What Are The Dangers Of The MMR Vaccine?

The measles vaccine has initiated a grand debate about immunization. The United States has reignited the concern over an illness that, although relatively harmless in most cases, has been somewhat nonexistent in recent years. ^[1] Concerns over vaccines and autism appear to have resulted in the decline of vaccination rates, possibly contributing to outbreaks. But is this actually true? Or, as the research suggests, could the Measles, Mumps, and Rubella (MMR) vaccine simply not be as effective as we’re being told? Or, could it even be dangerous?

What’s in the MMR Vaccine?

The ingredients contained in most vaccines are often unrecognizable terms that should, at first glance, appear worrisome. Injecting chemical ingredients–not to mention a live (albeit weakened) virus–into your bloodstream doesn’t sound like the wisest decision. Here’s a basic rundown of the ingredients in the MMR vaccine ^[2]:

Minimum Essential Medium

This is the medium that grows the Rubella virus and contains vitamins and amino acids and fetal bovine serum, which is produced from blood collected at commercial slaughterhouses.

Sodium Phosphate

Typically added to maintain pH balance and to keep active ingredients suspended in water. It can cause gastrointestinal problems but has also been linked with organ damage. In some instances, it can cause a severe allergic reaction that might include heart arrhythmia, seizure, and loss of consciousness.

Recombinant Human Albumin

Human albumin is a protein found in blood plasma and recombinant means it’s genetically engineered. In essence, the vaccine contains genetically-engineered human blood, and it’s uncertain as to the source. When this is injected, it’s been known to cause chills, fever, nausea, increased heart rate, and difficulty breathing.

Neomycin

An antibiotic that’s been known to cause serious allergic reactions in some individuals. Anyone who has ever had a life threatening allergic reaction to neomycin (or antibiotics in general) should absolutely avoid the MMR vaccination! One of the scariest things about neomycin is that it can cause late reactions, sometimes 3-4 days after exposure, well into the time period when you may think you’re in the clear.

Sorbitol

A synthetic sweetener often added to foods and beverages, sorbitol is used in vaccines as a stabilizer. Some people are allergic to sorbitol or fructose and should avoid it but even without the allergy, sorbitol can cause gastrointestinal issues and aggravate IBS.

Medium 199

Also used as a stabilizer. This medium contains vitamins, amino acids, and fetal bovine serum. Fetal bovine serum, again, is produced from the blood collected at commercial slaughterhouses.

Hydrolyzed Gelatin

Hydrolyzed gelatin is collagen collected from the bones of animals, including cows, fish, poultry, and rabbits. It contains free glutamic acid (MSG) and aspartic acid, two amino acids that can negatively affect neurological health. Even worse, injecting gelatin greatly increases the risk of infection from synthetic growth hormones and mad cow disease.

Chick Embryo Cell Culture

Derived from chick embryo, this cell culture is used to grow and store the live virus in the vaccine. When injected, the immune system is exposed and gets to work to build short-lived immunity against the illness.

WI-38 Human Diploid Lung Fibroblasts

WI-38 is a cell culture line obtained from aborted fetuses and used in the production of various vaccines. The purpose of this cell line is to culture and grow live viruses.

What About the Measles Booster Shot?

Following the initial dose of the measles vaccine, a booster shot is recommended at varying intervals to support immunity against the disease. The booster is the same vaccine containing a weakened version of the live virus that targets the immune system in an effort to elevate it back to a protective state. Since a vaccine, if effective, is said to wean after a few years’ time, receiving a booster every few years or so is supposed to rev up the body’s defense system by recharging the previous immunization.

Adults who missed out on the MMR vaccine in their childhood and those tested to show they are not immune to the disease are urged to receive a booster. The issue is that the MMR booster contains similar ingredients as the MMR vaccine, prompting the same health threats. While most people can receive a booster without any issue whatsoever, there is always a risk that reactions can occur following injection of the live virus.

Measles Vaccine and Autism: What’s the Connection?

