Government may revive the Vaccine PSUs- but a watch is needed

June 7, 2008

Dear Friends,

This is a good news but still wew need

to be watchful as this may be an attempt to skirt the

issue for the time being as pressure is mounting

because the lobbies are stil active to keep the

vaccine institutes closed and convert them to vaccine

testing labs.

for the time being thanks to all who supported the

issue and forced the ministary to reconsider the

decision to close the vaccine PSUs.

special thanks to Pioneer.

Dr. Omesh Bharti

H.P.

http://www.dailypioneer.com/indexn12.asp?main_variable=front%5Fpage & file_name=st\

ory1%2Etxt & counter_img=1

Ramadoss blinks, orders vaccine probe

J Gopikrishnan | New Delhi

Sweetheart deal with associate's firm set to be

scrapped

A sustained campaign by The Pioneer against the

vaccine scam has finally stirred Union Health Minister

Anbumani Ramadoss into action. The dubious joint

venture for measles vaccine production between a

Central Public Sector Undertaking (PSU) and a private

company will now be investigated. Simultaneously, a

committee will go into the possibility of restarting

vaccine production by the PSUs who were asked in

January to shut shop by the Health Ministry.

Well-placed sources in the Health Ministry said that

Ramadoss held a detailed discussion with his senior

officials late on Thursday and ordered an

investigation into the " irregularities " in the

controversial deal between Pasteur Institute of India

(Coonoor), a PSU, and Green Signal Bio Pharma (GSBP).

The Pioneer was the first paper to report that the PSU

had purchased measles seeds from Green Signal Bio

Pharma for an astronomical Rs 3.25 crore when these

were available virtually for free from Indian

Immunologicals Ltd, Hyderabad, another PSU engaged in

measles vaccine production. The one-sided deal also

granted 70 per cent of the projected profit of Rs 205

crore earned from the joint venture to the private

company for three years.

Sources said Ramadoss asked the Ministry officials to

keep the controversial deal in abeyance till the

investigation is completed. The Health Minister also

constituted a three-member committee, headed by the

Drugs Controller General of India, to explore the

possibility of restarting vaccine production at the

three Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs) who were

directed in January to close production. The committee

has been asked to submit the report before July 15.

The Minister has come under tremendous political

pressure to revoke the directive banning vaccine

production by the PSUs after allegations surfaced that

he was playing into the hands of private vaccine

manufacturers and international suppliers. The CPI(M)

central committee had passed a resolution that the

PSUs be revived. Its general secretary Prakash Karat,

Politburo member Brinda Karat and Madurai MP P Mohan

had asked Ramadoss to take urgent steps for restarting

vaccine production by the three PSUs. The BJP had

sought the Prime Minister's intervention in the matter

while Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Karuananidhi and

Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal had

also asked Ramadoss to lift the ban on the PSUs and

enable them to manufacture vaccines.

Sources also said that the meeting discussed the

revelation of irregularities, as

reported in The Pioneer, and that there was a

realisation that the deal must be scrapped to prevent

the matter from going to the court. " The deal will be

scrapped as and when the investigation report is

submitted, " said an official.

Green Signal Bio Pharma is owned by P

Sundaraparipoornan, who is considered a close

associate of the Union Health Minister in the

political circles of Tamil Nadu. How and why the PSU

decided to purchase the measles seed, a critical part

in vaccine manufacture, from GSBP -- which is neither

an accredited vendor nor producer of measles vaccine

-- is still a mystery? The private company did not

produce any proof of origin or source of supply for

the measles seed it delivered to Pasteur Institute.

The controversial deal was signed on November 27,

2006, and the private company withdrew Rs 2.5 crore

within the next two days. Though the integrated

finance division of the Health Ministry noticed and

objected to the irregularities in July 2007, the

Ministry never took any action. The finance division

pointed out that the director of the Pasteur Institute

was not competent to enter into the agreement as he

had no power to sign any contract worth above Rs 50

lakh. The division also recommended that the amount be

recovered from Green Signal Bio Pharma, but the

Ministry chose to take no follow-up action.

The Pasteur Institute has been engaged in the

production of rabies vaccine for more than 100 years.

As measles vaccine production is a new project, it

needs the approval of the Planning Commission besides

budgetary provisions. But these norms were not

followed and the finance division's findings were also

ignored. Dr Elangeshwaran, the then director of the

PSU who signed the controversial deal, had told The

Pioneer that he had been " arm-twisted " by top

officials of the Health Ministry into helping private

companies. He also said that immense pressure was put

on him by the Health Ministry to close down vaccine

production at the PSUs, a move that would benefit only

the private companies.

The Pioneer investigation also revealed that the

Ministry received a proposal from Dr Elangeshwaran on

December 27, 2007, seeking Rs 17.8 crore to start the

measles vaccine project which envisages a Rs 205-crore

profit in three years. Within two weeks, the Ministry

ordered that all vaccine production by the three PSUs

-- Pasteur Institute of India in Coonoor, BCG Vaccine

Lab in Chennai and Central Research Institute in

Kasauli -- be suspended. The only exception was made

in the case of measles vaccine production, which

benefited the private company.

This came as a major shock as these PSUs were the main

source of vaccine production for expanded immunisation

programme in India. They used to meet 70 per cent of

the nation's vaccine needs. The Pasteur Institute was

manufacturing rabies vaccine for more than 100 years

now.

Sequence of events

November 27, 2006

Pasteur Institute buys measles seed from Green Signal

Bio Pharma for an astronomical Rs 3.25 crore

he company is neither an accredited vendor nor a

producer of measles vaccine

Measles seeds were available for free from Indian

Immunologicals Ltd, Hyderabad, another PSU

The PSU agrees to give 70% of the profit earned on

measles vaccine production to Green Signal Bio Pharma

for three years

The firm withdraws Rs 2.5 cr within two days of

signing the deal

PSU director was not competent to sign deal above Rs

50 lakh

Planning Commission approval was not obtained for the

project, nor was any budgetary allocation made

July 2007

Integrated finance division reports to the Health

Ministry on the illegal actions. Recommends that the

Rs 2.5 crore be recovered from the private company

December 27, 2007

The PSU director sends a project proposal to the

Health Ministry for sanctioning Rs 17.8 crore for

starting measles vaccine production. Projected profit

for three years is Rs 205 crore, which ensures Rs 143

crore (70%) for the private company

For any comments, queries or feedback, kindly mail us

at pioneerletters

June 8, 2008

Dear Dr. Bharti and others,

It may be good news that a PSU's working is to be scanned and regulated, and made to function according to the agreed parameters. BUT what of the product this PSU produces? Is there any real science behind it? Do the consumers have any reliable dependable safety nets? Does the educated urban dwelling middle class, who function as policy consumers and makers really know the issues involved? I am pasting an extract from my forthcoming book for your comments.

As far as the JSA is concerned I had hoped that this group with it commendable widespread base would have started to think out of the box and come up with sustainable alternatives to the vaccine paradigm.

Prabha Krishnan.

Informed Choice.

While womenâ€™s groups especially and other health activists have been proactive on the issue of informed consent with regard to contraception and abortion, they have not worked with equal vigour on the issue of drugless health. This gap is particularly glaring in the case of immunization against disease. The term immunization in India and elsewhere actually refers to vaccination, but these terms are not interchangeable.

Organisms build immunity throughout their lives in a variety of ways.

In Indian traditional thought, we are urged to take note of our nine emotion states, or nava rasa-s, variously listed as love, laughter, parental love, anger, disgust, fear, compassion, peace, wonder, courage and to engage with them creatively. For instance, not finding a caring partner may make one miss out on erotic or parental love. To suppress anger, disgust and fear has its own consequences. Never to know and express wonder wearies the spirit. To be removed from oneâ€™s ancestral lands can be deeply shocking to a farmer who knows no other occupation.

In Matrix I we noted how the latest trend in industrial development, the setting up of Special Economic Zones or SEZs, leads to large-scale displacement. In More to Muse On I will revert to this issue of displacement and how this alienation breeds ill health.

Attaining real immunity.

Authentic and lasting immunity is built from

Â· Appropriate food, air and water

Â· Control over livelihood resources

Â· Political participation leading to control over national issues

Â· Ability to manage stress.

When discussions on health policy for women, men and children do not cover these issues the outcome cannot be empowering for the citizens of the country.

The current discourse on vaccinations does not bring into focus a number of issues.

Â· Issues of theory

Do vaccinations really kick-start immunity building?

Does antibody production indicate resistance to disease?

Do vaccinations promote over-committed, inflexible immune systems?

Â· Contents of vaccinations â€“ could they be really safe?

Vaccines contain formaldehyde, mercury and aluminum products besides alien proteins and RNA. The vaccination procedure bypasses the infantâ€™s defence systems however immature these may be. Mercury for one is known to cause neural damage even when the expectant mother consumes modest amounts of industrially produced fish. Also current vaccination schedules can mandate at least 16 vaccines in the first 2 years of the childâ€™s life. The toxic load is completely unacknowledged. In Japan, sudden infant death syndrome or cot deaths were controlled by raising the age at first vaccination to 2 years. In India, the first vaccinations are given at birth.

Â· Side effects. Vaccines are known to produce the disease they are supposed to control.

This has been noticed in the case of polio, pertussis and influenza. In the run up to the Iraq war the small-pox and anthrax vaccines have been implicated in producing heart disease and pneumonia in healthy American military personnel and civilians. MMR vaccines have been implicated in the production of Autism and other learning and cognitive defects in vaccinated children. One recurrent feature is the refusal of health authorities to take cognizance of anecdotal evidence from parents connecting the development of autism in previously healthy child with

vaccinations.

Absence of safety nets. Since vaccinations have attained sacred cow status in India, there has been no move to provide strict monitoring, reporting and compensation systems. Thankfully this last at least is being seen as an ethical issue and is being protested by some.

In not engaging with these issues we are exposing large segments of the population to participation in experiments without informed consent. This is a violation of the Nuremberg Code and the Helsinki Declaration on research on human subjects.

