Meningiccocal Vaccine Could Be Harming Our Youth

The Meningitis vaccination campaign may prove detrimental to our youngster's health, investigators say.

Quantas award winning journalist Barbara Sumner Burstyn has been investigating the vaccination campaign with Risk & Policy Analyst Ron Law.

They have called for a Royal Commission of Inquiry to investigate the Ministry of Health trialling an expertimental drug on the public.

"We believe the integrity, ethics, safety and justifications for the mass immunisation of 1.15 million New Zealand children is deeply flawed, dangerous, a violation of the principles of public health and informed consent, contrary to the Nuremburg Code, in breach of the Health and Disability Commissioner's Code of Practice and various Acts of Parliament and therefore illegal," Sumner Burston said.

She said the public has a vested interest in being fully informed on all issues surrounding the administration of an experimental medicine to all New Zealanders under the age of 20 and this is required by international law.

"The MeNZB™ vaccine was approved under a loop-hole in the Medicines Act that allows for restricted use of experimental drugs in a limited number of patients.

This is anathema to good public health practice and is the very thing that international agreements signed by New Zealand, such as the Nuremburg Code, were designed to prevent," Sumner Burston said in a press release.

She said she was appalled by New Zealand's media ignoring the issue and the Government's lack of integrity.

"Two and half years later and I'm still outraged, not only by the fact of the vax and the way it was used in NZ but by the media and their co-option by government - who are, as I'm sure you know, no more than the executive arm of corporations."

She said they are not pursuing an anti-vaccination agenda, but rather drawing the public's attention to what they believe is a gross abuse of administrative power.

Ministry of Health

Anthony Clearwater, media advisor for Communicable Disease and Immunisation at the Ministry of Health, said meningococcal disease causes more hospital admissions and deaths than any other notifiable disease in New Zealand. The disease has a lasting impact on people's lives, the financial cost of meningococcal disease is also huge and some of these costs are ongoing due to the long-term effects of the disease, he said.

"Since 1991, the group B meningococcal disease epidemic is estimated to have cost New Zealand society over $1 billion. Of this, the direct cost to the health sector for existing and ongoing treatment and rehabilitation is estimated at more than $470 million."

He said it cost about $10,000 to admit a patient to hospital with meningococcal disease. This does not include follow-up treatment and any rehabilitative care that may be required, such as plastic surgery, prosthetics or hearing aids.

In June 2004 Meningitis Vaccination Campaign director Dr Jane O'Hallahan said that the amount Chiron was being paid for the MeNZB vaccine "was a significant proportion of the total budget."

Nineteen people have been diagnosed with Meningitis this year and one has died.

Norway's Warning Unheeded

Researcher at Norway's National Hospital's Department of Pediatric Research in Oslo, Ola Didrik Saugstad was deeply concerned when he found four studentsat the same highschool who had been vaccinated to have Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) or chronic fatigue syndrome.

Profesor Saugstad said a short time later a Norweigan TV station aired a progam linking the vaccine and ME. Around 160 students who had been vaccinated were diagnosed with ME, he said.

He said it was not known whether this number of cases of ME was higher than that of normal popualtions, but approximately one third of these students developed the symptoms of ME in close relation to the vaccination (1-3 weeks).

"This could turn out to be a big scandal. There was no systematic follow up of adverse effects - as in New Zealand. The students and their parents were told the vaccine was innocent."

He said because the health authorities in New Zealand will most likely try to avoid finding a link between ME and the MeningB vaccine it could be years before any detrimental affects could be realised.

"Most youngsters and their parents think, hope and believe that their initial symptoms of ME will disappear, and therefore it may take many years before a diagnosis is confirmed. In Norway it took 15 years before a relation was questioned."

"I do not have anything against vaccines. However, a careful follow up of the vaccinated subjects should be mandatory. Especially if there is a trial," he said.

"The effectness of this vaccine is really questionable. I wonder how the New Zealand authorities could just transfer the Norwegian experience to New Zealand."