It should be noted that the CDC advises pregnant women against receiving the MMR vaccine for fear that it may harm the developing fetus. This warning should tip most people off. While it’s not conclusive that the MMR vaccine–or any vaccine, for that matter–causes autism, we do know that a number of connections have been made. A now-refuted publication in the medical journal The Lancet reported that the MMR vaccine and autism were indefinitely linked. Despite the claims of the author, other reputable publications and mainstream media outlets continue to explore the possibility of the connection between neurological damage and immunization. ^[3]

A number of cases relating to the MMR vaccine and autism have been made public. The Italian Health Ministry in 2012 ruled that the MMR vaccine received by a nine-year-old boy caused him to develop autism. ^[4] The family was awarded with £140,000 in damages. According to the news report at the time, up to 100 similar cases were being investigated by lawyers in Italy. Health officials generally regard the development of autism immediately following vaccination a mere coincidence, but with more and more cases coming to light, it becomes increasingly difficult to support this theory.

The Full Story

The media is quick to blame the anti-vaxxers, as they’re calling them, parents who refuse to vaccinate their children on moral, religious, or health grounds, for pastmeasles outbreak in North America. This one-sided viewpoint isn’t investigating the numerous accounts of adverse reactions to vaccinations, or the fact that the measles vaccine isn’t always 100% effective at preventing the illness. Measles, like the chicken pox, is a relatively benign disease that, once infected and recovered from, provides immunity from future occurrences. This isn’t to say that infection with the illness is ideal or to downplay the negative complications that can arise, but it is a conversation worth having in today’s discussion on vaccines.

How are you approaching the news of the measles outbreak? What are your thoughts on the vaccine? We’d love to hear your voice in the comments!

References:

1. Walter A. Orenstein, Mark J. Papania and Melinda E. Wharton. Measles Elimination in the United States. J Infect Dis. (2004) 189 (Supplement 1): S1-S3. doi: 10.1086/377693.


2. Centers for Disease Control. Vaccine Excipient & Media Summary. CDC Fact Sheet.


3. Sharyl Attkisson. Vaccines, Autism and Brain Damage: What’s in a Name? CBS News.


4. Paul Bignell. Italian court reignites MMR vaccine debate after award over child with autism. The Independent.

HuffPo Exposed for Removing Articles that Favorably Review “Vaxxed” Movie

It’s recently been revealed that The Huffington Post has continued to block articles that appear to cast any favorable light on the controversial film “Vaxxed,” as two articles contributed by British writer Sally Beck were removed shortly after publication.

Beck wrote an article, titled “VAXXED, should we watch this movie?”, and it was published on the UK version of The Huffington Post on February 21st. She went on to co-author an article titled “The MMR vaccine: why it’s sensible to worry about the way it has been regulated” shortly after the “Vaxxed” article.

“Vaxxed is based on extensive recorded interviews with whistleblower, Dr William Thompson, a former senior scientist at the CDC, (Centres for Disease Control) the US agency concerned with safeguarding public health,” Beck wrote. “The film looks at whether his claims – that he, and four others at the CDC, skewed data in an important study looking at whether the MMR jab (measles, mumps and rubella) can cause autism – are true. Dr Thompson said: ‘I have waited a long time to tell my story and I want to tell it truthfully. I was involved in deceiving millions of taxpayers regarding the potential negative side effects of vaccines. We lied about the scientific findings.’”

The article “VAXXED, should we watch this movie?” served mainly as a review of the film’s content, while the MMR article expressed support for parents who have concerns about the safety of MMR vaccines. Both articles appear to show some graciousness toward Thompson as well as controversial figures Andrew Wakefield and Brian Hooker.

