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.
Linear regression analysis of unweighted mean IMRs showed a high statistically significant correlation between increasing number of vaccine doses and increasing infant mortality rates.
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.
Malnutrition has been associated with a decrease in immune function. An impaired immune function often leads to an increased susceptibility to infection.
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.
Despite the United States spending more per capita on health care than any other country, 33 nations have better IMRs.
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.
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.
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.
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… elicits an important inquiry: are some infant deaths associated with over-vaccination?
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.
Shortly thereafter, in 1969, medical certifiers presented a new medical term—sudden infant death syndrome. In 1973, the National Center for Health Statistics added a new cause-of-death category—for SIDS—to the ICD [International Classification of Diseases].
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.
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.
[T]he postneonatal mortality rate from ‘suffocation in bed’ increased… ‘suffocation-other’, ‘unknown and unspecified causes’, and due to ‘intent unknown’… all increased during this period as well.
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.
Although some studies were unable to find correlations between SIDS and vaccines, 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.
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.’’
Fine and Chen reported that babies died at a rate nearly eight times greater than normal within 3 days after getting a DPT vaccination.
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… “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.
If some infant deaths are vaccine related and concealed within the various ICD categories for SUIDs [sudden unexpected infant death], is it possible that other vaccine-related infant deaths have also been reclassified?