffingtonpost dot com/kim-stagliano (There, that should fool my spamblocker!) 2 ORGANIZATION COMMENT #2: Bedrok Community Hi....thank you for letting our voices be heard. I'm sure you will see similar stories over and over: I promise you these are not coincidental. My first child received a DTaP and an MMR shot at 15 months. He had been sick often that winter so the doctor told me it was important to get him up to date. Within a week of the vaccine he quit talking and socializing; the months to come other odd behaviours started to emerge. I expressed to our pediatrician at about 18 months that my son had met all his milestones according to his chart that I had always seen in his office but at 18 months he had not. He brushed me off and asked me if everything was fine with my marriage. A few months later I asked for speech therapy and he would not order the service until 24 months. Later when we did start speech therapy and baby evaluations and myself starting to search for information outside my pediatrician I figured out he was autistic. It was almost a year's wait for a developmental pediatrician appointment. I tried to disbelieve that the vaccines were the cause. I think I wanted to always trust my doctors and do everything they said. I became pregnant with a second child so I was under a big responsibility to do some of my own research. I could not burdon myself or society with another autistic child. What I found is that I took a chiild with a compromised immune system and loaded him up on too many live virus, mercury, and other toxins at once. My child was sick a lot with ear infections, colds, and an asthmatic type condition. After doing my own research I found that the studies that my pediatrician so preciously held sacred were tainted by money greedy people had been slanted to be favorable for them. A good analogy to compare these studies is to say that because your risk of cancer does not increase if you smoke one pack of cigarettes a day vs. two packs that it does not cause cancer. A simple population based study is what I think is proper but the door is shut everytime this is brought up. Why can't we just vaccinate for the important things? Go back to the 1984 schedule when autism was just 1 in 10,000; not 1 in 165 as it is today. How is okay for the CDC to lie to us about how many people die of the flu every year. They actually bind two lies together. It was probably five or six years ago; I checked their facts. The news said that the CDC reported 64,000 deaths from the flu the previous year. I looked it up and it was 1,600. I also looked further and found that always the person had some other life threatening illness and the flu laid them to rest. I joke that they meant to say that 64,000 men felt like they were going to die when they got the flu. Has any doctor ever told a new parent that their is a chance that their child will never leave the hospital because they might die from the Hep B shot? I doubt it. Why can't it be suggested that the mother be checked Hep B and if she comes up clear then hold off vaccinating until they have other care takers. The baby does not even have an immune system. I really think this borders on criminal. The vaccine has never been tested on anything younger than 5 years of age. Why is this okay? Please, I beg, do not shut the door on research. You have an opportunity to do the right thing and stop this horrible epidemic of autism. Be a hero and don't be seen as the coward in years to come. I tell you this with a heavy heart. This administration has a lot of cleaning up to do and it's not just with the vaccines. I keep you all in my prayers. 3 Sincerely, Diane Farr founder Bedrok Community hope, support, and education 4 ORGANIZATION COMMENT #3: Georgetown Medical Center Alumni Association Hongkong Branch Ltd., Commentary Submission in Response to The National Vaccine Program Office (NVPO)’s soliciting for public comment on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Immunization Safety Office (ISO) draft Scientific Agenda Recommendations ; April, 2008 : Summary: Different emphasis from European states was put on vaccine preventable disease program including vaccine practice safety and vaccine policy objectives which are outlined with illustrations in the discussion of their practice of measles control and elimination vaccination programs in nations like Denmark, Italy, Netherlands, Poland and EU as a region. WHO EU Region has delivered a strategic plan for member states to follow which include: -achieve and sustain very high coverage with two doses of measles vaccine -strength surveillance systems, and -improve availability of information on immunization In Italy, the emphasis was out into increasing coverage. In the Netherlands, focus was put onto increasing predictability on various level of susceptibility via surveys on measles antibodies usage. While vaccination schedules were adjusted to match with the incidences during epidemic year. In Poland, risk factors such as failure to identifying symptoms of measles, according to WHO guidelines remained a concern in vaccine data analysis. Overall, EU regional vaccination policy in the measles disease prevention and elimination put practice focuses on: increase in coverage; set up supplementary immunization activity program for higher risk population groups; elimination of congenital rubella via ensuring protection of women of child-bearing age and improving valid information for both health professionals and the public on immunization risks. Future EU vaccination measures on measles elimination and prevention include national plans to be developed emphasizing contact tracing of cases, laboratory diagnostic procedures and active and timely interventions for Denmark; a campaign to catch-up for children of primary school for Italy, confirmation of vaccination program as the most effective means of preventing measles disease and its complications for the Netherlands; more surveillance on both confirmed and suspected measles cases for Poland plus strengthening of overall routine immunization services and protection of susceptible individuals for the disease for all states in the EU region. In the end, the level and degree of vaccination safety , effectiveness and nature of policy depends on the state or federal nation’s economic, social, health and governance diversity as well as the kind of health system adopted as exposed in the following parallel illustrating discussion between US and EU regions. (US Reference Source:Section 3: 5-Yr. Research Needs Subsection B- Vaccines and Vaccination Practices Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention’s Immunisation Safety Office Scientific Agenda Recommendation (Draft) for National Vaccine Advisory CommitteeWorking Group, April, 2008; p. 32-33) Introduction: World Health Organisation has released strategic plan for European region with the objective to interrupt the indigenous transmission of vaccine preventable disease 5 (of measles) by the year 2011. EUVAC.NET was therefore created in 2000 following Decision of the European Parliament and Council that set up a community network for the epidemiological surveillance and control of communicable diseases. In practice, in WHO European Center, in Denmark, measles data are received monthly by email from each of the central surveillance institution (including those from participating countries). The case definition used follows the WHO recommendations and a data set of 23 variables is entered into a database for epidemiological investigation.