The measles (MMR) vaccine has a significant seizure risk

Not a conspiracy theory, a huge study published in JAMA. The finding doesn't mean we shouldn't vaccinate against measles. But health bureaucrats should be honest: all medical interventions have risks.

The Unreported Truths hive mind is at work.

After yesterday’s article suggesting reporters and health bureaucrats should be honest that deaths from measles are quite rare, a reader emailed:

I think you have missed one important fact: The measles vaccine has long been given along with two others, mumps and rubella. It’s called the MMR vaccine.

Seizures caused by the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine occur in approximately 1 in 640 children up to two weeks after administration of this vaccine.

The reader provided a link to the study supporting his comment, calling it “statistically powerful.” So I took a look myself. He was right.

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The paper is more than 20 years old; Danish researchers published it in the Journal of the American Medical Association on July 21, 2004.

It compared the rates of “febrile seizures” — seizures caused by high fevers — in 439,000 Danish children who had received the MMR vaccine as toddlers with 98,000 who did not. These seizures were serious medical events requiring hospitalization, or at minimum a visit to an emergency room or hospital clinic.

The records revealed a striking pattern. Unvaccinated and vaccinated children had a similar risk of seizures — except for the two weeks immediately after vaccinated children were given the shot, when they were three times as likely to have seizures.

Overall, the researchers calculated that an additional 1.6 children would suffer seizures over those two weeks for every 1,000 MMR vaccines given. The average risk per shot was 1 in 640, just as my emailer wrote. Children who had previously suffered seizures had a much higher additional risk, about 1 in 50.

See for yourself:

SOURCE

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The study is not a randomized controlled trial. But the fact the extra risk occurred only in those two weeks essentially proves the difference results from the shot itself and not some hidden difference between vaccinated and unvaccinated kids.

Further, the study included every Danish child born between 1991 and 1998 and used Danish national medical record data, the gold standard for this kind of work.

Most children recover fully from febrile seizures. But they can be very frightening for parents, and they sometimes have long-term consequences. Even a single seizure increases the risk of future seizures and potentially of epilepsy.¹

I have to keep repeating this: I still believe kids should receive the MMR vaccine. But febrile seizures are just one possible side effect, and a 1 in 640 risk for a serious outcome is significant for a vaccine being given to healthy toddlers.

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(Not what you want to see.)

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What this paper really proves — yet again — is that every medical intervention carries risks. Over the last generation, physicians and public health bureaucrats have become far too blase about the fact vaccines are not exempt from this reality.

I cannot help wondering if the 1986 vaccine compensation act, which made childhood vaccines immune from lawsuits, played a role in that cultural change.

Further, we don’t really know what the risks of continuing to add new vaccines to the schedule might be. Might we have reached a point where each additional vaccine might cause broader systemic stress and a more severe inflammatory response? The answer is likely no — the natural world contains a massive number of viruses and bacteria that our immune systems must face every day — but the question is worth asking.

Regulators and physicians should demand a higher standard for every new childhood vaccine. Instead, the mRNA debacle showed the opposite, as they shoved an novel biotechnology on children despite a lack of evidence it worked at all.

It is no wonder many parents no longer fully trust physicians on this topic.

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(Transparency about what I know. And what I don’t.)

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I have one final question about the Danish study. It might have occurred to you too.

In 2004, JAMA — one of the top two American medical journals — was willing to publish it. The JAMA editors understood it was solid work worthy of a broad audience, even though they must have known its finding would not thrill vaccine advocates.

Would they be willing to do so today?

1. The researchers found that kids who suffered their first seizure in the two weeks after being vaccinated had a higher risk of more seizures later compared to those who suffered a first seizure at other times.

They did not find a higher risk of epilepsy; nine children out of the 973 who suffered seizures post-vaccination ultimately developed epilepsy. It is impossible to know if any of those children would have avoided becoming epileptic had they not suffered seizures after vaccination.