Current Health News You Can Use

Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients, June, 2001 by Joseph M. Mercola

Prevnar, Pneumococcal (Strep) Vaccine Does NOT Prevent Ear Infections and Has Major Side Effects

Prevnar is the relatively new vaccine against pneumococcus. The alleged benefits are greatly exaggerated and the risks are significant. The least of the risks is the cost. This is the most expensive routine vaccine to date. The wholesale cost is about $58. There are over 90 different serotypes or (different strains based on cell wall antigens) of pneumococcus. The vaccine only has 7 serotypes assumed to be the common ones, but this is an uninformed experiment at best as there is no way to know if this will be covering all of the strains.

In the US pneumococcus causes the following:

* 3,000 cases of meningitis

* 50,000 cases of bacteremia

* 500,000 cases of pneumonia

* 7 million cases of ear infections

The FDA approval states the drug is only approved for invasive cases of pneumococcal disease such as bacteremia and meningitis. It is not approved for ear infections. This is most peculiar as it is commonly recognized that bacterial meningitis is primarily seen in adults not in infants for which this vaccine is recommended. The HMO trial in which Prevnar was approved had no placebo group. The control group received another experimental vaccine for mennigococcus. This was the only trial that was done to establish the safety and efficacy to recommend this vaccine for every newborn in the US.

There is an important concept known as serotype drift, which describes the ability of the virus to actually shift and mutate. This phenomenon is well documented in many HIV trials. Well just how well did the vaccine work in the HMO trial? In the first 17 cases of bacteremia it worked perfectly. However it was not effective for any cases of ear infections. Ear infections are a big business in the US. It is estimated that 5 billion dollars a year are spent in treating ear infections. If Prevnar could have stopped this or even reduced this problem it would have been great. But that is not the case.

The FDA data from the HMO trial and that in Finland showed that the prevention benefit is less than 4%. The efficacy claims of Prevnar in ear infections and pneumonia remain unproven. What about adverse side effects of Prevnar? The children who received Prevnar in the trial were four times more likely to have seizures and four times more likely to have stomach problems.

Also, significantly more children developed asthma who had been given Prevnar and there was also one death in the Prevnar group and none in the other. Prevnar also alters the developing immune system. Additionally it will put selective pressure on the pneumococcal serotypes and has the potential to change the natural pattern of strep infections. Over one trillion dollars of health care system are under the watchful eyes of the FDA, CDC and the NIH. These three pillars of our public health care system have come to be more and more controlled by "expert panels" advisory committees. Such experts dictate policy and control the complex biomedical system. They directly influence taxpayers' health and wealth. However there is a huge conflict of interest as most of these experts served the special interest groups who profit from their decision. Many are in financial relationships with various manufacturers and are registered as their paid speakers or as some people might say, paid lobbyists.