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An increasing number of Ohio parents are using religious exemptions to delay or refuse for immunizations for children amid fears that vaccines contribute to autism. Ohio Department of Health data shows the number of religious or philosophical exemptions nearly quadrupled in Ohio between 1998 and 2008, though that figure still represents fewer than 1 in 100 children. All states require children to be immunized for school. Most allow religious exemptions, and Ohio and 19 others also permit exemptions for personal reasons. Doctors say they’re concerned that more exemptions could lead to outbreaks of preventable illnesses among children who haven’t had...

A mother and father in New York were subjected by their school district's attorney to a faith "sincerity test," which ultimately ruled their beliefs were too questionable to qualify for a religious exemption to mandatory student immunization. Ron and Rita Palma filed the exemption with their son's school district in 2006 after coming to the conclusion the year before that the required vaccinations violated their conscience and sense of God's leading for their family. Rather than accept the standard exemption form, however, the Bayport-Blue Point Union Free School District demanded the couple meet with school attorney David Cohen. The Palmas...

THE doctor who sparked the scare over the safety of the MMR vaccine for children changed and misreported results in his research, creating the appearance of a possible link with autism, a Sunday Times investigation has found. Confidential medical documents and interviews with witnesses have established that Andrew Wakefield manipulated patients’ data, which triggered fears that the MMR triple vaccine to protect against measles, mumps and rubella was linked to the condition. The research was published in February 1998 in an article in The Lancet medical journal. It claimed that the families of eight out of 12 children attending a...

Monday January 5, 2009 Doctors Urge Puberty Blockers for Children Considering Sex Change By Kathleen GilbertCHEVY CHASE, Maryland, January 5, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - An international medical organization has recommended that children as young as 12 who question their sexual identity should be given drugs to block the physical changes of puberty.The New Scientist reports that the injunction comes as part of a set of guidelines, the first of its kind, published last month by the Endocrine Society.  The “Guidelines For Health Organisations Commissioning Treatment Services For Trans People” call for healthcare administrators around the globe to provide full coverage...

LITTLE FALLS — Claudine Liss's Kingwood Drive home was full of refreshments and holiday decorations Wednesday, but most of her guests were writing letters and making calls to lawmakers about child vaccinations.   Left, Dr. Sheeba Ben giving 7-month-old Evan Didato a wellness checkup at Riverside Pediatric Group in Secaucus Wednesday. Above, Laureen Marston-Hindi and her daughter, Sophie Hindi, 2, and Gayle Casas at the pro-parental choice letter-writing campaign Wednesday in Little Falls. It was one of three "vaccination choice" open houses scheduled around New Jersey this week, where concerned parents gathered to demand that legislators give them the...

Merck is asking federal regulators to expand the use of its human papillomavirus vaccine to boys and young men.The company has asked the FDA to approve the Gardasil vaccine’s use in males ages 9 to 26 years to prevent genital warts and other lesions, CNBC’s Mike Huckman reported. In 2006, the FDA approved giving the vaccine to girls and women of those ages. We talked with a Merck spokeswoman who pointed to studies showing Gardasil’s effectiveness in young males.But the request will likely renew questions about Gardasil’s cost-effectiveness, especially with a price tag of $360 for a three-dose regimen. In...

Note: Merck's separate dose for rubella, Meruvax, uses aborted fetal cell lines and taints the entire MMR II vaccine. The separate doses of Attenuvax (measles) and Mumpsvax (mumps) use chick embryo. Without these separate doses for measles and mumps, there will be no moral alternative for parents! See contact information for Merck below. snip Merck Focusing on Combination Vaccine Manufacturer Stops Sales of Monovalents for Measles, Mumps, Rubella By David Mitchell 12/24/2008 Merck & Co. Inc. has stopped production and sales of its monovalent vaccines for measles, mumps and rubella. The manufacturer instead plans to focus on its combination vaccine,...

Washington, DC -- A leading pro-life group that educates about the vaccines that are based on the cells from babies killed in abortions is worried about a new decision from the pharmaceutical giant Merck. The company has decided to stop producing some vaccines that are not made based on fetal cells from abortions.

