I just wanted to clarify this as many of us have heard for years that the Japanese don't vaccinate until after 2 and this is just NOT true. It was true for a few years until 1994 or so. But now, NO!

The website has info on what went on with the pertussis vaccine....
http://idsc.nih.go.jp/yosoku/image-E/ImmEN_03.gif
OR
for larger graph
http://idsc.nih.go.jp/yosoku/ImmEN_03.pdf

2003 Vax schedule Japan

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I don't have the original info " JAPANESE SIDS REBUTTAL" which Viera is commenting on below...........but this tells the Japan and SIDS story
http://www.whale.to/vaccines/scheibner1.html
SCHIEBNER COMMENTS ON THE SIDS REBUTTAL Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 08:08:52 -0700

Viera Schiebner - SIDS researcher in Australia,


Comments on JAPANESE SIDS REBUTTAL


1. Between 1970 and 1974, 37 infant death occurred after DPT vaccination in Japan; because of this the doctors in one prefecture boycotted vaccination (Iwasa et al. 1985 and Noble et al. 1987). Consequently, the Japanese Government first stopped DPT vaccination for 2 months in 1975, and, whenvaccination was resumed, the vaccination age was lifted to 2 years. Interestingly, not only the entity of sudden death disappeared from vaccine injury compensation claims (only 2 deaths were subject of vaccine injury compensation claims in the 2-year olds compared with 37 in younger children), but the the overall infant mortality has improved: Japan zoomed from 17th to first place in infant mortality in the world. This means that Japan moved from a very high bracket to the lowest infant mortality rate in the world (Jenny Scott 1991). Interestingly, Noble et al. (1987) who spent some 2 weeks in Japan studying the acellular whooping vaccine there, wrote that "It is difficult to exclude pertussis vaccines as a causal factor even when other etiologies are suggested, particularly when the adverse events occur in close temporal association with vaccination".

The same thing happened in England after 1 July 1975 when thanks to the first media reports of brain damage linked to vaccination, parents stopped vaccinating: the compliance fell down to 30% or even 10% in some areas. As unwittingly documented by McFarlane (1982), the overall infant mortality rate plummeted. She wrote:

"The postneonatal mortality fell markedly in 1976, the year in which a sharp decline in perinatal mortality rate began. Between 1976 and 1979, however, neither the late nor the postneonatal mortality rates fell any further. Indeed, the postneonatal mortality rate increased ,slightly amongbabie s born in 1977". This very closely correlates with the documented oscillations in vaccination compliance: low compliance was linked to low death rate and vice versa. The vaccination compliance was lowest in 1975-76. Then it started climbing up in 1977-78, simply because people have short memories and the new parents did not know about the publicity surrounding vaccination as the cause of serious side effects (young couples become interested in these issues only after they have their first children). Fine and Clarkson (1982) wrote "...it is surprising that the interepidemic period did not decrease after the 1974 fall in vaccine uptake." They expected the incidence to increase in the unvaccinated children. Indeed, this interepidemic period was unusually long with the lowest incidence of whooping cough on record.

When in 1988 Japanese parents were given the choice to start vaccinating anything between 3 months of 4 years, obviously many ignorant parents started at 3 months because the low SIDS rate increased fourfold in the last 13 years (Byron Shire Echo; June 1994). The article quoted Professor Hiroshi Nishida of Tokyo Women's Medical College, who said that the SIDS rate among babies aged under 1 year had sharply increased to 0.33 % in 1992 when compared with 0.07 % in 1980.

2. SIDS is a rather rubbery diagnosis and the figures can be and are manipulated. However, the total infant deaths are a bit more difficult to manipulate. The definition of SIDS is a death of a child unexpected by history and with insufficient determination of cause of death. So, it depends on the degree of damage whether the infant death will be diagnosed as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome or pneumonitis, bronchiolitis, brain edema etc. With the increasing number of vaccines administered as part of the "routine" now, we shall see increasing numbers of babies with very serious reactions to vaccines and they will not be diagnosed as SIDS. We already see it in the epidemic of Shaken Baby Syndrome, when babies develop serious brain and other haemorrhages and die or remain seriously damaged and the parents are being accused of causing it by allegedly shaking their babies to death (Scheibner 1998).

