The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) immunization schedule was updated in January, 2013 to recommend that a dose of Tdap vaccine be administered to all pregnant women during each pregnancy whether or not they have received the vaccine previously. This is a new recommendation.
What is the reason for this change? The CDC changed its recommendations due to the pertussis (whooping cough) epidemic that affected more than 41,000 people in the U.S. last year. Whooping cough occurs as a result of an infection from the bacterium Bordatella pertussis. Signs of pertussis include paroxysmal cough, inspiratory whoop, and vomiting after coughing. It is fatal in 1.6% of hospitalized infants less than one year of age. In the U.S., approximately 5-30 children die per year due to pertussis. Pertussis is rarely fatal for older children and adults. Pertussis can be treated with antibiotics. However, in most cases it is a self-limited illness lasting a few weeks to six months.
Pertussis is a serious illness in an infant. We definitely want to minimize pertussis infections in very young children. However, is giving the Tdap immunizaition during every pregnancy the right thing to do?
The Tdap vaccine is a combination vaccine that is supposed to protect against tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis. Does the Tdap vaccine protect against pertussis? The answer is probably yes. What do I mean by probably? There have not been definitive studies on the efficacy and safety of this vaccine. There is no question that the incidence of pertussis has declined over the last 70 years. However, the CDC’s data shows that the pertussis illness was declining well before the onset of the vaccine.(1)
But, what is in the vaccine? The Tdap vaccine contains aluminum phosphate, formaldehyde, polysorbate 80 and may contain traces of thimerosal. Polysorbate 80 (also known as Tween 80) has been shown to cause infertility in animals. (2) Parenteral injection of aluminum has been shown to cause neurotoxicity.(3) Thimerosal contains 50% mercury by weight. Mercury is a known neurotoxin and carcinogen. Formaldehyde is a human carcinogen and highly toxic to all animals. If you add in all the recommended childhood vaccines, the total amount of polysorbate 80, mercury, formaldehyde, and aluminum can reach toxic levels. I will write more about that in a future blog.
We have an autism epidemic occurring as 1 in 88 children are now suffering with autism. Could this epidemic be fueled by too many vaccines? Unfortunately, nobody knows. Unbelievably, there have been no studies done to ascertain the safety of vaccines.
I have seen more than enough patients who report having a normal developing child until a vaccine was introduced. Then, after vaccination, normal development stopped and the child began regressing. Clearly, something happened to those children. Could it be too many vaccines? All vaccines cause inflammation of the brain. It would make sense that injecting too many toxic substances into a small body may lead to neurological problems.
Is it safe to infect Tdap in a pregnant female? Nobody knows. Again, no studies have been done to ensure that the vaccine is safe. Another important news item: There is a new strain of pertussis that may be causing the majority of the new cases of whooping cough. The present vaccine (Tdap) may not adequately cover this strain. Why? The appropriate studies have not been done. Big Pharma’s plan is to increase the frequency of the Tdap vaccine (which increases their profits) and hope for the best.
So, what do I recommend? I recommend that you do your own research. Study any drug before you allow it in your body. This advice is even more important for pregnant women since the fetus is very sensitive to whatever the mother is exposed to. When there are no studies that prove it is safe to do so, I find it difficult to justify injecting a pregnant woman with toxic chemicals.
Thanks to Dr. Kathy Erlich for editing and suggesting a blog on this topic.
(1)CDC, National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System and Supplemental Pertussis Surveillance System and 1922-1949, passive reports to the Public Health Service
(2)http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8473002?dopt=Abstract
I watched a PBS program about families with autistic children who stated their children were not damaged by the vaccine….but it was coincidental that autism developed after vaccines.
They believe through their research that vaccines only triggered early what would develop sooner or later from some other trigger.
These children carry a gene that predisposes them to autism and vaccines are not the culprit.
For all we or anyone probably knows, contracting the disease (no vaccine) could do the exact same thing to these children, more severe consequences or would cause their death.
People used to put into institutions all ages of children starting in infancy or later whenever NOT normal was not accepted to be kept at home. We simply don’t do that anymore, so the reality of NOT normal functioning and not normal appearance children is all around.