As the trend is to find and use a vaccine for every ill, even if it is self-limiting, more and more anomalies come to light.

For instance, when researchers analyzed hepatitis B vaccination statistics from 163 individuals with multiple sclerosis and 1,604 controls, they found a strong correlation between getting the hepatitis B vaccine and the risk of developing multiple sclerosis. Specifically, the results indicated that the risk of developing multiple sclerosis was three times higher in the group that was vaccinated against hepatitis B than in the group that was not vaccinated. By contrast, individuals given tetanus and influenza vaccinations had no significant extra risk of developing multiple sclerosis. The hepatitis B vaccine was designed specifically for "high-risk" groups: drug users, prostitutes, and others. When these groups wouldn't

cooperate with the hepatitis B vaccination program, the health authorities decided to widen coverage to children. But the risk of hepatitis B in children is very small, so there is absolutely no need to subject them to this potentially dangerous vaccine.[ii]

To keep their profits healthy, vaccine manufacturers resort to clever marketing, which includes wide coverage to confusing research, and dissemination of partial results in every medium, using misleading headlines. Consider this report from a Bangladesh study entitled â€œHib vaccine could save thousands in Asia.â€[iii]

Vaccinating infants in Asia against a bacterium that commonly causes pneumonia and meningitis could save hundreds of thousands of lives, according to researchers.

The results of the study in Dhaka, Bangladesh, published online in the Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal (28 June 2007), show that this immunization prevents one-third of all life-threatening pneumonia cases and over 90 per cent of meningitis cases caused by Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib).

The researchers, from the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research in Bangladesh and the US-based Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHSPH), say these results tally with previous findings from Chile and Indonesia.

They recommend the Hib vaccine for Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.

The results from the Bangladesh study â€• in which 68,000 children (under the age of two) were given the Hib vaccine, along with a routine diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis vaccine â€• challenge the notion that Hib rarely causes pneumonia and meningitis in Asia, say the researchers.

But there is disagreement about the total burden of pneumonia and meningitis caused by Hib in Asia.

Jacob Puliyel, head of the paediatrics department at St Stephen's Hospital in Delhi, India, says the latest data from India, published in 2002, shows that Hib incidence is only nine per 100,000 children under five, compared to 109 per 100,000 in the West.

Puliyel stated that developing countries should take local disease burden and cost-effectiveness into account by when deciding on vaccination priorities.

"At the current price of $US5.60 per dose, and a regimen of three doses, it is clearly unaffordable," says Puliyel.

The report quoted Dr. Jacob M Puliyel, M.D. who is a Senior Member, Indian Medical Association, Vice Chairman, (IMA Sub -Committee on Immunisation) and Head of Paediatrics, St. Stephens Hospital New Delhi He responded (to my mind indignantly and ironically)[iv]. (Emphasis added by me.)

â€œMy main argument against the research findings from Bangladesh is not that it does not make economic sense, but that the study is seriously flawed.

The visible enthusiasm of the sponsors of the study must not be allowed to cloud scientific objectivity. In the study, cases of pneumonia were compared with a control group without pneumonia. Because more children in the control group received the Hib vaccine, the researchers considered the vaccine to prevent pneumonia. But closer reading of the paper suggests that the Hib vaccination status in the control children was only coincidental. The control children were significantly richer, lived in better houses and their mothers were better educated. With their greater affluence, more children in the control group probably wore branded T-shirts, but we would not expect Nike or Reebok to suggest that wearing their apparel is protective against pneumonia.

Where starvation and cholera kill thousands of children each year, international agencies such as the GAVI (Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization), USAID and the WHO are busy spending millions on dubious research to emphasise the harm from a disease that local doctors hardly ever come across. All this so that vaccine manufacturers can fill their coffers. This situation can only be described as scandalous.

It is unfortunate that five resource poor countries like Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Pakistan and Sri Lanka have been persuaded to undertake the expensive intervention on the basis of flawed research.

Lois Privor-Dumm says in your report that Bangladesh is eligible for funding for the Hib vaccine from the GAVI Alliance, so they will only have to pay 20 US cents per dose instead of US$5.60 per dose. He failed to mention that there is no long-term assurance of continued GAVI funding, or that funding will be withdrawn soon after universal vaccination becomes government policy.â€

The trick by GAVI of subsidizing vaccinations until they become part of the standard vaccination programme and then withdrawing subsidies to let the country face the enormous economic and social burden of useless and mostly dangerous vaccines is repeated regularly all over the world.

The Dhaka study was published in June 2007, and Dr. Puliyel quotes data from 2002, but as long back as in 1994 in the US it was found that relevant safety research for this vaccine had never been done.

The Ohio House of Representatives in 1999 responded to a growing demand from parents to roll back the mandated hepatitis B vaccination, by calling for testimonies.

Philip Incao, M.D. made a very detailed analysis of the vaccine scenario on March 1, 1999 to Representative Dale Van Vyven, Chairman, Health Committee Ohio House of Representatives.[v]

Some of the most important points made at that representation are as follows. (Emphasis in original.)

1. In 1994 a special committee of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences published a comprehensive review of vaccine safety, which had been commissioned by federal law. Of five possible and plausible adverse effects of the hepatitis B vaccination, which the committee investigated, they were unable to come to any conclusion for four of them because they found to their dismay that the relevant research had not been done!

Why arenâ€™t the agencies responsible for vaccine safety commissioning such research? For the fifth adverse effect, anaphylactic shock, the committee concluded that the evidence positively established a causal relation to the hepatitis B vaccination.

2. In contrast to the lack of research on the adverse effects of hepatitis B vaccination found by the Institute of Medicine, the National Vaccine Information Center in its recent special report on hepatitis B vaccination cites 38 reports in the international medical literature, some dating back to 1987, that hepatitis B vaccination is causing chronic autoimmune and neurological disease in children and adults.

3. In July 1998, 15,000 French citizens filed a class action lawsuit against the French government accusing it of understating the risks of hepatitis B vaccine and of exaggerating its benefits for the average person. In October 1998 the French government declared a moratorium on hepatitis B vaccination in public schools while it evaluates more carefully the true risk-benefit profile of the vaccine.

4. Since July 1990, 17,497 cases of hospitalizations, injuries and deaths in America following hepatitis B vaccination have been reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) of the U.S. government. This figure includes 146 deaths in individuals after receiving only hepatitis B vaccine without any other vaccines, including 73 deaths in children under 14 years old.

5. The best way to determine the risk-benefit profile of any vaccination is well known and in theory is quite simple: Take a group of vaccinated children and compare them with a matched group of unvaccinated children. If the groups are well-matched and large enough and the length of time the children are observed following vaccination long enough, then such a study is deemed the "gold standard" of vaccine research because its data is as accurate a reflection as medical research is capable of achieving of how vaccinations are actually affecting our nationâ€™s children..

Incredible as it sounds, such a common-sense controlled study comparing vaccinated to unvaccinated children has never been done in America for any vaccination.

This means that mass vaccination is essentially a large-scale experiment on our nationâ€™s children.

6. A critical point which is never mentioned by those advocating mandatory vaccination of children is that childrenâ€™s health has declined significantly since 1960 when vaccines began to be widely used. According to the National Health Interview Survey conducted annually by the National Center for Health Statistics since 1957, a shocking 31% of U.S. children today have a chronic health problem, 18% of children require special health care or related services and 6.7% of children have a significant disability due to a chronic physical or mental condition. Respiratory allergies, asthma and learning disabilities are the most common of these.

Three controlled studies comparing vaccinated to unvaccinated children in England and New Zealand have shown that the vaccinated children have significantly more asthma, ear infections, hospitalizations and inflammatory bowel disease than their unvaccinated cohorts.

The idea that illnesses exist in an ecological balance like everything else in nature and that eradicating acute diseases could very likely upset the balance and cause chronic disease to increase is not seriously considered or pursued in medical science today. Whenever any evidence pointing in this direction is published, usually in the international medical literature, it is usually dismissed out of hand by American physicians or angrily repudiated with the implication that such research is "irresponsible" because it might cause the American public to lose trust in our vaccination program.

A true process of informed choice would, for example, raise grave questions about the vaccination of young children for hepatitis B.

We must be honest and admit that we do not know the impact of administering multiple, different vaccines on very young children or, indeed, on anyone."

8. My final comments are drawn from my 27 years of experience as a general practitioner of medicine. Twenty-three of those years were in a rural farming community in upstate New York where as many as 50% of my pediatric patients were unvaccinated due to their parentsâ€™ conscientious personal choice.

For 23 years I had the opportunity to observe my young patients grow from infancy to young adulthood and to appraise their overall health and vitality. It was out of this experience that my present views took shape. I observed that my unvaccinated children were healthier, hardier and more robust than their vaccinated peers. Allergies, asthma and pallor and behavioral and attention disturbances were clearly more common in my young patients who were vaccinated.

My unvaccinated patients, on the other hand, did not suffer from infectious diseases with any greater frequency or severity than their vaccinated peers: their immune systems generally handled these challenges very well.

Conclusion Today, when far more children suffer from allergies and other chronic immune system disorders than from life-threatening infectious diseases, it is neither reasonable nor prudent to persist in presuming that the benefit of any vaccination outweighs its risk.

The facts on hepatitis B brought out by Dr. Severyn and by the special 16-page report of the National Vaccine Information Center deserve our very careful consideration. They indicate that the risk of hepatitis B

vaccination outweighs its benefit for the vast majority of American children today.

We note that there is research going back to 1987 about the adverse reactions to this vaccine.

As I mentioned earlier, the entire discourse of vaccinating against contagious diseases is permeated with opposing voices, calling attention to flawed research, suppression of findings, deliberate fudging of efficacy outcomes, and charges of conflict of interest, even on part of contributors to prestigious main-stream journals.

Federal Vaccine Court.