Cherry et al. (1988) discussed the pertussis vaccine deaths in a rather odd way. Under the subheading Non-SIDS deaths they quoted Madsen's (1933) description of two babies who died soon after pertussis vaccination. In a way which can be described as contemptuous they tried to explain these immediate deaths (one-half hour after the second vaccination given four days after the first) and two hours after the second vaccination respectively) and Werne and Garrow (1946) who reported on the deaths of identical twins following the second injection of diphtheria and pertussis antigens. These children died within 24 hours of their vaccinations and had symptoms of anaphylactic shock (Cherry et al. 1988 wrote "suggestive" of schock) and then concluded that the injuries were also consistent with diffuse viral infection such as that which might be due to an enterovirus. No evidence whatsoever was offered for this unfounded assumption.

Under a subheading "SIDS", Cherry et al. (1988) tried to diffuse the impact of the published data on vaccine deaths by writing about a small section of the Tennessee deaths within 24 hours of their DPT vaccination. "An extensive evaluation of this possible association was made, and there was a weak statistical association with one lot of vaccine. It was the impression of the investigators and a panel of outside consultants that there was no causal relationship between the specific lot of vaccine and SIDS." and "A statistically significant number of excess deaths was noted in the first week following immunization (observed 17, expected 6.75 P less than .0005). This study was criticized by Mortimer and colleagues (1992) because ...did not take cognizance of the well-known age distribution of SIDS". This is a blatant circular argument: the well-known distribution of SIDS follows closely the vaccination schedule and none of the studies of SIDS distribution or incidence was the vaccination status of the SIDS victims even mentioned. This is "science" squarely standing on its head.

They also wrote that of the six children having serious side effects to Wellcome pertussis vaccines (described by Griffith (1978), "one was found to have pneumonia, one Reye Syndrome, and a four-day febrile illness, one acute tracheobronchitis, one tuberculous meningitis, and one an encephalomyelitis which had its onset seven days after immunization". Vaccines are known to cause pneumonia; the Reye Syndrome is a recognised side effect of vaccination, vaccines cause febrile illnesses and seven days is one of the characteristic critical days for the onset of vaccine reactions. I would also like to see details of the "tuberculous meningitis" before concluding that this was not a reaction to the administered vaccines.

Wilkins (1988) dealt with the question of delayed reactions to vaccines. She wrote that "if one assumes that the adverse reaction to the DTP vaccine may result from an immunologic intravascular complexing of particular antigen (whole-cell or disrupted organisms) with specific antibody to produce a Jarisch-Herxheimer reaction, then adverse reaction may not occur within 24 hours of inoculation...If the post inoculation interval is extended to 2 weeks, an additional 93 case infants (now representing a total of 98 case infants) might have been at risk for an adverse reaction to DTP vaccine."

Perhaps the most revealing is the comment of Cherry et al. (1988) about articles by Torch (1982 and 1986a, b). Even though the two articles published in 1986 were available at the time. Cherry et al. (1988) did not quote them. One wonders why? Perhaps, the answer is contained in the articles (see below).

Torch (1982 and 1986 a,b) analysed the symptoms and postmortem findings in babies and small children after vaccination and described them in sufficient detail not to leave anything to imagination. Torch (1986b) concluded that "Although many feel that the DPT-SIDS relationship is temporal, this author and others maintain a causal relationship exists in a yet-to-be determined SIDS fraction."

3. Even though vaccinators as a rule are very reluctant to use the word CAUSED when they talk about vaccine damage, they, interestingly, talk about REACTIONS to vaccination. The word reaction in itself implies the causal link, though it does not actually say so. You can't have a coincidental reaction to vaccination, you can only have coincidental occurrence of some damage or symptoms, demonstrably caused by something else. They often use the word "TEMPORAL" meaning occurring in time, always overlooking the fact that these "TEMPORAL REACTIONS" always occur AFTER and not NOT BEFORE vaccination, and that the reality of the occurrence after vaccination is the first condition to fulfill when establishing causality; if something happens before vaccination we would not even consider it being caused by the subsequent administration of vaccines.

