Food for thought for German health policy: The US is overturning a decades-old vaccination recommendation to vaccinate babies against hepatitis B in their first year of life.
Do babies have sex for the first time eight weeks after birth?
Are they already injecting drugs intravenously? “The pathogen that causes hepatitis B, an inflammation of the liver that in rare cases can lead to cirrhosis, liver cancer, and organ failure, is predominantly transmitted through such risky behavior,” admits the Robert Koch Institute. Nevertheless, the authority recommends “jabs” at the ages of 2, 4, and 11 months as part of the six-fold vaccination—even though this increases the risk of impairing brain development (1) and eventually developing multiple sclerosis (2), as studies show. Why is it not enough to immunize pregnant women who test positive for hepatitis and their babies?
In the US, the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) has recommended for decades that infants receive a hepatitis B vaccination within 12 to 24 hours of birth. But that came to an end on December 5, when a CDC advisory committee overturned the guideline. Why is this not giving German health policymakers pause for thought? Denmark and Finland do not recommend routine hepatitis B vaccination for babies. Has this led to an excessive number of infections
there?
Is it only the state of research that motivates hardliners? Italy introduced mandatory hepatitis B vaccination for babies in their first year of life back in 1991 – at the instigation of a certain Francesco de Lorenzo, then Minister of Health. Two years later, he was forced to resign
after a court convicted him of corruption: vaccine manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline had bribed him with 600 million lire, equivalent to more than €300,000. (3) Nevertheless, the 1991 vaccination practice continues in Italy to this day.
Crazy.
(Harald Wiesendanger)
Notes:
(1) Humanstudie: https://hisunim.org.il/wp-content/uploads/documents/scientific_literature/
Gallagher_Goodman_HepB.pdf; Animal studies: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29627530/,
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29751176/, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27501128/,
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26531688/, https://academic.oup.com/braincomms/article/
6/5/fcae315/7758318?login=false
(2) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12065880, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15365133/,
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18843097/
(3) https://ricerca.repubblica.it/repubblica/archivio/repubblica/2001/06/15/de-lorenzo-condannato-andra-in-carcere.html, https://napoli.corriere.it/notizie/cronaca/25_aprile_25/de-lorenzo-ho-pagato-molto-piu-di-tutti-gli-altri-il-vitalizio-ho-la-pensione-pignorata-a37f7e1c-1fd2-495d-93b1-ef0b385a2xlk.shtml;
