The Dystonia Flu-Shot Case

[Mosby]

snip

The new case making the rounds, however, appears to have some legs. It is getting international news attention, and I am being flooded with e-mail requests to analyze the case.

This is the story of Desiree Jennings, who is a 28 year old cheerleader who was apparently healthy until August when she received the seasonal flu vaccine. Ten days later she developed a severe respiratory illness, probably the flu, requiring hospitalization. She then developed an apparent neurological reaction in which she has difficulty speaking and walking, with involuntary muscle contractions and contortions. Her symptoms (including speech) are relieved, however, by walking backwards or by running. She also seems to have attacks of muscle contortions.

News reports are presenting her story as a rare vaccine reaction. Take a look at the video of her movements on this news report also.

This case, of course, has been immediately picked up by the anti-vaccine crowd. Generation Rescue, Jenny McCarthy’s anti-vaccine organization, wasted no time in exploiting this poor girl for their own agenda. She is now the latest poster child in the war against vaccines.

http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=1152

[GreenPartyVoter]

1. This should be cross-posted in GD and health. :^)

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

2. the war is against FORCED vaccines that aren't NEEDED

vaccines whose damage surpasses their good.

There's a risk ratio here.

There are basic vaccinations that we know are useful, and worth the risk, but there are
vaccinations that we can get by without, at least many of us.

There can also be safer vaccination.

There's nothing scientific about forcing flu vaccines on children.

If we are going to vaccinate, we need to reduce the risk to the person the vaccine is supposed to help.

[TZ]

8. So the 36,000 who die from influenza every year are unimportant?

You do realize there are a number of studies that have shown how fucking dangerous UNVACCINATED people are to the people who can't get vaccines because of underlying health issues?
Vaccines are very safe actually. There is a HELL of lot of safety testing going on. But unfortunately nothing in life is 100% safe. I can tell you this much...more people die from influenza and complications related to it than are EVER hurt by the vaccine.
Oh and the selfishness of "I don't need one cause I don't get sick" is part of why the name Typhoid Mary lives in infamy.
And there is plenty of scientific evidence that young children need vaccines..and in fact the children who don't get vaccinated end up more likely to have chronic illnesses like asthma and allergies as well.
Stop with the pseudoscienctific bullshit please!

[TZ]

9. delete wrong spot

[Butch350]

22. If it's good for u go for it - you don't decide for other people.

[Posteritatis]

10. Show us where the damage surpasses the good here

Blogs or my-neighbor-saids are not acceptable examples.

[nightrain]

3. somewhere I saw a video clip of her. I won't take those vaccines...

[Mosby]

4. She doesn't have dystonia, the media jumped the gun.

[nightrain]

6. she "appeared" to have some sort of neurological dysfunction... but then

again, we get into trouble trying to dx via video as some Rep Senator found out about Teri Schiavo.

Nevertheless, I won't be taking the flu vaccines for safety reasons..

[Posteritatis]

11. Not enough people are talking about the fact that *she self-diagnosed*

A cheerleader with no medical background could be trusted to diagnose a severed limb, but not a highly specific, very rare possible reaction to a vaccine. But since she's claiming it's due to the evil vaccine people just won't stop citing it.

It kind of bothers me that so few people are mentioning the fact that the "diagnosis" comes from someone utterly, utterly unqualified to make it.

[Orrex]

19. FWIW, that was my first reaction upon hearing upon hearing the story a few weeks ago

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=222&topic_id=72660&mesg_id=72663

But since her case appeared to fit the predetermined script that vaccines are dangerous, a certain contingent of anti-vaxers eagerly rallied around her, both here on DU and elsewhere.

A few of us who called for further information, in fact, were decried as shills and fundamentalists.



What a difference two weeks make.

[Ian David]

7. Good. Don't. Now, go live someplace where they won't make you. Maybe Somalia? n/t

[nightrain]

12. and the reason you are so nasty?

[Ian David]

13. Because you murder people. n/t

[nightrain]

14. really? aren't you being a bit absurd?

[Ian David]

15. No. You murder children and old people. Period.

Go move someplace that doesn't have vaccines.

[nightrain]

16. massive hyperbole... I'm staying.