There is currently a hearing in the US in a specially constituted Federal Vaccine Court which convened on June 11, 2007, to consider the relationship if any, between the thimerosal (mercury) content of vaccines and the rising tide of autism in the US.

The defence of the thimerosal content in vaccines is confounding for several reasons. Mercury is the second deadliest element in the natural environment, and a known neurotoxin. The US Environment Protection Agency routinely warns expectant mothers to limit using industrially farmed fish, for fear of the mercury content in such fish crossing the placental barrier and harming the fetus. So how is injecting it directly into the blood stream of newborn infants any safer?

A spokesperson for A-CHAMP (Advocates for Children's Health Affected by Mercury Poisoning) made some important points ahead of this hearing.[vi]

An interesting development was the filing of a citizen petition seeking a ban on use of mercury in drugs. A citizen petition is one of the mechanisms in the US whereby citizens can approach the administration for a variety of issues not limited only to health matters.

The Coalition for Mercury Free Drugs CoMeD, a grassroots group of parents and scientists filed a comprehensive 447-plus-page "Citizen Petition"1 on August 24, 2007 seeking a ban on the use of mercury in drugs unless it is proved toxicologically safe, with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Details of this petition, 2007P-0331 can be found at http://www.fda. gov/ohrms/ dockets/default. htm.

There is considerable criticism about military vaccination programmes in the US. The Gulf War Syndrome has been linked to mass vaccination programmes, using even some undisclosed experimental vaccines.[vii]

The concerns about polio vaccines.

In India a major vaccination issue is that of polio.

Even mainstream physicians, who do not query the theory of vaccinations, have reservations about this programme.

Extracts[viii] from a paper on the Global Initiative on Eradication of Polio lays out the concerns relating to

Research gaps

Surveillance and reporting issues

Ethical issues

Cost effectiveness

Choice of oral vaccine over injectable vaccine.

This section is long and detailed, but since in India vaccinations have attained sacred cow status, there is no way of stating baldly that the theory and practice are deeply flawed, that the vaccines cause more harm than good, and that by committing a significant portion of the healthcare budget to this one issue, we are on the wrong track altogether.

In the following section, the abbreviations used are as follows

IEAG Indian Expert Advisory Group

NPSP National Polio Survey Project

SIA Supplementary Immunisation Activities

NID National Immunisation Day

WPV Wild Polio Virus

AFP Acute Flaccid Paralysis

GAVI Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation.

Circulation of Wild Polio Virus (WPV) continues despite 12 years of intensive efforts.

There has been a dramatic increase in the number of acute flaccid paralysis cases (AFP) in the last 2-3 years, with a national average rate of 6.3/1,00,000 and even higher incidence of 12-13 /1,00,000 in endemic states of UP and Bihar, against an international average of 1/1, 00, 000.

There is an urgent need for a complete epidemiologic investigation into the cases of AFP with a view to find out the reason for the rising incidence, to know the exact cases and nature of these AFP cases, and to provide appropriate treatment and rehabilitation.

Strategy of increasing the number of pulse polio rounds each year to meet the challenge of continuing transmission of WPV does not seem to be meeting the desired objective of stopping the transmission of WPV and needs to be reviewed.

The mono-valent Oral Polio Vaccine-1 (mOPV1) has been introduced in India since last year, through the polio eradication programme. More than 5-6 pulse polio rounds have been undertaken in the selected districts of UP and Bihar with mOPV1, contrary to the recommended 1-2 doses. Impact of these multiple rounds of mOPV1 needs to be assessed.

Inactivated Polio Vaccine (IPV) has been introduced in many developed countries, to tackle the problem of Vaccine Associated Polio Paralysis (VAPP) due to OPV, while maintaining the immunity against wild poliovirus. Desirability, feasibility and cost efficacy of this strategy needs to be discussed in the national context.

Strategies that need to be adopted, if we fail to stop the transmission of WPV, need to be discussed as much as the â€˜post- eradication- strategiesâ€™ which would be required if we are somehow able make the achievement of stopping the wild polio virus transmission.

One Way Forward

The year 2006 should be the year of the phased withdrawal and closure of the National Pulse Polio Program.

Urgent investigation should be carried out on the actual incidence of Post Polio Residual Paralysis (PPRP) in the cases of reported AFP in the last 10 years.

The activities of the polio-immunization should be re-integrated into the Universal Immunization Program.

An expert committee should review the present evidence base on efficacy of the IPV and cost â€“benefit- ratio of substituting IPV for OPV and other issues related to the relative merits of these programs in the prevention of the transmission of WPV.

The improvement of sanitation and hygiene should be taken up as the highest priority, specially, in those urban and rural pockets of UP and Bihar, which have been reporting the cases of WPV in the last three years. Adequate funds are available under the â€˜Rajiv Gandhi Drinking Water and Sanitation Missionâ€™ for this purpose and more can be provided by the Central and State Governments. The public health professionals should put their time and energy for the effective implementation of this program.

An independent commission should be appointed to review all aspects of National Pulse Polio Program in the last ten years and appropriate lessons should be drawn for the health policy formulation, program implementation and health governance in this country.

A comprehensive policy and program for the rehabilitation of the children who have been paralyzed during the period of the polio eradication initiative should be worked out.

Based on the data received from the Lucknow office of NPSP (by one of the authors of this paper), most of the children in UP suffering from non-polio AFP had received more than three doses of Oral Polio Vaccine at the end of year 2004. The immunity gap was only 8% in the year 2003 and 2% in the year 2004. 93% of the 82 WPV cases had received four or more doses of OPV. (This data should be made available publicly, to enable informed debate.) Yet the wild poliovirus transmission persists in these areas.

Other important concerns.

Continuous shifts in the strategy

Since the launch of polio eradication program in the country, WHO has recommended several shifts in polio eradication strategies, without clear rationale. Blame continues to be put on â€œlack of political willâ€ or â€œso called resistant communityâ€ for failure to achieve eradication.â€ There has however not been an honest appraisal of the different strategies followed since the year 1995 and of the justification of the shifts in the strategies. The reality is that we are still left with ongoing transmission of WPV in India (and in other parts of the world), despite implementing the advise of WHO in letter and spirit. The following shifts were

made by the WHO advisers to achieve the goal of eradication within the given time framework, each time assuring success:

NIDs will be sufficient to stop poliovirus transmission.

Intensification of Pulse Polio Immunisation.

Further intensification after 2002 upsurge in India, several rounds in the year

The introduction of mOPV1 to finish the task of remaining reservoir

IPV vaccination will have to continue in the developed countries of the world, (earlier, the stopping of polio vaccination and savings to the developed world was the main justification of the program).

Each case of AFP caused by WPV may be equivalent of 1000 polio virus infection in the community, since majority of the infections remain either sub-clinical or do not manifest any paralytic symptoms. Therefore 66 detected cases in the year 2005, and 22 cases detected in the year 2006, do not reflect the last vestiges of the wild virus transmission.

There is need to carry out the surveillance of sewage and environmental services to define cessation of WPV.

Particularly in the case of UP the cases are concentrated in the Ganga-Yamuna Doab, which has formed a reservoir of polio transmission in the country. The districts, which have not reported cases in a particular year, have reported case in the subsequent year. The polio certification program itself would require that a region should not report cases for three years continuously for it to be certified polio free.

The filling of immunity gap has not really helped as cases continue to occur despite narrowing of the immunity gap.

Introduction of monovalent vaccine

Â· It is not clear whether mOPV1 has brought in any extra benefits or it has caused harm? The use of mOPV1 has been associated with alarming rise in number of AFP cases in UP and Bihar. This may be a pure coincidence or there may be more substance in this (see next section).

Sanitation Issue in Eradication of WPV[ix]

Â· Several of the â€˜resistantâ€™ pockets in UP and Bihar, which are now being called reservoir of WPV, particularly the urban and peri-urban areas, suffer from abysmally poor sanitation conditions. The sanitation and hygiene improvement should have been the foremost priority here.

Â· However, the number of AFP cases, as recorded by NPSP has started rising in the year 2004 and the rise has assumed an alarming dimension in the year 2005. The trend seems to be continuing in the year 2006 also.

Â· In 2004, there were 13,274 AFP cases reported in 2004, 27050 cases in 2005 and 5947 cases in 2006, till the end of March.

Â· This shows that there has been three fold rise in the reported AFP cases in the country between the year 2003 and 2005.

The trend of rise of AFP cases has been uneven in the different parts of the country, which is also reflected in the AFP rate

Â· In 20% of the AFP cases, the stool samples are not being collected within the stipulated period of 14 days. This figure has almost been constant since the year 2000. If the NPSP had issued any special directives to improve surveillance in the year 2004, it should have reflected in improvement in stool collection also, as shown by nearly 100 percent stool collection. Hence on the basis of this indicator, the claim of better surveillance cannot hold ground.

Â· The OPV is a live virus vaccine and repeated doses of any live virus can cause unforeseen damages. According to the data from USA, OPV can cause paralysis- VAPP (one case per 2.5 million doses for the first dose and one case per 6.5. million subsequent doses).

Â· However, in case of India, it has simply been assumed that repeated doses of this vaccine are absolutely safe, without having an effective surveillance for any possible side effects of the vaccine. This kind of surveillance is an integral component of the vaccination program in U.S.A. With the theoretical possibility that the attenuated poliovirus can form new recombinant strains with other enteric viruses and cause polio like symptoms or even encephalitis, such surveillance becomes critical.

Polio like symptoms can be caused by the Non-Enteric Polio Viruses also. The NPSP has been detecting these viruses in the laboratories and in some of the districts of U.P. these viruses are associated with as much as 50% of the AFP cases. Moreover, there seems to be a substantial increase over the incidence of 25% reported in earlier years (2000-2003) of AFP surveillance. Most of the districts reporting repeated WPV cases have also reported more than 40% AFP cases associated with NPEV. It may be possible to link this to poor sanitation and poor immunity of the vaccinated children. There were 8172 AFP cases, which detected NPEV in the year 2005 and 1188 AFP cases, which detected NPEV in the year 2006. (The data on NPEV[x]). It is possible that the rising numbers of cases of AFP are being caused by rising number of NPEV cases and needs to be discussed.