Rumors swirl, but a Swedish prosecutor will only confirm a "preliminary investigation" into allegations that pharma giant AstraZeneca fixed the Nobels for financial gainThey say it's Sweden's silly season, a time when journalists are desperately seeking a new spin on a century-old story: the Nobel Prizes.Last week, as luminaries gathered for Nobel Week in Stockholm, Radio Sweden reported a potential scandal surrounding the Physiology or Medicine prize. Allegations were swirling, the state-owned station said, that London-based drug manufacturer AstraZeneca, PLC, had, in essence, paid off members of the Nobel voting committee to help secure a win for Harald zur Hausen...

The White House wanted to know: How much safer are Americans today than they were on October 4, 2001? That was the day when a photo editor in Florida became the first reported case of inhalation anthrax in America in decades. In what became biology’s 9/11, five letters containing less than a quarter-ounce of anthrax total—the equivalent of two pats of butter—killed five people, infected 17, put more than 20,000 on antibiotics, and traumatized thousands more. Decontamination alone, including at the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington, took over three years and cost some $200 million. With these disturbing facts...

Passionate intensity, but little rationality, in the anti-immunization movement Autism’s False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure, by Paul A. Offit (Columbia University Press, 328 pp., $24.95) For some reason, the immunization of children has always aroused opposition of almost religious fervor. For example, a mass movement led resistance to smallpox vaccination in Britain for 70 years and was supported by intellectuals of the stature of George Bernard Shaw, who never believed in the germ theory of disease and thought that Pasteur and Lister were charlatans. Politicians have won or lost elections on their attitude...

A vaccine against rotavirus, the leading cause of diarrhea in infants, has led to a dramatic drop in hospitalization and emergency room visits since it came on the market two years ago, doctors reported Saturday. A bonus: the vaccine seems to be preventing illness even in unvaccinated children by cutting the number of infections in the community that kids can pick up and spread. "We're a little surprised by the degree of impact given the coverage we've achieved," said Jane Seward of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Only about half of young children had received the vaccine...

New research further debunks any link between measles vaccine and autism, work that comes as the nation is experiencing a surge in measles cases fueled by children left unvaccinated. Years of research with the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, better known as MMR, have concluded that it doesn't cause autism. Still, some parents' fears persist, in part because of one 1998 British study that linked the vaccine with a subgroup of autistic children who also have serious gastrointestinal problems. That study reported that measles virus was lingering in the children's bowels. Only now have researchers rigorously retested that finding, taking...

More people had measles infections in the first seven months of this year than during any comparable period since 1996, and public health officials blamed growing numbers of parents who refuse to vaccinate their children. Many of these parents say they believe vaccines cause autism, even though multiple studies have found no reputable evidence to support such a claim. In Britain, Switzerland, Israel and Italy, measles outbreaks have soared, sickening thousands and causing at least two deaths.

Officials have cleared the way for the burial of a British infant who has been kept in a mortuary freezer in London for the past 21 years. Christopher Blum was four months old in 1987 when he was found dead in his crib the same day he received an inoculation against whooping cough, polio and tetanus, The Times of London reported Monday. The boy's parents have refused to sign a death certificate allowing for burial because the document lists the cause as crib death instead of contaminated vaccine. Using new powers, the Enfield Council in North London has approved a...

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- A leading pro-life group that monitors the use of fetal cells from abortions in vaccinations is warning doctors and patients about a new polio vaccine. Children of God for Life is calling on both to "just say no" to the newly-licensed vaccine Pentacel made by Sanofi Pasteur. On June 26, the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP) recommended the vaccine as part of the immunization schedule for children. That's despite the fact that vaccines that were not derived with the controversial fetal cells have been on the market and in use for years. "We find it...

