FluMist Nasal Spray Vaccine Doesn’t Work Says CDC Advisory Committee
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) on June 22, 2016 recommended against using the live nasal spray version of the influenza vaccine known as FluMist during the 2016-2017 influenza season. After reviewing data for 2013-2016, the committee found that the “FluMist Quadrivalent” live attenuated influenza vaccine (LAIV), produced by AstraZeneca plc subsidiary MedImmune, LLC of Gaithersburg, MD, was only three percent effective…
Gardasil-Injured Teen in Ireland Gets No Help from Country’s Public Health Service
The newspaper Irish Mirror last month reported the case of 16-year old Rebecca Hollidge of Carrick-on-Shannon in Leitrim County, Ireland, who suffered severe side effects after receiving all three doses of the Gardasil human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine during 2013-2014.1 The vaccine is produced by Merck and Co. of Kenilworth, NJ. The newspaper Irish Mirror last month…
Chickenpox Vaccine May Increase Shingles Risk
Before the licensing of the live varicella zoster (chickenpox) virus vaccine in 1995 and subsequent mandating of the vaccine for all children in the U.S., chickenpox itself was considered one of the milder “rites of passage” for children and the vast majority of children experienced the common childhood disease before age ten. Most people have heard about how parents commonly…
A Dozen Boys in England Collapse After Receiving Meningococcal ACWY Vaccine
Public health officials in the United Kingdom launched a brief investigation of incident involving about a dozen boys at a secondary school in Northampton, England who collapsed on January 26, 2016 after receiving a routine series of meningococcal quadrivalent vaccines (bacteria types A, C, W135 and Y) for meningitis. The boys are 10th grade students at the Northampton School for Boys. According to an article by The Daily Mail, the mother…
Vaccine Injury Claims Expected to Increase in 2016
It came as no surprise to me that during the meeting of the Advisory Commission on Childhood Vaccines (ACCV) on December 4, 2015 the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and Division of Injury Compensation Programs (DICP) reported that the number of vaccine injury claims for this fiscal year will exceed previous years. I have monitored this committee for the past six years and have seen the number of claims rise every year. Sadly, they are…
Recently Vaccinated Kids Are Spreading Pertussis Everywhere
There was fuss in the media last month about a little study of 26 vaccinated Florida pre-schoolers, who got sick with B. pertussis whooping cough or had pertussis-like symptoms during a five-month period in 2013. All of the children, aged one to five years attending the Tallahassee preschool, had received three to four doses of pertussis vaccine (DtaP) according to the CDC…