Hey @carolyn_greg @MarthRosenberg @sallymjbeck Huffington Post is censoring its authors. Anyone else being censored on #science or #vaccines

— Forrest Maready (@forrestmaready) February 22, 2017

An archived version of the “Vaxxed:” article can be seen here, and her followup article, “The MMR Vaccine:” can be viewed here. 

https://t.co/whPkIaRCRJ https://t.co/fo4TDvwewM #VAXXED @forrestmaready @HuffPostUK dropped pieces are being uploaded elsewhere

— Sally Beck (@sallymjbeck) February 23, 2017

These articles illustrated how Beck was intrigued by the claims made in this movie, particularly a bold charge made by Thompson that, during a study regarding a potential link between African-American boys, the MMR vaccine, and autism which was published in 2004, he and his co-authors removed data that led to an indication that young African-American males who received the MMR vaccine before the age of 36 months may be at an increased risk for autism.

In 2014, Thompson released a statement that alleged he and his fellow co-authors eliminated data in the study:

“I regret that my co-authors and I omitted statistically significant information in our 2004 article published in the journal ‘Pediatrics’. The omitted data suggested that African American males who received the MMR (mumps, measles and rubella) vaccine before age 36 months were at increased risk for autism. Decisions were made regarding the findings of the report as the data was collected and I believe that the final study protocol was not followed.”

“Vaxxed” has been condemned by most of the medical community as well as the bulk of mainstream media as a whole, mainly because of the controversy surrounding Dr. Brian Hooker’s involvement with Thompson as well as the fact that it was directed by Andrew Wakefield. Wakefield lost his medical license and was essentially exiled from the scientific community after he published a study in 1998 suggesting that the MMR vaccine was linked to autism; his study was retracted following claims of fraud surrounding the study.

Hooker was subjected to intense criticism after publishing a similar MMR study of his own serving as a “re-analysis” of Thompson’s study; his paper was published in the journal Translational Neurodegeneration and it too was ultimately retracted.

Thompson’s willingness to admit wrongdoing at the CDC was quite abrupt, but ignored by most media. It turned out that Thompson’s claims had originally been made privately to Hooker. Unbeknownst to Thompson, Hooker had been recording these private discussions and it appears that Thompson went public because he was about to be exposed by Hooker. Thompson’s 2014 statement concluded that he was not aware that Hooker “was recording any of our conversations, nor was I given any choice regarding whether my name would be made public or my voice would be put on the Internet.”

The MMR study, the secret recordings, Thompson’s statement, and the release of the CDC documents of the study are indeed rife with controversy. While Wakefield and Hooker can be viewed as polarizing figures, the central theme of Beck’s “Vaxxed” review is mostly rooted in Thompson’s claims of CDC data manipulation.

However, the majority of news outlets tend to instead focus on Hooker and Wakefield. In-depth coverage specifically regarding Thompson’s claim that data in a study was omitted- quite a serious topic that some view as worthy of discussion- is difficult to be found among corporate media.

This is not the first time that The Huffington Post has pulled a review of “Vaxxed.” Lance Simmens, a former contributor for The Huffington Post, told journalist Celia Farber last year that his review of the movie was pulled with no explanation. “I saw a premier of VAXXED the other evening and was so moved by the presentation and discussion that followed that I felt compelled to write a piece asking that we at least begin a serious national dialogue on the allegations contained in the documentary,”Simmens told Farber. “I also drew attention to the spate of events that have unfolded over the past several years, where there has been a massive governmental failure to do its essential job, which is to protect the health, safety and welfare of the citizens.” 

Simmens shared his frustration that the article was removed from The Huffington Post with no explanation. “It never crossed my mind that this might be some sort of censorship because it has never happened to me and the article, while provocative, is not beyond any bounds of journalistic or political propriety,” Simmens noted.

The debate over vaccine safety can be difficult to navigate. Arguments can be heavily subjective, and there are clearly strong convictions present on both sides of the controversy: there are those who believe that vaccines are critical and that federal agencies should be spared scrutiny for the sake of preserving public health, and those who hold more doubt, seeking accountability regarding the science behind vaccines and believing that corruption exists within the pharmaceutical industry and the government. While The Huffington Post has the ultimate authority over what is published on its site, it is notable that their removal of Beck’s posts seem to point to an unwritten policy that expressly forbids discourse on this issue.