Can we talk about diphtheria in Australia? Well, and other countries I suppose...

[Japonica]

And I'd love some input from Spy, MT, all you knowledgeable folks out there...

We recently emigrated to Australia from Canada. Both my kids are vax-free, just had CO forms signed a month back. I was perusing the notifiable diseases for Australia one day and saw the 11 cases in the Northern Territory in 1992 and thought, "Hmm...I'm going to have to check into that..."

http://www9.health.gov.au/cda/Source/Rpt_4.cfm

The NNDSS says there were 11 cases in the Northern Territory and 1 case in SA.

So, then looking at this:

http://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/content/cda-pubs-cdi-2000-cdi2406-cdi2406f.htm

There's already a discrepancy with the data. This source says 15 cases in 1992 and 8 cases in 1991...the NNDSS says only 1 case in 1991. But I know others have posted elsewhere about the problem with diphtheria reporting and MT brought up some of the issues in her book.


Of the 23 patients, 16 (14 Aborigines) resided in the Northern Territory. Most (64%) of these recent cases were aged at least 15 years (range 1-78 years), in contrast with the pre-vaccine era when less than 30% of cases were aged 15 years and older.4,6 Even though the numbers of notifications reported here are small, they probably overestimate the true incidence of diphtheria as defined by the notification criteria since only six toxigenic isolates of C. diphtheriae from the Northern Territory were identified in 1991-2 (Dr Jan Lanser, Institute of Medical and Veterinary Science, Adelaide; personal communication), compared with 16 notifications for the same period. The remaining 10 notified cases were probably cutaneous infections and/or infections with non-toxigenic strains.

No surprise (well, to me) that there were quite a large number of Aboriginal cases. The living conditions on settlements is reported to be appalling. And similar to what Spy said in the Russia outbreak, the majority are adults. This fits with the Canadian notifications as well.


The age distribution of 30 cases for whom age information is available shows 50% occurred among persons aged > 30 years, 23% among those aged 5 to 9 years, and 13% each in the 10- to 19-year-old and 20- to 29-year-old age groups.
http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/publicat/ccdr-rmtc/98vol24/24s3/24s3b_e.html

And then there's the overestimate with the Australian cases...only six toxigenic isolates identified but 16 notifications...

So, I have a couple of questions.

Understanding the role that poverty, malnutrition, sanitation etc, plays in this, I'm still wondering why the age of notifications is creeping up in developed countries. Knowing that the vaccine is a toxoid and does not prevent transmission nor active infection, why aren't there notifications for kids under 15? Why are notifications reported to be adults with waning antibody levels?

Especially when
Toxigenic as well as nontoxigenic strains of Corynebacterium diphtheriae remain endemic in parts of
Australia2.

http://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/Publishing.nsf/Content/cda-cdi2112-pdf-cnt.htm/$FILE/cdi2112b.pdf


It is therefore likely that throat carriage or infection is not uncommon but remains undetected because most
laboratories do not culture throat swabs from patients with sore throats for C. diphtheriae.


Infections that are not apparent tend to outnumber clinical cases, and both toxigenic and non-toxigenic strains of C. diphtheriae may be harboured in the nasopharynx, skin, and other sites of asymptomatic carriers.
http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/publicat/ccdr-rmtc/98vol24/24s3/24s3b_e.html

I know MT mentioned this.

And again, trouble with finding out the reality of what's going on out there...


Since the late 1970s, diphtheria incidence has remained at a low rate ranging from 0.1 to 0.5 per 100,000 population. However, the steep decline in incidence starting from 1980 has been attributed, in part, to a change in case definition in 1980 to exclude carriers from reported cases in all provinces and territories(15)
http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/publicat/ccdr-rmtc/98vol24/24s3/24s3b_e.html

So, then, what does this mean for unvaccinated children? I'm not one to panic over the threat of looming VADs...my kids have been just fine and healthy over the past years, and as Mendelsohn said, they have as much chance of becoming infected with diphtheria as getting bitten by a cobra, but with it circulating endemically and vaccinated individuals as carriers, what's to be done besides eating healthy to boost immunity, adequate rest etc. Are there specific supplements to prevent diphtheria infection? And as a toxin-mediated disease, if the worst happens, then is SA obviously the first thing to do (I suppose while in hospital arguing about it with doctors and medical staff?) Do you suppose that carriage of other more beneficial bacteria (as we see with the Hib-pneumo-staph) prevent active diphtheria infection?

