Bill Gates Confronted On Nearly 48,000 Indian Children Becoming Paralyzed After Vaccine

[MissCee]

I found it interesting that he completely steered away from the actual question asked, especially with regards to the fact that he didn't even address the nearly 48,000 children paralyzed from the vaccine.

Thoughts?

[Fyrestorm]

I believe that the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation has not admitted that any of those cases were related to the vaccine (ya know, it's never the vaccine and always a coincidence) and even if it were vaccine related, all dead and injured children are just necessary collateral damage to the greater cause.
 

[prosciencemum]

I found a fairly neutral article about the issue which discusses the rise in non-polio paralysis which has been observed in India and the research article in which is was noted the rates appear to correlate with opv.

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/polio-free-does-not-mean-paralysis-free/article4266043.ece

Two comments struck me - a claim that the rise in cases of paralysis is related partially to better monitoring due to the efforts to eradicate polio (finding sudden cases of paralysis being the primary way to catch polio cases). And the WHO pointing out the highest number of opv vaccines were given out in 2004 when the numbers of paralysis were very low.

Sounds like more investigation is needed - and happening.

[Devaskyla]

Highest number of vaccines or highest number per person? Because there is a huge difference and number of doses per person has been strongly correlated with acute non-polio paralysis. I believe more than 6 doses was the number that caused a dramatic increase.

In addition, I highly doubt it's related to better monitoring. It's kind of hard to miss paralyzed kids. And this version appears more deadly than the paralysis caused by polio.

[prosciencemum]

Originally Posted by Devaskyla 

Highest number of vaccines or highest number per person? Because there is a huge difference and number of doses per person has been strongly correlated with acute non-polio paralysis. I believe more than 6 doses was the number that caused a dramatic increase.

In addition, I highly doubt it's related to better monitoring. It's kind of hard to miss paralyzed kids. And this version appears more deadly than the paralysis caused by polio.

This is the paragraph in the article I was refering to: 

Quote:

The non-polio AFP rate was not correlated with the number of oral vaccine doses that were administered, countered the WHO Country Office in its response. The largest number of oral vaccine doses given in India was in 2004, which had the lowest non-polio AFP rate in the last eight years. Moreover, although the number of oral vaccine doses given in the country had shown a continuous decline since 2007, the non-polio AFP rate had increased during the same period. In Bihar and U.P. too, there were similar trends of reduced oral vaccine doses and rising AFP rates during 2007-2011.

It is unclear from that if it's total doses or doses per person.

Can you link to the data on the 6 doses per person correlation and I'll try to chase it down more.

[Devaskyla]

This is the best link I can find at the moment

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22591873

[prosciencemum]

Originally Posted by Devaskyla 

This is the best link I can find at the moment

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22591873

Thanks. I found the full text of that abstract (via a quick Google search) at this location (pdf): 

http://www.theoneclickgroup.co.uk/documents/vaccines/Polio%20programme%2C%20let%20us%20declare%20victory%20and%20move%20on%2C%20J%20Puliyel.pdf

[prosciencemum]

Originally Posted by Devaskyla 

This is the best link I can find at the moment

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22591873

OK so here goes. This might be a bit train of thought, as I wrote it as I went through my process of digging. 

My notes on the article: Polio programme: let us declare victory and move on., by N Vashisht and J Puliyel (published in Indian Journal of Medical Ethics, June 2012). 

Badly written for a science article, but that doesn't immediately mean it's wrong! 

Note this is an opinion piece - no primary research, cites other works. Again not in itself a problem, but worth remembering, and we should dig down to the citations. 

Pg. 2 In "Terminology": Defines eradication - as in no polio disease circulating, and extinction - no polio virus in existence in the world. Then in the paragraph immediately following "Synthetic polio makes eradication impossible" mixes up the two terms - I agree this makes extinction impossible, but as they defined, that's different from eradication…. 

Cites (25) for increase in NAFP in India. 

25. Puliyel J, Sathyamala C, Banerji D. Protective efficacy of a monovalent oral type 1 poliovirus vaccine. Lancet. 2007;370:129-30.

