Vaccine safety – a lack of education muddies the waters …

[18 November 2002 - 10h08]
[mis à jour le 16 February 2010 à 10h08]

It’s a well-known fact that the French mind lends itself poorly to the learning of foreign languages. Nevertheless, it is incredible to read that, in the opinion of one legal “expert”, the vaccination campaign against hepatitis B carried out in France in 1994 was lacking in any reliable scientific knowledge, notably regarding the possible risks associated with the vaccine!

This is one expert who would have done well to take a few English lessons and read the relevant medical press … because scientific evaluations of vaccines against hepatitis B are plentiful and have been duly validated.

Right from the start of this very French polemic, the WHO reiterated the safety of the vaccine. In October 1998 it pointed out that “more than a billion doses of anti-hepatitis B vaccine have been used since 1981 with an exceptional level of harmlessness and effectiveness. The anti-hepatitis B vaccine is the first vaccine directed against a major form of cancer in humans, as individuals carrying the virus (are) most at risk of death from cirrhosis and liver cancer (…). The scientific data available do not provide evidence of any causal link between the anti-hepatitis B vaccination and demyelinating disorders of the central nervous system, including multiple sclerosis”.

And this is no less true in France, as former ministers Philippe Douste-Blazy and Bernard Kouchner have pointed out. In fact Kouchner has called for proper scientific expertise, stating that “legal expert opinions in this matter are (…) tainted by bias”. To say the least … France remains the only country in the world where neurological disorders have been ascribed to the hepatitis B vaccine… and without scientific justification, the final word being entirely subjective.

It is terrible to see families paying the price of disastrous practices and a legal system inadequately prepared to deal with scientific data and manned by representatives whose expertise is, to say the least, questionable. When the WHO speaks of “enormous pressure exerted by associations hostile to the vaccination” in France, specialists are indeed scandalised … because hepatitis B is a killer. It causes cirrhosis, liver cancer and acute liver failure which can kill in a matter of days. As the department under Professor Bismuth at the Henri Mondor University Hospital in Créteil points out: “10% of liver transplants are the result of infection with the hepatitis B virus”.

Source : WHO/67 1998, WHO-NPP/18 1999

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