Measles: two US outbreaks are blamed on low vaccination rates

Meryl Nass says "Ms Tanne seems to be singing with a Pharma-led chorus this week, orchestrated with the WHO, BMJ, NY Times and other media outlets".[1]

Indeed, with yet another opportunistic 'measles' article, the 'Pharma-led chorus' dominates the public narrative on vaccination, and citizens are kept in the dark about the gross conflicts of interest surrounding vaccination policy, and the burgeoning global vaccine product market, tipped to exceed US$77.5 billion by 2024.[2] A major segment of this market, the United States, provides protection from product liability for vaccine manufacturers via its controversial National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, which was created in the 1980s. This US protection of vaccine manufacturers from product liability is likely to have had repercussions throughout the world.

Citizens questioning vaccination policy and safety are reflexively labelled 'anti-vaxxers' and stifled and marginalised by the NY Times and other corporate and government media, and accused of being a threat to global health by the WHO.[3] Creeping censorship across the media, including social media forums, is crippling citizens' legitimate discussion of international vaccination policy, this is a crisis in our liberal democracies. Meanwhile, the Vaccine Confidence Project, an organisation described by the NY Times as "a London-based academic endeavour that monitors anti-vaccine websites for rumors and conspiracies and addresses them before the messages go viral" [4], is given free rein to deride citizens' concerns about vaccination, and to promote the broad range of Pharma's vaccine products.

Heidi Larson, an anthropologist and professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, is the Director of the Vaccine Confidence Project [5], although this is not acknowledged in the NY Times article cited by Janice Hopkins Tanne.

In September last year, the co-director of the Vaccine Confidence Project, Dr Pauline Paterson, was given a platform on the biased BBC Newsnight program 'Why the anti-vaccination movement is wrong'.

It was not disclosed on the BBC Newsnight program that the vaccine industry provides funding for the Vaccine Confidence Project. Other organisations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a foremost promoter of vaccine products [6], have also provided funding. Like BBC Newsnight, the NY Times also fails to disclose the conflicts of interest of the Vaccine Confidence Project in its 'anti-vaxxer' article. Similarly, the Nature journal fails to inform readers of Heidi Larson's and the Vaccine Confidence Project's conflicts of interest in her article 'The biggest pandemic risk? Viral misinformation'[7], referred to in the NY Times article.

I complained to the BBC that its editorial policy and standards had been breached in not disclosing conflicts of interest, and that the Vaccine Confidence Project was not clearly transparent about its funding sources on its website. I received a response from Adam Cumiskey, Newsnight's Chief Programme Producer. He did not accept the BBC had breached its policy or standards but acknowledged that, since the Vaccine Confidence Project began, its research team has received funding from a range of organisations including vaccine manufacturers GlaxoSmithKline and Merck, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Wellcome Trust, 3ie, Innovative Medicines Initiative and others.[8] In my view, this conflict of interest information should have been clearly disclosed during the BBC Newsnight program.

Mr Cumiskey advised me: "In the interests of transparency the VCP has told us that it's updating its website to include funding sources". Some amendments have been made to the Vaccine Confidence Project website now, but not nearly enough is known about this industry-funded surveillance organisation, and its influence on international vaccination policy and the media. I suggest citizens who pay for the BBC would be better served by the BBC investigating the Vaccine Confidence Project, rather than providing a non-critical promotional platform for the vaccine industry. Likewise journals such as The BMJ should be providing more critical analysis of industry-influenced vaccination policy to properly inform their primary readership, i.e. doctors and other health professionals.

Pharma is all about pushing products, but we are seeing a very sinister development now, with increasing moves towards government-mandated vaccine products around the world, e.g. in Australia, the United States, Italy and elsewhere. Incredibly, there is little or no critical analysis of these mandatory/coercive medical interventions, and the deleterious impact on the right to 'informed consent' before a medical intervention.

Citizens are not being consulted about the growing number of vaccine products and revaccinations being added to vaccination schedules, leading to what appears to be a gross over-use of vaccine products, along with other over-used medical products such as antibiotics, opioids, anti-depressants and proton pump inhibitors etc. Citizens and their children are being set up to be made compliant without question to the ever-increasing number of lucrative vaccine products and revaccinations coming through the industry pipeline.

As a matter of urgency, there must be an examination of the conflicts of interest of the Vaccine Confidence Project and other groups, committees, boards and organisations influencing international vaccination policy.