I know statistically, I am more likely, as a previously vaccinated adult of a certain age, to become infected with diphtheria than my kids are. Interestingly, I also don't see a mention of unvaccinated children getting clinical diphtheria (aside from the NZ case mentioned in your book MT that seems to get cited again and again in these gov't reports). So, if there is so much diphtheria circulating and unvaccinated kids and susceptible adults, where is the epidemic?

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

Where is the epidemic? The epidemic, as they pointed out, is an artifact of testing. In 1981, both my newborn and I were tested for diphtheroids, and the tests came back positive. Naturally. diphtheroids are ubiquitous. it's usually when the bacteria are invaded by a virus called a bacteriophage that toxigenic diphtheria arises. The virus switches on the genes which make the toxin.

there have been some reports recently of death following diphtheria infections where there was no bacteriophage involvement, but that is so infrequent as to be a purple moon event, and you wonder about whether or not the testing was done right too.

In Thailand, and other under-developed countries, the majority of people have natural immunity to toxigenic diphtheria because of repeat carriage of skin diphtheria.

However, I take it from the last two paragraphs that this is actually causing panic in you.

Why do you need to do more than doing what you should do anyway, which is eat right, get rest and make sure you are as healthy as you can be?

I recall a very disparaging Australian medical article, not so long ago, where the doctors were scathing about the parents wanting vitamin C and refusing vaccination after their child had recovered.

My advice is to read widely about prevention and treatment, do all you can ... and bear in mind that with diphtheroids circulating endemically, your children might already have a degree of natural immunity anyway.

[Japonica]

Thanks MT. I'm going to start reading more on prevention and treatment. Do you recommend anything offhand?

It's funny...It's a conflicted place to be to know that no one really has an idea of how much diphtheria is actually out there. The diphtheroids are circulating endemically. Yet, notifiable case numbers are conflicted, cases are not reported, isolates are not typed, carriers are not reported...so yippee, it's out there, being carried, and until the bacteriophage kicks in, the bacteria are a non-event. People aren't getting sick in dramatic numbers from just carriage. So, that is good news obviously. Like you said, many may already have some degree of natural immunity. The other side of it is that yes, it's out there and the old million dollar what if, the purple moon, bitten by a cobra scenario happens. Diphtheria is not on my list of childhood diseases I wouldn't mind my kids getting.

I wonder how many of those cases in 1991 and 1992 were vaccinated. Not that it seems to matter much re: infection but does it make a difference in treatment and outcome?

So, yes, more reading is in order. Aside from all the other issues with the vaccine, I'd have to see some real documented proof that the outcome for a vaccinated child recovering from clinical diphtheria was that much better and substantially different from an unvaccinated one before I'd even start considering that option.

[Spy]

Having lived through a 'horrible epidemic' of mid-90s with an unvaccinated child, I wouldn't seriously worry about 'whats out there'. Yes, it is out there. So what. Becoming 'infected' and developing toxic diphtheria are two very different things. I would say, our kids have become infected at some stage and we wouldn't even suspect it. And this 'cobra bite' chance is not random either. You have to seriously work for it, removing basics from your childs life from birth - i.e. breastmilk, normal food, happy childhood, etc. Yank your child from the mother, vaccinate them, feed them formula, then switch to almost 100% refined sugar diet, don't forget to stress them regularly... then, maybe, your 'cobra bite' chance becomes material, but even then not too high :) - as we know, many indigenous kids may still live like that but not a whole lot of notifications in the last years, right?

What I would learn is what the real thing looks like, as the worst thing about diphtheria in vaccinated population is, doctors are idiots. :alien: This is what killed most people in mid-90-s in Eastern Europe, basically - doctors having full access to patients in the right time but failing to see the obvious because of their assumption that 'vaccinated don't get diphtheria' (and neither can unvaccinated due to 'herd immunity' or simply because everyone was assumed to have been vaccinated anyway). So you have to be the one who sees that obvious and knows what to look for. But then again, having that knowledge and knowing the basics about health, you will never get to see it :).

[Japonica]

Thanks, Spy. Coming here helps me to put things into perspective.

