By Children’s Health Defense Team<\/p>\n
In January 2018, media outlets reported the embarrassing news that children born in the United States are\u00a076% more likely to die before their first birthday<\/a>\u00a0than infants born in 19 other wealthy countries. This clear-cut finding emerged from a cross-national study\u00a0published<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0Health Affairs<\/em>\u00a0by medical researchers at Johns Hopkins and two other leading U.S. teaching hospitals. Even though the U.S. spends more on children\u2019s health care per capita than the other nations, the authors\u2019 unadorned\u00a0conclusion<\/a>\u00a0was that the U.S. is \u201cthe most dangerous of wealthy nations for a child to be born into.\u201d<\/p>\n One of the\u00a0top five causes<\/a>\u00a0of infant deaths in the U.S. is sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), which,\u00a0by definition<\/a>, is an unexpected and unexplainable death that occurs in a \u201cseemingly normal, healthy infant under one year of age.\u201d The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) views SIDS (along with \u201caccidental suffocation in a sleeping environment\u201d and \u201cother deaths from unknown causes\u201d) as manifestations of the broader phenomenon of\u00a0sudden unexpected infant death<\/a>\u00a0(SUID). CDC attributes three-fourths (75%) of the 3,700 annual SUID deaths (a conservative estimate) to SIDS and \u201cunknown causes.\u201d<\/p>\n The pronounced bifurcation that characterizes infant mortality in the U.S. versus the other 19 countries began in the 1980s. It would make sense to ask whether something happened at that time that could explain why American children began having a tougher time making it past their first birthday than children in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Western Europe, Iceland or Japan, yet the\u00a0Health Affairs<\/em>\u00a0authors propose only that differences in income, education and the social safety net are to blame.<\/p>\n There is no reason to believe that those factors dramatically worsened in the 1980s. However, there is another \u201celephant in the room\u201d explanation that the\u00a0Health Affairs<\/em>\u00a0authors studiously ignore: in the 1980s, there was a major\u00a0uptick in vaccination<\/a>, including a strong push to enact and enforce vaccine mandates in schools and, toward the close of the decade, a significant jump in the total number of vaccines required.<\/p>\n Without even counting the vaccines now routinely administered\u00a0prenatally<\/a>, American infants receive\u00a0more vaccines in their first year<\/a>\u00a0than infants anywhere in the world and far more than in the 1980s. Many of those vaccines are administered in bundles at well-baby visits around two and four months\u2014exactly when\u00a0nine out of ten<\/a>\u00a0SIDS deaths occur.<\/p>\n In 2017, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims\u00a0ruled<\/a>\u00a0that there was \u201cpreponderant evidence\u201d supporting a claim that vaccines \u201ccaused or substantially contributed\u201d to a 2011 SIDS death. The court, which has a notoriously high burden of proof, also ruled that the death could not be attributed to non-vaccine-related factors.<\/p>\n A variety of epidemiologic and neuropathologic studies provide scientific context for the Court\u2019s landmark SIDS determination. For example, a VAERS study by independent investigators scrutinized\u00a01,881 reported infant deaths<\/a>\u00a0following receipt of one to eight vaccines and found that the deaths represented\u00a0almost 5% of all adverse events reported for infants from 1990 through 2010. The authors then considered the childhood vaccine schedule over the 20-year period and determined that there was \u201ca positive correlation between the number of vaccine doses administered and the percentage of\u2026deaths\u201d as well as hospitalizations. When the same authors also conducted a cross-national study to compare vaccine schedules and infant mortality rates across\u00a034 countries<\/a>, they reported \u201ca high statistically significant correlation between increasing number of vaccine doses and increasing infant mortality rates.\u201d<\/p>\n Case reports offer an even more concrete form of evidence linking vaccines to at least some SIDS fatalities. A study in Italy published in\u00a02014<\/a>\u00a0described histological examination of the autonomic nervous system in over 100 SIDS victims for whom detailed clinical and environmental information was available. After finding that 12% of the SIDS deaths occurred within one to seven days of the infant receiving a hexavalent vaccine for diphtheria, tetanus, acellular pertussis,\u00a0Haemophilus influenzae<\/em>\u00a0type B, poliovirus and hepatitis B, the authors concluded that \u201cvaccine components could have a direct role in sparking off a lethal outcome in vulnerable babies.\u201d A\u00a0case report<\/a>\u00a0from 2008, also by Italian researchers, described a three-month-old infant who died within 24 hours of receiving a hexavalent vaccine. Drawing on clinical data, postmortem findings and immunohistochemical and laboratory analyses, the investigators concluded that \u201cacute respiratory failure likely due to post hexavalent immunization-related shock was the cause of death.