Before the advent of GPEI, poliomyelitis cases were diagnosed clinically. It is clear that there was a gradual decline in the number of reported cases of poliomyelitis from the year 1988 to 1994. During these years the immunization coverage had not increased dramatically despite EPI and UIP, and therefore it could not have been a major reason for this decline. Besides, this was not the era of pulse-polio strategy in India, and therefore any reduction in reported polio cases during this period couldnâ€™t be attributed to the successful implementation of the GPEI.

Issues pertaining to human rights

Â· This program has expected and continues to expect that billions of people all over the world, year after year for decades, should be only passive recipient of the polio drops.

Â· In fact, where there was resistance, coercion, often in the form of direct force was exercised, to give polio drops even to unwilling families as ascertained during field visits by one of the authors. (In Mumbai Home Guards were used to help run the programme, but as of August 2007, the Bombay Municipal Corporation, which runs the programme has decided it was too expensive to do so. One BMC spokesman regretted this saying that people had respect for uniforms, and administering the drops was thus

easy.)

Â· Critical information about polio vaccine was never shared with the people: that these two drops may not protect a child from polio.

Dangers of injections during the transmission seasons fever or during the phase of vaccination were never presented. It should have been mandatory that during the pulse rounds, all unnecessary injections should be avoided as it may cause paralysis.

Â· The possibility of VAPP (Vaccine Associated Paralytic Poliomyelitis) was never brought into public domain. Even the scientific community has not been taken into confidence.

Â· There is a 2-10% case fatality rate with poliomyelitis. Deaths due to poliomyelitis have been reported in children who have been administered large number of OPV doses (ref. Paul: 2004; letter to the editor; Vaccine 23: 280). This has been reported from one state â€“Rajasthan. Yet they do not figure in the data presented by NPSP.

In this battle, the real issue of the viral (polio and other non-polio enteric viruses) and non-viral causes of the childhood paralyses and disability do not appear to matter. The program managers are unconcerned about the fate of nearly 85,000 cases of non-polio-virus -Acute Flaccid paralyses cases detected since the year 1998. No effort has been made to find out whether these children have been left with any residual paralyses or other morbidities and what are their care and rehabilitation needs, as they grow up.

Need to de-link ourselves from the global initiative

The three issues (survival of WPV, the rising numbers of AFP and the prospects of continuing with a newer costly vaccine rather than stopping the vaccination against polio altogether), obviously puts a complex challenge before the public health experts and the decision makers in a developing country like India.

We have to remind ourselves and everybody else that the National Pulse Polio Program, beginning with two annual NIDs and later transforming into several rounds of SIAs, were never intended to be a â€˜never-ending strategyâ€™. Since the year 2003, every year the hope has been built by the IEAG that transmission would stop if the SIAs were further intensified, yet this has not happened. The enormous financial costs and opportunity cost of the time of health workers, seems to be no consideration for the IEAG and for them no cost and no sacrifice seems to be too great to achieve the ever elusive goal..

The global eradication of polio leading to cessation of the vaccination was the overriding goal that was pushing this program and determining its paradigm and direction. This is no longer a possibility even according to the proponents of GPEI. The WHO built an aggressive campaign in the year 2004, â€˜the do or die yearâ€™, as according to them, if this chance was lost this year, the battle is lost forever. Yet the WHO has found reasons to persist with this aggressive strategy beyond 2004 to even up to 2006.

The complete cessation of the vaccination against the polio was the main goal of the polio eradication programme. Now that this is no longer possible, there remains no justification for spending more and more energies and resources in rooting out the remaining â€˜reservoirsâ€™ of WPV transmission. Therefore this can no longer be the part of the deliberations. The necessity of continuing the program needs to be reassessed for its cost benefit analysis and potential adverse effects.

This implies that time has come for us to de link from the post eradication strategy proposed by the WHO: a strategy that will leave the developing nations at the mercy of the WHO (and other global institutions, including the GAVI) and the vaccine manufacturers, for the management of outbreaks of poliomyelitis in the post eradication era.

5.3. Call a Halt to the Intensified SIAs

Therefore, in our view, the time has come to put a halt to the present program.

5..3.1 The factors that go in favor of a withdrawal strategy:

Â· The increasing resistance of the public,

Â· The flagging morale of the staff and

Â· Costs to the health systems

Â· No possibility of rooting out the WPV from the reservoir solely on the unifocal strategy of war between vaccine and virus and mOPV1 has failed to deliver.

5.3.2. Risks of a withdrawal strategy:

Â· The reversal faced due to upsurge of WPV in the year 2002 may be a concern the experts and decision makers will have to consider while weighing their options in the year 2006.

Â· This decision may be opposed by the WHO bureaucracy as it goes counter to them and they may pressurize us in more than one way.

5.3.3. Risk Mitigation strategy:

Â· Public and nation should be taken into confidence and the positive gains of the program should be given due publicity.

Â· There should be a phased withdrawal and in the meantime a more energy should be spent in strengthening the routine immunization.

Â· Sanitation and safe water should be given its due importance.

Â· India should forge alliance with other countries, which hold similar views on this program. We should ask for an independent international commission to investigate this program, a commission which will have the potential not to be influenced by the global players like the WHO, UNICEF and CDC Atlanta.

5.4 OPV vs. IPV

Â· With the assumption that WPV transmission will be stopped in near future, the WHO has said that the OPV will no longer be available. This is a questionable recommendation, as the OPV will need to be available for handling the re-emergence of poliovirus transmission, which seems to be real possibility in the future.

Â· Whether we should use IPV or OPV in future, should be solely determined by our national realities, and this is a different issue altogether which need not be dealt with here.

Â· In the past, the issue of the self â€“sufficiency in vaccine production has been raised. This should be an issue of deliberation again.

The monovalent vaccine, that is containing only one strain of the virus, has been used in some states such as Uttar Pradesh. This appears to have generated mistrust not only in the public, but in healthcare workers too as this report shows.[xi]

Goat story.

The managers of the national polio eradication programme are discussing two findings by scientists of the National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD).[xii]

While investigating a disease outbreak in Gombli village in Tamil Nadu, NICD scientists have detected polio 'antibodies' in goats implying that goats can get involved in the cycle of transmission overthrowing the current notion that humans are the only host of polio virus.

The NICD team recorded these findings while analyzing samples brought from Gombli village, 60-km north of Chennai bordering Andhra Pradesh. In February-March this year the village witnessed mass death of nearly 200 goats that was immediately followed by a disease outbreak in men who had kept these goats. Symptoms leading to paralysis were similar in goats and humans, an NICD team that visited the site reported at that time. According to NICD scientists presence of high amounts of antibodies against all three polioviruses in the goat sera and isolation of poliovirus from stool samples of affected men suggested a link between the goat deaths and outbreak in humans. Shoban Sarkar, in charge of the polio immunization programme in the health ministry said however, said the World Health Organisation

has informed him "there cannot be any correlation between the two."

About the isolation of poliovirus from adults he said "it could have reached them through contaminated water and not goats."

The report published by the National Centre for Communicable Diseases on this outbreak stated that â€œThe clinical and epidemiological evidence together indicate the possibility of an unknown disease as an acute infective encephalomyelitis of viral origin.â€

This appears to be an accurate description of polio itself. Why was this word not used in the final report? Was it because our scientists do not want to explore the possibility of the involvement of an animal reservoir/vector? The existence of such a reservoir/vector would overthrow all â€œeradicationâ€ efforts.

Two comments in the media report regarding this case are interesting; one that the country was so flooded with vaccine virus that it could now be isolated from grass as well. This would appear to give the term â€œvaccine coverageâ€ a new meaning. If the country is indeed flooded with vaccine viruses, why these relentless rounds of pulse polio with ever more virulent virus strains?

The second interesting comment that there is no link between goat fever and human polio outbreak, because the WHO said so, is indicative of our dependency on WHO validation and of that organizationâ€™s need maintain status quo.

Antibody response â€“ dependable?

The entire vaccines-protect against disease-paradigm has been built around the so-called antibody response as a measure of vaccine efficacy and by extension, protection afforded to the recipient. But it has been known for decades that the immune system is a complex affair, whose state of health cannot be captured by simplistic techniques such as antibody titers.

Dr. Merrill W. Chase was an immunologist whose research on white blood cells helped undermine the longstanding belief that antibodies alone protected the body from disease and microorganisms.[xiii]Dr. Chase made his landmark discovery in the early 1940's while working with Dr. Karl Landsteiner, a Nobel laureate recognized for his work identifying the human blood groups. At the time,

experts believed that the body mounted its attacks against pathogens primarily through antibodies circulating in the blood stream, known as humoral immunity. Dr. Chase had uncovered the second arm of the immune system, or cell-mediated immunity. His finding became the groundwork for later research that pinpointed B cells, T cells and other types of white blood cells as the body's central safeguards against infection.Dr. Chase's breakthrough generated little interest at the time, but it set in motion the research that helped redefine the fundamental nature of the immune system. Now scientists hold that the antibody response is generally a poor measure of protection and no indicator at all of safety.For viral diseases, particularly, the 'cellular' immune response is all-important, and antibody levels and protection are totally unconnected.

