Whooping Cough Vaccine Is Scarce

Ocean County Observer

February 10, 1986

It would seem that we in this county are going out of our way to self-destruct, to undo the work of the great scientists who unraveled early mysteries of immunology and to deprive ourselves of the fruits of their wisdom, their pains and the efforts of pharmaceutical companies to bring the marvels of preventive medicine to market.

The latest is the whooping cough fiasco. When America was much less populated than it is now, whooping cough killed 7000 children annually. The disease is highly contagious, and even during the heydey of immunization, about 300,000 cases occurred annually in the United States.

However, the disease was milder because the vaccine offered some protection even if it was incomplete.

The disease spreads worldwide. A vaccine against whooping cough (the pertussis part of the DPT vaccine that all kids are supposed to receive) has been highly successful. However it causes about 2 deaths and 32 cases of brain damage out of every 10 million immunized. Parents of children damaged by the vaccine have brought such a barrage of lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers that Connaught Laboratories stopped making the stuff altogether, and the vaccine is now in short supply.

The British lost confidence in the vaccine and suffered 100,000 cases during the last three years with 28 deaths. But beyond death, the following complications may affect a whooping cough: hemorrhage (sometimes into the eye to cause blindness); hernias; rectal prolapsed, and sometimes more serious results of the horrendous cough paroxysms that afflict victims that , such as detached retina, and brain hemorrhage that cause permanent damage. Brain inflammation encephalitis peculiar to whooping cough victims may ensue to leave a victim crippled for life.

All this and more, yet it can be prevented as it has in the past, were not vindictive parents and voracious parents so eager to “avenge” the deaths, tragic as they are due to the vaccine. Would these parents sacrifice several hundred other children to get their’s back? Have we become that sort of society?

In the treatment or prevention of every disease there is a risk-benefit ratio. The risk-benefit ratio in whooping cough greatly favors the preventive vaccine. At the expense of two youngsters out of 10 million it saves thousands of lives, preserves healthy bodies and prevents permanently damaged lungs.

Somehow we have learned to concentrate more on the perils of vaccine rather tan the benefits. We concentrate more on the side effects of anti-ulcer medication than on the side defects of the ulcer itself. We insist that vaccination against small pox (which also killed 30 to 40 infants annually) should be abolished because we believe we have abolished small pox world wide – although the virus lives on.

We have abolished the vaccination and we will soon have a population 100 percent of whom will be susceptible to small pox (40% mortality), but the small pox virus is still harbored in laboratories throughout the world. Were any of it to escape there would be hell to pay.

We are starting to behave, not like those inhabiting the “home of the Brave” but as craven people. We are afraid to accept any risks at all. Because of fetal monitoring the Caesarian section rate is 20%. Doctors are afraid to risk the birth defect or dead newborn. Yet birth complications prior to fetal monitoring never did amount to anything like two percent. Is it worth shifting the risk from baby to mother? There is, after all, a risk in Caesarian section.

The hullabaloo against nuclear reactors threatens to rob us of clean fuel and pollute us further with coal dust. The hue and cry over Three Mile Island was pervasive. Everybody took up the battle cry. Yet no one was injured and, like driving an auto, near misses don’t count. Yet the very same people screaming hysterically about the innate dangers of nuclear power have been silent about the tragic deaths of miners in a Colorado fire. Why are we so willing to risk the lives of several hundred miners a year for our energy without protest? Because the risk is contained and doesn’t touch most of us.

We are not behaving as a proud people, and the whooping cough fiasco is just another example of warped priorities. How many have to die or suffer permanent injury before a 100 percent vaccine against Whooping Cough is perfected and plentiful.