Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, October 4, 1994 TAG: 9410220010
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SANDRA EVANS THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
But a few days later, one of Whitestone's pediatricians gave a different version: She became deaf as a result of a serious bacterial infection, Haemophilus influenzae (Hib), an illness for which no vaccination was available at the time, according to Ted Williams, a Dothan, Ala., pediatrician. A DTP shot given weeks earlier had nothing to do with it, he said.
The flap has rekindled efforts by medical experts to reassure parents that DTP shots and other immunizations are safe and important to the health of young children. It has also renewed charges by a national group that the medical community, in its zeal to get children immunized, fails to acknowledge severe negative reactions to vaccines.
Health authorities last month stressed that vaccines protect against highly destructive diseases and voiced concern that more than a third of American toddlers have not been properly immunized.
``We can't protect our children from everything. This is one thing in the world we can protect them from,'' said Melinda Wharton, a child vaccine expert for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. ``I'm a mother myself. There was never a moment's doubt in my mind'' about immunizing her child.
Yet even the foremost proponents of immunizations agree there are risks and say that the pertussis (whooping cough) portion of DTP is responsible for more adverse reactions than the others. Most children have only mild reactions to the shots - a slight fever, crankiness or a sore spot where the shot was given - according to CDC. One in 330 children will get a fever of 105 degrees or more. One in 1,750 will have convulsions. Those children usually recover without lasting injury, according to the agency.
A CDC fact sheet says that ``permanent brain damage has been reported on rare occasions after a child has been vaccinated with DTP; however most experts believe that a connection between DTP and brain damage has not been proven.'' It does add that, as with any drug or vaccine, a slight risk of serious problems and even death exists.
The National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine earlier this year reported a suspected but unproven link between childhood vaccinations and chronic brain damage in very rare cases, estimated at less than 10 cases per million immunizations.
The CDC adds that the risks of a bad reaction are greater if the child is sick at the time of the shot, has had convulsions in the past, has had a nervous system disorder or is not developing normally.
In the late 1980s, the federal government developed a national program to compensate people who were injured by vaccines. The program is financed through an excise tax on vaccines. For certain reactions that occur occasionally as a result of a vaccine, victims do not have to prove the vaccine caused the problem, only that it occurred within a certain time after the shot.
For DTP, these injuries include: severe allergic reactions, such as those that cause shock (anaphylaxis); brain disorders, such as seizures and coma (encephalopathy), shock-collapse and continuing seizures (though seizures are in the process of being removed from the list.)
For injuries not on the compensation table, the person must file a petition in federal claims court and prove that the vaccine caused the problem.
Injury claims between 1988 and September 1994 totaled 574, and payments were awarded in 95 cases. Claims for pre-1988 vaccinations totaled 4,095, with payments ordered in 578. The awards ranged from $120 to $4 million.
In the original version of how Miss America became deaf, her mother, Daphne Gray, told reporters that Whitestone got a very high fever within days of getting the DPT shot at 18 months of age. The toddler then got a severe infection, and the strong medicine used to save her life also rendered her deaf, Gray said. Her physician reviewed the medical record and said the infection appeared weeks rather than days after the shot and that the medicine was not responsible for the hearing loss. He could not explain why the medical record did not jibe with Gray's recollections.
Barbara Loe Fisher, cofounder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center, started by parents whose children were injured by vaccines, said parents' experiences often are discounted by physicians.
``It's so often that the parent who is with the child and witnesses the high fever, witnesses the convulsions, the shock or whatever, it comes down to whether the doctor agrees it was due to the vaccination just given,'' Fisher said. ``[The medical community] continues to try to sweep these children under the rug,'' Fisher added.
The DTP shot contains three vaccines, consisting of small amounts of the disease-causing agents. The shot prompts the body to produce natural antibodies to fight all three diseases.
by CNB