Study after study has shown that people with high levels of serum antibodies have contracted illnesses they are serologically immune to whilst those with low to no antibodies have been protected. We know now and have known for over 60 years that our method of measuring immunity is completely wrong. The article goes on to state that since tetanus and diphtheria are both toxin-mediated illnesses (as is pertussis), antibodies can never prevent the multiplication of toxin since, upon exposure to our own body's natural defenses, clostridium tetanii, bordetella pertussis and diphtheria will all produce toxins which, regardless of our antibody status, will produce symptoms of infection.So, we are left with two questions:1- if as has been shown in studies, the existence of antibodies does not equal immunity to infection, how can we show that vaccines protect?2- if the production of antibodies does not protect against

toxin-mediated diseases, why do we continue to vaccinate against them? Many factors influence our susceptibility to contracting a particular infection in the first place, including health (which is affected by nutrition, clean water, fresh air, etc), mental state, genes and the body's metabolism and biorhythms. Vaccine research has found that immunoglobulin A (IgA ) antibodies are a much better indication of immunity than immunoglobulin G ( IgG) antibodies, but when a person has gone through the infection naturally (i.e. the antigen has entered through the natural portals of entry), both would be present anyway. When the vaccine ingredients are injected directly into the system, the production of IgA, is bypassed which is another reason why it is held that immunologically vaccines are ineffective. Indeed it

is the quiet realization of this significant error that is prompting efforts to produce vaccines that are inhaled instead of injected, e.g. the 'flu vaccine.

The fallacy of the antibody theory was exposed nearly 50 years ago.A report published by the Medical Research Council in Britain in 1950[xiv] demonstrated that many of the diphtheria patients had high levels of circulating antibodies, whereas many of the contacts that

remained perfectly well had low antibody counts.But as has been repeatedly demonstrated, theories and procedures are held on to because of the enormous profits they generate. Screening tests bring in profits of millions of dollars to virologists who hold the patents for them and hence the antibody theory will hold sway. The recent mumps vaccine fiasco in Switzerland has re-emphasized this point. Three mumps vaccines-Rubini, Jeryl-Lynn and Urabe strains (the one withdrawn because it caused encephalitis) all produced excellent antibody levels but those vaccinated with the Rubini strain had the same attack rate as those not vaccinated at all. Some doctors held that it actually caused outbreaks.[xv]

The same concern was expressed in the case of tetanus vaccination.[xvi] Severe (grade III) tetanus occurred in three immunized patients who had high serum levels of anti-tetanus antibody. The disease was fatal in one patient. The authors went on to add â€œThis is the first report of grade III tetanus with protective levels of antibody in

the United States. The diagnosis of tetanus, nevertheless, should not be discarded solely on the basis of seemingly protective anti-tetanus titers.â€

News of vaccine failure continues to be filed from many parts of the country, as recent reports from Orissa 49 and Lucknow50 show.

Commenting on the case of the five-year old daughter of a vegetable vendor who was paralyzed following several rounds of pulse polio vaccination, Dr Jai Singh, the district Immunisation Officer, said: â€œWe have registered her case under Acute Flaccid Paralysis and have sent the samples for further test.. There is nothing to worry about as over 40 cases of acute flaccid paralysis have been identified by us this year and none have proven positive for polio virus.â€ What could Dr. Jai Singh have meant when he said, â€œthere is nothing to worry aboutâ€? That a vegetable vendor would not be inconvenienced by a paralyzed daughter? Or that the state government would adequately compensate him for having damaged his child? Or that the parents of children with AFP not due to polio would be relieved to know of this serological

difference?

That there is resistance to this programme from both the public as well as the programme managers is seen from the next two reports.

A recent official publication, Financing and Delivery of Health Care Services in India, brought out by the National Commission on Macro - economics and Health (NCMH), says, "The single-point pursuit of polio eradication has resulted in adversely affecting the routine immunization, which was initiated in 1986 as a Technology Mission for achieving full protection against all vaccine- preventable diseases by 2000."[xvii]

The background paper, written by NCMH secretary and current National AIDS Control Organization chief K. Sujatha Rao, states, "As per a household survey conducted in 1998 and again in 2003 (Indian Institute of Population Sciences, 2004), the data for 220 districts showed that in the majority of the districts, there was either a declining performance or no improvement at all under the Universal Immunisation Programme (UIP)."Further, this paper says, "Discussions with field staff seemed to suggest that this decline was largely on account of the emphasis given to polio, which not only commanded better resources and visibility in the media but also consumed nearly one-third of the time, 30 times the cost and exhausted the staff."This paper titled â€œDelivery of Health Services in the Public Sectorâ€ recalls that in 2003, the Centre had had to send half the

department officials to oversee the Pulse Polio Initiative (PPI) round due to resistance from local staff. They had got tired of participating in four rounds of PPI (with each round requiring an entire month of preparation) as well as various other single-point campaigns, health melas and family planning targets. Regarding the cost burden of the programme, another background paper written for the NCMHâ€ Financing of Health in India â€œhas drawn attention to other dubious aspects of the PPI. This paper is co-authored by S. Selvaraju Rao, Somil Nagpal and S. Sakthivel of the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi. This paper says Rs 3,592 crores was spent on the PPI from 1996 to 2005. This amount does not

include the "extra-budgetary expenditures incurred by WHO on the appointment of over 1,000 consultants to monitor the programme and the amounts being incurred by the UNICEF or IEC". Almost 13 percent of the health department's budget during 2003-04 was spent on this single activity. This paper adds, "It is estimated that one drop of pulse polio vaccine is almost 30 times more expensive than the drop given in routine UIP."Public resistance has to be overcome by the use of uniformed personnel as the Municipal Corporation of Mumbai admits.[xviii] There appears to be calm acceptance of the municipalityâ€™s viewpoint that the public responds better to uniformed personnel. Polio vaccination efforts are not at par with a law and order situation. Or are they?

In Nigeria and other Muslim dominated countries of Africa, there is widespread resistance to vaccines because they are supposed to contain human body parts, and also contraceptive agents.[xix] The fears about surreptitiously imposed contraception appear to have some basis

in fact. LifeSiteNews. com reported that in 1995, theCatholic Women's League of the Philippines won a court order halting aUNICEF anti-tetanus program because the vaccine had been laced with B-hCG,which when given in a vaccine permanently causes women to be unable tosustain a pregnancy. The Supreme Court of the Philippines found thesurreptitious sterilization program

had already vaccinated three millionwomen, aged 12 to 45. B-hCG-laced vaccine was also found in at least fourother developing countries.

In India the extent of the resistance to this programme can be gauged by the relentless advertising in print and electronic media needed to overcome peoplesâ€™ fear and apathy.

Cinematic icons like Amitabh Bacchan and Shahrukh Khan are widely featured, and they donate their time and presence for what they perceive is a good cause. So too cricketers like Sachin Tendulkar and Mohammad Kaif. This is a judicious mix of Hindu and Muslim celebrities.

Also featured are ordinary middle and working class women, shown in the setting of their modest dwellings â€“ their religious affiliation hinted at by their dress and ornamentation. The dialogue and body language of these women indicate intelligence, knowledge, concern for the children and determination to wipe out the disease.

Local leaders and health ministers may feature in print advertisements.

In 2005, a teenager was awarded $8.5 million for injuries he said were linked to a polio vaccination 18 years ago.52

The lawsuit alleged that Cortez Strong, 18, contracted polio after he received an oral vaccine as an infant. Lawyers for Strong, who lives near Tower Grove Park in St. Louis, say he has limited use of his left arm and right hand.

Jurors gave Strong the full $8.5 million he asked for -- $1.5 million for past pain and suffering, $2 million for future missed earnings and $5 million for future pain. Strong, had turned down $50,000 from a vaccine compensation fund in order to sue.

We Indians who use their drugs and follow their diktats as to vaccination protocols, what can we claim?

Contamination issues.

Fears have been expressed for decades now that contamination by monkey viruses in the vaccine can precipitate chronic diseases in humans.

At the Third International Conference on Vaccine Safety hosted by the National Vaccine Information Centre in Washington D.C., Stanley Kops, a lawyer who has had his information on polio vaccines published in peer-reviewed medical journals and who has presented data at the Institute of Medicine (IOM) conference on SV-40 in mid-2002 (results published in October 2002), stated that the oral polio vaccine has always been contaminated with SV-40, a monkey virus which has been linked by the FDA and other organisations with cancers such as mesothelioma and meduloblastoma.Since 1963, the public has been assured that polio vaccines have not contained this deadly contaminant.Stanley Kops shows that not only is this not the case, but that the vaccine regulators who are charged with keeping the public safe, have known all along that SV-40 was never removed from

vaccines have not cared to ensure vaccine safety.[xx]

Another critical issue is of cramming some 24 vaccines in the first two years of a childâ€™s life. Some 4 or more vaccines can be given during each visit to the doctor, simply because so many are mandated. Concerned doctors have noted that autoimmune diseases are multiplying precisely for this reason.[xxi]

However, since vaccinations are very big business, there is no let up in the search forever new editions of the Holy Grail, the latest in this direction being DNA based vaccines.[xxii] In the name of the poor, much wealth can be accumulated.

In this context we need to remember the latest research regarding genetically modified organisms described in Matrix II, showing that our understanding of this field is seriously limited.

There is no let up in the protests either.[xxiii]

Dr Halvorsen, an NHS GP in London, has analyzed thousands of scientific papers and interviewed scientists and senior Department of Health officials about vaccine safety. One area that particularly concerns Dr Halvorsen is the use of aluminium â€“ a known brain and nerve toxin â€“ which is being added to the new five-in-one baby vaccine given at two, three and four months.Aluminium has been found to help stimulate the immune system, making vaccines more effective. But the amounts added to vaccines exceed the recommended safe level by up to 1,000 times. Although many doctors have expressed concerns, they cannot get funding to research the side effects.

Significant funding is however flowing in the direction of research into environmental factors affecting the expression of autism in babies.

The University of California at Davis has announced $7.5 million in new federal funding, including about $2 million for a groundbreaking study that seeks to track, earlier and more closely than before, potential environmental triggers for autism -- beginning in the womb.Another study â€œMarkers of Autism Risk in Babies -- Learning Early Signsâ€, or MARBLES, includes the sophisticated analysis of specimens from women even before they give birth, along with cord blood from the baby at birth and the mother's breast milk later on.

A huge study underway in Norway aims similarly to follow 100,000 children from the womb through age 6 in search of causes of a broad range of diseases, and its leaders have agreed to collaborate with Columbia University researchers to try to track factors in autism.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are also gathering biological and environmental data on hundreds of children with autism, and planning to examine hundreds more.