The herd immunity thing is tiresome. I keep reading report after report (gov't ones) where they reiterate that it's herd immunity and a population with a high vaccination/booster rate that is keeping diphtheria at bay, despite what we know about toxoid vaccines.

Time to dig up some info on identification and treatment...

[MinorityView]

When I was doing research on the scary statistics articles we did on insidevaccines, the scariest statistics were around diphtheria. And they were also the least likely to come true and based on the shakiest foundations. This is obviously a disease which becomes dangerous due to poor living conditions, because it went steadily downward as people became more affluent. Some of the stressors that, IMO, would boost outbreaks: malnutrition, overcrowding, constant exposure to filth in housing and water.

People in Europe weren't getting boosters of this vaccine in adulthood, yet despite exposure from the epidemics in Russia there were no outbreaks. It just didn't spread. How can you have a dire communicable disease that won't spread?

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

Japonica, if you assume that everything the medical profession writes and says is actually meaningful, and is based on fact, and doesn't miss out anything relevant, you can get yourself into a total stew about anything.

Living in Australia, I don't know why diphtheria in particular bugs you. I'd be far more concerned about some of the really nasty tick diseases, snake bites, spider bites, and just plain being fried to death in relentless sun. The children you'd think would be most at risk of diphtheria would be aboriginal children. In particular, unvaccinated aboriginal children. Diphtheria is something that has always been endemic world wide, particularly in warm countries. but diptheria isn't something that kills aboriginal children. If you want to know what kills them, read Archie Kalokerinos's books: "Every Second Child" and "Iin search of Opal".

He wrote a couple of chapters for my polio and tetanus book which never got published, but one was on tetanus.

He was a fully vaccinated doctor who had not long before had yet another tetanus booster, yet he got clincal tetanus (and lived to tell the tale). Of course, because he was vaccinated they were convinced it was something else, but eventually he was diagnosed correctly. And after that he refused to have another tetanus shot, ever.

as Spy said; sometimes in these situations if doctors haven't got their head screwed on, they are worse than useless.

Another interesting thing in Eastern Europe was that during the diphtheria over there, it dawned on some doctors that the amount of anti-toxin being administered was way too high. By vastly reducing it, they managed to reduce complications and deaths markedly.

Which raises the question as to whether or not, if the early literature on vitamin C in diphtheria had been taken seriously, anti-toxin of the animal kind, would ever be needed anyway.


Spy, :bigtongue: you forgot to add in dislocation due to local "conflict" (being polite) and the ravages of being a homeless street kid, who is introduced to alcohol and drugs, which in the Eastern European diphtheria experience resulted in a much larger likelihood of illness than anything else - whether or not they were vaccinated.

(Actually, the medical literature on diphtheria deaths, supposedly WITHOUT bacteriophage, were in street drug addicts, so you never know exactly what they were reporting.)

[Spy]

Living in Australia, I don't know why diphtheria in particular bugs you.

Hey, it didn't bug me in Russia in early 90-s, even bearing in mind that back then I was more than paranoid about VPDs (knew enough to not vaccinate but nowhere near enough to not fear). Like I said before, this outbreak I was reading about 10 years later in medical literature, scratching my head and wondering.... :P It was such a non-event at the time, compared to real things that were happening all over the place...


The children you'd think would be most at risk of diphtheria would be aboriginal children. In particular, unvaccinated aboriginal children.


Do they even exist? Don't they jab them twice more than any other kids these days??

[Japonica]

Yeah, well, that's the trick with the medical profession...sifting the garbage from any kernel of anything useful.

As for being bugged, I think many new parents who are on this path of questioning have moments where they stop and ask, "what's the deal with...?" Like you both mentioned, I need to read more to find the info I'm looking for.

Snakes and spiders...hee hee. People who live outside Australia always mention it. Saw one snake so far, dead in the road. Have seen a few spiders we wouldn't want around but they were dispatched. There's always something...back in Canada it was ticks too, West Nile virus, brown recluse spiders, SAD and frostbite.

So, why has the age of notifiable cases been going up? Is there something in the immune system of an adult that makes them more susceptible to clinical infection?

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

Spy, no they don't. There's still a lot of aboriginal children who aren't up-to-date on shots. But amongst those who are, the death rate is higher than amongst those who aren't.