[Ian David]

17. Whatever. I'm putting you on ignore. I have nothing but contempt for you. n/t

[nightrain]

18. Ian David, what's the source of all this venom?

[Posteritatis]

21. It comes from your conscious decision to spread disease rather than contain it. (nt)

[nightrain]

23. for your information I am not sick. I take measures NOT to spread disease. I am a healthcare

practitioner.

Before assuming, check out your fears.

Silly silly people...

[Posteritatis]

24. Then you should know what asymptomatic carriers are. (nt)

[nightrain]

25. Please take your fears elsewhere. Try not to dump them on other people. Name-calling

is not welcome. Try to be respectful of people who have different values/concerns.

[Mosby]

26. Your choice not to vaccinate affects others

snip

Consider: In certain parts of the US, vaccination rates have dropped so low that occurrences of some children’s diseases are approaching pre-vaccine levels for the first time ever. And the number of people who choose not to vaccinate their children (so-called philosophical exemptions are available in about 20 states, including Pennsylvania, Texas, and much of the West) continues to rise. In states where such opting out is allowed, 2.6 percent of parents did so last year, up from 1 percent in 1991, according to the CDC. In some communities, like California’s affluent Marin County, just north of San Francisco, non-vaccination rates are approaching 6 percent (counterintuitively, higher rates of non-vaccination often correspond with higher levels of education and wealth).

That may not sound like much, but a recent study by the Los Angeles Times indicates that the impact can be devastating. The Times found that even though only about 2 percent of California’s kindergartners are unvaccinated (10,000 kids, or about twice the number as in 1997), they tend to be clustered, disproportionately increasing the risk of an outbreak of such largely eradicated diseases as measles, mumps, and pertussis (whooping cough). The clustering means almost 10 percent of elementary schools statewide may already be at risk.

In May, The New England Journal of Medicine laid the blame for clusters of disease outbreaks throughout the US squarely at the feet of declining vaccination rates, while nonprofit health care provider Kaiser Permanente reported that unvaccinated children were 23 times more likely to get pertussis, a highly contagious bacterial disease that causes violent coughing and is potentially lethal to infants. In the June issue of the journal Pediatrics, Jason Glanz, an epidemiologist at Kaiser’s Institute for Health Research, revealed that the number of reported pertussis cases jumped from 1,000 in 1976 to 26,000 in 2004. A disease that vaccines made rare, in other words, is making a comeback. “This study helps dispel one of the commonly held beliefs among vaccine-refusing parents: that their children are not at risk for vaccine-preventable diseases,” Glanz says.

“I used to say that the tide would turn when children started to die. Well, children have started to die,” Offit says, frowning as he ticks off recent fatal cases of meningitis in unvaccinated children in Pennsylvania and Minnesota. “So now I’ve changed it to ‘when enough children start to die.’ Because obviously, we’re not there yet.”

snip

The frightening implications of this kind of anecdote were illustrated by a 2002 study published in The Journal of Infectious Diseases. Looking at 3,292 cases of measles in the Netherlands, the study found that the risk of contracting the disease was lower if you were completely unvaccinated and living in a highly vaccinated community than if you were completely vaccinated and living in a relatively unvaccinated community. Why? Because vaccines don’t always take. What does that mean? You can’t minimize your individual risk unless your herd, your friends and neighbors, also buy in.

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/10/ff_waronscience/all/1

[Indenturedebtor]

28. Well I am one of the 10% who doesn't get the flu

The one time I've ever had the flu in my entire life was when I took the live attenuated flu shot.

I will not take live attenuated shots. Give it to me dead or don't give it to me.

[Orrex]

29. Well, if you got the flu, then you're not one of the 10% who doesn't get the flu

QED

[Indenturedebtor]

30. Ok let me qualify that - I don't get the flu unless I get live attenuated shots... and

What's more - even for those 10% with the different antibodies: as I understand it you have to train your immune system. That's the one time in my entire life that I've had the flu.

[Orrex]

31. I hate to seem like a contrarian, but...

you don't actually know that you got it from the vaccine; all you know is that you got it after you received the vaccine.

One complicating factor is that many people perceive the normal post-vaccine reactions as "having the flu." I'm not saying that's true in your case, because I have no idea of your circumstances. However, a friend of mine used to get the vaccine each year, and each year he'd say "I got the flu from the vaccine." And then 24 hours later he'd be fine.

