How "Anti-Abortion" Laws are Pro-Death, not Pro-Life

Reproductive care is health care in more ways than many people have thought through.  The fact that anyone can consider the anti-abortion laws that exist and that are being planned as I write this to be "pro-life" is a sign that life has already become so devalued that it's loss isn't even seen or recognized when it comes to pregnancy and birth.  The lives of women, both in terms of quantity and quality, are invisible, as are the lives of their families and other children and the children they may have had in the future.  If the goal were to reduce the number of pregnancies that are ended intentionally or that end in accidental ways, the solutions would start in other parts of society- we would take meaningful steps to reduce rape and to support pregnant women so they could afford to have and raise a baby unexpectedly.  We would be horrified at the extremely high infant mortality rate for black babies and other babies of color and take immediate steps to provide optimal care for those babies to bring the death rate down.  We would ensure that pregnant women receive appropriate prenatal care and that infants received the care they needed in the early years.  There are many, many things that we would do- but not only do we not do those things, we are allowing our health care system to degenerate such that more and more babies and pregnant women are losing their lives.  Anti-abortion laws, as they stand, are in no way "pro life".  

If You’re Pregnant, Here’s What To Know About the Medical Procedures That Could Save Your Life
Information about medical care for miscarriage, including D and C or D and E.  Both of those procedures can be used for abortion as well so in states with abortion bans, they may not be offered when appropriate and needed.  This video gives basic information about how to educate and protect yourself if you are or become pregnant.

How Do Abortion Pills Work? Answers to Frequently Asked Questions.
Abortion medication, sometimes referred to as the "abortion pill", is two pills taken together- mifepristone and misoprostol.  "Mifepristone blocks a hormone called progesterone that is needed for a pregnancy to continue. The FDA-approved regimen is to take 200 milligrams of mifepristone on the first day. Patients are directed to take misoprostol within 24 to 48 hours of the mifepristone. The misoprostol works to expel fetal tissue from the uterus."

The Impact of Legal Abortion on Maternal Mortality
"Legal abortion has recently been suggested as an essential healthcare service. In this study, we consider whether abortion legalization over 1969-1973 improved women’s health, measured by maternal mortality. Our event-study results indicate that legal abortion substantially lowered non-white maternal mortality by 30-40%, with 113 non-white maternal deaths averted nationally in the first year abortion became legal. We also find that early state-level legalizations were crucial, and more influential than the Roe v. Wade decision itself. "

Dozens of pregnant women, some bleeding or in labor, are turned away from ERs despite federal law
"More than 100 pregnant women in medical distress who sought help from emergency rooms were turned away or negligently treated since 2022, an Associated Press analysis of federal hospital investigations found.

Two women — one in Florida and one in Texas — were left to miscarry in public restrooms. In Arkansas, a woman went into septic shock and her fetus died after an emergency room sent her home. At least four other women with ectopic pregnancies had trouble getting treatment, including one in California who needed a blood transfusion after she sat for nine hours in an emergency waiting room."

Abortion Bans Have Delayed Emergency Medical Care. In Georgia, Experts Say This Mother’s Death Was Preventable.
"Tasked with examining pregnancy-related deaths to improve maternal health, the experts, including 10 doctors, deemed hers “preventable” and said the hospital’s delay in performing the critical procedure had a “large” impact on her fatal outcome."

A Woman Died After Being Told It Would Be a “Crime” to Intervene in Her Miscarriage at a Texas Hospital
"Barnica is one of at least two Texas women who ProPublica found lost their lives after doctors delayed treating miscarriages, which fall into a gray area under the state’s strict abortion laws that prohibit doctors from ending the heartbeat of a fetus.

Neither had wanted an abortion, but that didn’t matter. Though proponents insist that the laws protect both the life of the fetus and the person carrying it, in practice, doctors have hesitated to provide care under threat of prosecution, prison time and professional ruin.

ProPublica is telling these women’s stories this week, starting with Barnica’s. Her death was “preventable,” according to more than a dozen medical experts who reviewed a summary of her hospital and autopsy records at ProPublica’s request; they called her case “horrific,” “astounding” and “egregious.”

A Pregnant Teenager Died After Trying to Get Care in Three Visits to Texas Emergency Rooms
An 18-year-old woman died from sepsis after visiting emergency rooms 3 times, when she developed symptoms of sickness and miscarriage.  The hospitals diagnosed her with strep throat, and later a UTI as well and sent her home, despite clear signs indicating a life-threatening infection.  Once she returned for the third time her emergency care was delayed out of concern over the fetal heartbeat.  It's not possible to say for sure if her death could have been avoided, but a lot more could have been done to try.  In Texas, officials have made a point to tell doctors that their abortion ban takes precedence over a federal law that requires emergency rooms to treat women and stabilize them when they have life-threatening complications of pregnancy. 

A Third Woman Died Under Texas’ Abortion Ban. Doctors Are Avoiding D&Cs and Reaching for Riskier Miscarriage Treatments.
"The 35-year-old’s death was preventable, according to more than a dozen doctors who reviewed a detailed summary of her case for ProPublica. Some said it raises serious questions about how abortion bans are pressuring doctors to diverge from the standard of care and reach for less-effective options that could expose their patients to more risks. Doctors and patients described similar decisions they’ve witnessed across the state.

It was clear Porsha needed an emergency D&C, the medical experts said. She was hemorrhaging and the doctors knew she had a blood-clotting disorder, which put her at greater danger of excessive and prolonged bleeding. “Misoprostol at 11 weeks is not going to work fast enough,” said Dr. Amber Truehart, an OB-GYN at the University of New Mexico Center for Reproductive Health. “The patient will continue to bleed and have a higher risk of going into hemorrhagic shock.” The medical examiner found the cause of death to be hemorrhage."

"But because D&Cs are also used to end pregnancies, the procedure has become tangled up in state legislation that restricts abortions. In Texas, any doctor who violates the strict law risks up to 99 years in prison. Porsha’s is the fifth case ProPublica has reported in which women died after they did not receive a D&C or its second-trimester equivalent, a dilation and evacuation; three of those deaths were in Texas.  (E)ven in cases like Porsha’s where there isn’t a fetal heartbeat or the circumstances should fall under an exception in the law. Some doctors are transferring those patients to other hospitals, which delays their care, or they’re defaulting to treatments that aren’t the medical standard.  Texas outlaws abortion from the moment of fertilization; a record showing there is no cardiac activity isn’t enough to give physicians cover to intervene, experts said."

"Staff are familiar with misoprostol because it’s used for labor, and it only requires a doctor and a nurse to administer it. To do a procedure, on the other hand, a doctor would need to find an operating room, an anesthesiologist and a nursing team. “You have to convince everyone that it is legal and won’t put them at risk,” said Goulding. “Many people may be afraid and misinformed and refuse to participate — even if it’s for a miscarriage.  (F)or example, legislators added an update to the ban for patients diagnosed with previable premature rupture of membranes, in which a patient’s water breaks before a fetus can survive. Doctors can still face prosecution for providing abortions in those cases, but they are offered the chance to justify themselves with what’s called an “affirmative defense,” not unlike a murder suspect arguing self defense. This modest change has not stopped some doctors from transferring those patients instead of treating them."

Afraid to Seek Care Amid Georgia’s Abortion Ban, She Stayed at Home and Died
Candi Miller had several chronic health conditions that made pregnancy dangerous and potentially life-threatening for her, but she became pregnant unintentionally soon after Georgia passed a ban on abortion.  She ordered abortion pills through the mail, feeling that she needed to handle an abortion on her own, and didn't go to the hospital when she experienced complications following taking the pills out of fear.  She died, leaving behind three children who now have no mother.  Her death was preventable.  

"ProPublica’s new reporting makes clear, for the first time, that in the wake of bans, women are losing their lives in ways that experts have deemed preventable.  It also underscores the reality that abortion bans have not actually led to a decrease in abortions. But for people like Miller, they have increased the degree of difficulty and risk."  Women with chronic conditions that make pregnancy more dangerous are not helped by the narrow exceptions written into law, and often need to travel out-of-state to get the supportive care they need even to continue the pregnancy.  There is so much confusion around the new laws that women are often not showing up for care until they are already experiencing serious complications.  This system has made pregnancy more dangerous for many women.

Abortion Bans Have Delayed Emergency Medical Care. In Georgia, Experts Say This Mother’s Death Was Preventable.
Amber Nicole Thurman died of treatable complications of abortion medication in Georgia after the state's abortion ban went into effect.  She had a rare complication in which her body didn't fully expel the fetal tissue, which would normally be treated by a common, safe intervention called a D and C.  This procedure was essentially outlawed in Georgia, so she ended up dying of sepsis, an deadly infection that resulted from the lack of treatment that she received.  Her death is "the first time an abortion-related death, officially deemed “preventable,” is coming to public light."
Referenced in the article- The Impact of Legal Abortion on Maternal Mortality
"Our event-study results indicate that legal abortion substantially lowered non-white maternal mortality by 30-40%, with 113 non-white maternal deaths averted nationally in the first year abortion became legal. We also find that early state-level legalizations were crucial, and more influential than the Roe v. Wade decision itself. "

Texas women denied abortions for ectopic pregnancies file federal complaints against hospitals
 "The hospital's intervention was too late, her attorneys say. Her ectopic pregnancy ruptured days later, leaving her bleeding heavily and in blinding pain. She was transferred from a facility in Burnet County to Ascension Seton, where she was told she was "bleeding out," according to the complaint.  To save her life, doctors removed her right fallopian tube, leaving her with lower chances of having a successful pregnancy in the future."

“These women are proof that exceptions do not make abortion bans less dangerous, even when they are exceedingly clear," Beth Brinkmann, senior director of U.S. litigation at the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in Monday's news release. “It’s impossible to have the best interest of your patient in mind when you’re staring down a life sentence. Texas officials have put doctors in an impossible situation.  Numerous Texas OB-GYNs and medical associations have said that the severe repercussions, combined with the state's abortion ban's complicated wording, leave doctors hesitant to administer treatment."

"Texas Alliance for Life in monthly news releases has highlighted that one to 10 "medical-necessity" abortions have been recorded in Texas each month since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the federal right to an abortion established in Roe v. Wade. More than 50,000 took place each year between 2008 and 2020."

Doctors Warned Her Pregnancy Could Kill Her. Then Tennessee Outlawed Abortion.
Mayron Michelle Hollis became pregnant unexpectedly soon after giving birth to a daughter, but despite the pregnancy posing a very serious risk to her health and life, Tennessee passed an abortion ban before she could end the pregnancy.  Her doctor tried to put together a team to perform the necessary procedure but was unable to gather the needed participants because they were afraid of the legal consequences, so she was left to navigate a terrifying situation with little help- further traumatizing her, jeopardizing her health, her family, her sanity, and her life, and with additional barriers put up by the state to make her already extremely difficult situation orders of magnitude worse.  Amazingly she and her baby survived- despite the medical system, not because of it.  This article is very well done and worth reading.

Her miscarriage left her bleeding profusely. An Ohio ER sent her home to wait
Christina Zielke had a confirmed miscarriage but was left to wait for the tissue to pass on it's own, which didn't happen for weeks.  When it did, she lost a large amount of blood but was not treated and instead sent home due to Ohio's trigger law- meaning that abortion became illegal the same day that Roe v Wadew was overturned.  Many anti-abortion advocates do not understand that miscarriage, a common event in pregnancy, is treated with the same procedures that are also used in abortion.  This means that when abortion is outlawed, miscarriage becomes much harder to get treatment for and becomes a dangerous event when it doesn't need to be, placing the health and lives of large numbers of women in danger- even women who had no intention of having an abortion, even women whose pregnancies are not viable or are ectopic (which must always be terminated).  These laws are having a large amount of unintended consequences that their authors don't take accountability for, at least partially because they lack a basic understanding of the biology and medicine around pregnancy.

