The anti-vaccine movement is a disturbingly growing phenomenon in the United States and across the globe, despite the enormous evidence of disease averted and lives saved though the decades.
According to a new study in the journal, AIMS Public Health, Dr. S. Jay Olshansky, professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health and the creator of the WI-38 cell strain, Dr. Leonard Hayflick estimate that nearly 200 million cases of polio, measles, mumps, rubella, varicella, adenovirus, rabies and hepatitis A — and approximately 450,000 deaths from these diseases — were prevented in the U.S. alone between 1963 and 2015 by vaccination developed from this cell strain.
Globally, the vaccines developed from this strain and its derivatives prevented an estimated 4.5 billion cases of disease and saved more than 10 million lives.
In an interview with Leonard Hayflick, PhD, I asked him for his thoughts on the anti-vaccine movement and this is what he said:
“Yes, it’s a very sad situation that developed in the past decade or so, and that is many people have decided that vaccines are dangerous. Nothing could be further from the truth.
“It is true to say that there are a occasional vaccinees, or recipients of vaccines who do have side effects that are unwanted, undesirable, rarely fatal, because these individuals are peculiarly sensitive to foreign materials put into their bodies.
“But the numbers of these people are so rare and the benefits the vaccines are so great that to deny a child a vaccine is to have that child flirt with possible disability or death.
“Many people believe there are additives in these vaccines that may have caused disease. That is simply not true. The paper that originally described that possibility has been retracted, although it’s quoted by the anti-vaxxers, as they’re called, and the very figures that I recited here what was one of the purposes of this publication, was to show people the tremendous benefits that vaccines have for human health.
“There is no other medication that one could challenge that has resulted in a greater benefit to humankind than have viral vaccines and bacterial vaccines as well.”
Listen to Hayflick’s comment below:
The Outbreak News This Week Radio Show, the first and only radio program dedicated to infectious disease and health news and information, airs every Sunday at 8 pm ET in the Tampa Bay area on AM 1380 The Biz and online at http://1380thebiz.com/
LISTEN to the entire 24 minute interview: Vaccines, the WI-38 cell strain and 10 million lives saved: A conversation with Dr. Leonard Hayflick
Related:
- Texas measles prediction: Outbreaks by 2018
- Anti-Vaxx Op-Ed, Trump/RFK Jr meeting: An ID Doc’s perspective
- Vaccine exemptions and other legal matters with Prof. Dorit Rubinstein Reiss
- Smallpox: ‘You can argue that Henderson may of saved more lives than any other single human being in human history’, Hotez states
- 5 Vaccine preventable diseases in the US: Then and now
Here’s the thing, no one is studying which kids are “recipients of vaccines who do have side effects that are unwanted, undesirable, rarely fatal, because these individuals are peculiarly sensitive to foreign materials put into their bodies.” In the last decade the US Government has paid 59 families because of death from MMR vaccine. In the same time period, 1 US person died from the measles virus, so to sit there and say that the risk of the virus is more than the risk of the vaccines is completely ridiculous. We can talk about how many might die if no one were vaccinated, we can talk about risks in other countries who don’t have as good of health systems, we can talk about a lot of specific things but sitting there, blindly spewing out the same thing every other pharma media outlet is saying without any #’s, without any looking into WHY people are affected is what is causing folks to question. Probably more than anything else. This stopping of discussion, of middle ground, is actually backfiring. Here’s a link of the former head of the NIH saying the CDC is not running meaningful vaccine studies because they are “afraid of what they might find”. That’s the terrifying thing, someone get some cojones and report on that. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-open-question-on-vaccines-and-autism/
A-freaking-men!
THANK YOU!!!! The truth, finally!
Finally, the truth! Thank you, we must find out who is vulnerable to vaccine injury. It is not as rare as we are led to believe. I learned the hard way!