Self citation. There's an abstract here with same title (different authors): http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17448821 demonstrating improved efficacy of a new type of OPV. 

Oh actually, the Puliyel et al. 2007 citation is a comment on the above…. Odd to cite a comment. The full text is here: http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(07)61075-7/fulltext It's a complaint about the ethics of the published study on the efficacy of the new type of OPV claiming that the public were not properly informed and adverse affects not properly monitored. It is incorrect/misleading (in my opinion) to cite this for data on increase in NAFP in India tied to this new vaccine. 

The authors response to the comment is here: http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(07)61077-0/fulltext

Moving on. Article points to online data on polio in India in the last 10 years (29). Cites (30) for correlation of NAFP rates and numbers of doses (still unclear if it means doses per child, or total doses - although 6 does of OPV/year is mentioned…)

Quote:

29. Puliyel J, Vashisht N, Sreenivas V. National Polio Surveillance India data 2000 -2010: NPSP Polio surveillance data on Acute Flaccid Paralysis (AFP) and non-polio AFP and Demographic data[Internet]. [date unknown][cited 2012 Jan 30]. In: jacob.puliyel.com[Internet]. Available from: http://jacob.puliyel.com/download.php?id=248

30. PuliyelJM,VashishtN,SreenivasV.Non-PolioAFPRateinDifferentStates of India: A Regression Model. Under journal review.

So they're citing a self published (on the internet) study, and a publication not yet accepted by a journal for this. Date of this opinion piece is June 2012, so we should check out if citation 30 is now published (9 months later) and also look at the internet site. 

You can search PubMed for author/year, and my search on Puliyel J[Author] for 2012/2013 does not reveal (30) as published. These things can take a while though, so again not in itself a major problem. 

Internet link - is to a pdf with some figures and data (self published by Puliyel J looks like). 

Data on AFP, and number of OPV does is taken from this site: http://www.npspindia.org/bulletin.pdf, which publishes bulletins on the number of AFP cases in India. 

Trying to dig a bit more for the data on the OPV doses (which in the table is listed as "approximated" so I want to know a bit more about that). I did not see that in the bulletin… which is just about tracking AFP cases and follow up tests for polio….. 

Starting back to here: http://www.npspindia.org I followed the link to "Routine Immunization" (but it was broken). 

There is a figure on in the pdf which seems to show dates of immunisation programs, but it's not split by state…. 

Can anyone help - I can't find the source of the data on number of doses….. 

Looking at the plots a few Indian states with very high rates of NAFP drive the trend (which is pretty flat otherwise…). I will be skeptical of this result until I understand the source of the data on doses. 

Moving on - ends with confusing conclusions - in the same paper they are saying OPV Is dangerous they are also saying OPV immunisation to control polio needs to continue…. 

Quote:

The huge costs of repeated rounds of OPV in terms of money and non-polio AFP shows that monthly administration of OPV must cease. The low incidence of non-polio AFP in places given less than six doses, suggests that routine immunisation is relatively safe. Our resources are perhaps better spent on controlling poliomyelitis rather than trying to eradicate the disease. Routine immunisation must be strengthened and perhaps one or two rounds of pulse polio may be needed. 

So monthly administration should cases, but routine immunisation strengthened....? And the paragraph before (and after) both warn against stopping OPV - which is planned for 2014 assuming it remains that the last wild polio case in India was in 2011 (ie. 3 years after the last case). I'm very confused what the point of the author is - other than that he's unhappy with foreign aid helping with polio vaccination in India. 

I don't find this a very convincing report. Again this doesn't mean it's totally wrong, I'd just need more work (preferably actually published research) before I was convinced there actually is a link between rates of NAFP and the number of doses of OPV given. 

[pers]

Oh my goodness.  The reporter doesn't seem to understand what eugenics means.  Being concerned about overpopulation humans in general is not eugenics.  Supporting programs that make effective birth control and family planning services available to allow women to have control of their own fertility is not eugenics.   Recognizing that people who have every reason to expect their children will survive to adulthood tend to choose to have fewer children and so programs such as those supplying clean water, food, medical care, and vaccines can help reduce population growth is not eugenics. 