North Texas woman says her baby fell on a Dallas freestanding ER floor after she gave birth
In a state with anti-abortion (so-called "pro life") laws, it is horrifyingly ironic that this baby nearly lost her life due to such utter disregard for human life.  The US has a profoundly disturbing history of such incompetent treatment and such complete lack of basic care for black women and their babies that the infant and maternal death rate is many times higher than it is for white mothers and babies.  This just highlights the hollowness of the so-called "pro-life" movement who are nowhere to be seen when it comes to these excess deaths.  In addition, this level of care is the "new normal" in America as we allow private equity and profit-based health care to destroy the health care system and leave only the most minimal skeletal remains, all in the name of short-term value extraction.

The CDC Hasn’t Asked States to Track Deaths Linked to Abortion Bans
"(T)the Biden administration has missed a critical opportunity to illuminate how abortion bans are interfering with maternal health care, leading to deaths and irreversible injuries: The CDC has not pushed state committees that review maternal deaths to examine the role these new laws have played."

If You’re Pregnant, Here’s What You Should Know About the Medical Procedures That Could Save Your Life
"Women experiencing pregnancy loss in states with abortion bans told us they wished they had known what to expect and how to advocate for themselves. We created this guide for anyone who finds themselves in the same position."

Are Abortion Bans Across America Causing Deaths? The States That Passed Them Are Doing Little to Find Out.
"The same political leaders who enacted abortion bans oversee the state committees that review maternal deaths. These committees haven’t tracked the laws’ impacts, and most haven’t finished examining cases from the year the bans went into effect. "

We Don't Do That Here (New York Times)

Five Woman Sue Texas Over the State's Abortion Ban (New York Times)

Maternal morbidity and fetal outcomes among pregnant women at 22 weeks’ gestation or less with
complications in 2 Texas hospitals after legislation on abortion
"n 2 Texas hospitals, state-mandated expectant management of obstetrical complications in the periviable period was associated with significant maternal morbidity (Figure). Consistent with reports
evaluating outcomes in women requesting expectant management, most of the pregnant patients at <22 weeks presenting with medical indications for delivery experienced serious morbidity, and fetal outcomes were poor. Expectant management resulted in 57% of patients having a serious maternal morbidity compared with 33% who elected immediate pregnancy interruption under similar clinical circumstances reported in states without such legislation."

Food Supply Dangers (Bird Flu)

Big Ag, Not Wild Birds, Is What Really Spreads Avian Flu

Bird flu (H5N1) was first identified in chickens on a farm in Scotland in 1959.  In 1996 an outbreak occurred on a goose farm in China and spread to humans, killing half of the humans who contracted it.  In 2005 bird flu was spread from domestic birds to wild birds who spread it via migration, bringing it to the Americas in 2021.  The problem of bird flu is usually presented as one in which a virus infecting wild birds is being brought into domestic bird farms, where it spreads like crazy, harming the birds and threatening the health of humans who have contact with farmed birds.  This version of the story seems to be backwards.  The evidence shows bird flu as primarily a problem arising from our farming practices that sometimes spills over into wild birds, who are capable of spreading it.

"We’re getting the story of bird flu backward. The way that we farm animals in the U.S. and the world is amplifying costly and potentially deadly pathogens. Stopping this outbreak and preventing future outbreaks means reckoning with a troubling paradox: Food is essential for our health, but the conditions under which we create our food is making us and the animals around us sick."

Industrial animal farming involves overcrowding animals in cramped and unnatural conditions that jeopardize their health, a situation worsened by poor cleanliness (animals are often sitting in their own waste) and the fact that the animals are often genetically similar which makes them susceptible to the same pathogens.  These factors together create an environment like a petri dish in which the influenza virus can easily mutate and spread, and that spread isn't limited to just other birds- it can also spread to pigs and cows, allowing it to mutate further.  What is particularly dangerous about bird flu spreading to pigs is that their immune systems are similar to those of humans in such a way that when the virus mutates among pig populations it becomes more likely to be dangerous to humans.  There is reason to believe this may also be true of cows, but in cows there is the added risk that sick cows tend to be asymptomatic, so the infections are missed. This is basically a problem with the fundamental way that food animals are produced in the US and many other countries. 

 

Drug Prices

Big Pharma Drug Patent Abuses Cost Medicare Billions: Report
Medicare has been given the ability to negotiate the price of some drugs, but those lower prices won't go into effect until the beginning of 2026 for some reason, prolonging the time that people still have to pay the higher cost for no real; reason.  This shows whose interests are being prioritized here.  There is another problem though that is allowing drug manufacturers to effectively steal billions of dollars from consumers, the practice of "patent abuses and evergreening tactics.  The report defines "evergreening tactics" as the practice of "patenting trivial and/or obvious modifications of existing medications to lengthen exclusivity on branded medicines."  This is done to extend monopoly powers and profiteering in ways that go against the spirit of the market and amount to theft.

"This is paramount, Public Citizen argues, given the scope of lost savings. The group estimates that Medicare will lose somewhere between $4.9 and $5.4 billion in savings that should have accrued to taxpayers if four out of the 10 drugs did not take advantage of patenting tactics, and therefore would have faced greater competition prior to negotiation.

"These lost savings are nearly as much as what Medicare is expected to save if negotiated prices go into effect on all of the selected drugs in the first year of the program ($6 billion)," according to the report."  For one medication alone, "Medicare would have spent $1,891,500,836 less on a net basis had enrollees been able to use lower-cost alternatives by the time negotiated prices go into effect on January 1, 2026."

Referenced in this article:
Analysis Shows Amgen’s Gaming Of Patent System Cost Medicare More Than a Billion in Savings Over Less Than Four Years

Despite Profit Surge, Novartis Still Suing to Prevent Lower Drug Prices
"Novartis seeing its profits double serves as another reminder that Big Pharma can afford to negotiate more reasonable prices for seniors," Accountable.US executive director Tony Carrk said in a statement responding to the company's financial report."  The company is suing to fight price negotiations laid out in the Inflation Reduction Act, despite the fact that it's making an extremely high level of profit.  The greed driving this clearly has nothing to do with the ability of the company to function or to create or sell new drugs. 

Brand-Name Drugs Increase Cost But Not Patient Satisfaction
“Generic medications are manufactured to be equivalent in all ways (except appearances) to brand-name medications,” he said in an e-mail. “Unfortunately, many patients and physicians are convinced to spend more and use the brand-name medication by marketing initiatives, including advertisements on the television or drug coupons that promise similar out-of-pocket expenses for the higher-cost brand-name medications.”
"Goetz said he doesn’t know why generics sometimes have higher satisfaction than brand-name drugs, but he offered one theory. “People might have outsize expectations for what a heavily marketed drug is going to do for them,” he said. “They may watch the commercials and think that any given drug is going to be the answer to all their problems. And the reality of medicine and the reality of pharmacology is that every drug has some benefits for some people and some side effects for some people, and that’s the whole balance.”
"Generics may have another advantage over newly launched drugs in the same class. By definition, a generic has been on the market a long time, so doctors know how it works, and any major problems or side effects would have already surfaced. By comparison, the studies that help brand-name drugs win approval may not have picked up safety problems or side effects that, while uncommon, can represent an issue once a medicine is taken widely."

Iodine (GoodRx)

Prescriber Checkup (Medicare’s popular prescription-drug program serves more than 42 million people and pays for more than one of every four prescriptions written nationwide. Use this tool to find and compare doctors and other providers in Part D)
FAQ: What You Need to Know About Prescriber Checkup

Doctor given prison for taking kickbacks to prescribe risky drug
"A Chicago doctor who was once the nation's most prolific prescriber of the risky antipsychotic drug clozapine was sentenced to nine months in prison Friday for taking cash, vacation trips and other kickbacks from the drug's manufacturers.  Dr. Michael Reinstein, the subject of a 2009 Tribune-ProPublica joint investigation, admitted to pocketing nearly $600,000 in benefits over the years for prescribing various forms of clozapine, known as a risky drug of last resort, to hundreds of mentally ill patients in his care."
"When he pleaded guilty last year, Reinstein also settled a massive civil lawsuit brought by the U.S. attorney's office alleging that he submitted more than 140,000 false Medicare and Medicaid claims as part of the kickback scheme. He was ordered to pay more than $3.7 million in penalties to the U.S. government and the state of Illinois."

Risky, Overused Medications Prescribed Far Less Often in the Aloha State
"Medicare patients in Hawaii take fewer opioid painkillers and fewer antibiotics, on average, than those in any other state. Physicians and health policy experts cite demographics and healthier lifestyles as possible reasons why."

Medicare’s Failure to Track Doctors Wastes Billions on Name-Brand Drugs

PRESCRIBERS WITH QUESTIONABLE PATTERNS IN MEDICARE PART D
This is a study cited in the article above

Medicare Drug Program Fails to Monitor Prescribers, Putting Seniors and Disabled at Risk
"some doctors and other health professionals across the country prescribe large quantities of drugs that are potentially harmful, disorienting or addictive. Federal officials have done little to detect or deter these hazardous prescribing patterns."
"Doctors barred by state Medicaid programs for questionable prescribing remain able to dole out the same drugs under Medicare. So can dozens of practitioners who have been criminally charged or convicted for problem prescribing, or who have been disciplined by state medical boards."
"In lawsuits and disciplinary records, state and federal authorities cite a number of reasons that doctors prescribe improperly. Some run mills where patients get prescriptions if they pay cash for a visit. Others have relationships with drug companies that influence what they prescribe. Regulators say some doctors choose inappropriate medications under pressure from families or facilities.  Research also shows that doctors often don't keep up with the latest studies and drug warnings."

 

The Global Impact of Pharmaceutical Profiteering and Corruption

The Meriam-Webster dictionary defines profiteering as "the act or activity of making an unreasonable profit on the sale of essential goods especially during times of emergency".  Profiteering by pharmaceutical companies has been an increasing problem worldwide for decades.  The fact that medical care is so often needed during times of crisis and emergency makes profiteering easy and commonplace.  This is also facilitated by changing power dynamics globally, providing more opportunities for pharmaceutical companies to exploit.    

Johnson and Johnson are trying to extend their patent for anti-tuberculosis medications that are needed to save millions of lives, but instead of letting the patent expire so that the drug can be made affordably enough to be available to the rest of the world, they are trying to falsely extend the patent to bolster their own profits.  Learn more about it here.

French company bungled clinical trial that led to a death and illness, report says "Why one man died and four others fell ill during a drug safety study in France last month is still very unclear. But a preliminary inspection report lashes out at Biotrial, the company that conducted the study, for how it responded after the first volunteer in the clinical trial was hospitalized. Three major errors by Biotrial put other volunteers at risk, says the report, published yesterday by France's General Inspectorate of Social Affairs (IGAS). Responding to the report, Touraine said that from now on any hospitalization during a clinical trial should be regarded as "new fact" that needs to be brought to the attention of health authorities immediately. Such events should "lead to an immediate suspension of the trial until the safety of volunteers is guaranteed," she said. "Volunteers must be clearly informed about the suspension of the study and its reasons."

Bill Gates Almost Single-Handedly Derailed the Plan That Could Have Led to a 'People's Vaccine'
"But the inspiring plan devised by the scientists—which promised to create a vaccine essentially belonging to the world's people, not to corporate shareholders—was crushed fairly decisively when Bill Gates ventured into the fray."

 "Among other things, the vaccine tragedy highlights the danger posed by the extreme concentration of wealth and power that Bill Gates represents. It turns out that his mega-philanthropy comes with a hitch: it enables Gates to develop extraordinary influence over crucial matters, such as whether or not the world's poor will have a chance to survive the pandemic."

