Vaccination and its adverse effects: real or perceived

BMJ 1998;317:159-160 ( 18 July )

Editorials

Vaccination and its adverse effects: real or perceived

Society should think about means of linking exposure to potential long term effect

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Vaccines have been spuriously linked to sudden infant death syndrome,¹ paediatric asthma,² autism,³ inflammatorybowel disease,⁴ and permanent brain damage.⁵ Recently USresearchers have suggested that vaccination after 28 days afterbirth may induce type 1 (autoimmune) diabetes mellitus in susceptible individuals.⁵ This theory, pounced on earlier this year by the US media, may have led to a lowering of confidence in childhood routine immunisation. In May several institutions (including the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Centresfor Disease Control, the World Health Organisation, and the UK's Department of Health) sponsored a workshop at the US National Institutes for Health to assess the evidence of a possible causallink.

Immunologists, diabetologists, epidemiologists, policymakers, and observers debated the available evidence for two days andconcluded that it does not support a causal link between vaccinationand the onset of type 1 diabetes. Some short and longer term observational studies to test the . . . [Full text of this article]

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This article has been cited by other articles:

Jefferson, T O, Rabinovich, R., Tuomilehto, J., Bedford, H., Elliman, D., Classen, J. B., Classen, D. C (1999). Vaccines and their real or perceived adverse effects. BMJ 318: 1487-1487 [Full text]
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