My query is-if scientists can make the correlation between environmental antigens and the incidence of autism, why are vaccines not registering on this radar? Vaccines contain a variety of chemicals, alien body parts and the like and are directly injected into the bloodstreams of humans with very immature immune systems.

Seeking health, finding poverty.

According to a World Health Organisation survey, many Indian families, whose inability to access or afford water, sanitation and nutritious food has made them more prone to ill health, have been pushed below the poverty line by the rising cost of healthcare.[xxiv]

The â€˜World Health Surveyâ€™, conducted by the Indian Institute of Population Sciences (IIPS) on behalf of the WHO in six Indian states, also found that 12% of such families had to sell their assets to cover the medical expenses of family members.

The survey interviewed 10,000 families in the lower income group in Maharashtra, Karnataka, Himachal Pradesh, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh between 2002 and 2005.

Additionally, the survey noted, clean drinking water, basic sanitation, proper nutrition and pollution-free fuel, still unavailable to a majority of the poor in India, made lower income groups more vulnerable to disease and health hazards, eventually leading to higher health expenditure. For instance, nearly 84% of such families cannot afford vegetables and fruit due to the spiraling cost of food.

Privatization has also infected many health schemes like free check-ups and treatment for the poor at government hospitals, free medicines and free beds. â€œThe policy framework never focused on improving the overall health conditions before withdrawing welfare schemes owing to privatization,â€ claims Arun Bal of the Association for Consumersâ€™ Action on Safety and Health (ACASH) in Mumbai.

Vandana Shiva terms this trend of putting medicines out of the reach of vast sections of the public as bioterrorism.[xxv]

She writes, â€œBiowarfare or bioterrorism is the deliberate use of living organisms to kill people. When economic policies based on trade liberalization and globalisation deliberately spread fatal and infectious diseases such as AIDS, TB and malaria, by dismantling health and medical systems, they too become instruments of bioterror. This is the way citizen groups have organised worldwide against the TRIPS (Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights) Agreement and GATS (General Agreement on Trade in Services) of the WTO. TRIPS imposes patents and monopolies on drugs, taking essential medicines beyond the reach of the poor.

For example, AIDS medicine, which costs $200 without patents, costs $20,000 with patents. TRIPS and patents on medicines become recipes for spreading disease and death because they take cure beyond people's reach. Similarly, privatization of health systems as imposed by the World Bank under SAPS (Structural Adjustment Programmes) and also proposed in GATS, spreads infectious diseases because low cost, decentralized public health systems are withdrawn and dismantled. These are also forms of bioterror. They are different from the acts of terrorists only because they are perpetrated by the powerful, not the marginalized and the excluded and they are committed for the fanaticism of the free market ideology, not fundamentalist religious ideologies. But in impact they are the same. They kill innocent people and species by

spreading disease.â€

T. Jacob John. â€œPolio eradication and ethical issuesâ€. IJME, Oct-Dec 2004 (4).

[ii] "Recombinant hepatitis B vaccine and risk of multiple sclerosis: a prospective study." Neurology 2004; 63(5): 838-842

[iii] http://www.scidev.net/News/index.cfm?fuseaction=readnews & itemid=3726 & language=1

[iv] http://www.scidev. net/Editor Letter s/index.cfm? fuseaction= readeditorletter & itemid=119 & language=1

[v] http://www.whale.to/m/incao.html

[vi] http://www.scoop. co.nz/stories/ HL0706/S00120.

htm

The Centres for Disease Control recently released figures to show that one child in every 150 is diagnosed with autism. Eighty percent of autistic Americans are under the age of 18.

While Dr. Fombonne, (one of the authorities called to testify in the hearing) is usually described as an expert, it's rarely noted that his expertise in mercury toxicity comes from being a psychiatrist, not a toxicologist.

Another expert witness, Dr. Offit defended thimerosal as safe, when adequate toxicological research exists to show otherwise. Thimerosal was never tested by the FDA.

Dr.Offit wrote in the Boston Globe recently about the hearings. In his article â€œAt Risk: vaccines,â€ he warned, â€œUnfavorable judgments will threaten the vaccine supply. Manufacturers will be scared out of the business. Children's very lives will be put at risk if we dare to question vaccine content.â€

Wendy Fournier, President of the National Autism Association, refutes this. "He writes of massive litigation that could force companies to leave the vaccine business, when the vaccine manufacturers in fact cannot be held liable. Consumers will pay any money awarded to these suffering families. A $.75 fee is added to the cost of every vaccine and put into The Vaccine Injury Compensation Program to compensate people who are injured by them. The manufacturers are not held responsible and therefore have no incentive to produce safe vaccines for consumers."

See also. Gardiner Harris. â€Opening Statements in Case on Autism and Vaccinationsâ€. New York Times, June 12, 2007

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/12/us/12vaccine.html

[vii] Mark Sircus. Multiple Vaccinations. Feb 14, 2006 http://www.thenhf.com/vaccinations_77.htm

Most deployed personnel received 17 or more vaccines, some probably experimental and administered without proper informed consent, in a two to three day period during deployment. In a British study funded by the Department of Defense and published in the British medical Journal Lancet an association was found between GWS and the multiple vaccines that were administered to British veterans. In the U.S. there have been GWS signs and symptoms in personnel who have received the anthrax vaccine.. In some cases this has resulted in chronic illnesses in as many as 7-10% of personnel receiving the vaccine. These chronic illnesses, including CFS/ME and

other illnesses, are very similar to the diagnosis of GWS.In 1999 a British study examined a large number of Gulf War exposures in large cohorts of British Gulf War and non-deployed Gulf-era veterans, and Bosnia veterans. They found that "Vaccination against biological warfare and multiple routine vaccinations were associated with the CDC multi-symptom syndrome in the Gulf War cohort." The French Ministry of Defense (MOD) also found that "multiple vaccinations given during the war, particularly those for anthrax, botulinum, and plague, seem associated with an excess of (GWS) signs and symptoms."

[viii] Global Polio Eradication Initiative in India-1995- 2006: Background Information Note. Prepared for IMA Conference by Dr. Onkar Mittal and Dr.C. Sathyamala. Final Draft 4th May, 2006

[ix] Polio and Sanitation

In 1952, there were 57,879 reported cases of polio in the United States, including 21,269 cases of paralytic polio that resulted in more than 3000 deaths, with similar epidemic reported in Europe. These epidemics appeared to affect mostly adolescents and young adults and were growing at a steady pace, which spurred development of SALK inactivated vaccines. The universal use of Salk and Sabine vaccines has resulted in the almost complete global eradication of polio.

The most devastating result of poliovirus infection is paralysis, but more than 90% of infections are asymptomatic or unapparent but do induce protective immunity. Clinically apparent but non paralytic illness in about 5% of all infections, with paralytic polio occurring in about 1 out of 1000 infections among infants to about 1 out of 100 infections amongst adolescents. Prior to introduction of vaccines in United States and Europe, improvement in sanitation had limited the fecal- oral

spread of polioviruses, resulting in epidemic of infection occurring later in life, when 1 in every 100 infections resulted in paralysis. Thus in-developed countries prior to universal vaccinations, epidemics of paralytic poliomyelitis were observed among adolescents. Conversely in developing countries where sanitation was and continues to be poor, infection in early life results in infantile paralysis. Undoubtedly, good sanitation explains the virtual eradication of polio as a disease from United States in early 1960s, when only about two third of population was immunized with Salk vaccine, and subsequent absence of circulating wild-type poliovirus in US and Europe. In contrast, poor sanitation and crowding have permitted the continued transmission of poliovirus in certain poor countries in Asia and Africa, despite massive global efforts to eradicate polio, in some areas with an average of 12-13 doses of polio vaccine administered to children younger than 5 years of age.

Nelsonâ€™s Text Book of Pediatrics- 17th edition

Table: List of the districts reporting WPV cases in U.P. in 2004 and percentage of AFP cases reporting NPEV

(Ref: data received from Lucknow office of NPSP)

District

NPEV % in 2004

1

Moradabad

50%

2

Shahazanpur

46.6

3

Badaun

47.56%

4

Muzaffarnagar

48%

5

Bareilly

49.58%

6

Ghaziabad

47%

7

Shaharanpur

28%

8

Bijnor

41%

9

Meerut

38%

10

Baghpat

44%

11

Hathras

43%

12

Aligarh

35.48%

13

Bulandshahar

41.40%

14

Gautam Budh Nagar

61.8

15

Jyotiba Phule Nagar

47%

16

Mathura

34.35

17

Rampur

18

Etah

46.24%

19

Mau

45%

20

Chandauli

16.2

21

Azamgarh

23

22

Balrampur

12.8

23

Barabanki

26.8

24

Faizabad

21

25

Farukhabad

30

26

Hardoi

30

27

Lalitpur

21

28

Maharjganj

19

29

Sitapur

19

29

Varanasi

21.2

Total

State av. 31.90

[xi] Untested vaccine surfaces in polio outbreak

http://www.tehelka. com/story_ main33.asp? filename= Ne280707untested _vaccine. asp

When the mOPVI was launched in India in mid-2005, the impression created at the time was that this vaccine had earlier been used in the 60s and 70s in some other countries. The project manager of the NPSP, Dr Hamid Jafari, confirmed this while talking to media.

In contrast to this position, the April 21, 2007, issue of Lancet, carried a study titled â€œProtective efficacy of a monovalent oral Type 1 poliovirus vaccine: a case-control study by Grassly NC, Wenger J, Durrani S, Bahl S, Deshpande JM, Sutter RW, Heymann DL and Aylward RBâ€. On pages 1356-1362 it says: â€œA high-potency monovalent oral type 1 poliovirus vaccine (mopv-i) was developed in 2005 to tackle persistent poliovirus transmission in the last remaining infected countries. Our aim was to assess the efficacy of this vaccine in India.â€

This clearly means that the MOPVI is a new, untested vaccine and its use was part of an experiment. This news has outraged the Indian medical community.