Japonica - I've noticed in this "supposedly clean" world that the invincible attitude of adults seems to be inflated. it's as if they consider that with the medical profession having "conquered" everything, they don't need to observe basic hygiene procedures.

Not long ago in this country a child got tetanus after a knee graze. The grapevine told me that the mother simply put on a sticky plaster. Whether it's true or not, I don't know, but if it is, well, hello? My grandmother knew far more about basic symptom analysis, health and how to treat all sorts of problems than many people I know, do today.

There is what I call a "help desk" mentality, where people swan around in ignorance, because at the end of their fngrtps they cn txt n ask 4 a fix n 1 txt msg pls. Or go to the doctor and he will fix it.

Why else would people so willingly eat so much crap? Why do people not realise that they are the product of what they put in their mouths? If they eat white bread, white sugar, drink alcohol and smoke, why is it they don't figure they will pay a price for that?

those adults getting diphtheria.

Simple questions. What is their lifestyle all about?

[Spy]

So, why has the age of notifiable cases been going up? Is there something in the immune system of an adult that makes them more susceptible to clinical infection?

Well for starters, diphtheria is exceptionally friendly with alcohol and this is something adults as a general rule of thumb do more than babies. :) Pretty much applies to any other system abuse - whatever we do to ourselves, an average adult would have experienced more years of abuse than an average child, even if they start at the same time and do the same silly things...

There are also a number of natural mechanisms of protecting the young - i.e. maternal immunity, breastfeeding, etc, their own interesting patterns of maturation which doesn't make them prone to certain things, but these are harder and harder to notice in mainstream public as this is the very thing vaccination is trying to replace and deny it was ever there, and with the lifestyle of these days it really seems disappearing in the general mass population.


There's still a lot of aboriginal children who aren't up-to-date on shots. But amongst those who are, the death rate is higher than amongst those who aren't.

So you're saying they get diphtheria more often but die more rarely? As in, they get it, get over it and live longer than those who supposedly don't get diphtheria but get killed by other things before they get a chance?


Not long ago in this country a child got tetanus after a knee graze. The grapevine told me that the mother simply put on a sticky plaster. Whether it's true or not, I don't know, but if it is, well, hello? My grandmother knew far more about basic symptom analysis, health and how to treat all sorts of problems than many people I know, do today.Ahhh, don't get me started. ok. too late, here it comes :deadhorse:

It is THE standard medical procedure, as I suspect, in this country, to SEAL any scrape or cut of otherwise broken skin. Seal it with the dirt, seal it with your eyes closed, in grave panic that a drop of blood will contaminate themselves through their rubber gloves and the rest of the universe. I have no idea why (I do have my suspicions that it has to do with imprinted HIV/AIDS paranoia that comes with professional training) but I am seriously about to write a long angry letter to my sons school demanding dare not to touch his scrapes at all, as I am getting increasingly sick and tired of ungluing and unsealing things that didn't need to be bandaided at all!
A few years back I had a remarkable case of a school nurse (older son this time) calling me almost hysterically asking to pick up the kid who has pierced his hand with a rusty metal stick falling on him in a computer room where he helped to clean up some large mess. She sealed it, she did not clean it, she was dead scared. A professional school nurse. Then I did my (hopefully) last stupid thing to my kids - I took him to a doctor hoping to clean the wound properly (hahaha). All I got, aside from the lecture attempt, was 'better' sealing of the same thing. She wouldn't know how to clean it! And she proudly announced to me that 'they don't need to know how anymore, this is what tetanus vaccination if for'!!! This was, needless to say, my last visit to a medical doctor :D. At home, kicking myself for wasting an hour of my time, I opened it up again, apologised to the kid for inconvenience and cleaned it up myself.

But no, mothers who put bandaids on things in this environment do not surprise me in the least - I got to hear it from the horse's mouth - this knowledge is deemed unnecessary because they have THE VACCINE.

Idiots. :wacko:

[RandomName]

And she proudly announced to me that 'they don't need to know how anymore, this is what tetanus vaccination if for'!!!

:ohmy:She said that? Out loud? *boggles*

Idiots indeed.