I just watched this interesting story on 60 minutes. The late billionaire's money is being used to probe life's medical mysteries through the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, America's second largest charity. Lesley Stahl reports. I went to the Hughes Medical Institute Web site and found this page which describes the goals of the new Janelia Farm. Quote: "Janelia Farm's overall objective is to pursue fundamental problems in basic biomedical research that are difficult to approach in academia or industry, because: They require expertise from disparate areas. They are too long-term for standard funding mechanisms. They are outside the current priorities...

This Rally was held yesterday in Washington DC. The Green our Vaccines movement is a grass roots effort to send a message to the Vaccine Manufacturers....Too Many Too Soon! With many videos, pictures, and links this blog entry is a comprehansive overview of the rally and the bloggers and media who covered it. Jenny Hatch Entertainment Tonight: Jim and Jenny March for Green Vaccines ET takes you to Wahsington, DC, where JIM CARREY and JENNY McCARTHY lead a march and rally aimed at drawing attention to the issue of toxins in children's vaccines. McCarthy, who wrote the best-selling book Louder...

For decades, scientists have known that they can make vaccines much more efficacious by adding aluminum compounds, but they never knew why. Now, a study reveals how, on a molecular level, these helpers spur the production of antibodies. The finding may help researchers develop better vaccines. Many vaccines contain adjuvants, nonspecific agents that help jolt the immune system into action. "Alum," a term referring broadly to aluminum hydroxide and several aluminum salts, has this effect, as was accidentally discovered in the 1920s. It has been widely used in human vaccines since the 1950s, and it's still the only adjuvant allowed...

Generation Rescue "In light of the recent Hannah Poling decision, in which the federal court conceded that vaccines could have contributed to her autism, we think the tide is finally turning in the direction of parents like us who have been shouting concerns from our rooftops for years." Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey are actors and parents actively involved in autism-related causes. McCarthy is the author of the book Louder Than Words: A Mother's Journey in Healing Autism. Go here to read the whole editorialI have to applaud Jenny McCarthy for her tenacity. Her much needed voice has blasted through...

ON March 6, Terry and Jon Poling stood outside a federal courthouse in Atlanta, Ga., with their 9-year-old daughter Hannah and announced that the federal government had admitted that vaccines had contributed to her autism. The news was shocking. Health officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and at the American Academy of Pediatrics have steadfastly assured the public that vaccines do not cause autism. Now, in a special vaccine claims court, the federal government appeared to have said exactly the opposite. What happened? The answer is wrapped up in the nature of the unusual court where the...

Reviewed by Brunilda Nazario, MD Federal Officials Say Vaccines Worsened Condition That Led to Autism Spectrum Disorder in Georgia Girl Federal officials say a Georgia girl is entitled to compensation from a federal vaccine injury fund because she developed autism-like symptoms after receiving childhood vaccines in 2000. Hannah's father, Jon, tells WebMD he was not surprised by the compensation decision. "When you are talking about the courtroom versus science, the burden of proof is different," Poling says. "(But) we showed there was a plausible mechanism. We showed that an injury occurred shortly after her vaccination. Her growth curve went flat...

Cholera, 'flu and many more diseases tackled by eating rice A seemingly bizarre experiment in genetically engineering plants has come up with a strain of rice that could make vaccination injections a thing of the past. Researchers working at the University of Tokyo's Institute of Medical Science are working with experts in the fields of drugs, agrobiology and genetics to change the makeup of rice to include cholera proteins. Anti-disease technology When the rice is fed to laboratory mice, it causes them to develop antibodies to cholera in the same way a standard vaccination would work. The implications - if...

Seattle, WA (LifeNews.com) -- A biotech firm has announced it will offer ethical alternatives to some of the vaccines that currently rely on the use of fetal tissue form abortions. The Seattle-based AVM Biotechnology says it will produce ethical alternatives in the fields of biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, and vaccine development. The news gives hope to pro-life people who have been reluctant to use some vaccines because their development came as a result of the destruction of unborn children. “We will be working to bring commercially available, morally acceptable, vaccines to the US market and to use existing technology to produce new...

