How the Lyme vaccine got banned
Basically, it was part of the anti-vaccine hysteria.
Where I live, Lyme disease is a very real possibility if you go outside in the countryside or even suburbia. People have to dress with great care to avoid it, and I personally know several people who’ve had it and had to have rather elaborate treatment. I had no idea that an effective vaccine had been developed decades ago but became unavailable, based on reasoning that sounds deeply flawed.
Thanks, anti-vaccers.
I live in a fairly rural and wooded community north of Boston. Lyme is a scourge. My wife and I do a fair amount of puttering around outside. I’ve had Lyme three times, my wife has had it twice. Fortunately for us we had symptoms early enough and significant enough that it was detected before the onset of the later, much more serious effects. Our doctors are hypervigilant about testing.
If there had been a vaccine, I would most certainly have taken advantage. I guess it is always a balancing act, and a judgement call about what to approve, or not.
I don’t recall ever having Lyme, but I fished in the mountains; and we had deer in our yard all winter. I assume that where there are deer there are deer ticks. My wife, who does not venture into the wild, did contract Lyme disease in California after walking along a short river front path over which brush intruded. She also caught it early.
As Steve Walsh noted; vigilance pays dividends.
I got the tick bite about 8 years ago after camping at a friend’s farm which is effectively ground zero for Lyme in MN/WI. My wife noticed I was getting pretty goofy, and when I took off my shirt, the bright red circle with the bite marks was pretty obvious. Except to me apparently, because my comment was, “Oh, that’s nothing.
At the clinic, they took my blood pressure and the triage nurse wanted to get me into a wheelchair right then. “I’m fine, really!” The friend who brought me said, “She means they don’t want to lift your fat ass off the floor when you pass out.”
Then they put me in a room and parked the crash cart next to me, because I have an odd EKG that looks like heart attack imminent.
I tested negative for Lyme and several associated diseases. The infectious disease specialist told me, “Never mind the test. It sometimes takes a month to test positive. You have Lyme, practically a textbook case.” Lots of heavy antibiotics.
I don’t remember any of this, other than the crash cart. Other people say it happened, and why would they lie? My wife said, “You were really, really sick for two weeks.” It seemed like two days to me.
Agree on the anti-vaxxers.
It is not anti vaccination that bans vaccinations. That’s a government thing or medical industry decision.
At the same time, a few members of the FDA panel that approved LYMErix had voiced a theoretical concern that the drug could cause an autoimmune reaction leading to arthritis. The idea was that as the immune system learned to attack the protein that covered the Lyme bacteria, it could overreact and start to attack healthy tissue in the body. This side effect didn’t occur in the clinical trial. It was just a hypothetical possibility.
The FDA panel eventually unanimously approved the drug, but the fear of an autoimmune reaction trickled down to the public.
What happened next was a perfect storm to drive the product from the market. A 2000 study found the vaccine contributed to autoimmune arthritis in hamsters. Other research posited (but didn’t prove) that it was possible some people were more genetically predisposed to develop this type of autoimmune response in reaction to the vaccine.
Sure enough, some LYMErix recipients soon began to complain publicly that the drug was causing them to develop joint pain. National news media were reporting on the concerns, casting them in a harrowing light. In the 2000, ABC news told the story of a man who fell ill with a “fever and an intense, hellish pain” after taking the vaccine.
Even incomptent vox com admits that it was the mass media people like to decry but will still read, pay for, and distribute as truth, that contributed. Also the FDA panel contributed as well, probably because they were not getting enough bribes.
Are the FDA these anti vaccers that also approved the drug itself? Labels confuse humans as easily as they are to use.
But it was too late. Already, there was “significant media coverage, sensationalism, the development of anti-Lyme vaccine groups … who urged withdrawal of the vaccine from the market,” Poland explained in his 2011 article. A class-action lawsuit targeted SmithKline Beecham, claiming the company did not do enough to warn people of potential autoimmune side effects.
What they should have investigated was who was paying these groups. If it was Warren Buffet, George Soros, or William Gates… you got a problem here. These people are partially or just wholly funding entire vaccine programs, Gates most exclusively. So how can they be anti vaccine?
They aren’t anti vaccine groups or that’s at least not where the money comes from. They are just anti lyme Vaccine… that is very different. It’s called fake grassroots, or astroturf, designed to get rid of your competition.
What Leftists and Gates don’t get rid of their competition using dirty tactics?
The problem with people pushing vaccines is that they can be pro or anti vaccine. The difference is normally between people who want voluntary vaccines vs involuntary vaccines. That’s a crucial difference that doesn’t rely upon vaccine outcomes, as people can take their own risk.
But the normal response is, but don’t we need vaccines for children. If a vaccine damages a child, then is the doctor liable? If not, then who is liable: nobody.