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A Childhood Miracle Slips Into Controversy
Gannett News Service
At the end of the century, public health
officials are gratified with their progress in the war against several diseases,
mainly through the "silver bullets'' of immunization: vaccines developed
against a wide variety of serious illnesses from polio to whooping cough. In the
United States, the last case of naturally occurring polio was in 1979. Whooping
cough, which once killed 12,000 a year, now claims only five or 10 people. But
with that good news comes bad. In rare -- but dramatic -- instances some
vaccines trigger dangerous reactions resulting in lifelong disability or even
death.
Because vaccines are the only substance the government forces
Americans to put into their bodies, Gannett News Service has undertaken a
four-month investigation, using the Freedom of Information Act and government
computer databases, to provide insight to these little-known effects of a public
health policy of immunizations:
Part 1: Shaken baby syndrome, when a baby can be literally
shaken to death, is a serious social problem. But its symptoms match the
reaction of a controversial childhood vaccine. When is a death caused by abuse
and when is it caused by a vaccine? Many parents, including some who face
prison, may never find out.
Part 2: Sudden Infant Death Syndrome can be a source of fear
or guilt for parents. For almost a decade, a federal claims court has been
drawing a significant association between mysterious deaths attributed to SIDS
and a controversial vaccine.
Part 3: World health officials hope for a polio-free planet by
the year 2000. But lurking under that great success has been the rare, but real
risk of contracting polio as a result of the oral vaccine.
Part 4: Pervasive government efforts to immunize every child
are prompting some privacy advocates, vaccination critics and lawyers to warn:
Parents Beware.
Part 5: The government's National Vaccine Injury Compensation
Program was set up to compensate children injured by their childhood
immunizations. But it is sliding into controversy, as critics label it unfair,
ineffective and a corruption of congressional intent.
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