Is this terribly dangerous vaccine about to be reintroduced?
The numbers don’t lie – whooping cough is back with a vengeance.
More than 100,000 Americans have contracted whooping cough (also known as pertussis) during the past three years alone. Infection rates have tripled since 1990.
There’s an outbreak in the state of Washington right now.
And it’s all because a vaccine forced on millions of our children… a shot many of them can’t attend day care or school without… is practically worthless.
A new study proves that the DTaP and TDap shots for whooping cough can’t prevent the disease, even after as many as six doses.
Public health officials are demanding a more effective vaccine – but it’s time to be careful what we wish for. Because the drug companies and our government may now be on the verge of resurrecting one of the most dangerous vaccines in American history.
One that was yanked from the U.S. market 19 years ago. One that left a trail of brain damage and dead children in its wake.
Back to the future
When the “whole cell” pertussis shot (DTP) was phased out in America in 1996, it was good riddance to bad rubbish.
The DTP vaccine was supposed to save us, especially our kids, from the chronic coughing and life-threatening struggle to breathe that comes with whooping cough. Instead, the DTP shot could be counted among the most sordid and heartbreaking stories in the history of vaccinations.
In the 1930s scientists first started suspecting DTP was harming babies’ brains – and by the 1950s, there was no longer any doubt.
The DTP shot regularly caused convulsions, brain inflammation and permanent brain damage. Once babies got the shot, they were twice as likely to die as those who were unvaccinated.
It took nearly half a century of science to get the DTP vaccine out of America, but it never completely went away. It’s still used around the world – especially in developing countries – and may be poised for a return to the U.S.
And that’s because its replacements – the DTaP and TDap vaccines – are duds. And it’s not just the science that says it. Common sense says it, too.
DTaP and TDap are supposed to protect us from tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis, all in one shot. But the protection is so weak and short-lived that kids may get the vaccine and boosters six times before they turn 12.
And that’s not all. Additional boosters are recommended for kids 19 and older and for pregnant women.
But even as the DTaP and TDap vaccines turn us into pin cushions, the number of whooping cough cases has skyrocketed. In the past three years we’ve had more Americans with whooping cough than during the entire 1980s and 1990s combined.
So it was no surprise when government scientists analyzed cases from a 2012 outbreak and found that getting a DTaP or TDap shot was about as effective as doing nothing.
Three of every four kids who developed whooping cough were current on all their vaccines and boosters.
“I think the path forward is to get a better vaccine,” said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
That may sound reasonable enough – but there are no new whooping cough vaccines in the pipeline. When drug companies and health officials talk about a better whooping cough vaccine, many of them have the same thing in mind.
A return of the dangerous DTP shot.
The drug companies have been “inching toward the reintroduction of whole cell pertussis vaccine for several years now,” says Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, an expert on vaccinations.
Dr. Kathryn Edwards, director of Vanderbilt’s vaccine research center, even floated the idea of a new version of the DTP shot in an interview with Scientific American just a couple years ago.
If the DTP shot returns, we’ll be asking parents to choose between protecting kids from whooping cough and protecting them from brain damage.
Sources:
“Pertussis vaccines – a dangerous failure” Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, DO, May 4, 2015, drtenpenny.com
“Whooping cough outbreak tied to vaccine ineffectiveness” May 5, 2015, Newsmax Health, newsmax.com