\u201d<\/p>\n Unfortunately, researchers at the CDC and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)\u2014the two agencies charged with protecting children\u2019s health and conducting vaccine surveillance through the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS)\u2014seem unconcerned about infant deaths that are\u00a0temporally associated<\/a>\u00a0with vaccination. Three recent examples illustrate the agencies\u2019 relaxed perspective:<\/p>\n The two U.S. agencies and many of their international counterparts appear to be more interested in promoting across-the-board vaccination than in trying to find the cause of post-vaccination infant deaths. In numerous settings, officials take advantage of classification loopholes to mask the role of vaccines. In India<\/a>, for example, a national committee charged with investigating 54 infant deaths that occurred following administration of an all-in-one pentavalent vaccine (similar to the hexavalent vaccine but without the polio component) sidestepped the possible role of the vaccine by rating 52 out of the 54 deaths as either\u00a0coincidental or unclassifiable<\/a>. In\u00a0Vietnam<\/a>, the World Health Organization (WHO) willingly reported a link between the pentavalent vaccine and non-fatal serious adverse events but termed all of the fatal cases in 12 previously healthy babies as\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0vaccine-related\u2014despite reports that \u201chours after receiving the vaccine, they began wailing loudly, \u2026had convulsions and serious trouble breathing and died shortly afterwards.\u201d<\/p>\n The absence of a hard-and-fast definition of SIDS also contributes to the denialism about vaccines\u2019 likely role. In the UK, researchers have described a\u00a0growing reluctance<\/a>\u00a0among pathologists and coroners to even use the term SIDS, making assessment of SIDS data \u201cpotentially inaccurate and confusing.\u201d In the U.S.,\u00a0non-standardized case definitions<\/a>\u00a0mean that \u201ccases once reported as SIDS are now being reported as [accidental suffocation and strangulation in bed] and cause unknown\/unspecified.\u201d U.S.\u00a0researchers<\/a>\u00a0also have shown that medical examiners and coroners are inconsistent in the cause of death that they apply to sudden unexpected infant deaths and often classify them as \u201csuffocation\/asphyxia.\u201d<\/p>\n Whether an infant death following vaccination eventually comes to be categorized as SIDS or something else, a common denominator in postmortem analyses is the ascertainment of \u201csigns of inflammation and responses to infection<\/a>\u201d that are \u201cout of proportion to preexisting symptoms.\u201d The types of \u201cmild problems<\/a>\u201d often listed as potential vaccine reactions are frequently\u00a0observed in SIDS infants<\/a> prior to death. Researchers have hypothesized that \u201cthe increase in inflammatory markers found in SIDS infants indicates that infection and inflammation might contribute to some of these deaths, either as a direct cause or the trigger of a lethal event\u201d and \u201cmight also be indicative of vulnerability in the immune response to an infectious trigger in infants.\u201d Vaccines\u2014with their potent adjuvants designed expressly to stimulate an intense immune response\u2014could well represent just such a trigger, with unfortunate consequences.<\/p>\n\n
\nMany of those vaccines are administered in bundles at well-baby visits around two and four months\u2014exactly when\u00a0nine out of ten<\/a>\u00a0SIDS deaths occur.<\/h3>\n
\n<\/blockquote>\nEvidence of a SIDS-vaccine relationship<\/h2>\n
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\nWhen the same authors also conducted a cross-national study to compare vaccine schedules and infant mortality rates across 34 countries, they reported \u201ca high statistically significant correlation between increasing number of vaccine doses and increasing infant mortality rates.\u201d<\/h3>\n
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\u202612% of the SIDS deaths occurred within one to seven days of the infant receiving a hexavalent vaccine for diphtheria, tetanus, acellular pertussis,\u00a0Haemophilus influenzae<\/em>\u00a0type B, poliovirus and hepatitis B\u2026<\/h3>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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\n\u2026researchers found that half (51%) of all the adverse events reported for hepatitis B-containing vaccines were for children under two years of age, and SIDS was the most commonly reported cause of death.<\/h3>\n
\n<\/blockquote>\n\u201cNo concerning patterns\u201d?<\/h2>\n
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\n\u2026hours after receiving the vaccine, they began wailing loudly, \u2026had convulsions and serious trouble breathing and died shortly afterwards.<\/h3>\n
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\n\u2026\u201cthe increase in inflammatory markers found in SIDS infants indicates that infection and inflammation might contribute to some of these deaths, either as a direct cause or the trigger of a lethal event\u201d\u2026<\/h4>\n
\n<\/blockquote>\nInflammation and infection<\/h2>\n