 

How Bill Gates Impeded Global Access to Covid Vaccines: Through his hallowed foundation, the world’s de facto public health czar has been a stalwart defender of monopoly medicine.

The Corrupting Influence of Money in Medicine

The influence of money has wormed its way into all aspects of the American medical system- research, practice, access, the guidelines and advice patients are given about their health, and even how diagnostic criteria are determined.  This money represents the domination of a few pharmaceutical companies that have twisted and tweaked the entire system to serve their profit motive.  The effects of what is called regulatory and institutional capture by economists has had a devastating effect on the health of Americans.  It has also led to an unprecedented amount of wealth consolidation at record speed.

In Minnesota, the Mayo Clinic Sometimes Called the Shots With Gov. Tim Walz
Tim Walz has a very close relationship with The Mayo Clinic, to the point that he has allowed them to re-write legislation that was passed by the Minnesota legislature.  The Mayo Clinic has costs that are 88% higher than average in Minnesota adjusted for medical complexity of patients.  Mayo has consistently fought and eliminated efforts to reduce the cost of health care, often emphasizing internal strategies instead such as AI programs to handle staffing.  They were instrumental in killing any "public option" or single payer healthcare including regarding the ACA under Obama. 

Industry's Influence in Medicine: Duped, Doped and Dying in America
Gwen Olsen, a former pharmaceutical drug rep, tells about her experiences seeing pharma companies from the inside.  She says that the system is predatory and was intentionally set up to control us by doping us up and dumbing us down for profit.  

It finally happened: Goldman Sachs asks 'Is curing patients a sustainable business model?

Mother’s death sparks concern about hospital investment
Private equity firms have bought hospitals and extract all the wealth they can from them, leaving them unable to properly care for patients, which can be deadly.

The healthcare system is a giant SCAM (that you pay for)

The average yearly cost of health insurance in the US is $7 K.  The US spends more on healthcare than any other country, but the quality of care is the lowest among all wealthy nations.  Patients are over0charged by billions of dollars every year.  "A handful of companies have turned healthcare into a trillion dollar scam".  Profits are valued over human lives.  In Canada, one vial of insulin costs $30 but here in America the same vial costs $300, and the price for one specific AIDS drug in the US is $2 K while it costs only $8 in Australia.  From the New York Times-"Among those who reported problems paying their bills despite having insurance, 63% said they used up all or most of their savings; 42% took on an extra job or more work hours; 14% moved or took in roommates; and 11% turned to charity."  A study found that 66.5% of all bankruptcies were tied to medical issues, which is about 500 K families going into bankruptcy each year. The US is the only developed country that doesn't have universal health care.  Many poorer countries, including Pakistan, Iran, and Rwanda, provide free medical care to their people.  

 

Insurance companies have tried to say that they offer a valuable service because they negotiate prices down so much, but it turns out that they start with a very inflated price, so they aren't really saving you money.  Hospitals and other providers won't negotiate their prices down so much with individuals because they say they don't have representation.  Another way of saying this is that hospitals penalize people without insurance by adding a charge of several hundred percent on your medical bill.  You could say that hospitals and insurance companies collude in a mafia-like scheme, where hospitals enforce penalties if you don't pay insurance companies for protection.  The rate of c-sections in America is more than double the world average and this is largely due to c-sections being much more lucrative.  There are even hospitals that charge you if you want to hold your baby after birth as "skin to skin contact".  

Blackstone is one of the largest investing firms on earth, and owns the biggest medical staffing company in America, called TeamHealth.  It came out in a deposition that TeamHealth's prices were "higher than those of 95% of other providers and 8 or 9 times more than what medicare would pay", and that "the actual costs of medical services are not a factor in setting TeamHealth's prices".  So if you've ever wondered where all the money you pay for medical care goes, it goes to investors.  Almost every publicly traded hospital, medical, and pharma company is at least partially owned by either BlackRock or Vanguard.  These two companies have almost total control over the American health care system and use their influence to bring in huge returns while more and more Americans can't afford healthcare at all.

Pharmaceutical companies pay the most to lobby congress by far, which is twice as much as the next highest spender.  Life expectancy is dropping faster in America than anywhere else, and the maternal mortality rate is increasing.  Medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the country, 10% of all deaths each year.

The prices hospitals don't want you to see (NYT)   

How Profiteering and Corruption Harm Patients
A Place to Die’: For-Profit Health Care Crisis EXPOSED

Latest huge Big Pharma fraud settlement + shocking history of injury and death cover-ups

Drug Shortages Forcing Hard Decisions on Rationing Treatments
"In recent years, shortages of all sorts of drugs — anesthetics, painkillers,antibiotics, cancer treatments — have become the new normal in American medicine. The American Society of Health-System Pharmacists currently lists inadequate supplies of more than 150 drugs and therapeutics, for reasons ranging from manufacturing problems to federal safety crackdowns to drug makers abandoning low-profit products. But while such shortages have periodically drawn attention, the 
rationing that results from them has been largely hidden from patients and the public."

Medical Bills Leading Cause of Bankruptcy, Harvard Study Finds
"Illness and medical bills caused half of the 1,458,000 personal bankruptcies in 2001, according to a study published by the journal Health Affairs.  The study estimates that medical bankruptcies affect about 2 million Americans annually -- counting debtors and their dependents, including about 700,000 children.  Surprisingly, most of those bankrupted by illness had health insurance. More than three-quarters were insured at the start of the bankrupting illness. However, 38 percent had lost coverage at least temporarily by the time they filed for bankruptcy."

The High Cost of Drugs and Treatment and Paying Doctors to Prescribe Drugs
Transparency in medicine Dr Wen 

Leana Wen: What your doctor won’t disclose
TED talk by a doctor about issues of trust in the doctor-patient relationship, doctors resisting transparency about themselves and how they practice (including disclosing payments and perks from pharmaceutical companies). 

Docs on Pharma Payroll Have Blemished Records, Limited Credentials
"The implications are great for patients, who in the past have been exposed to such heavily marketed drugs as the painkiller Bextra and the diabetes drug Avandia — billion-dollar blockbusters until dangerous side effects emerged."
"A review of physician licensing records in the 15 most-populous states and three others found sanctions against more than 250 speakers, including some of the highest paid. Their misconduct included inappropriately prescribing drugs, providing poor care or having sex with patients. Some of the doctors had even lost their licenses.  More than 40 have received FDA warnings for research misconduct, lost hospital privileges or been convicted of crimes. And at least 20 more have had two or more malpractice judgments or settlements. This accounting is by no means complete; many state regulators don’t post these actions on their web sites.  Forty five who earned in excess of $100,000 did not have board certification in any specialty, suggesting they had not completed advanced training and passed a comprehensive exam. Some of those doctors and others also lacked published research, academic appointments or leadership roles in professional societies."

Lawsuits Say Pharma Illegally Paid Doctors to Push Their Drugs
"Pharma companies are being accused in lawsuits of paying doctors to push off-label uses of their drugs or financially rewarding doctors for prescribing their brand-name medications.  In the past three years alone, pharmaceutical companies have anteed up nearly $7 billion for settlements in cases such as one filed by Angela Maher, a former drug sales rep for Ortho-McNeil Pharmaceutical."

Despite improved transparency, conflicts of interest remain issue in medicine
“These conflicts undermine the reliability and credibility of the guidelines,” Nissen told Cardiology Today. “I don’t think that disclosure is the antidote here. The antidote is for physicians who are involved in public policy discussions not to accept money for promoting drugs.”

60 Minutes Episode Pharma execs used strip clubs, broke FDA laws to boost opioid sales

Forty-three percent of pediatricians receive industry payments "A significant proportion of pediatricians received payments from industry sources, such as pharmaceutical and device manufacturers, with the greatest amount of payments associated with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder treatments and vaccines, according to recent research in Pediatrics." 

Insulin should be cheap. Here’s why it's not

High Insulin Prices Drive Diabetics to Take Extreme Measures

Diabetics Are Hacking Their Own Insulin Pumps

Lawmakers grill Mylan CEO over EpiPen price hikes
"Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, held up an EpiPen to punctuate his point that epinephrine — “the juice” inside Mylan’s device — costs about $1 a dose. The list price of a two-pack of the pens is $608, up about 500 percent in a decade."

"You virtually have a monopoly, and you've used it to your advantage - but unfortunately, it's at the expense of people who need it," said Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.). "I'm wondering what your sense of social responsibility is to those people."

FDA approves first generic version of EpiPen  The article discusses how the new generic version will help ease the chronic shortage of EpiPens that worsens near the end of the summer as kids need new prescriptions for school and other activities.  It also talks about how Mylan, the brand name version, actively fought the approval of the new generic
version out of self interest. 

Heather Bresch, the CEO of Mylan, testifies in front of congress about price gauging the epi pen 

Damning NEW Email Puts Joe Manchin’s Daughter At Center Of EpiPen Price-Fixing Scheme

Drug executives to testify before Congress about their role in U.S. opioid crisis "Current and former executives with the pharmaceutical distributors that are accused of flooding communities with powerful prescription painkillers have been summoned to testify before Congress about their role in the U.S. opioid epidemic."

"Since 2000, the epidemic has killed 200,000 people — more than three times the number of U.S. military deaths in the Vietnam War."

A Giant Pain in the Wallet
How an effort by the FDA to evaluate drugs that have been on the market since before testing was required has allowed pharmaceutical companies to price-gauge patients.

Pharmaceutical advertisements in leading medical journals: experts' assessments.
"In the opinion of the reviewers, many advertisements contained deficiencies in areas in which the FDA has established explicit standards of quality. New strategies are needed to ensure that advertisements comply with standards intended to promote proper use of the products and to protect the consumer."

Accuracy of pharmaceutical advertisements in medical journals.
"Doctors should be cautious in assessment of advertisements that claim a drug has greater efficacy, safety, or convenience, even though these claims are accompanied by bibliographical references to randomized clinical trials published in reputable medical journals and seem to be evidence-based."

What if all US health care costs were transparent? | Jeanne Pinder
How drug companies make you buy more medicine than you need
This video talks about how pharmaceutical drugs are packaged and sold in ways that deliberately lead to waste, which creates costs that are then borne by the consumer.  For some drugs such as chemotherapy drugs these costs can be very high.  This issue is not something that the FDA regulates. This article by ProPublica goes into more detail about this topic.

Frequency and Magnitude of Co-payments Exceeding Prescription Drug Costs
"A co-payment suggests sharing the total cost between patients and payers. However, drug co-payments sometimes exceed costs, with the insurer or pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) keeping the difference. Furthermore, some pharmacists are contractually prevented from alerting patients when their co-payment exceeds the drug’s cash price. Although some have argued that the practice is uncommon, a 2016 survey of independent pharmacists indicates otherwise."

The case of the $629 Band-Aid — and what it reveals about American health care
We have all experienced the bizarrely high prices charged for many medical services and devices, and I think we can all relate to the parent who wrote this article about the absurdity of medical pricing. 

Pharma Influence over Practice and Patient Care
Leana Wen: What your doctor won’t disclose
TED talk by a doctor about issues of trust in the doctor-patient relationship, doctors resisting transparency about themselves and how they practice (including disclosing payments and perks from pharmaceutical companies).

Conflicts of interest pervade US treatment guidelines, reports say
"Financial conflicts of interest are widespread among the authors of US clinical practice guidelines, according to two research letters and an editor’s note that were published in JAMA Internal Medicine.  Such conflicts are “an intractable problem in the United States,” write Robert Steinbrook, editor at large of JAMA Internal Medicine, and Colette DeJong of the University of San Francisco."

