Hilary Butler documenting HIB, then Prevnar now MRSA

From: Hilary Butler

Forward this where you like.

A couple of weeks ago, Ninetonoon did a programme about how wonderful Prevnar is, and how lots of  countries are using it, and that’s why we should too.

Well, take your pick. Wednesday’s issue of JAMA details that this time, the bug might have bit them right back on the backside. Use Prevnar, get a new MRSA = dead children. This is what the public gets, when they sit back and trust the medical profession, and when the questions they ask, do not get answered in any meaningful way.
(see letter to Dr Marc Lipsitch ­ the answers were unsatisfactory and I’ve not pdf’d them)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/16/AR2007101601392_pf.html

In the new study, Fridkin and his colleagues analyzed data collected in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, Oregon and Tennessee, identifying 5,287 cases of invasive MRSA infection and 988 deaths in 2005. The researchers calculated that MRSA was striking 31.8 out of every 100,000 Americans, which translates to 94,360 cases and 18,650 deaths nationwide. In comparison, complications from the AIDS virus killed about 12,500 Americans in 2005.

In the second paper, Michael E. Pichichero and Janet R. Casey of the University of Rochester in New York documented the emergence of an antibiotic-resistant strain of another bacterium known as Streptococcus pneumoniae, which causes common ear infections. Although all 11 children identified in the Rochester area with the microbe so far were successfully treated, five required an antibiotic approved only for adults, and one child was left with permanent hearing loss.

The researchers attributed the emergence of the strain to a combination of the overuse of antibiotics and the introduction of a vaccine that protects against the infection.

"The use of the vaccine created an ecological vacuum, and that combined with excessive use of antibiotics to create this new superbug," Pichichero said.

So will Pete Hodgson let New Zealand parents welcome this new ecological niche into New Zealand, and act all surprised when in a few years, kiddies drop dead because they can’t be treated?

You all realise, of course, that this was started by the use of the Hib vaccine.

I attach for you a pdf containing a letter sent by me to Bill Birch in 1993, and USA’s foremost expert on this topic, Marc Lipsitch in April 2006, with an extract from the infectious disease journal, and the revelant IAS waves newsletter giving Bill Birch’s reply.
 

[whale] Letter 1
[whale] letter 2

http://www.wellwithin1.com/HIBPneu1993-2006LettersA.pdf
http://www.wellwithin1.com/HIBPneu1993-2006LettersB.pdf

OR

http://www.nccn.net/~wwithin/HIBPneu1993-2006LettersA.pdf
http://www.nccn.net/~wwithin/HIBPneu1993-2006LettersB.pdf