WASHINGTON - GlaxoSmithKline Plc's rotavirus vaccine is associated with increased pneumonia-related deaths and other adverse reactions, U.S. regulatory staff said in documents posted on Friday. The review comes ahead of a Food and Drug Administration advisory meeting next Wednesday to consider approval of the oral vaccine to prevent the most common cause of severe diarrhea and dehydration among infants and young children in the world. FDA staff said its analysis of 11 studies revealed that in the largest trial, there was a statistically significant increase in deaths related to pneumonia compared with placebo, documents posted on the FDA's Web site...

Gazprom, Russia's state gas company, and officials from Ukraine's energy sector, have began talks to try to avoid Russia cutting off gas to its neighbour because of a dispute over a $1.5bn debt. The conflict is being closely monitored in EU countries who receive Russian gas through pipelines crossing Ukraine. "If we don't succeed today in making documents about the delivery of Russian gas... there won't be Russian gas going to Ukraine tomorrow," Sergei Kupriyanov, a Gazprom spokesman, said on Monday. "It's hard to expect that all the problems will be removed today and that all disagreements will be solved."...

ATLANTA (AP) — The sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer in women is poised to become one of the leading causes of oral cancer in men, according to a new study. The HPV virus now causes as many cancers of the upper throat as tobacco and alcohol, probably due both to an increase in oral sex and the decline in smoking, researchers say. The only available vaccine against HPV, made by Merck & Co. Inc., is currently given only to girls and young women. But Merck plans this year to ask government permission to offer the shot to boys....

The ABC network said on Monday it will go ahead with plans to air an episode of its new legal drama "Eli Stone" despite objections from pediatricians who say the show may discourage parents from having their children immunized. The debut episode features the show's title character and hero, a trial lawyer for big corporations who decides to fight for the little guy, convincing a jury that a mercury-based preservative in a vaccine caused a child's autism. On the show, a jury awards the boy's mother $5.2 million in damages after it is revealed the CEO of the vaccine maker...

ABC Show Will Go on, Over Protest by Doctors By EDWARD WYATT Published: January 29, 2008 ABC said on Monday it would include a disclaimer about the plot line of the debut episode of the drama “Eli Stone,� which links childhood vaccines to autism, and direct viewers to a government Web site that discredits such a link. ABC’s decision follows a call by the American Academy of Pediatrics for ABC to cancel the opening episode of “Eli Stone,� which is scheduled to be broadcast at 10 p.m. Thursday. In a letter to ABC executives on Friday, Dr. Renee R....

A U.S. Coast Guard officer and devout Catholic has filed suit to prevent being forced to receive a vaccination derived from the lung of an aborted child after a higher ranking officer disputed his understanding of Church theology. The Alliance Defense Fund filed a complaint last week in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on behalf of Lt. Cmdr. Joseph Healy, charging the government with using its own arbitrary judgment of what constitutes Catholic theology while permitting religious exemptions to others, effectively discriminating against Healy's sincerely held religious beliefs. Healy's request for religious exemption cited a 2005...

LOS ANGELES, (AP) -- Autism cases in California continued to climb even after a mercury-based vaccine preservative that some people blame for the neurological disorder was removed from routine childhood shots, a new study found. Researchers from the state Department of Public Health found the autism rate in children rose continuously during the 12-year study period from 1995 to 2007. The preservative thimerosal hasn't been used in childhood vaccines since 2001, but is used in some flu shots. Doctors say the latest study adds to existing evidence refuting a link between thimerosal exposure and autism risk and should reassure parents...

martyros writes "Researchers at the Baylor College of Medicine are performing clinical trials of a vaccine that teaches the immune system to attack cocaine, preventing it from giving a high. The vaccine is made by attaching inactivated cocaine molecules to the outside of inactivated cholera proteins. When the immune system attacks the cholera proteins, it also 'learns' the cocaine molecules as well. The result is that the immune system 'recognizes the potent naked drug when it's ingested. The antibodies bind to the cocaine and prevent it from reaching the brain, where it normally would generate the highs that are so...