US Physician Societies are completely Corrupted

Dollars for Docs- How Industry Dollars Reached Your Doctors

We Found Over 700 Doctors Who Were Paid More Than a Million Dollars by Drug and Medical Device Companies
"Each year from 2014 to 2018, drug and medical device companies spent between $2.1 billion and $2.2 billion paying doctors for speaking and consulting, as well as on meals, travel and gifts for them."

Docs on Pharma Payroll Have Blemished Records, Limited Credentials

Now There’s Proof: Docs Who Get Company Cash Tend to Prescribe More Brand-Name Meds
"A ProPublica analysis has found for the first time that doctors who receive payments from the medical industry do indeed tend to prescribe drugs differently than their colleagues who don’t. And the more money they receive, on average, the more brand-name medications they prescribe."
"doctors who received industry payments were two to three times as likely to prescribe brand-name drugs at exceptionally high rates as others in their specialty."
"nearly nine in 10 cardiologists who wrote at least 1,000 prescriptions for Medicare patients received payments from a drug or device company in 2014, while seven in 10 internists and family practitioners did."

Matching Industry Payments to Medicare Prescribing Patterns: An Analysis
(this is mentioned in the above article)

Private equity ownership is killing people at nursing homes
"The researchers studied patients who stayed at a skilled nursing facility after an acute episode at a hospital, looking at deaths that fell within the 90-day period after they left the nursing home. They found that going to a private equity-owned nursing home increased mortality for patients by 10 percent against the overall average.  Or to put it another way: “This estimate implies about 20,150 Medicare lives lost due to [private equity] ownership of nursing homes during our sample period” of 12 years, the authors — Atul Gupta, Sabrina Howell, Constantine Yannelis, and Abhinav Gupta — wrote. That’s more than 1,000 deaths every year, on average."
This is the working paper behind this article:
DOES PRIVATE EQUITY INVESTMENT IN HEALTHCARE BENEFIT PATIENTS?  EVIDENCE FROM NURSING HOMES

Payments, Conflict of Interest, and Trustworthy Otolaryngology Clinical Practice Guidelines
"Clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) are the cornerstone of the evidence-based practice of otolaryngology–head and neck surgery. The American Academy of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery (AAO-HNS) CPGs are widely distributed, as judged by frequency of downloads, webpage views, and CPG-related sessions at national meetings. Clinical practice guidelines are developed to reduce variation in care and to improve quality. They create debate and even controversy, with concerns expressed about restraints on clinician decision making as well as the medicolegal implications of recommendations. Clinical practice guidelines must be trustworthy, and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) and the Guideline International Network have provided standards for CPGs.1 A major threat to the creation of trustworthy guidelines is conflict of interest (COI) among the organizations and the committee members who create CPGs.

Influence Over Regulation and Policy
Why HEALTHCARE works the way it does: Look at these SHOCKING lobbying numbers

Third member of prestigious FDA panel resigns over approval of Biogen’s Alzheimer’s drug
"A third member of a key Food and Drug Administration advisory panel has resigned over the agency’s controversial decision to approve Biogen’s new Alzheimer’s drug, Aduhelm, CNBC has learned."

 "Dr. Aaron Kesselheim, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, said the agency’s decision on Biogen “was probably the worst drug approval decision in recent U.S. history,” according to his resignation letter obtained by CNBC."

Secret Clinical Trial Data to Go Public: Drug companies have begun to share their clinical trial data. The long-overdue shift heralds a new era in medicine (from Scientific American)
"How well does a prescription drug work? It can be hard for even doctors to know. Pharmaceutical companies frequently withhold the results of negative or inconclusive trials. Without a full accounting, a physician who wants to counsel a patient about whether a drug works better than a sugar pill is frequently at a loss. Drug companies share only airbrushed versions of data on safety and usefulness.

As a consequence, regulators can approve drugs that have hidden health hazards. Clinical trials of GlaxoSmithKline's diabetes drug Avandia (rosiglitazone) and Merck's anti-inflammatory Vioxx (rofecoxib) revealed an elevated cardiac risk from the drugs, but relevant findings were held back from regulators or never published.* Far more drugs have gone to market with critical safety data kept secret. These scandals have tarnished the reputation of the pharmaceutical industry."

Bill Gates Almost Single-Handedly Derailed the Plan That Could Have Led to a 'People's Vaccine'
"But the inspiring plan devised by the scientists—which promised to create a vaccine essentially belonging to the world's people, not to corporate shareholders—was crushed fairly decisively when Bill Gates ventured into the fray."

 "Among other things, the vaccine tragedy highlights the danger posed by the extreme concentration of wealth and power that Bill Gates represents. It turns out that his mega-philanthropy comes with a hitch: it enables Gates to develop extraordinary influence over crucial matters, such as whether or not the world's poor will have a chance to survive the pandemic." 

 

How Bill Gates Impeded Global Access to Covid Vaccines: Through his hallowed foundation, the world’s de facto public health czar has been a stalwart defender of monopoly medicine.

Money in Medical Research
The Corruption of Evidence Based Medicine — Killing for Profit
"This has huge implications. Evidence based medicine is completely worthless if the evidence base is false or corrupted. It’s like building a wooden house knowing the wood is termite infested. What caused this sorry state of affairs? Well, Dr. Relman another former editor in chief of the NEJM said this in 2002  “The medical profession is being bought by the pharmaceutical industry, not only in terms of the practice of medicine, but also in terms of teaching and research. The academic institutions of this country are allowing themselves to be the paid agents of the pharmaceutical industry. I think it’s disgraceful”

The people in charge of the system — the editors of the most important medical journals in the world, gradually learn over a few decades that their life’s work is being slowly and steadily corrupted. Physicians and universities have allowed themselves to be bribed."

This Is The Sickening Amount Pharmaceutical Companies Pay Top Journal Editors

"The medical profession is being bought by the pharmaceutical industry, not only in terms of the practice of medicine, but also in terms of teaching and research," said the late Arnold Relman, a former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) in 2002. He passed away in 2014.

"The academic institutions of this country are allowing themselves to be the paid agents of the pharmaceutical industry. I think it's disgraceful."

Undisclosed payments in research

Payments by US pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers to US medical journal editors: retrospective observational study

"Industry payments to journal editors are common and often large, particularly for certain sub-specialties. Journals should consider the potential impact of such payments on public trust in published research."

Oncology trial authors don’t fully disclose financial conflicts of interests, analysis finds "A substantial proportion of US oncologists involved in clinical trials used to gain marketing authorization for cancer drugs do not fully disclose financial conflicts of interest when the trial is published, research in JAMA Oncology shows.  The analysis, published as a research letter,1 found that a of third of oncologist authors failed to completely disclose payments from the drug company sponsor of the trial when the trial was published."

Leading US cancer researcher failed to disclose industry ties in dozens of articles
"One of America’s most prominent breast cancer doctors failed to disclose pharmaceutical industry ties worth millions of dollars in authoring dozens of articles in major journals, according to a report by the New York Times and ProPublica.  José Baselga, physician-in-chief at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, neglected to mention multiple directorships and consultancy fees when completing conflict of interest disclosure forms for leading publications including the New England Journal of Medicine and the Lancet, the report found.  Baselga also left out his industry payments when writing for Cancer Discovery, the journal of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), even though he was the joint editor-in-chief and president of the association."

Corruption and Profiteering in Medical Insurance and Medicare
Medicare Privatization Scheme Faced Legal Questions About Profiteering
"Diane Archer, founder of Just Care and a health policy expert, described a similar scenario in an email to The Intercept. “The way they make money is by spending as little as possible on patient care, while ensuring as best they can that they have all diagnoses possible for their enrollees in order to maximize government payments. The more diagnoses, the higher the government payments. Government payments are set upfront and unrelated to the cost or number of services people receive.

“And, yes, the incentive is to deny as much care as possible,” she continued, “it’s also to delay as much care as possible and to create administrative and financial barriers that make it hard for enrollees to get care"

 

Why I Left the Network
Extremely well done article about how insurance companies are avoiding coverage of mental health services, despite the ACA's requirement that they cover mental health services the same as they cover physical health services.  They create what are called "ghost networks", meaning that they will list providers who they know are deceased, retired, or not in their network in order to give the appearance that they have adequate coverage for services when in fact they don't.  They also keep reducing the amount that they reimburse providers, make it harder and harder for providers to get reimbursed, and challenge the legitimacy of provider's qualifications and treatments, all in an attempt to get providers to drop out of their network.  When they do drop out, their names are kept in the listings, and the companies find ways to make consumers work hard and take a long time to establish that care isn't available.

Health Insurance Whistleblower: Medicare Advantage Is "Heist" by Private Firms to Defraud the Public

The Reason Health Care Is So Expensive: Insurance Companies
"But the thing that few people talk about, and that no serious policy proposal attempts to fix—the arrangement that accounts for much of the difference between health spending in the U.S. and other places—is the enormous administrative overhead costs that come from lodging health-care reimbursement in the hands of insurance companies that have no incentive to perform their role efficiently as payment intermediaries."

"Because insurers are paid a fixed percentage of the claims they administer, they have no incentive to hold down costs. Worse than that, they have no incentives to do their jobs with even a modicum of competence."

CNN Exclusive: California launches investigation following stunning admission by Aetna medical director "California's insurance commissioner has launched an investigation into Aetna after learning a former medical director for the insurer admitted under oath he never looked at patients' records when deciding whether to approve or deny care."

Inside America’s ‘GoFundMe’ Health Crisis

Koch-backed study finds ‘Medicare for All’ would save U.S. trillions

Stability, Not Crisis: Medical Malpractice Claim Outcomes in Texas, 1988–2002

"Using a comprehensive database of closed claims maintained by the Texas Department of Insurance since 1988, this study provides evidence on a range of issues involving medical malpractice litigation, including claim frequency, payout frequency, payment amounts, defense costs, and jury verdicts. The data present a picture of stability in most respects and moderate change in others. We do not find evidence in claim outcomes of the medical malpractice insurance crisis that produced headlines over the last several years and led to legal reform in Texas and other states. Controlling for population growth, the number of large paid claims (over $25,000 in real 1988 dollars) was roughly constant from 1990–2002. The number of smaller paid claims declined. Controlling for inflation, payout per large paid claim increased over 1988–2002 by an estimated 0.1 percent (insignificant) to 0.5 percent (marginally significant) per year, depending on the data set we use. Jury awards increased by an estimated 2.5 percent (insignificant) to 3.6 percent (marginally significant) per year, depending on the data set, but actual payouts in tried cases showed little or no time trend. Real defense costs per large paid claim rose by 4.2–4.5 percent per year. Real total cost per large paid claim, including defense costs, rose by 0.8–1.2 percent per year."

 

The Economics and Politics of COVID 19 Vaccines and Other Therapeutics

How Politics Corrupted Science: Dr. Vinay Prasad on COVID

For Fraction of Pentagon Budget, World Could Prevent 1.5 Million Covid Deaths

As World Confronts Omicron Variant, Top 8 Pfizer & Moderna Investors Make $10 Billion in a Week

How Bill Gates Impeded Global Access to Covid Vaccines

Bill Gates: The Billionaire Who Puts Vaccine Profiteering Above Human Life 

Bank Blocks Donations Supporting Cuban Effort to Vaccinate World

Researchers develop patent-free Covid vaccine for developing nations

WHO says: “Countries shouldn’t require proof of vaccination as international travel requirement”

“Pandemic, Inc.”: J. David McSwane on Chasing Capitalists & Thieves Who Got Rich While We Got Sick (interview with book author)
"In “Pandemic, Inc.: Chasing the Capitalists and Thieves Who Got Rich While We Got Sick,” ProPublica investigative reporter J. David McSwane tracks pandemic federal relief funds and finds many contracts to acquire critical supplies were wrapped up in unprecedented fraud schemes that left the U.S. government with subpar and unusable equipment. He says an array of contractors were “trying to take advantage of our national emergency,” and calls the book “a blueprint of what not to do” during the next pandemic."