4. In the past, vaccinators were denying that vaccines cause any adverse effects. Thanks to strong anti-vaccination awareness, vaccinators now have to admit that yes, no vaccines are 100% safe or 100% effective and reactions do occur and the vaccinated children are getting the "vaccine-preventable diseases". Yes, there are mild or strong local reactions; and yes, there are systemic reactions, like fever, convulsions, hypotonic-hyporesponsive episodes, screaming (a cerebral cry), drowsiness, but only within a maximum of 7 days after vaccination. They also have great difficulty recognising and accepting the damage in individual cases. They always claim that the damage was coincidental, or worse still, caused by the parents of the affected or killed child by accusing them of Shaken Baby Syndrome.

The vast majority of published studies of vaccine reactions included a follow-up of up to only 48 hours. This conveniently excludes about 90% of reactions to vaccination (see also Wilkins 1988).

Characteristically, most vaccine reactions are delayed, many starting only 2-3 weeks after vaccination.

5. With this introduction, we may find it rather curious why Cherry et al. (1988) would even contemplate to publish some 40 pages of a Report of the Task Force on Pertussis and Pertussis Immunization in which they analyse in quite a detail all those "temporal" reactions to the pertussis vaccine. But they did.

Among many other examples of this remarkable, and as it might seem, wholly misplaced diligence. Cherry et al. (1988) looked into sudden infants deaths after pertussis vaccination. That babies as a rule are given the pertussis vaccine together with the diphtheria and tetanus toxoids as DPT did not seem important to these authors. If you administer 3 in 1 vaccines how do you know which vaccine caused what? Unless, of course, you know precisely what damage the pertussis component of this toxic trio causes. In fact, the pertussis vaccine is as a rule used to induce encephalomyelitis in laboratory animals (Steinman et al. 1982) and when these unfortunate animals develop encephalomyelitis, as expected, and intended, it is never considered just coincidentally temporally related to the administration of the pertussis vaccines, or a result of some Shaken Rat Syndrome inflicted by laboratory staff: it is only when the same vaccine causes the same reactions in babies, it is as a rule considered coincidental and only temporally related or a result of Shaken Baby Syndrome inflicted on them by their parents or other carers. Kirschner and Stein (1985) called this hostile attitude of medical staff a form of medical abuse.

On page 971, Cherry et al. (1988) under the heading "development of alternative B pertussis vaccines" write that "During the past several decades, many laboratories attempted to identity and separate significant protective antigens from those bacterial components that account for adverse reaction. Until recently, this effort amounted to a trial and error process that proved to be exceedingly difficult in face of the array of biologically active products that could be derived from B pertussis organisms..-Two of the extracted vaccines will be described. The experimental vaccine of Pillemer et al. (319) was partially purified by adsorption to human RBC stroma. In extensive comparative field trials in the United Kingdom, it was highly protective in children but caused significantly more systemic reactions than available conventional whole-cell vaccines. It was not pursued further." We should not even have to go any further. Cherry et al. (1988) here clearly and without a shadow of a doubt (at least in my mind) used the word "caused" when describing the adverse systemic reactions which were observed and documented as a result of this pertussis vaccine administration in extensive comparative trials. MORE AT THE WEBPAGE - can't post it all here

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>From an MD in Japan.................Kaz Matsuki, M. D.

Mumps is not in the program - they took it out after more and more parents had become concerned about a possible relation mumps vaccination - meningitis (this was with the Urabe strain in MMR).

In Japan, vaccines are classified by law into two categories, regular (teiki sesshu) and optional (nin-i sesshu) ones. Regular ones are offered by Japanese municipalities for free for certain age groups. Optional ones are not required by law to be provided, and thus are not free.

Mumps vaccine is an optional vaccine. Japanese cities and towns do not offer mumps vaccine, but still your child can be vaccinated in Japan, if you find a doctor who is willing to give a shot. But this is not always easy.

In 1989, Japan started a new MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) vaccine. In 1993, just four years later, it was withdrawn from the market, because the mumps component (Urabe strain) had an unusually high rate of a side effect. Although it was mild aseptic meningitis (with spontaneous healing) and occurred much less frequently in vaccines than in real mumps (1/11,000 vs 1/200), the outcry was loud.

The currently available vaccine in Japan for mumps is new and should be safer. Some doctors have longer and bitter memories, some have skepticism, but others still have faith in vaccines. Just shop around.

Kaz Matsuki, M. D.

Sheri Nakken, R.N., MA, Classical Homeopath
http://www.nccn.net/~wwithin/homeo.htm

And there was I thinking that the Japanese had profited by their experience instead of ignoring it!!.
Great Posting.