This is a major international political and ethical issue. Citizens must have transparency and accountability for vaccination policy.

References:
1. Meryl Nass. Re: Measles: two US outbreaks are blamed on low vaccination rates. Another perspective. BMJ Rapid Response, 22 January 2019: https://www.bmj.com/content/364/bmj.l312/rr-0
2. Vaccine market size to reach (US)$77.5 billion by 2024 / CAGR: 10.3%. Grand View Research, March 2018.
3. Vaccine hesitancy - Ten threats to global health in 2019: https://www.who.int/emergencies/ten-threats-to-global-health-in-2019
4. How to Inoculate Against Anti-Vaxxers. The New York Times, 19 January 2019.
5. As noted on the Vaccine Confidence Project 'About' webpage, listing the Research Team: https://www.vaccineconfidence.org/about/
6. Bill and Melinda Gates pledge $10 billion in Call for Decade of Vaccines. (Undated press release on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation website.) Also see news report on Nature: Ten billion dollars pledged for 'decade of vaccines', 29 January 2010: https://www.nature.com/news/2010/100129/full/news.2010.44.html
7. Heidi J. Larson. The biggest pandemic risk? Viral misinformation. Nature. World View. 16 October 2018.
8. Email from Adam Cumiskey, BBC Newsnight to Elizabeth Hart, 17 January 2019.

Please allow me to make a few corrections and add context to Ms. Tanne's article. Endemic measles has been eradicated from the US and the whole of the western hemisphere, per the WHO.(1) It does not continually recirculate. But cases are brought into the US, or rarely occur as a clinical response to measles vaccination, (2) multiple times each year. (3) The US averages about 250 reported cases annually.

There have been only 3 deaths from measles in the US since 2000: one in a 75 year old male who was exposed in Israel; one in a 13 year old immunosuppressed male who had received a bone marrow transplant 3 months premortem, who lacked any identified exposure to a measles case; and one in an immunosuppressed woman with multiple comorbidities. Whether any of these deaths was caused by a vaccine strain is unknown, but since vaccine strain measles can be virulent in an immunocompromised host, it is possible. (2)

There are approximately 2500 mumps cases yearly in the US, but no recent mumps-related deaths.(4) There are approximately 10 rubella cases yearly in the US, but since 2012, all rubella cases were infected outside the US. (5)

Thus, there is no evidence that in recent years unvaccinated US children have caused a single death from measles, mumps and rubella. Yet how many column inches, how many hours of TV news have been devoted to scaring the American public about the dire threat of measles? Fear of measles has been the major driver of the campaigns to eliminate vaccine exemptions.  Parents of immunocompromised children have been incited to frenzy about the risks posed to their children by unvaccinated classmates. Yet, when you look closely, the risk is marginal to none.

Even when all eligible children are vaccinated, there will remain those who cannot be vaccinated with live vaccines, and those who fail to achieve immunity from their immunizations. Even after 2 doses, the mumps vaccine is only 86% efficacious. (6) Measles vaccine is 85-95% efficacious after one dose, (7) and 90-98% after two.(8) In US and Canadian measles outbreaks, up to 50% of those developing measles have received two doses of MMR. (8) Thus, there will continue to be disease outbreaks, with or without ending the practice of vaccine exemptions.

During the past 30 years, approximately 89,000 adverse reactions, including about 450 deaths, have been reported to the US Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System for measles vaccines.

Ms Tanne seems to be singing with a Pharma-led chorus this week, orchestrated with the WHO, BMJ, NY Times and other media outlets. Simultaneously, similar bills have been introduced this month in US state legislatures to end all vaccine exemptions.

But consider: if vaccine exemptions are withheld from children whose families perceive them to be at high risk of an adverse reaction from the MMR, we are likely to experience an inversion in public health: fewer overall viral infections, but more vaccine reactions (and child deaths) then we have now. Public health won't prevail, but Pharma profits will.

1. https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/measles-has-been-eliminated-a...
2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3381670/
3. https://www.cdc.gov/measles/cases-outbreaks.html
4. https://www.cdc.gov/mumps/hcp.html
5. https://www.cdc.gov/rubella/about/in-the-us.html
6. https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/imm/mumps-vaccine-effectiv...
7. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2845860/
8. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3570049/