The U.S. Billionaires Profiting the Most from the Pandemic
"(billionaires) in the United States have accumulated an additional $1.7 trillion of net worth since the start of the pandemic two years ago...  The net worth gain of every U.S. billionaire combined over the last two years could finance a majority of the ambitious plan (Build Back Better) without the profiteers becoming any poorer in the process. The immense wealth disparity is also evident when comparing the U.S.' 704 billionaires with the 65 million households making up the bottom half of U.S. society in terms of income. The latter's combined net worth clocks in at around $3.4 trillion, that of the billionaire class adds up to $4.6 trillion." 

Zero Covid And The POWER, INCENTIVES of the Chinese Regime | Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar  
A discussion of whether capital or political power controls public policy in the US and China.
"On December 21st 2021, Delta Airlines CEO Ed Bastian asked the CDC to shorten the COVID isolation policy from 10 days to 5 days.  On December 7 the CDC updated and revised their isolation and quarantine guidelines from 10 to 5 days.  

Dr Fauci (speaking with CNN's Jim Acosta) "with the sheer number of cases we are having, and that we expect to continue with omicron, one of the things we want to be careful of is that we don't want to have so many people out.  I mean obviously if you have symptoms you should stay home, but if you're asymptomatic and you're infected...we want to get these people back to jobs, particularly those with essential jobs that keep our society running smoothly."

AFTER 2 YEARS OF COVID, U.S. BILLIONAIRES ARE $1.7 TRILLION, OR 57%, RICHER
"Two years into the biggest national health crisis in recent history, U.S. billionaires’ wealth continues to soar above the misery: as of March 10, their collective wealth has shot up by $1.7 trillion, or 57%, since the pandemic emergency was proclaimed in mid-March 2020. Their total wealth reached $4.6 trillion, up from $2.95 trillion on March 18, 2020, according to the latest report from Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) based on Forbes data. The number of U.S. billionaires increased by 15%, from 614 to 704. Data can be found in the table below and here for all billionaires"

A Poor People’s Pandemic Report "Mapping the Intersections of Poverty, Race and COVID-19
April 2022"
"In the US, the pandemic was debilitating, resulting in an estimated 1.2 million increase of people living with disabilities, totaling one in four adults living with disabilities in the US. All faced inaccessible and inadequate healthcare resources during the pandemic, as well as higher rates of unemployment, and over-representation in low-wage positions (Roberts et al. 2022; CDC, 2020; Adler et al. 2021; Kinsella, 2022)."

"People over the age of 65 experienced the greatest loss of life, comprising 75% of COVID-19 deaths in the US - or -1 in 100 older Americans died, compared to 1 in 1,400 people under the age of 65 (Bosman et al. 2021). While the greatest number of deaths have been among non-Hispanic white people, the rates of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths have been higher among people of color: American Indian or Alaska Natives are 3.1 times more likely to be hospitalized, Black or African Americans are 2.5 times more likely to be hospitalized and 1.7 times more likely to die, and Hispanic or Latino persons are 1.5 times more likely to get COVID and 2.3 times more likely to be hospitalized (CDC, 2022)." 

'A Poor People's Pandemic': Poorest US Counties Suffered Twice the Covid Deaths of Richest
"A first-of-its-kind examination of the coronavirus pandemic's impact on low-income communities published Monday shows that Covid-19 has been twice as deadly in poor counties as in wealthy ones, a finding seen as a damning indictment of the U.S. government's pandemic response."

Excess mortality during the Coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19)

Calling Me a Hero Only Makes You Feel Better 

Wisconsin sees at least seven cases of COVID-19 as a result of in-person voting amid pandemic

After Two Years of Covid, Report Finds Pandemic Made Far Deadlier by 'Greed'
"While effective vaccines provide hope, their rollout has tipped, from a natural desire to protect citizens, into nationalism, greed, and self-interest," reads Oxfam's report, compiled on behalf of the People's Vaccine Alliance. "Large numbers of people in low-income countries face the virus unprotected and millions of people would still be alive today if they had had access to a vaccine. Big pharmaceutical corporations have been given free rein to prioritize profits ahead of vaccine equality."

"The richest 10 men doubled their fortunes during the pandemic and a new billionaire is being created every 26 hours," the report notes. "Of those new billionaires, 40 of them have made their billions profiting from vaccines, treatments, tests, and [personal protective equipment]."
Here is the OXFAM report
PANDEMIC OF GREED A wake-up call for vaccine equity at a grim milestone

“Davos Man”: How Billionaires Devour the World & Fuel Global Inequality, Prolonging the Pandemic

EU Chief Defends Vaccine Patents as 'Precious' as South Africa Demands Waiver
"We are talking about the lives of millions, hundreds of millions, of people rather than the profitability of the few companies," he continued. "It is not acceptable that Africa is consistently at the back of the queue in relation to access to medicines. While we appreciate the donations, they are never a sustainable way or mechanism to build resilience.  Help to empower us, let us tackle obstacles together." 

Documents Reveal Biden Admin Not Fighting for a Covid Vaccine Patent Waiver, Despite Public Statements

Daniel Barnett's guide to coronavirus vaccine passports - are they legal?

'A Game-Changer': Defying Big Pharma, WHO Expands Vaccine Tech Sharing
"This is a game-changer," Dearden said in a statement. "The pharmaceutical system is being remade from the ground up by lower- and middle-income countries. These countries have seen the damage that reliance on the profit-hungry big pharmaceutical corporations has done."

"While some countries have barely received any Covid-19 vaccines, rich nations are throwing millions of doses in the bin, and the three big corporations producing mRNA vaccines are raking in $1,000 a second in profit," he added. "It's time to end this obscenity."

Model-based estimates of deaths averted and cost per life saved by scaling-up mRNA COVID-19 vaccination in low and lower-middle income countries in the COVID-19 Omicron variant era
"Findings Global scale up of vaccination to provide two doses of mRNA vaccine to everyone in LIC/LMIC would cost $35.5 billion and avert 1.3 million deaths from COVID-19, at a cost of $26,900 per death averted. Scaling up vaccination to provide three doses of mRNA vaccine to everyone in LIC/LMIC would cost $61.2 billion and avert 1.5 million deaths from COVID-19 at a cost of $40,800 per death averted. Lower estimated infection fatality ratios, higher cost-per-dose, and lower vaccine effectiveness or uptake lead to higher cost-per-death averted estimates in the analysis."

FDA asks federal judge for 55 years to complete FOIA request for Pfizer vaccine information
"The Food and Drug Administration is asking a federal court to allow it to take nearly 55 years to release data on Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine to the public. 

PHMPT also made a request for expedited processing of its FOIA submission, arguing there is a "compelling need" for the FDA to speedily release Pfizer vaccine data "because a lack of transparency erodes the confidence the medical and scientific community and the public have in the conclusions reached by the FDA."

"During a time when COVID-19 vaccine mandates are being implemented over the objection of those that have questions about the data and information supporting the safety and efficacy of the Pfizer Vaccine, and individuals with these questions are being expelled from employment, school, transportation, and the military, the public has an urgent and immediate need to have access to this data," PHMPT said in its FOIA request."

"It took the FDA precisely 108 days from when Pfizer started producing the records for licensure (on May 7, 2021) to when the FDA licensed the Pfizer vaccine (on August 23, 2021). Taking the FDA at its word, it conducted an intense, robust, thorough, and complete review and analysis of those documents in order to assure that the Pfizer vaccine was safe and effective for licensure," he wrote."

Lessons We’ve Learned — Covid-19 and the Undocumented Latinx Community
"After years of anti-immigrant rhetoric and policy, the fear and mistrust in this community was understandable, painful, and palpable.

Speaking with patients, we learned that transmission was fueled by poverty and economic necessity. Patients were grateful that Maryland’s stay-at-home orders didn’t apply to their jobs in construction, landscaping, cleaning, and cooking. Ineligible for unemployment benefits and with barely any savings, undocumented immigrants couldn’t afford to stay home, even if their jobs entailed traveling in vans with sick people or working without masks in crowded settings. Many people working under informal arrangements and without government protections continued to work while sick, fearing being fired.

Housing instability was so prevalent that we began routinely asking people whether they lived in a basement.

Another patient, who was using a high-flow nasal cannula and was on the verge of requiring intubation, asked to leave so he could work and send money to his family in Guatemala.

essential workers need occupational protections, higher wages, and access to care. People who take risks to keep society functioning shouldn’t struggle to pay rent or medical bills when they get sick. State and local officials should work with employers and hold them accountable for protecting workers and providing adequate paid medical leave."

The Loaded Language of Autism Treatment

Lately, it seems that when I'm talking with another ASD mom, I often here her say "I love my child, but.." when she is going to either talk about something that she is doing to help that child, or express a frustration about that child.  I have heard many moms of neurotypical kids express all manner of frustration about their children without ever feeling the need to assure the listener that they do, in fact, love that child.  This has been gnawing away at me for awhile.  What is going on here? 

As all of you are aware, I'm sure, the language around autism is highly politically charged.  Putting the words "autism" and "cure" in the same sentence is akin to bringing matter and antimatter together.  This language is also overflowing with baggage from the sordid past of autism perceptions in our culture, many of which center on the mother.  In addition to the backwards ideas that are hiding in this language, it also is a major barrier to positive productive conversations that can help move us forward.  Like most things when it comes to autism, we mothers are the ones who must change this if it is ever going to change.  In order to move forward and adopt healthy language that is conducive to positive discussions about ASD we need to unpack some of the sloaded baggage inherent in the current language so that we can move forward.

Firstly, we love our children.  This should be just as understood for us as for mothers of neurotypical kids.  I believe that the need we so often seem to feel to assert this is a shadow from the Bettelheim years that needs to be abandoned.  I think we need to stop acknowledging that our love for our children was ever questioned in the first place.  When the mother of a child with seizures, or diabetes, or cancer, or cerebral palsy, or pretty much anything else fights for her children and doesn't give up until they get what they need, she is a hero.  It is assumed that she is motivated by love and devotion for her child.  If we fight this way we are written off as crazy, in denial, and a threat to our children, and our fight is seen as evidence that we do NOT love or accept our children.  This needs to end.

Are Vaccines Necessary, Safe, and Effective?

For studies regarding the variability of vaccine response based on genetic and other factors, see this post:    Studies Show That Individual Responses to Vaccination Vary Widely

This post discusses shedding from live vaccines.

This post discusses contamination of vaccines.

EFFECTIVENESS OF VACCINATION AS A PUBLIC HEALTH POLICY

Annual Summary of Vital Statistics: Trends in the Health of Americans During the 20th Century

PEDIATRICS Vol. 106 No. 6 December 1, 2000 pp. 1307 -1317

"Thus vaccination does not account for the impressive declines in mortality seen in the first half of the century"

Ambulatory Visit Rates and Antibiotic Prescribing for Children With Pneumonia, 1994–2007

Pediatrics Published online February 14, 2011 (doi: 10.1542/peds.2010-2008)
"The incidence of pediatric ambulatory CAP (Community Acquired Pneumonia) visits has not changed significantly between 1994 and 2007, despite the introduction of heptavalent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine in 2000."

[Susceptibility to measles and varicella in healthcare workers in a tertiary hospital in Catalonia]
Enferm Infecc Microbiol Clin. 2012 Apr;30(4):184-8
"Healthcare workers born after 1980 were 20 times (95% CI: 11.0 to 37.2) more likely to be susceptible to measles, and 2 times (95% CI: 1.2 to 3.2) more likely to be susceptible to varicella than those those born before 1965...  The susceptibility to measles in healthcare workers in our centre is higher in younger cohorts, with values higher than expected in a community with high vaccination coverage against measles, mumps, rubella vaccine (MMR) in the paediatric population for many years."

