Vaccines & Infant Death

Vaccines & Infant Death (SBS): Pediatrician Speaks Out on NVIC's The Doctor's Corner

by Barbara Loe Fisher

The Doctor's Corner, sponsored by the National Vaccine Information Center, is a new internet forum at www.NVIC.org for pediatricians to publish referenced articles and analyses evaluating vaccine risks. Today, F. Edward Yazbak, M.D., FAAP, has published an analysis, "Multiple Vaccinations and Shaken Baby Syndrome," that reviews the relationship between administration of multiple vaccines to infants who develop serious adverse events or die and parents being subsequently charged with "Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS).

Dr. Yazbak provides a review of death reports of infants 6 months of age or younger to the federal Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS). He describes individual case histories and the history of vaccine deaths, which are misdiagnosed as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), and discusses vaccine deaths which may be misdiagnosed as Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS).

When an infant dies after vaccination, pediatricians are often reluctant to consider the possibility that the vaccine(s) recently given to keep the child well have killed the child. In our 1985 book, DPT: A Shot in the Dark, Harris Coulter and I described the misdiagnosis of infant deaths, which have occurred within 24 to 72 hours after DPT vaccination, as SIDS. The fact that coroners often misdiagnose vaccine deaths as SIDS is further evidenced by compensation awards made in the U.S. Court of Claims to parents, whose babies died within hours of DPT vaccination, but the coroner initially diagnosed the death as "SIDS."

Dr. Yazbak's article about the misdiagnosis of vaccine deaths and injuries as "Shaken Baby Syndrome" and the subsequent persecution and imprisonment of innocent parents is an important one.

We are all obviously unanimous in our condemnation of any form of child abuse and our conviction that any abuser should be punished to the full extent of the law.

It is well known that vaccines can cause brain inflammation and catastrophic brain damage in some children. Until all of the biological mechanisms for vaccine injury and death are fully understood and described in the scientific literature, parents should be given the benefit of the doubt when babies die after vaccination.

The Doctor's Corner is a public service of the National Vaccine Information Center which provides a place for enlightened pediatricians to discuss how and why vaccines cause reactions, injuries and death; why some children may be at higher risk than others for suffering a vaccine reaction; and how vaccine risks can be reduced.

Pediatricians will also examine the relationship between infectious disease, vaccination and how early childhood experiences with both can influence immune function.

The National Vaccine Information Center has long supported the forging of a more enlightened partnership between pediatricians and parents when it comes to making vaccination decisions for children. Parents in the 21st century are becoming educated about vaccination and want something more from pediatricians than inflexible administration of one-size- fits-all vaccine policies that fail to respect bio-diversity or the informed consent ethic.

NVIC's The Doctor's Corner is a place for intelligent, open-minded, compassionate and courageous pediatricians to demonstrate that they understand and are prepared to respond in a different way to parental concerns about vaccination.


To read Dr. Yazbak's article, click here: