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The Driven Researcher

On Vaccines, Adjuvants and Autoimmunity

Posted by Christina England on Nov 21, 2017 8:05:45 AM

Immunologists survey the research and it’s not reassuring

Add one more item to the growing stack of published medical literature linking vaccines to the current explosion of autoimmune diseases from skin afflictions to neurological disorders. A paper published in October 2015, the journal Pharmacological Research is an international team of immunologists’ roundup of current findings on vaccine-induced disease -- and their conclusions are in sharp contrast to public health’s “safe and effective” mantra that denies any such connection.

“Vaccines and autoimmunity are linked fields,” state the authors led by Luísa Eça Guimarães of the Zabludowicz Center for Autoimmune Diseases in Tel-Hashomer, Israel. Just as natural infections can sometimes induce autoimmune disease, so can vaccination induce autoimmunity that “may be severe and fatal.”

Autoimmunity can manifest acutely, as encephalitis for example, or in a wide range of disfiguring and debilitating immune-mediated illnesses from alopecia to multiple sclerosis. These are soaring globally and together affect as many as one in five Americans today. Officials like those at the National Institutes for Health and the Centers for Disease Control claim some mysterious unidentified “environmental” factors must be responsible for the epidemic, but they obstinately refuse to look at the ever-increasing schedule of injected drugs that target the immune system.

In the paper, the immunologists review current research and case studies of vaccine-induced autoimmunity in light of the new the concept of Autoimmune Syndrome Induced by Adjuvants introduced by leading immunologist Yehuda Shoenfeld in 2011. The ASIA model explains adverse events that have been linked to vaccination since it began according to new understandings of the mechanisms by which vaccine ingredients called adjuvants take effect. Adjuvants are designed to stimulate the immune system but in some individuals can trigger a cascade of immune reactions and symptoms (ASIA) that can eventually manifest as overt autoimmune disease.

Aluminum's Effect as a Vaccine Adjuvant

The paper identifies three documented risks associated with the most common vaccine adjuvant, the metal aluminum: 1) it persists in the body for years; 2) it can “trigger pathological immune responses” and 3) it can “pass through the [blood brain barrier] BBB into the [central nervous system] CNS where it can trigger immune-inflammatory processes, resulting in brain inflammation and long-term neural dysfunction.”

Given aluminum’s well-established neurotoxicity and the increasing schedule of aluminum-containing vaccines for children, this should be terrifying.  “Aluminum compounds persist for up to 8-11 years post vaccination in the human body,” say the immunologists. “This fact, combined with repeated exposure may account for a hyper activation of the immune system and subsequent chronic inflammation.”

Bad as that all sounds, they also note that vaccination has been experimentally demonstrated to unleash the immune system’s production of autoantibodies – immune cells mistakenly directed at their host’s cells rather than invaders. “It has been widely demonstrated that autoantibodies can develop years before the manifestation of a full-blown autoimmune disease,” say the immunologists.

Vaccine Adverse Reaction Reports

Pandemrix H1N1 swine flu vaccineOnly a fraction of adverse events are reported and no long-term studies have ever been done to compare autoimmune disease in vaccinated vs. unvaccinated individuals or looked at the impact of the full schedule of vaccines on autoimmunity so it is a wonder that the immunologists still assert the general safety of some vaccines. Especially given what they are just learning about others -- like the totally unexpected but now indisputable link between the H1N1 Pandemrix swine flu vaccine used in 2009 and a horrifying epidemic of narcolepsy among children who received the vaccine and will be disabled for life. How many cases of historical narcolepsy were caused by previous vaccines? No one knows.

The immunologists show no sympathy for the HPV vaccine against human papilloma virus, however, thoughGardasil Vaccine for HPV it is universally recommended and frequently mandated to girls (and boys) as young as nine to prevent rare adult cervical and anal cancers. “Death rate from cervical cancer in 9-20-year-old girls is zero and long-term benefits are yet to be proven,” say the immunologists. They cite unusually high adverse event reports with the vaccine, including cases of many autoimmune diseases such as paralyzing Guillain Barre syndrome, multiple sclerosis and transverse myelitis and state that “short-term risks to healthy subjects can prove to pose a heavier burden than cervical cancer.”

What This Means?

Future studies must be “better designed,” the paper concludes. Having true placebos rather than comparing one adjuvanted vaccine to another would be a start. And studies should follow recipients for many years rather than the usual month or two and large epidemiological studies of vaccines’ impact on autoimmune disease should be undertaken, the researchers add.

Many parents and even many doctors may be surprised that such studies have never actually been done already, particularly for immune system diseases that are inexplicably soaring.

But even more disturbing than these admissions from top immunologists is the paper’s unintended revelation of just how little is known about how vaccines impact the immune system. It turns out the top doctors don’t have a clue who is really in danger of vaccine injury or why. The study of ASIA and these adjuvant effects is just beginning to bring parts of the whole vaccine/autoimmunity phenomenon into focus. And what is most clear is not at all reassuring.

The Children’s Medical Safety Research Institute (CMSRI) is a medical and scientific collaborative established to provide research funding for independent studies on causal factors underlying the chronic disease and disability epidemic. You can follow CMSRI on Facebook and Twitter for the latest updates.

Topics: Blog

The Children’s Medical Safety Research Institute (CMSRI) is a medical and scientific collaborative established to provide research funding for independent studies on causal factors underlying the chronic disease and disability epidemic.
  

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