Lack of Efficacy of Haemophilus b (HiB) Polysaccharide Vaccine in Minnesota
JAMA 1988;260:1423-1428
"Our results indicate that vaccination with Haemophilus b polysaccharide vaccine had no effect in preventing H influenzaetype b disease in Minnesota children."  

VACCINE SAFETY CONSIDERATIONS
Electronic Support for Public Health–Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (ESP:VAERS)
"Adverse events from drugs and vaccines are common, but underreported. Although 25% of
ambulatory patients experience an adverse drug event, less than 0.3% of all adverse drug events
and 1-13% of serious events are reported to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Likewise, fewer than 1% of vaccine adverse events are reported. Low reporting rates preclude or
slow the identification of “problem” drugs and vaccines that endanger public health. New
surveillance methods for drug and vaccine adverse effects are needed. Barriers to reporting
include a lack of clinician awareness, uncertainty about when and what to report, as well as the
burdens of reporting: reporting is not part of clinicians’ usual workflow, takes time, and is
duplicative. Proactive, spontaneous, automated adverse event reporting imbedded within EHRs
and other information systems has the potential to speed the identification of problems with new
drugs and more careful quantification of the risks of older drugs."

 

When the results of the study were apparent, how did the CDC respond?  Did they take the risks seriously and work to protect the public?  "Unfortunately, there was never an opportunity to perform system performance assessments because the necessary CDC contacts were no longer available and the CDC consultants responsible for receiving data were no longer responsive to our multiple requests to proceed with testing and evaluation."

 

Public should be told that vaccines may have long term adverse effects
BMJ, Jan 16, 1999;318(7177):193
"Research into immunisation has been based on the theory that the benefits of immunisation far outweigh the risks from delayed adverse events and so long term safety studies do not need to be performed. When looking at diabetes—only one potential chronic adverse event—we found that the rise in the prevalence of diabetes may more than offset the expected decline in long term complications of H influenzae meningitis. Thus diabetes induced by vaccine should not be considered a rare potential adverse event. The incidence of many other chronic immunological diseases, including asthma, allergies, and immune mediated cancers, has risen rapidly and may also be linked to immunisation.

We believe that the public should be fully informed that vaccines, though effective in preventing infections, may have long term adverse effects. An educated public will probably increasingly demand proper safety studies before widespread immunisation. We believe that the outcome of this decision will be the development of safer vaccine technology."

Pharmacogenomics in the evaluation of efficacy and adverse events during clinical development of vaccines.
Methods Mol Biol. 2008;448:469-79.
"The understanding of vaccine-induced immune responses in adults and infants is limited. Current vaccination schedules for infants are frequently debated. Especially, the relationship among the timing, the frequency of the dosing, and the generation of an immunological memory are debated. Vaccine antigen-induced cytokine responses to vaccinations given in infancy are of particular interest because little is known about cellular responses in this age, and the information available is based on antibody responses. Pharmacogenomics is ideally suited to study cellular responses related to immune response; in addition, toxicity, inflammation, apoptosis, stress, and oncogenesis can be monitored, since the expression of thousands of genes can be measured in a single experiment."

Pharmacogenomics in the preclinical development of vaccines: evaluation of efficacy and systemic toxicity in the mouse using array technology.
Methods Mol Biol. 2008;448:447-67
"The development of vaccines, conventional protein based as well as nucleic acid based vaccines, and their delivery systems has been largely empirical and ineffective. This is partly due to a lack of methodology, since traditionally only a few markers are studied. By introducing gene expression analysis and bioinformatics into the design of vaccines and their delivery systems, vaccine development can be improved and accelerated considerably. Each vaccine antigen and delivery system combination is characterized by a unique genomic profile, a "fingerprint" that will give information of not only immunological and toxicological responses but also other related cellular responses e.g. cell cycle, apoptosis and carcinogenic effects. The resulting unique genomic fingerprint facilitates the establishment of molecular structure--pharmacological activity relationships and therefore leads to optimization of vaccine development."

Combining Childhood Vaccines at One Visit Is Not Safe

Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons Volume 21 Number 2 Summer 2016
"Although health authorities including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) claim that childhood vaccines are safe and recommend combining multiple vaccines during one visit, a review of data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) shows a dose-dependent association between the number of vaccines administered simultaneously and the likelihood of hospitalization or death for an adverse reaction. Additionally, younger age at the time of the adverse reaction is associated with a higher risk of hospitalization or death."
You can read more about this study here.

Confounding in Studies of Adverse Reactions to Vaccines

Am. J. Epidemiol. (1992) 136 (2):121-135.
"Several social and medical attributes are associated with both avoidance or delay of vaccination and an increased risk of adverse events such as sudden infant death syndrome or childhood encephalopathy. Studies that fail to control adequately for such confounding factors are likely to underestimate the risks of adverse events attributable to vaccination."

Combination Vaccines: Postlicensure Safety Evaluation
Clin Infect Dis. (2001) 33(Supplement 4): S327-S333.
"The well-known limitations associated with prelicensure trials have led many to hope that postlicensure studies can address safety issues. This article reviews measures that have been or should be taken to meet this expectation...Only by investing in vaccine safety infrastructure at a level commensurate with investments in vaccine development can we hope to retain the public's confidence in immunization."

Adverse events following immunization with vaccines containing adjuvants.

Immunol Res. 2013 Jul;56(2-3):299-303
"A traditional infectious disease vaccine is a preparation of live attenuated, inactivated or killed pathogen that stimulates immunity. Vaccine immunologic adjuvants are compounds incorporated into vaccines to enhance immunogenicity. Adjuvants have recently been implicated in the new syndrome named ASIA autoimmune/inflammatory syndrome induced by adjuvants. The objective describes the frequencies of post-vaccination clinical syndrome induced by adjuvants. We performed a cross-sectional study; adverse event following immunization was defined as any untoward medical occurrence that follows immunization 54 days prior to the event. Data on vaccinations and other risk factors were obtained from daily epidemiologic surveillance. Descriptive statistics were done using means and standard deviation, and odds ratio adjusted for potential confounding variables was calculated with SPSS 17 software. Forty-three out of 120 patients with moderate or severe manifestations following immunization were hospitalized from 2008 to 2011. All patients fulfilled at least 2 major and 1 minor criteria suggested by Shoenfeld and Agmon-Levin for ASIA diagnosis. The most frequent clinical findings were pyrexia 68%, arthralgias 47%, cutaneous disorders 33%, muscle weakness 16% and myalgias 14%. Three patients had diagnosis of Guillain-Barre syndrome, one patient had Adult-Still's disease 3 days after vaccination. A total of 76% of the events occurred in the first 3 days post-vaccination. Two patients with previous autoimmune disease showed severe adverse reactions with the reactivation of their illness. Minor local reactions were present in 49% of patients. Vaccines containing adjuvants may be associated with an increased risk of autoimmune/inflammatory adverse events following immunization."

Relative trends in hospitalizations and mortality among infants by the number of vaccine doses and age, based on the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), 1990–2010
Hum Exp Toxicol October 2012 vol. 31 no. 10 1012-1021

"Our findings show a positive correlation between the number of vaccine doses administered and the percentage of hospitalizations and deaths. Since vaccines are given to millions of infants annually, it is imperative that health authorities have scientific data from synergistic toxicity studies on all combinations of vaccines that infants might receive. Finding ways to increase vaccine safety should be the highest priority."

Association between Birth Order and Emergency Room Visits and Acute Hospital Admissions following Pediatric Vaccination: A Self-Controlled Study
PLoS ONE 8(12): e81070
"Birth order is associated with increased incidence of ER visits and hospitalizations following vaccination in infancy. 1st-born children had significantly higher relative incidence of events compared to later-born children."

Adverse Events Following 12 and 18 Month Vaccinations: A Population-Based, Self-Controlled Case Series Analysis
"Live vaccines have distinct safety profiles, potentially causing systemic reactions one to 2 weeks after administration. In the province of Ontario, Canada, live MMR vaccine is currently recommended at age 12 months and 18 months...  The primary reason for increased events was statistically significant elevations in emergency room visits following all vaccinations. There were non-significant increases in hospital admissions. There were an additional 20 febrile seizures for every 100,000 vaccinated at 12 months."

Common variants associated with general and MMR vaccine–related febrile seizures
Nature Genetics 46, 1274–1282 (2014)
"Febrile seizures represent a serious adverse event following measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccination. We conducted a series of genome-wide association scans comparing children with MMR-related febrile seizures, children with febrile seizures unrelated to vaccination and controls with no history of febrile seizures. Two loci were distinctly associated with MMR-related febrile seizures, harboring the interferon-stimulated gene IFI44L (rs273259: P = 5.9 × 10−12 versus controls, P = 1.2 × 10−9 versus MMR-unrelated febrile seizures) and the measles virus receptor CD46 (rs1318653: P = 9.6 × 10−11 versus controls, P = 1.6 × 10−9 versus MMR-unrelated febrile seizures)."

Aluminum Vaccine Adjuvants- Are They Safe? Current Medicinal Chemistry, vol.18: 17 pp 2630-2637
"Experimental research, however, clearly shows that aluminum adjuvants have a potential to induce serious immunological disorders in humans. In particular, aluminum in adjuvant form carries a risk for autoimmunity, long-term brain inflammation and associated neurological complications and may thus have profound and widespread adverse health consequences. In our opinion, the possibility that vaccine benefits may have been overrated and the risk of potential adverse effects underestimated, has not been rigorously evaluated in the medical and scientific community."

Autoimmune hazards of hepatitis B vaccine
Autoimmun Rev. 2005 Feb;4(2):96-100
"According to Hippocratic tradition, the safety level of a preventive medicine must be very high, as it is aimed at protecting people against diseases that they may not contract. This paper points out that information on the safety of hepatitis B vaccine (HBV) is biased as compared to classical requirements of evidence-based medicine (EBM), as exemplified by a documented selectivity in the presentation or even publication of available clinical or epidemiological data. Then, a review is made of data suggesting that HBV is remarkable by the frequency, the severity and the variety of its complications, some of them probably related to a mechanism of molecular mimicry leading to demyelinating diseases, and the others reproducing the spectrum of non-hepatic manifestations of natural hepatitis B. To be explained, this unusual spectrum of toxicity requires additional investigations based upon complete release of available data."

Hepatitis B vaccine induces apoptotic death in Hepa1-6 cells.
Apoptosis. 2012 May;17(5):516-27
"Vaccines can have adverse side-effects, and these are predominantly associated with the inclusion of chemical additives such as aluminum hydroxide adjuvant. The objective of this study was to establish an in vitro model system amenable to mechanistic investigations of cytotoxicity induced by hepatitis B vaccine, and to investigate the mechanisms of vaccine-induced cell death. The mouse liver hepatoma cell line Hepa1-6 was treated with two doses of adjuvanted (aluminium hydroxide) hepatitis B vaccine... Hepatitis B vaccine exposure increased cell apoptosis as detected by flow cytometry and TUNEL assay. Vaccine exposure was accompanied by significant increases in the levels of activated caspase 3, a key effector caspase in the apoptosis cascade. We conclude that exposure of Hepa1-6 cells to a low dose of adjuvanted hepatitis B vaccine leads to loss of mitochondrial integrity, apoptosis induction, and cell death, apoptosis effect was observed also in C2C12 mouse myoblast cell line after treated with low dose of vaccine (0.3, 0.1, 0.05 μg/ml). In addition In vivo apoptotic effect of hepatitis B vaccine was observed in mouse liver."

