Infant mortality rates regressed against number of vaccine doses routinely given: Is there a biochemical or synergistic toxicity?

The infant mortality rate (IMR) is one of the most important indicators of the socio-economic well-being and public health conditions of a country. The US childhood immunization schedule specifies 26 vaccine doses for infants aged less than 1 year—the most in the world—yet 33 nations have lower IMRs. Using linear regression, the immunization schedules of these 34 nations were examined and a correlation coefficient of r = 0.70 (p < 0.0001) was found between IMRs and the number of vaccine doses routinely given to infants. Nations were also grouped into five different vaccine dose ranges: 12–14, 15–17, 18–20, 21–23, and 24–26. The mean IMRs of all nations within each group were then calculated. Linear regression analysis of unweighted mean IMRs showed a high statistically significant correlation between increasing number of vaccine doses and increasing infant mortality rates, with r = 0.992 (p = 0.0009). Using the Tukey-Kramer test, statistically significant differences in mean IMRs were found between nations giving 12–14 vaccine doses and those giving 21–23, and 24–26 doses. A closer inspection of correlations between vaccine doses, biochemical or synergistic toxicity, and IMRs is essential.

Introduction

The infant mortality rate (IMR) is one of the most important measures of child health and overall development in countries. Clean water, increased nutritional measures, better sanitation, and easy access to health care contribute the most to improving infant mortality rates in unclean, undernourished, and impoverished regions of the world.^1–3 In developing nations, IMRs are high because these basic necessities for infant survival are lacking or unevenly distributed. Infectious and communicable diseases are more common in developing countries as well, though sound sanitary practices and proper nutrition would do much to prevent them.¹

The World Health Organization (WHO) attributes 7 out of 10 childhood deaths in developing countries to five main causes: pneumonia, diarrhea, measles, malaria, and malnutrition—the latter greatly affecting all the others.¹ Malnutrition has been associated with a decrease in immune function. An impaired immune function often leads to an increased susceptibility to infection.² It is well established that infections, no matter how mild, have adverse effects on nutritional status. Conversely, almost any nutritional deficiency will diminish resistance to disease.³

Despite the United States spending more per capita on health care than any other country,⁴ 33 nations have better IMRs. Some countries have IMRs that are less than half the US rate: Singapore, Sweden, and Japan are below 2.80. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), “The relative position of the United States in comparison to countries with the lowest infant mortality rates appears to be worsening.”⁵

There are many factors that affect the IMR of any given country. For example, premature births in the United States have increased by more than 20% between 1990 and 2006. Preterm babies have a higher risk of complications that could lead to death within the first year of life.⁶ However, this does not fully explain why the United States has seen little improvement in its IMR since 2000.⁷

Nations differ in their immunization requirements for infants aged less than 1 year. In 2009, five of the 34 nations with the best IMRs required 12 vaccine doses, the least amount, while the United States required 26 vaccine doses, the most of any nation. To explore the correlation between vaccine doses that nations routinely give to their infants and their infant mortality rates, a linear regression analysis was performed.

Methods and design

Results

Basic necessities for infant survival

It is instructive to note that many developing nations require their infants to receive multiple vaccine doses and have national vaccine coverage rates (a percentage of the target population that has been vaccinated) of 90% or better, yet their IMRs are poor. For example, Gambia requires its infants to receive 22 vaccine doses during infancy and has a 91%–97% national vaccine coverage rate, yet its IMR is 68.8. Mongolia requires 22 vaccine doses during infancy, has a 95%–98% coverage rate, and an IMR of 39.9.^8,9 These examples appear to confirm that IMRs will remain high in nations that cannot provide clean water, proper nutrition, improved sanitation, and better access to health care. As developing nations improve in all of these areas a critical threshold will eventually be reached where further reductions of the infant mortality rate will be difficult to achieve because most of the susceptible infants that could have been saved from these causes would have been saved. Further reductions of the IMR must then be achieved in areas outside of these domains. As developing nations ascend to higher socio-economic living standards, a closer inspection of all factors contributing to infant deaths must be made.

Crossing the socio-economic threshold

It appears that at a certain stage in nations’ movement up the socio-economic scale—after the basic necessities for infant survival (proper nutrition, sanitation, clean water, and access to health care) have been met—a counter-intuitive relationship occurs between the number of vaccines given to infants and infant mortality rates: nations with higher (worse) infant mortality rates give their infants, on average, more vaccine doses. This positive correlation, derived from the data and demonstrated in Figures 1 and ​and2,2, elicits an important inquiry: are some infant deaths associated with over-vaccination?