We have access to in-home care training and assistance as well as being trained and allowed to do what medical facilities only used to do to care for special needs people.
It would not surprise me to learn that some of these newborns were allowed to die natural deaths or had their lives quickly snuffed out because WE as a society did not have the where with all or desire to devote so much care to such people. Not everyone accepted the burden of this kind of care to be a blessing or teaching moment that lasts their lifetime or that child’s lifetime. And some families may have more than one or several special needs children.
The other animals on the planet do not have only disease free offspring. They do not/cannot devote time to special needs infants. These infants keep up with the mother/group or die.
As a unique animal on this planet, we have the option to keep those infants/or injured among us well cared for, whether or not they will ever contribute to society as an independent functioning person.
The last two years or three ( winters) I’ve come down with what seemed like a cold and was on the mend to only develop a cough that didn’t go away and was quite strangling. The second time enough to break a blood vessel in my eye to blind me momentarily in one eye and send me to the emergency room after midnight. That morning to an opthamologist. And then follow up tests to see if I’d suffered a stroke and then a later appointment for ultrasound to check all my heart valves and arteries in my chest and neck.
After DIL stated we get a Tdap booster or risk not being around the new baby girl to be born in December I read the symptoms of Pertussis and can surmise I likely had it at least once every year. It takes weeks to recover with coughing and spitting up guck all that time.
Yes, we will be getting our booster. To protect ourselves and our new grandbaby and older grandchildren should their vaccine wain. And be part of the herd shared immunity.
I’ve wished vaccines weren’t necessary and have said as much many times, but having experienced this amount of exhaustion, a baby would not survive it. If the pertussis we are now experiencing is a new strain, then we will do the best we can for now until we know better.
Dr. B,
Well, I was with you until I read your take on vaccines. This is the kind of fear-mongering that has caused pertussis to reach epidemic levels in recent years in my home state of Washington. While I agree that vaccines are dubious in nature, there is no PROOF that any of the claims of potential risk are legitimate. On the other hand, there is a 14, 000 foot tall mountain of proof that vaccines save lives. It’s a clear case of the benefit outweighing the cost. While I do agree that more research needs to be done, the simple application of logic can easily explain why vaccines are so important. I’m often appalled at how seemingly difficult it is for people to understand that, in avoiding unproven risks by not vaccinating their children, they are putting those same children at PROVEN risk for PROVEN death. Pertussis can and has killed very young children. So has tetanus, mumps, measles…the list goes on and on. These are deadly diseases, and you’re hinting that people shouldn’t vaccinate their own children against them? Dr. B, I’m a nurse, and I appreciate your holistic and evidence-based take on treating patients- I wish more doctors were like you. But on the subject of vaccines, I’m afraid you lean a little too far away from mainstream medicine. People who read your blog will take your words to heart, and if those words can lead to the death of a child, those words should be chosen much more carefully.
Dear Dr.,
I believe the reason pregnant women are encouraged to be vaccinated against whooping cough is that it would offer immunity for the infant from the first few weeks of birth. A time when they are most vulnerable to dying if infected with the disease.
Also another point is that vaccines provide immunity based on “the herd” also being vaccinated. When parents do not vaccinate their own children they put everyone else’s at risk to catch the disease, although it may be a mild case. Vaccines are not a guarantee to wipe out a disease unless at certain percentage of the population is vaccinated (in the 90%). Whooping cough has been making a comeback because many parents do not vaccinate. Whooping cough may have also mutated to a stronger stain because of this.
Thimeresol is no longer in vaccines (since about 2008)
Ask any person over age 70 how many children they went to school who died from a disease that we currently never see anymore. Polio, measles, whooping cough, tetanus…all cause death. WWII was the first war that more American’s died on the battlefield than from disease due to widespread immunization. Sure, improvements and understanding of how disease is spread has also provided help. For instance, mosquito control (another controversial treatment) and sanitation eliminated yellow fever and several other diseases in the US. However, you can’t count on either of these if you travel outside the US.
