The CDC's mandated schedule is the brass ring that all vaccine manufacturers are going for - approval of a vaccine can mean annual revenues of $1 billion or more, which is about what Merck pulls in for their current Hepatitis B vaccine.
Hepatitis A vaccine appears in a brand new category on the mandated schedule called the 'high risk' category. The significance of this new category will soon become apparent. But before we get into that, let's take a look at Hepatitis A the disease and assess the necessity for a mandated vaccine.
What is Hepatitis A?
As every doctor knows, Hepatitis A is an acute viral disease of the liver. Hepatitis A virus (HAV) has supposedly been isolated: "a 27-nm RNA picornavirus (enterovirus) with only one serotype..." - American Academy of Pediatrics, Dec 1996
Hepatitis A is a mild, self-limiting disease, resolving on its own with no treatment in 4-8 weeks. Most infections are subclinical, meaning that most people who get the disease never even know it because they never manifest symptoms. (Merck Manual, p 377) The journal Pediatrics agrees: "Most HAV infections in young children are asymptomatic... Clinical hepatitis occurs in fewer than 10% of infected children" meaning, the disease is so mild that 90% of those who get hepatitis A never even know it.
National Institutes of Health states that: "Most people who have Hepatitis A get well on their own after a few weeks." - NIH Manual: What I Need To Know About Hepatitis A
Diagnosis of hepatitis A is supposedly by IgM antibody. But more often, diagnosis is by symptoms alone. According to Merck Manual (p382) , the chief symptoms of hepatitis A are:
- loss of appetite
- NVD
- hives
- joint pain
- dark urine
Jaundice may also occur, but it usually indicates the beginning of recovery. By the time these symptoms appear, the disease is no longer infectious. Hepatitis A disappears completely after acute infection, and does not contribute to chronic liver disease or to cirrhosis. It is important to note that after the patient recovers, he has true lifetime immunity.
It's shocking to discover that hepatitis can be caused by both hepatitis B and hepatitis C vaccines. This fact is found in a disclaimer that GlaxoSmithKlein makes about Havrix, that it can't cure the hepatitis caused by these other 2 vaccines. The manufacturer states it package insert that hepatitis is a possible side effect of Havrix.
How Many Cases Really Are There?
This is tricky - research roulette. On the 2002 package insert, the manufacturer of Havrix cites 13-year old studies to demonstrate the incidence of hepatitis A and citing that the case death rate is six-tenths of one per cent. This seems like a rather high death rate until one realizes that these are not US figures, but global figures, meaning that they were taken primarily from Third World countries because that's where the majority of hepatitis A is found. So that means that these patients are trying to recover from a disease of poverty, filth, and malnutrition in an environment of poverty, filth, and malnutrition. Complicating factors are not known.
Looking at the true incidence of the Hepatitis A in the US is an academic artifice, a daunting challenge indeed. A standard government reference for epidemiology is Statistical Abstracts. On p 137 of the most recent edition (2000), we find that the overall incidence of Hepatitis A has been declining for the past 2 decades:
1980 --- 29.1 cases per 100,000
1998 --- 23.2 cases per 100,000
This decline is good news, and of course had nothing to do with the vaccine since the vaccine was approved in 2002. Note that these numbers also "include cases imported from outside the United States." Unfortunately, in a disease which only manifests symptoms less than 10% of the time, and with the immense amount of immigration and international travel going on, there is simply no way to separate foreign from domestic origin. The truth is no one can really say with authority how many cases of hepatitis A occur in the US annually.
The Real Number of Deaths
In an earlier part of that same reference, the total number of annual US deaths from all three types of viral hepatitis put together (Types A, B, and C) in 1998 was only 4700.
Remember this 4700 also includes complications of autoimmune diseases, terminal infectious diseases, and other serious illnesses, most in communities of poverty and malnutrition, alcoholics, drug addicts - individuals of this nature. This lowest common denominator of life supposedly represents the necessity of a vaccine for all. Almost all sources agree that children are not the group dying from hepatitis A: "hepatitis with mortality occurs mostly in people with underlying conditions, such as chronic liver disease, and in older age groups" - http://www.aap.org/policy/01207.html
The Vaccine Itself
This is fun. Hepatitis A vaccine is made from infected human connective tissue cells. The agents are filtered, and attenuated with aluminum, formaldehyde, and phenoxyethanol - a synonym for ethylene glycol - a component in antifreeze.
Aluminum and Formaldehyde
As Drs. Russell Blaylock and Theo Colburn have well explained, it is not just the connection with Alzheimer's that makes aluminum such a danger to human physiology. It's that aluminum can interfere with the formation, development and survival of virtually any human nerve tissue in an unpredictable fashion, beyond any timetables yet devised. (Excitotoxins, Our Stolen Future) We simply don't know.
As for formaldehyde, let's just ask how much danger of cancer is an acceptable risk in the pure, perfect blood of a newborn? Cancer occurs first in just one cell. So where are the studies that prove that this "trace" of formalin or antifreeze will not be sufficient to cause that first cell mutation that develops into cancer? Where are they?