A vaccine that could help to control a flu pandemic has shown encouraging results in its first human trials. The vaccine, made by Acambis, based in Cambridge, should protect against all strains of influenza A, the type responsible for pandemics. Unlike existing vaccines it does not have to be reformulated each year to match the prevalent strains of flu, so it could be stockpiled and used as soon as a pandemic strain emerges. Nor does it need to be grown on fertilised chicken eggs, as the existing vaccines do, but can be produced by cell culture. The results, announced yesterday...

The parents of more than 2,300 Prince George's County students who failed to get needed vaccinations could face fines of $50 a day and up to 10 days in jail if their children do not meet the state's immunization requirements, county officials said yesterday. The threat of legal action is a last resort after months in which Prince George's has struggled to get its 131,000 students immunized for chicken pox and hepatitis B, as mandated by the state. More than 2,300 students have not been immunized and have been barred from attending schools, almost two months after a Sept. 20...

BOSTON -- Sabrina Rahim doesn't practice any particular faith, but she had no problem signing a letter declaring that because of her deeply held religious beliefs, her 4-year-old son should be exempt from the vaccinations required to enter preschool. She is among a small but growing number of parents around the country who are claiming religious exemptions to avoid vaccinating their children when the real reason may be skepticism of the shots or concern they can cause other illnesses. Some of these parents say they are being forced to lie because of the way the vaccination laws are written in...

LONDON - A polio outbreak in Nigeria was caused by the vaccine designed to stop it, international health officials say, leaving at least 69 children paralyzed. It is a frightening paradox in a part of the world that already distrusts western vaccines, making it even tougher to stamp out age-old diseases. The outbreak was caused by the live polio virus that is used in vaccines given orally — the preferred method in developing countries because it is cheaper and doesn't require medical training to dispense.

Controversy continues to plague efforts to protect young women against cervical cancer by vaccinating them against HPV, the human papillomavirus, but one leading scientist's discovery could throw a monkey wrench into the debate. "We found HPV under the fingernails of young men," said Dr. Laura Koutsky, a University of Washington epidemiologist. Koutsky led some of the pioneering research and clinical trials that resulted in an HPV vaccine, Merck's Gardasil, recently approved for use in girls and young women. The reason her fingernail finding is a potential bombshell has to do with why the vaccine is controversial. HPV, which is the...

Amendment Keeps Taxpayers from Funding Mandatory HPV Vaccines The U.S. House passed an amendment Wednesday that will keep the government from funding mandatory vaccination against the human papillomavirus (HPV).Republican Reps. Phil Gingrey of Georgia and Jim Jordan of Ohio introduced the amendment following efforts across the country to require young girls to receive the vaccine to attend school. Merck & Co.’s Gardasil vaccine protects against the four most common strains of HPV, a sexually transmitted infection. Focus on the Family Action supports widespread availability of the vaccine, but holds that parents should make the decision of whether their daughters are...

Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that no one is out to get you. With these words, I will relate a story about what is going on in the United States regarding those who wish to control the lives of our young people and the future generations of our nation... In 1985, Planned Parenthood people were among the participants in an exercise that produced a document called Inventing the Future: Alternatives to Adolescent Pregnancy. The document was the result of creative thinking on the part of the participants on how they would want things to operate in the future. It...

GIRLS aged 12 are to be vaccinated against a sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer under plans to be approved this week by a government committee. The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation is expected to recommend that all girls should be given the jab in the first year of secondary school to protect them against the human papilloma virus (HPV). The committee, which comprises senior health specialists, is also expected to recommend a catchup campaign to vaccinate all girls aged 12-16. The final decision about who will receive the vaccine, which costs more than £300 for a series...

For more than a decade, families across the country have been warring with the medical establishment over their claims that routine childhood vaccines are responsible for the nation's apparent epidemic of autism. In an extraordinary proceeding that begins today, the battle will move from the ivory tower to the courts. Nearly 5,000 families will seek to convince a special "vaccine court" in Washington that the vaccines can cause healthy and outgoing children to withdraw into uncommunicative, autistic shells -- even though no link has been found by a large body of evidence and expert opinion. The court has never heard...