Head of the pediatrics department of Delhi-based St Stephenâ€™s Hospital, Jacob Puliyel, raised important ethical issues. He said administering MOPVI without examining its potential harmful effects amounts to experimentation on human subjects. The question that NPSP and WHO have to answer is why polio drops that are five times more potent, which means they carry five times more of the live poliovirus, was indiscriminately administered. Would this not result in overexposure to the live poliovirus and possibly result in vaccine-induced polio? â€œThe oversight body that introduced this experimental vaccine should also have monitored adverse effects,â€ wrote Puliyel to Lancet. Further, he

mentioned: â€œIn the absence of proper post-vaccination surveillance of adverse effects, we have to rely on indirect evidence of possible adverse effects available from the NPSP. Data from Uttar Pradesh (where Grassly and colleagues show improved vaccine efficacy) show an increase in the incidence of non-polio Acute Flaccid Paralysis (AFP, or the weakness of limbs) since the introduction of the monovalent vaccine.â€ Doctors in UP are worried about this development. â€œWe want the nature of AFP in these cases to be investigated. It could be due to over exposure to the polio vaccine,â€ said a senior doctor in Lucknow who has overseen the polio immunisation programme in UP for years.

These apprehensions are not without reason. Of the 10,264 reported cases of AFP, 209 were cases of polio. Of the remaining 10,055 only 2,553 were followed up. NPSP data reveal that approximately 4,800 cases had residual paralysis or died after acquiring in 2005 non-polio AFP. â€œThe situation was even worse in 2006 after just six doses of MOPVI. It is not surprising that NPSP is not keen on the follow up of these cases,â€ says Puliyel.

[xii] â€œPolio in goats baffles experts.â€ PTI. Monday, December 30, 2002 01:34:21 pm.

[xiii] http://www.nytimes. com/2004/ 01/22/nyregion/ 22CHAS.html

[xiv] â€œA study of diphtheria in two areas of Gt. Britainâ€ Special report series 272, HMSO 1950

[xv] M Schegal .et al. â€œComparative efficacy of three mumps vaccines during diseaseoutbreak in

Switzerland: cohort study.â€ BMJ, 1999; 319:352-3.

[xvi]NE Crone and AT Reder. â€œSevere tetanus in immunized patients with high anti-tetanus titers.â€ Neurology 1992; 42:761-764.

http://www.ncbi. nlm.nih.gov/ htbin-p.. .m=6 & db=m & Dopt=b

49 http://in.news. / 070726/43/ 6in7m.html

50 cities.expressindia.com/fullstory..php?newsid=240608

[xvii] https://www.who.int/macrohealth/action/Background/paper

[xviii] Jinal Shah. â€œPulse polio: BMC may not hire home guards.â€ Indian Express. Mumbai edition. August 3,

2007:5

http://cities. expressindia. com/fullstory. php?newsid= 249006

Till July, more than 250 women in uniform formed a crucial part of the anti-polio drive in earlier rounds as they administered vaccine to children up to the age of 5 years at 213 transit points across the city at a mere Rs 50 a day and at several booths at Rs 40 a day. But, now the BMC [Mumbai Municipality] would have to cough up Rs 198 a day per Home Guard. BMC doctors say home guards play a

very crucial role during the immunisation drive. "They are much more disciplined and people, especially migrants, respect uniform and it becomes easy to conduct the drive," said Dr Jairaj Thanekar, BMC's executive health officer.

[xix] Scientist Finds UNICEF Nigerian Polio Vaccine Contaminated with Sterilizing Agents.

http://www.lifesite .net/ldn /2004/mar/04031101. html

http://www.newmedia explorer .org/sepp/2004/ 03/10/nigeria _polio_vaccine_ found_contaminated. htm

Dr. Haruna Kaita, a pharmaceutical scientist and Dean of the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences of Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, Nigeria, took samples of the vaccine to labs in India for analysis.When asked why Dr. Kaita felt the drug manufacturers would have contaminated the Oral Polio Vaccine, he gave three reasons: "These manufacturers or promoters of these harmful things have a secret agendawhich only further research can reveal. Secondly they have always taken us in the third world for granted, thinking we don't have the capacity, knowledge and equipment to conduct tests that would reveal suchcontaminants. And very unfortunately they also have people to defend their atrocities within our midst, and worst still some of these are supposed to be our own professionals who we rely on to protect our interests."

[xx] http://www.sv40cancer.com/oralpres.asp

[xxi] http://www.thenhf.com/vaccinations_77.htm

[xxii] G. Padmanaban. â€œDNA vaccines for prophylaxis and therapy.â€

http://www.ias. ac.in/currsci/ aug25/articles11 .htm

[xxiii] Richard Halvorsen. The Truth About Vaccines: How We Are Used as Guinea Pigs Without Knowing

It. London, Gibson Square, 2007. http://www.express. co.uk/posts/ view/14350/ Children-

[xxiv] The Hindustan Times, February 5, 2007

[xxv] Vandana Shiva. â€œ Bioterrorism and biosafety.â€ http://www.hinduonnet.com/2001/10/19/stories/0519134i.htm

--- On Sat, 7/6/08, omesh bharti <bhartiomesh wrote:

omesh bharti <bhartiomesh[HealthyIndia] Government may revive the Vaccine PSUs- but a watch is needed"JSA" <pha-ncc >, "DISEASE SURVEILLANCE" <diseasesurveillance >, "Madhavi Yennapu" <y_madhavi01, "vaccines group" <rationalvaccinepolicy, "ICMR 9" <varshney, , "PULIYEL" <puliyel, "PULIYEL 1" <puliyel, "sathya mala" <sathya_phr, "manicam nie" <manicampSaturday, 7 June, 2008, 1:05 PM

Dear Friends,This is a good news but still wew needto be watchful as this may be an attempt to skirt theissue for the time being as pressure is mountingbecause the lobbies are stil active to keep thevaccine institutes closed and convert them to vaccinetesting labs.for the time being thanks to all who supported theissue and forced the ministary to reconsider thedecision to close the vaccine PSUs.special thanks to Pioneer.Dr. Omesh BhartiH.P.http://www..dailypio neer.com/ indexn12. asp?main_ variable= front%5Fpage & file_name= story1%2Etxt & counter_img= 1Ramadoss blinks, orders vaccine probe J Gopikrishnan | New DelhiSweetheart deal with associate's firm set to bescrappedA sustained campaign by The

Pioneer against thevaccine scam has finally stirred Union Health MinisterAnbumani Ramadoss into action. The dubious jointventure for measles vaccine production between aCentral Public Sector Undertaking (PSU) and a privatecompany will now be investigated. Simultaneously, acommittee will go into the possibility of restartingvaccine production by the PSUs who were asked inJanuary to shut shop by the Health Ministry. Well-placed sources in the Health Ministry said thatRamadoss held a detailed discussion with his seniorofficials late on Thursday and ordered aninvestigation into the "irregularities" in thecontroversial deal between Pasteur Institute of India(Coonoor), a PSU, and Green Signal Bio Pharma (GSBP).The Pioneer was the first paper to report that the PSUhad purchased measles seeds from Green Signal BioPharma for an astronomical Rs 3.25 crore when thesewere available

virtually for free from IndianImmunologicals Ltd, Hyderabad, another PSU engaged inmeasles vaccine production. The one-sided deal alsogranted 70 per cent of the projected profit of Rs 205crore earned from the joint venture to the privatecompany for three years. Sources said Ramadoss asked the Ministry officials tokeep the controversial deal in abeyance till theinvestigation is completed. The Health Minister alsoconstituted a three-member committee, headed by theDrugs Controller General of India, to explore thepossibility of restarting vaccine production at thethree Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs) who weredirected in January to close production. The committeehas been asked to submit the report before July 15.The Minister has come under tremendous politicalpressure to revoke the directive banning vaccineproduction by the PSUs after allegations surfaced thathe was

playing into the hands of private vaccinemanufacturers and international suppliers. The CPI(M)central committee had passed a resolution that thePSUs be revived. Its general secretary Prakash Karat,Politburo member Brinda Karat and Madurai MP P Mohanhad asked Ramadoss to take urgent steps for restartingvaccine production by the three PSUs. The BJP hadsought the Prime Minister's intervention in the matterwhile Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Karuananidhi andHimachal Pradesh Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal hadalso asked Ramadoss to lift the ban on the PSUs andenable them to manufacture vaccines.Sources also said that the meeting discussed therevelation of irregularities, asreported in The Pioneer, and that there was arealisation that the deal must be scrapped to preventthe matter from going to the court. "The deal will bescrapped as and when the investigation report

issubmitted," said an official.Green Signal Bio Pharma is owned by PSundaraparipoornan, who is considered a closeassociate of the Union Health Minister in thepolitical circles of Tamil Nadu. How and why the PSUdecided to purchase the measles seed, a critical partin vaccine manufacture, from GSBP -- which is neitheran accredited vendor nor producer of measles vaccine-- is still a mystery? The private company did notproduce any proof of origin or source of supply forthe measles seed it delivered to Pasteur Institute.The controversial deal was signed on November 27,2006, and the private company withdrew Rs 2.5 crorewithin the next two days. Though the integratedfinance division of the Health Ministry noticed andobjected to the irregularities in July 2007, theMinistry never took any action. The finance divisionpointed out that the director of the Pasteur Institutewas

not competent to enter into the agreement as hehad no power to sign any contract worth above Rs 50lakh. The division also recommended that the amount berecovered from Green Signal Bio Pharma, but theMinistry chose to take no follow-up action.The Pasteur Institute has been engaged in theproduction of rabies vaccine for more than 100 years.As measles vaccine production is a new project, itneeds the approval of the Planning Commission besidesbudgetary provisions. But these norms were notfollowed and the finance division's findings were alsoignored. Dr Elangeshwaran, the then director of thePSU who signed the controversial deal, had told ThePioneer that he had been "arm-twisted" by topofficials of the Health Ministry into helping privatecompanies. He also said that immense pressure was puton him by the Health Ministry to close down vaccineproduction at the PSUs, a move that would

