AAP Recommends Hepatitis B Vaccine for All Newborns

The annual "Recommended Childhood Immunization Schedule" of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) is issued in January of each year.

The newly released 2002 immunization schedule encourages the routine use of hepatitis B vaccine before being discharged from the hospital allegedly to:

Safeguard against maternal hepatitis B testing errors and test reporting failures
Protect neonates discharged to households in which hepatitis B chronic carriers other than the mother may reside
Enhance the completion of the childhood immunization series

Merck Pharmaceuticals is the manufacturer of the hepatitis B vaccine being recommended universally for all newborns and makes $1 billion a year from this vaccine alone. The Hepatitis B Coalition, an offshoot of the Immunization Action Coalition (IAC), is the main group pushing this through. IAC funding initially came from a $750,000 grant from the CDC and is supported by the World Health Organization, the World Bank, the Rockefeller Foundation with ongoing funding from Smith-Kline, Merck, Aventis and Johnson & Johnson.

The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) was developed by the government to report vaccine reactions. Many experts believe that only 10 percent of adverse reactions are reported since reporting is not mandated by law.

Considering that only 10 percent of adverse reactions are reported, there were still nearly 25,000 VAERS hepatitis B reports from July 1990 to October 31, 1998, showing 439 deaths and 9,673 serious reactions involving emergency room visits, hospitalization, or permanent disability.

In 1999, the federal government requested the drug companies to remove thimerosal, a mercury derivative, from the hepatitis B vaccine and they still have only partially complied. The single dose hepatitis B vials have replaced thimerosal with aluminum phosphate, another potent neurotoxin that has been linked to Alzheimer’s. The multi-dose hepatitis B vaccine vials still contain thimerosal.

The presence of brain edema in healthy infants who die very soon after receiving hepatitis B vaccine is profoundly disturbing, especially in view of the frequency of neurological symptoms in the VAERS. Furthermore, many children who receive this vaccine at birth have subsequently developed autism. Autism has reached epidemic proportions in this country ever since this vaccine has been administered at birth.

To date there have been no studies proving that this vaccine is safe for newborns.

A manufacturer's representative was asked in a 1997 Illinois Board of Health hearing to show evidence that the hepatitis B vaccine is safe for a 1-day old infant. The representative stated: "We have none. Our studies were done on 5- and 10-year-olds."
--The Congressional Quarterly, August 25, 2000, pg. 647

Vaccine derived immunity is thought to be short lived. Between 30-50 percent of vaccinated individuals lose their antibodies within 7 years.

Up to 60 percent of persons who initially respond will lose detectable antibodies within 12 years. This means that administering hepatitis B vaccine at birth will provide little to no protection to the real risks of acquiring hepatitis B: promiscuous sexual behavior and IV drug abuse.

Furthermore, antibody count does not necessarily mean that you have acquired immunity to a particular pathogen. There are many cases of people acquiring the very disease they were supposed to be protected from despite high antibody count.

How Serious Is a Hepatitis B Infection?

Approximately 50 percent of patients who contract hepatitis B develop no symptoms after exposure. However, the exposure ensures that they will have life-time immunity. An additional 30 percent develop only flu-like symptoms, and again, this group will acquire life-time immunity. The remaining 20 percent exposed to hepatitis B will develop the symptoms of the disease. 95 percent of this 20 percent will fully recover, with life-time immunity. Therefore, less than 5 percent of people who contract Hepatitis B will become chronic carriers of the infection.

The numbers get even smaller: of that 5 percent, nearly 75 percent (or 3.75 percent of the total exposed) will live with an asymptomatic infection and only 25 percent, (or only 1.25 percent of the total number of people exposed) will develop chronic liver disease or liver cancer, 10-30 years after the acute infection. (Hyams, K.C. (1995) Risks of chronicity following acute hepatitis B virus infection: A review. Clin. Infect. Dis. 20, 992-1000.)

Think of that in terms of probability: The possibility of contracting the disease is exceedingly difficult for children and only 1.25 percent of those that are exposed will actually develop the most serious complication.

This type of "protecting the needle in the haystack" medicine is absurd at best, dangerous at worst.

How Many Children Are Hurt or Helped By Hepatitis B Vaccine?

Hepatitis B is a rare, mainly blood-transmitted disease. In 1996 only 54 cases of the disease were reported to the CDC in the 0-1 age group. There were 3.9 million births that year, so the observed incidence of hepatitis B in the 0-1 age group was just 0.001%. In the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), there were 1,080 total reports of adverse reactions from hepatitis B vaccine in 1996 in the 0-1 age group, with 47 deaths reported.

Let us put this in simpler terms. For every child with hepatitis B there were 20 that were reported to have severe complications from the vaccine. Let us also remember that only 10 percent of adverse reactions are reported to VAERS, so this means:

Traditional medicine is harming 200 children to allegedly protect one from hepatitis B.

In most other industries, the fraud presented here would lead to criminal charges.

What You Can Do

Tell every pregnant woman you know about this issue. They need to know the facts BEFORE they are in the hospital and still have time to make a truly informed decision.

If they are still convinced their child needs hepatitis B vaccine, encourage them to delay the vaccine until they are at a possible risk, like late adolescence.

I am not asking much here; only some compassion for the helpless. If you have ever seen the agony of families who are struggling with caring for brain injured children, you will understand the seriousness of this new “recommendation”.

Drug deaths pale in comparison to the devastation in lost lives that will result from the implementation of this hepatitis B recommendation.

You can play a large role here. Most of all us did not have a chance to make a difference in the 9/11 tragedy, but nearly everyone of us can help protect the precious brain cells of a newborn.

Don't Delay. Contact every pregnant woman you know immediately. Save a life.