DPT vaccine lies
[back] Lying

[They have got a cheek to make out DPT is safe and doesn't cause brain damage.  They engineered this lie in the UK by fixing a court case.  They then said the 900 cases of brain damage they paid out in the past were nothing to do with the vaccine!! ^{(1, 2}.]

At Risk: Truth About Vaccines, Lawsuits & Shortages by Barbara Loe Fisher
MYTH #1: DPT vaccine injury lawsuits in the 1970's and 1980's drove most drug companies making vaccines out of US market; or specifically, as Offit states in the June 3, 2007 Boston Globe Op Ed, " at the beginning of the 1980's, 18 companies made vaccines, by the end of the decade, only four were left."
FACT: In 1982, there were four drug companies making and selling vaccines for children in the U.S.: Merck, Wyeth, Lederle and Connaught. In 2007, after two decades of mergers and acquisitions, there are six drug companies making and selling vaccines for children in the U.S.: Merck, Wyeth, Sanofi Pasteur, GlaxoSmithKline, MedImmune and Novartis. Foreign companies, like Australia's CSL Biotherapies, are poised to enter the lucrative US vaccine market soon. There are more than 200 vaccine trials in various stages worldwide and most vaccines being developed will be targeted by CDC officials and drug company lobbyists for widespread use in order to guarantee stockholder profits for vaccine manufacturers.
MYTH #2: Because DPT vaccine injury lawsuits in the 1970's and 1980's drove drug companies out of the US market, vaccine shortages occurred and continue to occur; specifically, Offit blames "the legacy of pertussis litigation" for shortages of tetanus vaccine "in 1998," pneumococcal (Prevnar) vaccine "beginning in 2000" and influenza vaccine "between 2003- 2004."
FACT: In a 2002 Government Accounting Office (GAO) investigation and report,"Childhood Vaccines: Ensuring an Adequate Supply Poses Continuing Challenges," the threat of vaccine injury lawsuits was not listed among reasons for vaccine shortages in the U.S.. Instead, the GAO identified primary reasons as (1) manufacturing production problems; (2) calls by immunization policy-making bodies to remove a preservative from vaccines as a precautionary measure; (3) a manufacturer's decision to cease production of some vaccines; and (4) greater than- expected demand for a vaccine that had recently been added to the immunization schedule.
    Almost all of the vaccine shortages that the U.S. has experienced have been due to vaccine manufacturer production and government regulation compliance problems. Dr Offit should be well aware of reasons for vaccine shortages in the past decade because he was publicly identified as a member of the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) from 1998 to 2003.
    The shortage of adult tetanus vaccine occurred in early 2001, not 1998, when Wyeth-Lederle abruptly announced it had stopped production of tetanus-toxoid containing products, as well as DTaP vaccine. The 2002 GAO report revealed Wyeth had been planning to leave the DTaP and tetanus vaccine market but accelerated its departure when it realized it would have problems responding to FDA requirements to make "significant upgrades to its facilities where tetanus toxoid was manufactured." In addition, in August 2001, Merck temporarily suspended operations in one of its facilities manufacturing MMR and Varicella (chicken pox) vaccines to address issues raised by FDA inspectors during a plant inspection and to make scheduled modifications to its facility. According to the 2002 GAO report, the time it took to make plant modifications and difficulties in meeting FDA manufacturing requirements contributed to shortages of MMR, varicella, DTaP, and Td vaccines between the end of 2001 and summer of 2002.
    The shortage of pneumococcal vaccine in 2001- 2002, occurred when Wyeth-Lederle aggressively promoted its vaccine after FDA licensure in 2000 but failed to correctly predict public demand for the vaccine that made Prevnar the best selling new pharmaceutical product in 2001. Although failure of supply to meet demand was the main reason for the shortage, the 2002 GAO report added ""the company's production of the vaccine was also hampered by ongoing manufacturing problems" and "changes made in the company's quality assurance procedures" to comply with FDA standards.
    The shortage of influenza vaccine in 2003-2004 and flu-related deaths resulted when a more severe type of influenza circulating that year (A/Fujian) was not contained in the flu vaccine. CDC officials, who knew it but didn't tell Americans, publicized the deaths of children attributed to the Fujian flu in the fall of 2003 and urged that everyone get vaccinated, which generated a huge demand for flu vaccine that exceeded supply.
http://www.nvic.org/History/Newsletters/%203770Reaction.pdf  
MYTH #3: DPT vaccine does not cause brain inflammation and permanent brain damage; specifically Offit states that "Subsequent studies of hundreds of thousands of children showed that the risk of permanent brain damage was the same in children who had not received the vaccine as in those who had."
FACT: Of all the vaccines which have been routinely used by children in the past century, the brain damaging effects of the pertussis (whooping cough) portion of DPT vaccine is among the most well documented in the scientific literature. Created in 1912, the crude pertussis vaccine basically consisted of B. pertussis bacteria killed with heat, preserved with formaldehyde, and injected into children. In the early 1940's, aluminum was added as an adjuvant and later the mercury preservative, thimerosal, was added when pertussis was combined with diphtheria and tetanus vaccines to create DPT. Pertussis vaccine was never studied in large clinical trials before being given to children in the first half of the 20th century or after it was combined into DPT and recommended for mass use by the American Academy of Pediatrics in 1947.
    The pertussis vaccine's ability to kill was first signaled in 1933 when T. Madsen reported two babies died within minutes of vaccination. In 1947, Matthew Brody gave detailed descriptions of two cases involving brain damage and death after pertussis vaccination. But, it was the 1948 published case study by Byers and Moll that gave the strongest warning that children were suffering brain inflammation within 72 hours of pertussis vaccination and being left with various kinds of brain damage. Forty years later, the prospective UCLA/FDA study published in Pediatrics in 1981 comparing DT and DPT vaccines would find that 1 in 875 DPT shots is followed by either a convulsion or collapse shock episode within 48 hours of vaccination.
    Biological mechanisms for pertussis vaccine induced brain damage center on pertussis toxin (PT), one of the most lethal toxins in nature. Pertussis toxin is a known neurotoxin, a reliable inducer of brain inflammation and brain damage, which is why it is used in lab animals to deliberately induce EAE (experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis). Pertussis toxin is implicated in brain inflammation caused by pertussis (whooping cough) complications as well as pertussis vaccine complications. Unfortunately, pertussis toxin is also thought to be responsible for stimulating immunity which is why it remains in DPT, DTaP and Tdap vaccines.. Other ingredients in DPT vaccine, which have been associated with neuroimmune dysfunction and may interact synergistically with pertussis toxin to cause shock, brain damage or death are: endotoxin, aluminum, and mercury.
    After decades of reports in the medical literature that the pertussis portion of DPT vaccine was causing brain damage in some children, the large, case controlled National Childhood Encephalopathy Study was conducted in Britain and published in 1981. It confirmed a statistically significant association between pertussis vaccine or pertussis-containing vaccines (DPT) and acute brain inflammation leading to permanent brain damage. An NCES reanalysis 10 years later re-confirmed the finding. In 1994, the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences, published a report validating the conclusions of NCES, stating that " "the balance of evidence is consistent with a causal relation between DPT and the forms of chronic nervous system dysfunction in the NCES in those children who experience a serious acute neurological illness within 7 days after receiving DPT vaccine."