Tetanus. Historical data relating to risks of disease versus risks of vaccine.

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

I will at some point, do a sticky on tetanus, what the disease is etc.

but in the meantime here is some basic information on the history of Tetanus in USA in a readable format; http://www.vaclib.org/links/tetanusindex.htm

and an item on Inside Vaccines:

http://insidevaccines.com/wordpress/vaccine-efficacy-how-often-do-vaccines-work/tetanus/

There are around 4 million babies born a year in USA, and around 5% of them do not get a tetanus shot. So do your maths. How many babies every year in USA are supposedly about to die from tetanus?

So lets look at some case data. Using this chart between 1995 - 2000:

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/109/1/e2/T1

Out of all those hundreds of thousands of unvaccinated children, what does that roughly make the risk of tetanus?

Now lets consider the risks of the tetanus vaccine:

This is the WHO module on Tetanus, which is quite interesting as a whole.

http://www.who.int/vaccines-documents/DocsPDF07/869.pdf

On page 29 is this comment:


There have been reports of brachial plexus neuropathy occurring following tetanus immunization (Quast et al. 1979; Holliday & Bauer, 1983; Tsairis et al. 1965; Beghi et al. 1985; Hamati-Haddad & Fenichel, 1997). In 1994, the United States Institute of Medicine (IOM) concluded that a causal relationship between tetanus immunization and brachial plexus neuropathy is likely, estimating that 0.5–1 cases per 100 000 TT vaccine recipients were attributable to tetanus toxoid (IOM, 1994).


It has been suggested that this conclusion may be an overestimation due to the limited nature of the data reviewed to reach the conclusion (Wassilak et al. 2004).




the reason being that they rarely see the need to do studies on a vaccine which is already licensed unless the reaction are so bad that they smack the CDC repeatedly around the chops, week in, week out.


Just remember that over a life time for a person who has tetanus shots, that's 4 - 9 shots including boosters. And now, they are not single tetanus shots, they are combos: at least, in NZ, they are. USA as well. I don't know about Australia.


The risk of just brachial plexus alone without any of the other serious side effects, is greater than the chances of actually getting tetanus in the first place, in my opinion.

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

Here are three graphics, taken from "From One Prick to Another".

the first is US data from a New England Medical Journal article (PMID 4885059):

http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f71/Angladrion/UStetanusdata.jpg

America experienced a steady decrease in tetanus mortality from 1900 until before the vaccine and even after, which is admitted in an Am J Epidemiology article (PMID 5074684):

the decline started before introduction of tetanus toxoid and has continued in the last decade during which time toxoid delivery has not improved significantly.

This next graph is UK data taken from "20th Century Mortality" Office for National Statistics.

http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f71/Angladrion/UKtetanusgraph.jpg

And this graph is taken from the New Zealand Mortality and Morbidity data which can be found in many sources, but I have all the original reports from which the data was extracted, so the New Zealand Health Department cannot argue with this data.

http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f71/Angladrion/NZtetanusdata.jpg

what interests me most about this data, is that the greatest reduction in tetanus was at a time when the polio was around, and the emphasis was on keeping your hands clean, wounds clean... in fact, the message in those two decades was that cleanliness was next to godliness.

Cleanliness being next to godliness, isn't a general message I ascribe to, since a healthy person has nothing to be concerned about by a bit of dirt on a carrot, etc... but I'm an advocate of handwashing, and appropriate wound care.

[MinorityView]

It looks as though insidevaccines could add a bit more info to their coverage on this illness.