Genetic Profile of an Oka Varicella Vaccine Virus Variant Isolated from an Infant with Zoster
J Clin Microbiol. 2004 Dec; 42(12): 5604–5608.
"Conceivably, genomic mutations or reversions to wild type, particularly those that confer amino acid substitutions, could affect virulence and restore wild-type pathogenicity. Furthermore, VZV strains with unique pathogenic qualities could emerge. The comparison of DNA sequences between V-Oka and P-Oka revealed 42 base substitutions associated with 20 amino acid changes. Specific amino acid substitutions in ORF 62 have been associated with enhanced virus growth and spread in cell culture, and substrains purified from the vaccine mixture display variable properties in cell culture"

Gardasil Vaccination: Evaluating the Risks Versus Benefits
Lucija Tomljenovic, PhD,Neural Dynamics Research Group, Dept. of Ophthalmology,
University of British Columbia, 828 W. 10th Ave, Vancouver, BC. Jan 2011

"Cervical cancer is a rare disease in developed countries which invalidates the recommendations for universal immunization with any HPV vaccine. The incidence of cervical cancer has dropped substantially since implementation of regular Pap screening procedures. Currently, in the US, the death rate from cervical cancer(2.4/100,000 women)is lower than the rate of reported serious adverse events, including death,from Gardasil (3.34/100,000 doses distributed)"

Early diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis vaccination associated with higher female mortality and no difference in male mortality in a cohort of low birthweight children: an observational study within a randomised trial

Arch Dis Child doi:10.1136/archdischild-2011-300646
"Surprisingly, even though the children with the best nutritional status were vaccinated early, early DTP vaccination was associated with increased mortality for girls."

Elderly Subjects Have a Delayed Antibody Response and Prolonged Viraemia following Yellow Fever Vaccination: A Prospective Controlled Cohort Study
PLoS ONE 6(12): e27753
"We found that elderly subjects had a delayed antibody response and higher viraemia levels after yellow fever primovaccination. We postulate that with older age, a weaker immune response to yellow fever vaccine allows the attenuated virus to cause higher viraemia levels which may increase the risk of developing SAEs. This may be one piece in the puzzle of the pathophysiology of YEL-AVD."

VACCINE FAILURE
Chickenpox Outbreak in a Highly Vaccinated School Population
PEDIATRICS Vol. 113 No. 3 March 1, 2004 pp. 455 -459
"211 (97%) had been vaccinated before the outbreak. Twenty-one cases occurred in 9 of 16 classrooms. In these 9 classrooms, 18 of 152 (12%) vaccinated students developed chickenpox, compared with 3 of 7 (43%) unvaccinated students. Vaccine effectiveness was 72% (95% confidence interval: 3%–87%). Students vaccinated >5 years before the outbreak were 6.7 times (95% confidence interval: 2.2–22.9) as likely to develop breakthrough disease as those vaccinated ≤5 years before the outbreak (15 of 65 [23%] vs 3 of 87 [3%])."

The genetic basis for measles vaccine failure.
Acta Paediatr Suppl. 2004 May;93(445):43-6; discussion 46-7.
"The US measles epidemics of 1989-1991 included a series of outbreaks resulting from vaccine failure."

The association of class I HLA alleles and antibody levels after a single dose of measles vaccine. Hum Immunol. 2003 Jan;64(1):103-9.

"Despite the success of the current measles vaccine in controlling disease in industrialized countries, the importance of vaccine failure has become increasingly apparent."

The influence of the HLA-DRB1*13 allele on measles vaccine response.
J Investig Med. 1996 Jun;44(5):261-3.
"Measles remains a public health threat in the United States with over 50,000 cases being reported from 1989 through 1991 with continued smaller outbreaks. Measles vaccine failure is in part to blame for these large-scale outbreaks. "

The genetic basis for interindividual immune response variation to measles vaccine: new understanding and new vaccine approaches.

Expert Rev Vaccines. 2013 Jan;12(1):57-70.

"The live-attenuated measles vaccine is effective, but measles outbreaks still occur in vaccinated populations."

FRAUD IN VACCINE SAFETY STUDIES

Commentary--Controversies surrounding mercury in vaccines: autism denial as impediment to universal immunisation.

Indian J Med Ethics. 2014 Oct-Dec;11(4):218-22.
"In 2004, the US Center for Disease Control (CDC) published a paper showing that there is no link between the age at which a child is vaccinated with MMR and the vaccinated children's risk of a subsequent diagnosis of autism. One of the authors, William Thompson, has now revealed that statistically significant information was deliberately omitted from the paper. Thompson first told Dr S Hooker, a researcher on autism, about the manipulation of the data. Hooker analysed the raw data from the CDC study afresh. He confirmed that the risk of autism among African American children vaccinated before the age of 2 years was 340% that of those vaccinated later."

Methodological Issues and Evidence of Malfeasance in Research Purporting to Show Thimerosal in Vaccines Is Safe
BioMed Research International Volume 2014 (2014), Article ID 247218, 8 pages

"There are over 165 studies that have focused on Thimerosal, an organic-mercury (Hg) based compound, used as a preservative in many childhood vaccines, and found it to be harmful. Of these, 16 were conducted to specifically examine the effects of Thimerosal on human infants or children with reported outcomes of death; acrodynia; poisoning; allergic reaction; malformations; auto-immune reaction; Well’s syndrome; developmental delay; and neuro- developmental disorders, including tics, speech delay, language delay, attention deficit disorder, and autism. In contrast, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that Thimerosal is safe and there is “no relationship between [T]himerosal[-]containing vaccines and autism rates in children.” This is puzzling because, in a study conducted directly by CDC epidemiologists, a 7.6-fold increased risk of autism from exposure to Thimerosal during infancy was found. The CDC’s current stance that Thimerosal is safe and that there is no relationship between Thimerosal and autism is based on six specific published epidemiological studies coauthored and sponsored by the CDC. The purpose of this review is to examine these six publications and analyze possible reasons why their published outcomes are so different from the results of investigations by multiple independent research groups over the past 75+ years."

For more discussion of this study, see this article.

VACCINE POLICY CAN HAVE UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

Polio programme: let us declare victory and move on

Indian J Med Ethics. 2012 Apr-Jun;9(2):114-7.
"It was hoped that following polio eradication, immunisation could be stopped. However the synthesis of polio virus in 2002, made eradication impossible. It is argued that getting poor countries to expend their scarce resources on an impossible dream over the last 10 years was unethical. Furthermore, while India has been polio-free for a year, there has been a huge increase in non-polio acute flaccid paralysis (NPAFP). In 2011, there were an extra 47,500 new cases of NPAFP. Clinically indistinguishable from polio paralysis but twice as deadly, the incidence of NPAFP was directly proportional to doses of oral polio received. Though this data was collected within the polio surveillance system, it was not investigated. The principle of primum-non-nocere was violated. The authors suggest that the huge bill of US$ 8 billion spent on the programme, is a small sum to pay if the world learns to be wary of such vertical programmes in the future."

Hospitalizations After a Decade of Pneumococcal Vaccination

N Engl J Med 2013; 369:1662-1663, correspondence
This is a series of letters to the editor regarding a study published in July of 2013, which presented evidence about the long term effectiveness of the 7-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine, in which concerns are raised about potentially dangerous unintended consequences of this vaccine.  "Griffin and colleagues (July 11 issue) report a reduction in the incidence of pneumonia after the introduction of the 7-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV7). The authors address the concern regarding serotype replacement, whereby a vaccine-mediated reduction in the disease burden of Streptococcus pneumoniae PCV7 serotypes is offset by a proportional increase in nonvaccine serotypes. However, species replacement by other pathogens, particularly Staphylococcus aureus, is equally troubling."  A number of letters discuss this possibility and the evidence that it has occurred. 

Review of the United States universal varicella vaccination program: Herpes zoster incidence rates, cost-effectiveness, and vaccine efficacy based primarily on the Antelope Valley Varicella Active Surveillance Project data.

Vaccine. 2013 Mar 25;31(13):1680-94
"In the prelicensure era, 95% of adults experienced natural chickenpox (usually as children)-these cases were usually benign and resulted in long-term immunity. Varicella vaccination is less effective than the natural immunity that existed in prevaccine communities. Universal varicella vaccination has not proven to be cost-effective as increased HZ morbidity has disproportionately offset cost savings associated with reductions in varicella disease. Universal varicella vaccination has failed to provide long-term protection from VZV disease."

Infection with hepatitis B virus carrying novel pre-S/S gene mutations in female siblings vaccinated at birth: two case reports

Journal of Medical Case Reports 2010, 4:190
"Despite the success of mass vaccination, breakthrough of HBV infection was reported in vaccinees, resulting in acute or chronic hepatitis. The majority of HBV infections developed after immunization were caused by wild type viruses. However, up to 20 to 30 percent of breakthrough infections were proved to be caused by surface gene mutants, especially those with mutations located at the "a" determinant "

High incidence of treatment-induced and vaccine-escape hepatitis B virus mutants among human immunodeficiency virus/hepatitis B-infected patients

Hepatology. 2013 Sep;58(3):912-22
"Vaccine escape mutants selected by NA exposure were frequent and steadily increasing during follow-up. Although the high antiviral potency of TDF can mitigate incident mutations, other antiviral options are limited in this respect. The public health implications of their transmission need to be addressed."

INFLUENZA

Effectiveness of trivalent inactivated influenza vaccine in influenza-related hospitalization in children: a case controlled study
Allergy Asthma Proc 2012 Mar-April;33(2):e23-7
"TIV did not provide any protection against hospitalization in pediatric subjects, especially children with asthma. On the contrary, we found a threefold increased risk of hospitalization in subjects who did get the TIV vaccine. This may be a reflection not only of vaccine effectiveness but also the population of children who are more likely to get the vaccine."

Increased risk of non-influenza respiratory virus infections associated with receipt of inactivated influenza vaccine

Clin Infect Dis. (2012)

"We randomized 115 children to trivalent inactivated influenza vaccine (TIV) or placebo. Over the following 9 months, TIV recipients had increased risk of virologically-confirmed non-influenza infections (relative risk: 4.40; 95% confidence interval: 1.31-14.8). Being protected against influenza, TIV recipients may lack temporary non-specific immunity that protected against other respiratory viruses."  It is worth noting that the study found that "There was no statistically significant difference in the risk of confirmed seasonal influenza infection between recipients of TIV or placebo" and suggests that although there was no difference in influenza illness between the experimental and control groups, the experimental group did form antibodies, so that is considered "serological evidence".  So "success" of a vaccine is not based on whether it prevents the disease itself.

Live Attenuated Influenza Vaccine Enhances Colonization of Streptococcus pneumoniae and Staphylococcus aureus in Mice

18 February 2014 mBio vol. 5no. 1 e01040-13
"Community interactions at mucosal surfaces between viruses, like influenza virus, and respiratory bacterial pathogens are important contributors toward pathogenesis of bacterial disease. What has not been considered is the natural extension of these interactions to live attenuated immunizations, and in particular, live attenuated influenza vaccines (LAIVs). Using a mouse-adapted LAIV against influenza A (H3N2) virus carrying the same mutations as the human FluMist vaccine, we find that LAIV vaccination reverses normal bacterial clearance from the nasopharynx and significantly increases bacterial carriage densities of the clinically important bacterial pathogens Streptococcus pneumoniae (serotypes 19F and 7F) and Staphylococcus aureus (strains Newman and Wright) within the upper respiratory tract of mice. Our findings are, to the best of our knowledge, the first to demonstrate that vaccination with a live attenuated viral vaccine can directly modulate colonizing dynamics of important and unrelated human bacterial pathogens, and does so in a manner highly analogous to that seen following wild-type virus infection."

