Vaccines

In its issue of October 20, 2014, JAMA Neurol published a paper "Vaccines and the risk of multiple sclerosis and other central nervous system demyelinating disease" (doi:10.1001/jamaneurol.2014.2633).

The following comment was also posted on PubMed Commons.

In its issue of July 1, 2014, Pediatrics (the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics) published a paper "Safety of vaccines used for routine immunization of US children: a systematic review", which updated the 2011 Institute of Medicine (IOM) consensus report on vaccine safety.

The following comment was also posted on Pubmed Commons.

Further a publication on the risk of multiple sclerosis after hepatitis B vaccine [2], this paper briefly summarizes evidence pointing to an unusual toxicity of this vaccine.

It was rejected by the Editor-in-chief on the following basis: "It is too difficult to understand. I do not think that it adds sufficiently to the thoughtful and balanced editorial and the original paper".

This letter was published in the Br Med J (2 Oct., 2003) as a "rapid response" to a News on the health hazards in Veterans after Gulf war [4].

On Sept. 2013, the journal Vaccine published a paper co-signed by WHO’s experts and devoted to the causal assessment of adverse reactions following immunisation [6]. This paper attracted strong criticism, esp. from colleagues confronted with the hazards of immunisation programs the benefit/risk of which has not been properly assessed. I was asked by some to contribute, and my comment on this paper is now available on PubMed Commons; a copy is given below.

Recent publications have highlighted the unusual potential of hepatitis B vaccines to produce markers of auto-immunity such as anti-phospholipids antibodies. Combined with an impressive body of convergent data, these papers contribute to the biological basis for how hepatitis B vaccines, with a high degree of certainty, can induce autoimmune reactions, some of them quite severe.

(NB. This paper was rejected by Clin Dev Immunol in 2005, with the haste normally expected as far as the toxicity of hepatitis B vaccines is concerned...)

The following correspondence was rejected in 2005 by the British Medical Journal. Having regard to the persistent stubborness of regulatory bodies not to see evidence of toxicity before new drugs are registered, it is still of relevance...

On June 4, 2011, I was asked by Mr. P. X. to perform an assessment on his case, after he developed a variety of acute and chronic symptoms following his immunization against hepatitis B. To perform this assessment, I received by fax a 10-page summary of his medical history.

Regarding my professional qualification, I have worked since 1982 in the field of drug monitoring and pharmacoepidemiology, with a special focus on the assessment of causality. Regarding hepatitis B vaccines, in France and abroad, I was requested as a medical expert witness to perform several dozens of assessments further to injuries ascribed by the plaintiffs to these vaccines. In addition, I was commissioned by the French Court (Paris) in charge of the criminal inquiry on the national campaign of vaccination which was launched in 1994. Overall, I spent thousands of hours on the hepatitis B vaccination issue, and had the opportunity of examining a number of confidential documents related to the registration or post-marketing surveillance processes. Although and regrettably, much of this documentation is embargoed as secret by Court order according to French law (as there is no Freedom of Information Act in France), in a number of instances it permitted indirect cross-checking with public data.

In Dec., 2010, I have been interviewed by a British journalist on the new flu vaccination campaign.

An expert workshop organised in European Parliament (Brussels), by Michèle Rivasi and Corinne Lepage.