[MinorityView]

picking my jaw up off the floor---

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

:previous: if you've read my first book you will know that's what the doctor said after we took son #2 to him after he'd stood on a knife. He peeped under the pressure bandage, replaced it, and when I asked, "Are you going to see if it needs cleaning?" He replied, "No, he's had his shots hasn't he?"

As if tetanus spores are the only thing resident in soil?

Spy, no. What I meant was that aboriginal children who are vaccinated have a much higher death rate than those who are not aka "Every Second Child", because of what the vaccines "do" in their bodies. I'm not saying they die of diphtheria. Usually they die of seemingly unrelated infections within a week or two of receiving vaccines, and often, follow up antibiotics. Archie's book details it well.

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

MV that is so common. You wouldnt' believe how many times I've heard doctors in this country not clean something on the basis that they don't need to, because of magic vaccines.

[Spy]

:ohmy:She said that? Out loud? *boggles*

Idiots indeed.

Yep. Out loud. I still remember my 14-year-old-at-the-time laughing in her face :).

[Japonica]

Thanks Spy, MT. I wondered what role alcoholism played in it because lousy diet is lousy diet no matter what age. There's enough kids out there subsisting solely on white flour, vegetable oil, and sugar. And no doubt many of them are smoking too (as in living in rooms full of second hand smoke).

Oh wounds...my friend was backpacking around Europe in 1992. In Barcelona, she stepped on the edge of an unsecured piece of metal covering a construction pit in the concrete and through a collsion of improbables and rotten luck, she ended up in the pit with the corner of the metal plate wedged in her leg, deep enough to be almost near the bone.

The doctors in Barcelona sewed it up tight and sent her on her way. By the time she reached Austria some days later, the wound was putrid...Austrian doctors opened it back up, cleaned out the absolute muck in there, and couldn't believe that their counterparts in Spain had sewn it shut to begin with.

[Spy]

Thanks Spy, MT. I wondered what role alcoholism played in it because lousy diet is lousy diet no matter what age. There's enough kids out there subsisting solely on white flour, vegetable oil, and sugar. And no doubt many of them are smoking too (as in living in rooms full of second hand smoke).

Alcoholism plays a huge role, it is very well known and consistently demonstrated in outbreaks. However, I also believe in a factor I call margin of safety :). Thing is, human body is an extremely forgiving thing and each person is born with a remarkable level of resistance to abuse, so to speak. The extent is individual and the whole thing is affected by epigenetics (i.e. you can only do it for X number of generations before you start dying out, each next one worse off than the one before), but the general trend is that kids are stronger than adults... until their margin of safety is gone and consequences of lifestyle become obvious...

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

Isn't it funny how the human genetic sequence is only getting worse, not better?!!!!

When IMAC did their review of JALP, they said that my inclusion of the 1984 article about live Tamysh people who had an average age of 120, menitioning a photo in the article, of a man who was 169, was ludicrous, because didn't I realise that in those days, they had good genes?

So in these days we now have lousy genes?

And just why is that?

(C'mon Darwin. :ein: Explain solely "bad" evolution .....)

After all, the 169 year old Tamysh man had probably never seen more than a couple of vaccines in his whole life. How dare he have better genes than all these rabidly vaccinated children, carrying asthma inhalers and a raft of other drugs including behaviour modifiers....

rant off.

[RandomName]

When IMAC did their review of JALP, they said that my inclusion of the 1984 article about live Tamysh people who had an average age of 120, menitioning a photo in the article, of a man who was 169, was ludicrous, because didn't I realise that in those days, they had good genes?


OT :red: but that sounds like an interesting article. Anyplace I can find it? I don't know what IMAC and JALP are.

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

JALP is my first book "Just a Little Prick" (http://www.beyondconformity.org.nz/books) and Imac is a provaccine pharma funded organisation (though they deny it, despite all the pharma logos they used at the bottom of their letters in the first few years...) staffed by taxpayer funded doctors, whose aim is to shoot up every kid ever born in NZ with every vaccine that they can persuade the government to allocate taxpayer money to pay for. Their response to our first book is here (http://www.immune.org.nz/site_resources/Professionals/Topics_Special_Interest/Anti-imms%20rebuttals/Myth-HP-16_Critique_of_Just_a_Little_Prick_IMAC_2007.pdf).

But is there any point in reading their 19 or whatever pages to our book, if you've not read the book in the first place?