benefit onlythe private companies.The Pioneer investigation also revealed that theMinistry received a proposal from Dr Elangeshwaran onDecember 27, 2007, seeking Rs 17.8 crore to start themeasles vaccine project which envisages a Rs 205-croreprofit in three years. Within two weeks, the Ministryordered that all vaccine production by the three PSUs-- Pasteur Institute of India in Coonoor, BCG VaccineLab in Chennai and Central Research Institute inKasauli -- be suspended. The only exception was madein the case of measles vaccine production, whichbenefited the private company.This came as a major shock as these PSUs were the mainsource of vaccine production for expanded immunisationprogramme in India. They used to meet 70 per cent ofthe nation's vaccine needs. The Pasteur Institute wasmanufacturing rabies vaccine for more than 100 yearsnow.Sequence of

eventsNovember 27, 2006Pasteur Institute buys measles seed from Green SignalBio Pharma for an astronomical Rs 3.25 crorehe company is neither an accredited vendor nor aproducer of measles vaccineMeasles seeds were available for free from IndianImmunologicals Ltd, Hyderabad, another PSUThe PSU agrees to give 70% of the profit earned onmeasles vaccine production to Green Signal Bio Pharmafor three yearsThe firm withdraws Rs 2.5 cr within two days ofsigning the dealPSU director was not competent to sign deal above Rs50 lakhPlanning Commission approval was not obtained for theproject, nor was any budgetary allocation madeJuly 2007Integrated finance division reports to the HealthMinistry on the illegal actions. Recommends that theRs 2.5 crore be recovered from the private companyDecember 27, 2007The PSU

director sends a project proposal to theHealth Ministry for sanctioning Rs 17.8 crore forstarting measles vaccine production. Projected profitfor three years is Rs 205 crore, which ensures Rs 143crore (70%) for the private companyFor any comments, queries or feedback, kindly mail usat pioneerletters@ .co. in

Explore your hobbies and interests. Click here to begin.

June 8, 2008

Respected Madam,

Thanks for these details, I would go

through it and comment. Can you please tell me the

name of your book, I would be thankful

Bharti

--- Prabha Krishnan <prabha40249 wrote:

> Dear Dr. Bharti and others,

> & nbsp;

> It may be good news that a PSU's working is to be

> scanned and regulated, and made to function

> according to the agreed parameters. BUT what of the

> product this PSU produces? Is there any real science

> behind it? Do the consumers have any reliable

> dependable & nbsp;safety nets? Does the & nbsp; educated

> urban dwelling middle class, who function as policy

> consumers and & nbsp;makers really know the issues

> involved? I am pasting an extract from my

> forthcoming book for your comments.

> & nbsp;

> As far as the JSA is concerned I had hoped that this

> group with it commendable widespread base would have

> started to think out of the box and come up with

> sustainable alternatives to the vaccine paradigm.

> & nbsp;

> Prabha Krishnan.

> & nbsp;

> Informed Choice.

> & nbsp;

> While womenâ€™s groups especially and other health

> activists have been proactive on the issue of

> informed consent with regard to contraception and

> abortion, they have not worked with equal vigour on

> the issue of drugless health. This gap is

> particularly glaring in the case of immunization

> against disease. The term immunization in India and

> elsewhere actually refers to vaccination, but these

> terms are not interchangeable.

> & nbsp;

> Organisms build immunity throughout their lives in a

> variety of ways.

> In Indian traditional thought, we are urged to take

> note of our nine emotion states, or nava rasa-s,

> variously listed as love, laughter, parental love,

> anger, disgust, fear, compassion, peace, wonder,

> courage and to engage with them creatively. For

> instance, not finding a caring partner may make one

> miss out on erotic or parental love. To suppress

> anger, disgust and fear has its own consequences.

> Never to know and express wonder wearies the spirit.

> To be removed from oneâ€™s ancestral lands can be

> deeply shocking to a farmer who knows no other

> occupation.

> & nbsp;

> In Matrix I we noted how the latest trend in

> industrial development, the setting up of Special

> Economic Zones or SEZs, leads to large-scale

> displacement. In More to Muse On I will revert to

> this issue of displacement and how this alienation

> breeds ill health.

> & nbsp;

> Attaining real immunity.

> & nbsp;

> Authentic and lasting immunity is built from

> & nbsp; & nbsp;

>

Â· & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp;\

& nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp;

> Appropriate food, air and water

>

Â· & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp;\

& nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp;

> Control over livelihood resources

> & nbsp;

>

Â· & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp;\

& nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp;

> Political participation leading to control over

> national issues

>

Â· & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp;\

& nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp;

> Ability to manage stress.

> & nbsp;

> When discussions on health policy for women, men and

> children do not cover these issues the outcome

> cannot be empowering for the citizens of the

> country.

> & nbsp;

> The current discourse on vaccinations does not bring

> into focus a number of issues.

> & nbsp;

>

Â· & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp;\

& nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp;

> Issues of theory & nbsp;

> Do vaccinations really kick-start immunity building?

> Does antibody production indicate resistance to

> disease?

> Do vaccinations promote over-committed, inflexible

> immune systems?

> & nbsp;

>

Â· & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp;\

& nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp;

> Contents of vaccinations â€“ could they be really

> safe? & nbsp;

> & nbsp;

> Vaccines contain formaldehyde, mercury and aluminum

> products besides alien proteins and RNA. The

> vaccination procedure bypasses the infantâ€™s

> defence systems however immature these may be.

> Mercury for one is known to cause neural damage even

> when the expectant mother consumes modest amounts of

> industrially produced fish. Also current vaccination

> schedules can mandate at least 16 vaccines in the

> first 2 years of the childâ€™s life. The toxic load

> is completely unacknowledged. In Japan, sudden

> infant death syndrome or cot deaths were controlled

> by raising the age at first vaccination to 2 years.

> In India, the first vaccinations are given at birth.

> & nbsp;

>

Â· & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp;\

& nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp;

> Side effects. Vaccines are known to produce the

> disease they are supposed to control.

> This has been noticed in the case of polio,

> pertussis and influenza. In the run up to the Iraq

> war the small-pox and anthrax vaccines have been

> implicated & nbsp; in producing heart disease and

> pneumonia in healthy & nbsp; American military

> personnel and civilians. MMR vaccines have been

> implicated in the production of Autism and other

> learning and cognitive defects in & nbsp; vaccinated

> children. One recurrent feature is the refusal of

> health authorities to take & nbsp; cognizance of

> anecdotal evidence from parents connecting the

> development of autism in & nbsp; previously healthy

> child with vaccinations.

> & nbsp;

> Absence of safety nets. Since vaccinations have

> attained sacred cow status in India, there has been

> no move to provide strict monitoring, reporting and

> compensation systems. Thankfully this last at least

> is being seen as an ethical issue and is being

> protested by some.

> & nbsp;

> In not engaging with these issues we are exposing

> large segments of the population to participation in

> experiments without informed consent. This is a

> violation of the Nuremberg Code and the Helsinki

> Declaration on research on human subjects.

> & nbsp;

> As the trend is to find and use a vaccine for every

> ill, even if it is self-limiting, more and more

> anomalies come to light.

> & nbsp;

> & nbsp;For instance, when researchers analyzed

> hepatitis B vaccination statistics from 163

> individuals with multiple sclerosis and 1,604

> controls, they found a strong correlation between

> getting the hepatitis B vaccine and the risk of

> developing multiple sclerosis. Specifically, the

> results indicated that the risk of developing

> multiple sclerosis was three times higher in the

> group that was vaccinated against hepatitis B than

> in the group that was not vaccinated. By contrast,

> individuals given tetanus and influenza vaccinations

> had no significant extra risk of developing multiple

> sclerosis.

>

> The hepatitis B vaccine was designed specifically

> for " high-risk " groups: drug users, prostitutes, and

> others. When these groups wouldn't cooperate with

> the hepatitis B vaccination program, the health

> authorities decided to widen coverage to children.

> But the risk of hepatitis B in children is very

> small, so there is absolutely no need to subject

> them to this potentially dangerous vaccine.[ii]

> & nbsp;

> To keep their profits healthy, vaccine manufacturers

> resort to clever marketing, which includes wide

> coverage to confusing research, and dissemination of

> partial results in every medium, using misleading

> headlines. Consider this report from a Bangladesh

> study entitled â€œHib vaccine could save thousands

> in Asia.â€[iii]

>

> & nbsp;Vaccinating infants in Asia against a

> bacterium that commonly causes pneumonia and

> meningitis could save hundreds of thousands of

> lives, according to researchers.

> The results of the study in Dhaka, Bangladesh,

> published online in the Pediatric Infectious Disease

> Journal (28 June 2007), show that this immunization

> prevents one-third of all life-threatening pneumonia

> cases and over 90 per cent of meningitis cases

> caused by Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib).

> The researchers, from the International Centre for

> Diarrhoeal Disease Research in Bangladesh and the

> US-based Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public

> Health (JHSPH), say these results tally with

> previous findings from Chile and Indonesia.

> They recommend the Hib vaccine for Afghanistan,

> Bangladesh, Bhutan, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.

> The results from the Bangladesh study â€• in which

> 68,000 children (under the age of two) were given

> the Hib vaccine, along with a routine diphtheria,

> tetanus, and pertussis vaccine â€• challenge the

> notion that Hib rarely causes pneumonia and

> meningitis in Asia, say the researchers.

> But there is disagreement about the total burden of

> pneumonia and meningitis caused by Hib in Asia.

> Jacob Puliyel, head of the paediatrics department at

> St Stephen's Hospital in Delhi, India, says the

> latest data from India, published in 2002, shows

> that Hib incidence is only nine per 100,000 children

> under five, compared to 109 per 100,000 in the West.

>

=== message truncated ===

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