The parents of 12-year-old Michelle Cedillo asked a federal court Monday to find that their child's autism was caused by common childhood vaccines. Her parents, Theresa and Michael Cedillo, allege a preservative called thimerosal that had been used in vaccines weakened their daughter's immune system and prevented her body from clearing the measles virus after she was immunized for the disease at age 15 months. Today, Michelle suffers from a litany of health problems, including severe autism, inflammatory bowel disease, glaucoma and epilepsy. The burden of proof is easier than in a traditional court. Plaintiffs only have to prove that...

At least three deaths and more than 1,600 adverse reactions including spontaneous abortion and paralysis have been connected to Merck & Co.'s new vaccine for the human papilloma virus, a treatment the company has lobbied state lawmakers to make mandatory for young girls across the nation. The report comes from Judicial Watch, the Washington-based public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption.   "The FDA adverse event reports on the HPV vaccine read like a catalog of horrors," said Tom Fitton, Judicial Watch president. "Any state or local government now beset by Merck's lobbying campaigns to mandate this HPV vaccine...

Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, today released documents obtained from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act, detailing 1,637 reports of adverse reactions to the vaccination for human papillomavirus (HPV), Gardasil. Three deaths were related to the vaccine. One physician’s assistant reported that a female patient “died of a blood clot three hours after getting the Gardasil vaccine.” Two other reports, on girls 12 and 19, reported deaths relating to heart problems and/or blood clotting.

Pediatricians are encountering parents who refuse vaccinations for their children, prompting the doctors to show them the door. The problems seem to have heated up since a survey of 302 pediatricians published a year-and-a-half ago in Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine, in which 28% "said that they would ask the family to seek care elsewhere" for "refusing specific vaccines," and 39% said they would do so for families refusing all vaccines. Increasingly it seems, the pediatricians are following through on their threats, despite the potential for serious revenue loss. Iron Mountain, MI, pediatrician Alexis Wolfe says she has booted...

"At this stage, vaccination can still be considered experimental," said Dr. Karen McCune, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at UCSF, who co-authored the editorial. "To be discussing mandatory vaccination when the main clinical trials are still ongoing seems extremely premature. We're feeling like the enthusiasm is driving policy rather than data." A bill in the California Legislature requiring vaccination stalled in committee in March over concerns about parental rights and the lack of information about the long-term effects of the vaccine. The author has amended his bill to address the wider issue of how California requires vaccinations. In...

Many parents are praying right now that Oprahs Autism show will open up the floodgates and allow true debate on the number of vaccines and how they are impacting our children negatively to come out more fully in our national debate on childrens health.

As my frustration with the state of Massachusetts grows, I found out a few days ago that my 14 year old daughter has the chicken pox. Shortly thereafter, I was enlightened to the fact that there were a number of cases of the virus being endured by kids of all ages in my daughter's school system. A small epidemic. Now before evoking judgment for posting such a boring thread, here's the punch line. Most of the cases are repeats. That's right, many of the kids have already had the chicken pox, including my daughter. Now that I've got your attention,...

A week ago today, Texas became the first state to require school-age girls to be vaccinated against a sexually transmitted virus that has been shown to cause cervical cancer. Governor Rick Perry inked an executive order mandating that most girls, starting in September 2008, get the vaccination against the human papillomavirus (HPV) before entering sixth grade. The highly-publicized move spurred two New Jersey lawmakers to respond. Assemblymen Mike Doherty and Rick Merkt have introduced legislation that would preclude the government from dictating that children enrolled in schools receive vaccinations against the objections of their parents. In Texas young girls, some...

Paying attention to the news may be dangerous to your physical and moral health. I am sure it lowers the IQ. It is not so much that news reports contain lies (though they frequently do) or that reporting and commentary on subjects ranging from Global Warming to Hate Crimes are mere propaganda exercises (as they almost are always). What is more disturbing, however, is the failure to ask the necessary questions or put a story in any context that is not a liberal morality play. It is next to impossible, for example, to understand the risks that smoking entails because...