Study Challenges Notion of Pandemic Flu

An MIT researcher finds that "pandemic" flu not more deadly than the regular flu.

Influenza: marketing vaccine by marketing disease
BMJ 2013;346:f3037
"Closer examination of influenza vaccine policies shows that although proponents employ the rhetoric of science, the studies underlying the policy are often of low quality, and do not substantiate officials’ claims. The vaccine might be less beneficial and less safe than has been claimed, and the threat of influenza appears overstated."

Annual Childhood Flu Vaccines May Interfere with Development of Crossresistance
Journal of Virology, 2011; 85(22): 11995
"Vaccinating children annually against influenza virus interferes with their development of cross-reactive killer T cells to flu viruses generally, according to a new study. The research points up potentially conflicting policy outcomes. Annual flu vaccines are effective against seasonal flu, but could leave people more vulnerable to novel pandemics."

Effect of influenza vaccine on markers of inflammation and lipid profile.
J Lab Clin Med. 2005 Jun;145(6):323-7.
"Our findings show that the influenza vaccination causes transient changes in select markers of inflammation and lipids. Consequently, clinical and epidemiologic interpretation of the biomarkers affected should take into account the possible effects of influenza vaccination."

Altered Response to A(H1N1)pnd09 Vaccination in Pregnant Women: A Single Blinded Randomized Controlled Trial

PLoS ONE 8(4): e56700

"Our study suggests the immune response to the 7.5 µg MF59-adjuvanted Focetria®H1N1pnd09 vaccine in pregnant women may be diminished compared with non-pregnant women."

Ontology-Based Combinatorial Comparative Analysis of Adverse Events Associated with Killed and Live Influenza Vaccines
PLoS ONE 7(11): e49941.
"Vaccine adverse events (VAEs) are adverse bodily changes occurring after vaccination. Understanding the adverse event (AE) profiles is a crucial step to identify serious AEs. Two different types of seasonal influenza vaccines have been used on the market: trivalent (killed) inactivated influenza vaccine (TIV) and trivalent live attenuated influenza vaccine (LAIV)... There were evidences of two severe adverse events (Guillain-Barre Syndrome and paralysis) present in TIV. Although these severe adverse events were at low incidence rate, they were found to be more significantly enriched in TIV-vaccinated patients than LAIV-vaccinated patients. Therefore, our novel combinatorial bioinformatics analysis discovered that LAIV had lower chance of inducing these two severe adverse events than TIV. In addition, our meta-analysis found that all previously reported positive correlation between GBS and influenza vaccine immunization were based on trivalent influenza vaccines instead of monovalent influenza vaccines."

PERTUSSIS
Bordetella pertussis Strains with Increased Toxin Production Associated with Pertussis Resurgence
Emerging Infectious Diseases Volume 15, Number 8—August 2009

"We present evidence that in the Netherlands the dramatic increase in pertussis is temporally associated with the emergence of Bordetella pertussis strains carrying a novel allele for the pertussis toxin promoter, which confers increased pertussis toxin (Ptx) production. Epidemiologic data suggest that these strains are more virulent in humans. We discuss changes in the ecology of B. pertussis that may have driven this adaptation. Our results underline the importance of Ptx in transmission, suggest that vaccination may select for increased virulence, and indicate ways to control pertussis more effectively."

Pertussis Infection in Fully Vaccinated Children In Day-Care Centers, Israel
Emerging Infectious Diseases, vol. 6 no. 5, October 2000
"We tested 46 fully vaccinated children in two day-care centers in Israel who were exposed to a fatal case of pertussis infection. Only two of five children who tested positive for Bordetella pertussis met the World Health Organization's case definition for pertussis. Vaccinated children may be asymptomatic reservoirs for infection."

Vaccination Against Whooping Cough- Efficacy vs Risks
(this is an older study, published in The Lancet in 1977, which showed little if any benefit from Pertussis vaccine and significant risks "The claim by official bodies that the risks of whooping-cough exceed those of vaccination is questionable")

Acellular pertussis vaccines protect against disease but fail to prevent infection and transmission in a nonhuman primate model
Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 2014 Jan 14;111(2):787-92
"The observation that aP, which induces an immune response mismatched to that induced by natural infection, fails to prevent colonization or transmission provides a plausible explanation for the resurgence of pertussis and suggests that optimal control of pertussis will require the development of improved vaccines."

Discussion of this study in Scientific American)
Effectiveness for Pertussis Vaccines For Adolescents and Adults: case control study
BMJ 2013;347:f4249
"Tdap vaccination was moderately effective at preventing PCR confirmed pertussis among adolescents and adults"

Unexpectedly Limited Durability of Immunity Following Acellular Pertussis Vaccination in Pre-Adolescents in a North American Outbreak
Clin Infect Dis. (2012) doi: 10.1093/cid/cis287
"This first detailed analysis of a recent North American pertussis outbreak found widespread disease among fully vaccinated older children. Starting approximately three years after prior vaccine dose, attack rates markedly increased, suggesting inadequate protection or durability from the acellular vaccine."

New Emerging Clones of Bordetella Pertussis Carrying prn2 and ptxP3 Alleles Implicated in Australian Pertussis Epidemic in 2008-2010
J Infect Dis. (2012) 
(This is evidence that vaccines contribute to resistant strains of pathogens the same way that antibiotics do).
"The data suggest increasing selection among the B. pertussis population in Australia in favor of strains carrying prn2 and ptxP3 under the pressure of acellular vaccine–induced immunity."

Decrease of Hospital Admissions for Febrile Seizures and Reports of Hypotonic-Hyporesponsive Episodes Presenting to Hospital Emergency Departments Since Switching to Acellular Pertussis Vaccine in Canada: a report from IMPACT
PEDIATRICS Vol. 112 No. 5 November 1, 2003 pp. e348 
"The risks of febrile seizures and HHEs after pertussis-containing vaccine declined significantly with the introduction of acellular pertussis vaccine in Canada. Active surveillance systems are important for detecting trends in uncommon adverse events after routine immunizations."

Imperfect vaccine-induced immunity and whooping cough transmission to infants
Vacccine 2010 Dec;29(1):11-16
"Whooping cough, caused by B. pertussis and B. parapertussis, has increased in incidence throughout much of the developed world since the 1980s despite high vaccine coverage... In addition, the data indicate that the B. pertussis vaccine is not protective against disease induced by B. parapertussis."

Acellular pertussis vaccination facilitates Bordetella parapertussis infection in a rodent model of Bordetellosis
Prco Biol Sci 2010 Jul 7;277(1690):2017-25
"Despite over 50 years of population-wide vaccination, whooping cough incidence is on the rise. Although Bordetella pertussis is considered the main causative agent of whooping cough in humans, Bordetella parapertussis infections are not uncommon. The widely used acellular whooping cough vaccines (aP) are comprised solely of B. pertussis antigens that hold little or no efficacy against B. parapertussis... We show that aP vaccination helped clear B. pertussis but resulted in an approximately 40-fold increase in B. parapertussis lung colony-forming units (CFUs)... Further, we show that aP vaccination impedes host immunity against B. parapertussis-measured as reduced lung inflammatory and neutrophil responses. Thus, we conclude that aP vaccination interferes with the optimal clearance of B. parapertussis and enhances the performance of this pathogen. Our data raise the possibility that widespread aP vaccination can create hosts more susceptible to B. parapertussis infection."
Discussion of these findings from the Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics

Neurological Complications of Pertussis Immunization
Br Med J. Jul 5, 1958; 2(5087): 24–27

POLIO
Mechanism of injury-provoked poliomyelitis.
J Virol. 1998 Jun;72(6):5056-60.
"Skeletal muscle injury is known to predispose its sufferers to neurological complications of concurrent poliovirus infections. This phenomenon, labeled "provocation poliomyelitis," continues to cause numerous cases of childhood paralysis due to the administration of unnecessary injections to children in areas where poliovirus is endemic. Recently, it has been reported that intramuscular injections may also increase the likelihood of vaccine-associated paralytic poliomyelitis in recipients of live attenuated poliovirus vaccines. We have studied this important risk factor for paralytic polio in an animal system for poliomyelitis and have determined the pathogenic mechanism linking intramuscular injections and provocation poliomyelitis. Skeletal muscle injury induces retrograde axonal transport of poliovirus and thereby facilitates viral invasion of the central nervous system and the progression of spinal cord damage. The pathogenic mechanism of provocation poliomyelitis may differ from that of polio acquired in the absence of predisposing factors."

SMALLPOX
Genetic Basis for Adverse Events Following Smallpox Vaccination
J Infect Dis. 2008 July 1; 198(1): 16–22.

"Genetic polymorphisms in an enzyme previously associated with adverse reactions to a variety of pharmacologic agents (MTHFR) and an immunological transcription factor (IRF1) were associated with AEs after smallpox vaccination in two independent study samples. These findings highlight common genetic variants with promising clinical significance that merit further investigation."

An emergent poxvirus from humans and cattle in Rio de Janeiro State: Cantagalo virus may derive from Brazilian smallpox vaccine
Virology. 2000 Nov 25;277(2):439-49.
"The biological properties of poxvirus isolates from skin lesions on dairy cows and milkers during recent "The biological properties of poxvirus isolates from skin lesions on dairy cows and milkers during recent exanthem episodes in Cantagalo County, Rio de Janeiro State, Brazil, were more like vaccinia virus (VV) than cowpox virus. PCR amplification of the hemagglutinin (HA) gene substantiated the isolate classification as an Old World orthopoxvirus, and alignment of the HA sequences with those of other orthopoxviruses indicated that all the isolates represented a single strain of VV, which we have designated Cantagalo virus (CTGV). HA sequences of the Brazilian smallpox vaccine strain (VV-IOC), used over 20 years ago, and CTGV showed 98.2% identity; phylogeny inference of CTGV, VV-IOC, and 12 VV strains placed VV-IOC and CTGV together in a distinct clade. Viral DNA restriction patterns and protein profiles showed a few differences between VV-IOC and CTGV. Together, the data suggested that CTGV may have derived from VV-IOC by persisting in an indigenous animal(s), accumulating polymorphisms, and now emerging in cattle and milkers as CTGV. CTGV may represent the first case of long-term persistence of vaccinia in the New World."

Smallpox and smallpox vaccination: neurological implications
Neurology. 2003 Apr 22;60(8):1241-5.
"Cutaneous complications of vaccination occur in immunosuppressed subjects and in those with atopic dermatitis. Among the most serious complications is postvaccinal encephalomyelitis (PVEM). A related condition, postvaccinial encephalopathy (PVE), may be seen in children less than two years of age. There are no markers to predict who will develop PVEM. In the past, mortality was high, ranging from 10 to 50%. The neuropathology of PVEM suggested an immune-mediated attack on the CNS, but the target of the immune response is unknown. Comprehensive programs are needed for surveillance and confirming case definitions for neurologic complications. Multi-institutional controlled trials of antiviral and immune modulating therapy of PVEM should be considered. Neurologists should be actively involved in the planning process for vaccination programs and in the treatment of neurologic complications."

Frequency of Adverse Events after Vaccination with Different Vaccinia Strains
PLoS Med 3(10): e429
"Previous analyses of smallpox vaccination policies, which rely on the commonly assumed value of one death per million vaccinations, may give serious underestimates of the number of deaths resulting from vaccination. Moreover, because there are large, strain-dependent differences in the frequency of adverse events due to smallpox vaccination, it is difficult to extrapolate from predictions for the NYCBH-derived vaccines (stockpiled in countries such as the US) to predictions for the Lister-derived vaccines (stockpiled in countries such as Germany). In planning for an effective response to a possible smallpox outbreak, public-health decision makers should reconsider their strategies of when to opt for ring vaccination and when to opt for mass vaccination."