Gaia Health
March 6, 2013
The Pandemrix vaccine has condemned thousands of children to lives constrained by narcolepsy. An autoimmune disease was entirely predictable because the adjuvant used was squalene—but warnings were ignored. Now, the BMJ has produced a study that proves the AS03 adjuvant of Pandemrix causes narcolepsy.
Photo by Gianfranco Reppucci (cropped)
by Heidi Stevenson
The narcolepsy toll from GlaxoSmithKline’s Pandemrix swine flu vaccine is far more rampant than already recognized with 800 European children’s lives devastated. The British Medical Journal (BMJ) has revealed that the numbers worldwide must run into the thousands. Suggestions that there was something unique about the Scandinavian population that first noted the problem have now been shown to be untrue.
Narcolepsy is a devastating neurological disorder characterized by suddenly dropping off to sleep as the result of emotion—any emotion. Sufferers can suddenly collapse into sleep simply by laughing. Can you imagine a life in which laughing could be dangerous? This is not the only symptom of narcolepsy. It can also cause hallucinations, temporary paralysis, difficulty concentrating, restlessness and difficulty sleeping normally, vivid nightmares, cataplexy, and continuing to carry out actions while sleeping.
There is no known cure, and its victims are generally given strong drugs in an attempt to control symptoms. These include amphetamines and amphetamine-like drugs such as Adderall. All of these drugs can cause severe adverse effects, including tachycardia, nervousness, diarrhea, fatigue, vomiting, anxiety, palpitations, tremors, and manic episodes.
The Study
The researchers examined the records of children who’d been diagnosed with narcolepsy during the time that the Pandemrix vaccine was being delivered. They were provided with lists from the British Sleep Society and the British Paediatric Neurology Association, which referenced 23 centers that deal with narcolepsy. They initiated strong standards to rule out any child whose condition wasn’t definitively narcolepsy.
Questionnaires were sent to their GPs to ascertain whether they’d received the Pandemrix vaccine and on what date. This information was compared with the timing of onset of narcolepsy. What they found was definitive:
This study shows a significantly increased risk of narcolepsy in children who received the AS03 adjuvanted pandemic strain vaccine in England. Our case coverage method gave an odds ratio of 14.4 (4.3 to 48.5) for the primary analysis and is consistent with the relative risk of 13 reported from Finland in a retrospective cohort study.
Their results show that Pandemrix caused 14.4 times more cases of narcolepsy than would have normally occurred!
The probable reason that an increase in narcolepsy wasn’t noted in England is that Pandemrix vaccination in children was far from universal. In Finland, where the tragedy was first noted, the coverage was nearly universal. In England, it was 27.3% overall—43.9% in risk groups (those considered at high risk if infected with swine flu) and 26.2% in non-risk children.
It is now abundantly clear is that throughout the world, Pandemrix has caused thousands of children to develop narcolepsy during only a couple of years. There is now no evading the reality of the devastation caused by this vaccine that was pushed through a campaign of fear mongering about a mild disease.
Even more bluntly, the researchers stated:
The increased risk of narcolepsy after vaccination with ASO3 adjuvanted pandemic A/H1N1 2009 vaccine indicates a causal association, consistent with findings from Finland.
Notice that there’s no evading the reality: Pandemrix’s AS03 adjuvant causes narcolepsy. The question now is: What other autoimmune disorders will show up over the next few years because of this vaccine?
Squalene, the Adjuvant that Destroys Lives
The researchers also clarified that they believe it’s the AS03 adjuvant used in Pandemrix that caused narcolepsy. Many people warned of the risk, because the active ingredient in AS03 is squalene.
Even if squalene is banned, the problem of dangerous adjuvants is far from over. Researchers are demonstrating that the old standard, aluminum, is causing a huge array of adverse effects from vaccines, including lupus erythematosus, macrophagic myofasciitis, rheumatoid arthritis, antiphospholipid syndrome, and many other severely debilitating disorders.
And then there’s the new generation of bioengineered adjuvants, made by engineering bacteria so that they manufacture antigen-like particles. These are used both as antigens and adjuvants, and they carry a risk similar to squalene: They are all lipids. Injecting a lipid has been known for decades to cause devastating autoimmune diseases. In the early years of adjuvant experimentation, it was determined that they are too dangerous for use in vaccines. In fact, they’re used in animal experiments to cause autoimmune disorders so treatments for the human diseases they duplicate can be studied. How can such adjuvants be justified as safe?
The fact is that this tragedy was completely avoidable. Squalene’s danger has been known for decades. There is no excuse for its use in vaccines.
The Price Paid
These children with narcolepsy are condemned to lives constrained by the effects of both narcolepsy and the drugs they may take. When you consider that the disease they were supposedly being protected from, swine flu, proved to be a rather mild type of influenza, the tragedy of what has happened is inexcusable. It becomes apparent that they will suffer for the rest of their lives, never having the chance to experience life to its fullest, for one reason alone: greed. The sufferers of narcolepsy resulting from Pandemrix are paying the real price of GSK’s greed and government agencies and doctors that were only too willing to go along with pushing the vaccine that increased GSK’s profits.
Sources:
Risk of narcolepsy in children and young people receiving AS03 adjuvanted pandemic A/H1N1 2009 influenza vaccine: retrospective analysis, BMJ; Elizabeth Miller, Nick Andrews, Lesley Stellitano, Julia Stowe, Anne Marie Winstone, John Shneerson, Christopher Verity; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.f794
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