Fran never got her answer, so no... the administration is not interested in opening up a discussion on spacing out vaccines. But it is curious that Ms. Sebelius claimed that vaccines are constantly being tested for efficacy and safety. Both individually and in combination.
Really?
Because there is no study into the four shots (seven vaccines) that my son received at 18 months when he regressed into autism. My understanding of the process is that they do test for efficacy, but not so much for safety, and very rarely to they test combinations of vaccines for either.
And of course there is no study that looks of the safety of the complete schedule in any way.
The vaccine studies that they actually do are small and don't follow kids for very long. I was horrified to learn that the safety study on the Hepatitis B vaccine that Chandler reacted to when he was a new born only followed children for THREE DAYS.
And of course these tests almost never include a true placebo group. Merely one version of a vaccine compared to another version of a vaccine or adjuvant.
Although it was good to hear it straight from the horses mouth that the vaccine schedule is what it is partly due to convenience. Gotta get as many shots in as many kids as possible when they are in the office! Brain damage be damned.
I came across an interesting movie quote in the NYT today. From a piece on the International AIDS Conference:
In a lovely ironic touch, the conference hall is only a few steps from the Ferris wheel in the Orson Welles film noir classic set in postwar Vienna, “The Third Man.” On it, a cynical dealer of counterfeit drugs tells his pursuer to look down at the people below and says: “Victims? Don’t be melodramatic.... Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever?”
All that "constant testing" is not so much concerned with our particular little dots.
This is my little dot. His fevers, crying and constipation started three days after his first dose of Hepatitis B vaccine. I never could find a safety test that covered him.