It is not at all surprising that at someone who made his fortune from technology is most interested in technological means of solving problems related to sanitation, food production, and fighting diseases.  I fully understand why people who are against GMO foods and such are against his methods.  But this is a man using his own fortune with the stated goals of trying to decrease hunger, poverty, and disease.  I even understand why people who don't believe in vaccines object to his methods of fighting disease and think the money could be put to far better uses that would do more to improve health than vaccines.  But attempts such as this one to vilify him as some sort of evil monster who is deliberately trying to poison people are just ridiculous.  

Originally Posted by MissCee 

I found it interesting that he completely steered away from the actual question asked, especially with regards to the fact that he didn't even address the nearly 48,000 children paralyzed from the vaccine.

Thoughts?

Does he even know about the increased rate of AFP in India?  It hasn't been widely reported.  Perhaps he would have heard of it due to the issues he's involved in, but I don't know why he would be expected to have some special insight when doctors and health authorities don't know what is going on. 

OPV is a live vaccine and very rarely does cause paralysis, which is why it is no longer used in North America.  However, it is cheaper, easier to administer, and most importantly by far, it produces a far better immune response than IPV, which is why it is still used in many parts of the world which still have polio.  But that's not what is going on here. .

It's not at all accurate to say that the 48,000 children being discussed were paralysed by the vaccine.  AFP can be caused by several other diseases besides polio including West Nile Virus, enteroviruses, and GBS among many others.  It can also be caused by botulism poisoning and some other naturally occurring poisons such as certain snake bites.  

It happens everywhere.  The concern right now though is that rates of it in India are far greater anywhere else, and no one knows why this is.  There does seem to be some correlation between OPV doses and AFP rates in different parts of India, and this certainly is worrisome and must be investigated further to see if the relationship is causal.  However, unless I am  mistaken, the OPV in India is the same that is still used in several other countries (including Japan) and was used in the US just over a decade ago, so why do they not have the same extremely high levels?  Also, OPV doses given in India have been decreasing over the last several years at the same time as AFP cases have been increasing.  

Quote:

Originally Posted by Devaskyla 

In addition, I highly doubt it's related to better monitoring. It's kind of hard to miss paralyzed kids. And this version appears more deadly than the paralysis caused by polio.

 

It's hard for the people around a paralyzed kid or the doctors treating the child to miss them.  But will news of the paralyzed child in a remote region reach the government offices where such things are tracked?  Improved screening programs and an expanded definition of what should be reported as AFP absolutely have caused an increase in reported cases.  However, it does not fully explain the entire increase or why India has a rate so much higher than the rest of the world including many places which also have good monitoring programs in place.  Something troubling appears to be going on in India, and I hope further investigation turns up the reason and helps to decrease cases again, whether or not it ends up being related to  OPV.  

[prosciencemum]

Bump to check if anyone had any luck finding the primary source on the numbers if doses of OPV in different regions of India?

Seems a bit much to me to accuse someone donating millions of dollars to try to help poor children not get sick, of being in it for eugenics based on a self published Internet study for which we cannot locate the primary data source.

[prosciencemum]

One thing which does strike me - how come Bihar and Uttar Pradesh (two regions in India) have so much higher NAFP rates than the other regions

(here: http://www.npspindia.org/bulletin.pdf in Table 2). 

Those two places really add significantly to any correlation - since they're so out of the mean. 

Does anyone know anything about those two places? 

Wikipedia tells me they're in Northern India (and border each other). 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bihar

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uttar_Pradesh

Random (probably unrelated) facts: 

UP is the most populus state in India. 

The Taj Mahal is in UP. 

In 2004-2005 UP had the most people living in poverty of any state in India. In 2011 the literacy rate was 70% - below the national average for India. 

Bihar has traditionally lagged other Indian states in social and economic development. 

Bihar in 2011 was the most densly populated state in India. 

[prosciencemum]

Still can't find where the data on dose numbers came from though.