A closer inspection of infant deaths

Many nations adhere to an agreed upon International Classification of Diseases (ICD) for grouping infant deaths into 130 categories.^11–13 Among the 34 nations analyzed, those that require the most vaccines tend to have the worst IMRs. Thus, we must ask important questions: is it possible that some nations are requiring too many vaccines for their infants and the additional vaccines are a toxic burden on their health? Are some deaths that are listed within the 130 infant mortality death categories really deaths that are associated with over-vaccination? Are some vaccine-related deaths hidden within the death tables?

Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)

Prior to contemporary vaccination programs, ‘Crib death’ was so infrequent that it was not mentioned in infant mortality statistics. In the United States, national immunization campaigns were initiated in the 1960s when several new vaccines were introduced and actively recommended. For the first time in history, most US infants were required to receive several doses of DPT, polio, measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines.¹⁴ Shortly thereafter, in 1969, medical certifiers presented a new medical term—sudden infant death syndrome.^15,16 In 1973, the National Center for Health Statistics added a new cause-of-death category—for SIDS—to the ICD. SIDS is defined as the sudden and unexpected death of an infant which remains unexplained after a thorough investigation. Although there are no specific symptoms associated with SIDS, an autopsy often reveals congestion and edema of the lungs and inflammatory changes in the respiratory system.¹⁷ By 1980, SIDS had become the leading cause of postneonatal mortality (deaths of infants from 28 days to one year old) in the United States.¹⁸

In 1992, to address the unacceptable SIDS rate, the American Academy of Pediatrics initiated a ‘Back to Sleep’ campaign, convincing parents to place their infants supine, rather than prone, during sleep. From 1992 to 2001, the postneonatal SIDS rate dropped by an average annual rate of 8.6%. However, other causes of sudden unexpected infant death (SUID) increased. For example, the postneonatal mortality rate from ‘suffocation in bed’ (ICD-9 code E913.0) increased during this same period at an average annual rate of 11.2%. The postneonatal mortality rate from ‘suffocation-other’ (ICD-9 code E913.1-E913.9), ‘unknown and unspecified causes’ (ICD-9 code 799.9), and due to ‘intent unknown’ in the External Causes of Injury section (ICD-9 code E980-E989), all increased during this period as well.¹⁸ (In Australia, Mitchell et al. observed that when the SIDS rate decreased, deaths attributed to asphyxia increased.¹⁹ Overpeck et al. and others, reported similar observations.)^20,21

A closer inspection of the more recent period from 1999 to 2001 reveals that the US postneonatal SIDS rate continued to decline, but there was no significant change in the total postneonatal mortality rate. During this period, the number of deaths attributed to ‘suffocation in bed’ and ‘unknown causes,’ increased significantly. According to Malloy and MacDorman, “If death-certifier preference has shifted such that previously classified SIDS deaths are now classified as ‘suffocation,’ the inclusion of these suffocation deaths and unknown or unspecified deaths with SIDS deaths then accounts for about 90 percent of the decline in the SIDS rate observed between 1999 and 2001 and results in a non-significant decline in SIDS”¹⁸ (Figure 3).

Is there evidence linking SIDS to vaccines?

Although some studies were unable to find correlations between SIDS and vaccines,^22–24 there is some evidence that a subset of infants may be more susceptible to SIDS shortly after being vaccinated. For example, Torch found that two-thirds of babies who had died from SIDS had been vaccinated against DPT (diphtheria–pertussis–tetanus toxoid) prior to death. Of these, 6.5% died within 12 hours of vaccination; 13% within 24 hours; 26% within 3 days; and 37%, 61%, and 70% within 1, 2, and 3 weeks, respectively. Torch also found that unvaccinated babies who died of SIDS did so most often in the fall or winter while vaccinated babies died most often at 2 and 4 months—the same ages when initial doses of DPT were given to infants. He concluded that DPT “may be a generally unrecognized major cause of sudden infant and early childhood death, and that the risks of immunization may outweigh its potential benefits. A need for re-evaluation and possible modification of current vaccination procedures is indicated by this study.”²⁵ Walker et al. found “the SIDS mortality rate in the period zero to three days following DPT to be 7.3 times that in the period beginning 30 days after immunization.”²⁶ Fine and Chen reported that babies died at a rate nearly eight times greater than normal within 3 days after getting a DPT vaccination.²⁷

Ottaviani et al. documented the case of a 3-month-old infant who died suddenly and unexpectedly shortly after being given six vaccines in a single shot: “Examination of the brainstem on serial sections revealed bilateral hypoplasia of the arcuate nucleus. The cardiac conduction system presented persistent fetal dispersion and resorptive degeneration. This case offers a unique insight into the possible role of hexavalent vaccine in triggering a lethal outcome in a vulnerable baby.” Without a full necropsy study in the case of sudden, unexpected infant death, at least some cases linked to vaccination are likely to go undetected.²⁸

^More:

^{http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3170075/}