[Indenturedebtor]

32. Not at all... in my case I was knocked out for about 3 days

in the infirmary drinking ginger ale and wishing I was dead. I have never been so sick aside from when I got dysentery in Fiji. That was biblical! God was all like "Let thy dookies go!"

[trotsky]

34. That still doesn't change the fact that you don't know...

whether A) the flu vaccine gave you the flu or B) you don't get the flu.

[Indenturedebtor]

35. True but I don't know anyone that's only had the flu once at 30 yrs old

Do you?

[trotsky]

36. Yeah, me.

Never had a shot, had the flu just before I turned 29. Most miserable week of my life, I've gotten a shot every year since.

[Orrex]

37. Me, too.

Though, admittedly, I may have had it when I was around 12 as well.

[trotsky]

38. I thought I may have had the flu around age 14-15.

But compared to what I had at 29, what I had back then was most definitely NOT the flu. Good grief. Not even close.

[Indenturedebtor]

39. Well I'm not against vaccinnes. I get them when they're not live attenuated

But I really don't think that I even get the flu.

[trotsky]

40. Every human can get the flu.

You can, and you almost certainly have. Your symptoms may have been mild, or you may have even been asymptomatic. It is ridiculous to think that because you've "never" had the flu that you couldn't at a very minimum be passing it to others.

[Indenturedebtor]

41. I could be, I can't rule that out surely. But I am not going to get live attenuated vaccinnes

Except in the direst of circumstances. It is known that live attenuated vaccines can and do get people sick.

[Posteritatis]

27. I am, until their values or concerns harm others

Then their values or concerns are entirely undeserving of respect, because they are stupid and wrong.

[Mosby]

5. Follow up article

snip

For example, on Friday I discussed the case of Desiree Jennings, the 25 year old woman who claims to have developed dystonia 10 days after receiving the seasonal flu vaccine. I reported that all of the neurological experts who viewed the videos of Jennings that were made public (including me) are of the opinion that she does not have dystonia. Rather, the signs she displays are more typical of a psychogenic movement disorder, and therefore not due to the vaccine.

There is another angle to this story, however, that I was not aware of. I was mostly interested in the vaccine angle, as the Jennings story has been exploited by the anti-vaccine movement to further scare-monger about the flu vaccine. There is also a dystonia community, and they were not happy about the Jennings affair either. In particular, a woman by the name of Rogers Hartmann, who suffers from dystonia, and who has been one of the main faces of dystonia activism to the media, contacted me.

The dystonia community is concerned that the fact that neurology experts are forced to go on public record that Desiree Jennings’ symptoms are more consistent with a psychogenic disorder rather than a true neurological disorder may generate confusion in the public about the nature of dystonia itself. Fair enough – although I thought the doctors who were interviewed on Fox were pretty clear. I will also add here that dystonia is a perfectly legitimate movement disorder. It is, in fact, a brain disorder that results in involuntary muscle contractions. It can be very debilitating. The Desiree Jennings case should not confuse anyone about the nature of true dystonia.

But there is more still. Generation Rescue, the anti-vaccine group started by J.B. Handley and now fronted by Jenny McCarthy, was quick to jump on this case as a legitimate vaccine injury. But they then quickly distanced themselves from the case, removing the web page they had set up for Jennings. Here’s why.

http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=1163

[semillama]

20. The conclusion of the article is worth quoting here:

"But this is not a story of a woman injured by a vaccine. This is not even a rare vaccine reaction. It is something else. Neurological experts know it, and the dystonia community knows it.

This is also a story of irresponsible journalism. As Hartmann pointed out to me – most national media outlets did not touch this story, because even basic journalism would have uncovered that there is something fishy here, and no good journalist wants to get caught with their pants down. This is also a story of how irresponsible the anti-vaccine movement is. They were quick to exploit this case for its emotional appeal, pretending to have expertise they lack, and got it completely wrong. That’s a good summary of the anti-vaccine movement as a whole."

[trotsky]

33. Absolutely killer quote there.

"They were quick to exploit this case for its emotional appeal, pretending to have expertise they lack, and got it completely wrong. That’s a good summary of the anti-vaccine movement as a whole."

Bing-fucking-O.