However, the infants and very young children are on a taxing vaccine schedule. Perhaps vaccinating the very young with so many vaccines is not necessary or even too risky. I would like to see more information on the effects of vaccines for newborns through age 2. Of course, with so many infants put into daycare, one has to include this in the study.
I agree with J.B. One resource might be Neil Z. Miller’s “Vaccine Safety Manual for Concerned Parents and Health Practitioners.” The world has been brainwashed with the vaccine gospel. Vaccines save lives, we are told. Most people believe it. But there must be limits to how many vaccines a tiny child can endure before there are adverse consequences to that child’s undeveloped neurological, immune, and other interrelated systems. Some children are more at risk than others to vaccine injury. My kids only got a few shots 30 years ago, compared to what they are giving babies now. Vaccines are not perfectly safe. Parents need to be informed of the risks–which they usually are not–so they can make informed choice whether to consent to vaccination of their children or not. And children who are injured, as some inevitably are, should be fairly and adequately compensated, as they usually are not under our present system. If the vaccine industry and our government health agencies want the public to trust vaccines, they need to tell us the truth. But lies have been told and the truth withheld because our governments have feared that if people knew the truth, they would not vaccinate, and public health would suffer. People have a right to know the truth. Our government promotes vaccines. By so doing, it has compromised its ability to protect our nation’s children too young to consent., Read David Kirby’s “Evidence of Harm.”
Doctor, Please be clear with people. Do you think that you, who know so much more than the rest of us about the poisonous chemicals within vaccines, AND have first hand knowledge of the results of administering vaccs to your patients, can in good conscience NOT tell people to stay the heck away from vaccines? Be the leader of people who depend on You to give them the whole truth And come up with the obvious conclusion to the info and first hand observations you possess. You recommend people do their own research and come up with a decision whether or not to give their kids or themselves poison. YOU ARE the further research people are doing. So, please for your own peace of mind, and for the lives of many others, just say it: Do NOT under any circumstances take any vaccinces. Now, wasn’t that better? You are the leader people are looking to. Pray and God will help you with the work ahead of you. If you take a strong stand for what is right, trust in Him to take care of you. Thank you, God Bless you and your work. Jesus I trust in You.
I am a nursing student and have already completed a maternity/newborn rotation. The nurse goes into every room offering a tdap and flu shot, plus they offer the one day old child a hep B shot. I was flabbergasted! Hep B for a one day old? I think that’s a bit much! New nerves that haven’t yet been allowed to mylenate and they want to administer these shots to babies? I feel like no one in the gov or media is really looking into what these shots can do to young children. 1 out of 88 children developing autism is way too high! I know that when I decide to have a child I am going to follow my own shot schedule for them and skip some all together…
Besides the incredible increase of autism cases, there also have been increases in allergies (seasonal and food), ADHD and other behavioral issues, diabetes, and asthma in children which coincide with the intense increases in vaccines. It is extreme negligence that these issues have not been studied. I have a one-year-old with multiple food allergies, including a likely deadly allergy to peanuts, and no family history to justify it. When I was a child (30 years ago), I knew no one with allergies – food or otherwise. Every parent I know well or even by acquaintance has at least once child but usually multiple children with allergies. It is despicable that this vaccine is recommended during pregnancy. Any vaccines during pregnancy, when women are advised to limit any kind of drug. The dTap vaccine is wretched.
I am a labor & delivery nurse in the Kansas City area. We’ve been offering the trap vaccine for the last couple years, but our patients are receiving it after delivery. Does that change your opinion at all as to whether it would be more beneficial than risky? I personally had a baby last April & looked into getting pertussis only vaccine because I am allergic to tetanus. It is unavailable. I agree that we over vaccinate & it really shows since no one makes them individually. Thanks for this information.
Thank you for addressing this topic. Would you also consider discussing the pros and cons of the shingles vaccine for varied age groups including those over 70…Thank you
Kathleen,
I blogged about this topic in the past. Here is the link: https://www.drbrownstein.com/shingles-vaccine-think-again/
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