http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS88745+04-Apr-2008+PRN20080404

BALTIMORE, April 4, 2008 /PRNewswire/ -- Newly published data by Dr. J.
Barthelow Classen in The Open Endocrinology Journal shows a 50% reduction of
type 2 diabetes occurred in Japanese children following the discontinuation of
a single vaccine, a vaccine to prevent tuberculosis. This decline occurred at
a time when there is a global epidemic of type 2 diabetes and metabolic
syndrome, which includes obesity, altered blood cholesterol levels, high blood
pressure, and increased blood glucose resulting from insulin resistance.

Classen proposes a new explanation for the epidemic of both insulin
dependent diabetes (type 1 diabetes), which has previously been shown to be
caused by vaccines and non insulin dependent diabetes (type 2 diabetes). Upon
receipt of vaccines or other strong immune stimulants some individuals develop
a hyperactive immune system leading to autoimmune destruction of insulin
secreting cells. Other individuals produce increased cortisol, an immune
suppressing hormone, to suppress the vaccine induced inflammation. The
increased cortisol leads to type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome. Japanese
children have increased cortisol secretion following immunization compared to
White children and this explains why Japanese have a relative high rate of
type 2 diabetes but low rate of insulin dependent diabetes compared to Whites.
The lower cortisol response attributed to type 1 diabetes and the higher
cortisol response attributed to type 2 diabetes explains why type 1 diabetics
are generally leaner than type 2 diabetics since elevated cortisol causes
weight gain.

"The current data shows that vaccines are much more dangerous than the
public is lead to believe and adequate testing has never been performed even
in healthy subjects to indicate that there is an overall improvement in health
from immunization. The current practice of vaccinating diabetics as well as
their close family members is a very risky practice," says Dr. J. Barthelow
Classen.

Classen's research has become widely accepted. To view the published
papers and to find out the latest information on the effects of vaccines on
autoimmune diseases including insulin dependent diabetes visit the Vaccine
Safety Web site www.vaccines.net/newpage11.htm

I see stuff like this and then think about all the crap the Army put in me and I /shudder.

I think the links you've provided are interesting, but right off the bat, a few red flags: First of all, the author of all of the papers on that fellow's company page (who is a *solo* author, something unheard of among papers of this type normally submitted to reputable peer-reviewed journals, which typically have 5-10 authors if they're done at a medical school or in a major research lab) is CEO of his own immunotherapy firm "and holds many patents and patent applications related to testing vaccines for their rick of chronic diseases." No possible vested interests here! Doesn't he have any colloborators, or any colloborating evidence from other researchers (yes, I checked out the references in his papers, his actual 'supporting' evidence all comes from paper's *he's* written, at least on a casual read)? Secondly, to be blunt, this *particular* journal is somewhat suspect - not that it isn't published by a major online publisher (although I have an interest in endocrinology and had never heard of it before this) but that no credentials or affiliations are listed for the members of the editorial board, terms, etc. I suspect it's considerably more 'open' (as evidenced in its title) to contributions from private citizens and industry than most in its field...

No offense to you, Sanchek, but I'd have to say my hackles start to go up when I see these "The Sky is Falling! Vaccines are bad!" posts without qualifiers, or with minimal qualifiers on them, because typically, the articles deal with a specific vaccine and a specific adverse event, and they get blown out of proportion by individuals with a crusading wingnut agenda, and then well-meaning people run screaming for the hills, and decide they'd better not get Timmy his polio jab because he'll grow a third arm, and then the rest of us suffer when herd immunity goes down the toilet. Thanks Nigeria, for deciding that the polio vaccine was 'America's nefarious plan for spreading AIDS in Africa', and mucking up global eradication!

Claussen's reference to the BGC vaccine for TB (previously given at at 2 mo in Japan, not given at all in the US because frankly, it doesn't work) and the incidence of *Type 1 diabetes* raises an interesting case of crossreactivity when the immature (< 1 y.o.) immune system is hyperstimulated with a specific antigen - but to be blunt, the 'immune system' is not one monolithic giant 'on/off' switch that is globally stimulated to destroy at *any* age by 'vaccines'. It is an exquisitely sensitive antigen/antibody recognition and clonal selection system, regulated by hormones, cytokines, haptens, and other potentiating molecules. To see him *repeatedly* use the word 'vaccine' in his papers in the global sense, as if all vaccines were created equal, is especially disturbing and speaks to his lack of impartiality. That's not splitting hairs - I've read several of the papers and he seems to blur distinctions repeatedly in them and generalize when his supporting evidence (for metabolic syndrome) is extremely vague and drawn from a very specific response (in a different direction) to a very specific vaccine, given at a very specific time (extremely early in infancy).

He also seems to have a basic lack of understanding (and note that this is a journal of endocrinology, not of immunology) as to how and why the mechanisms of Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes are so different from each other immunologically; I'd be much more receptive to his work if he presented a shred of evidence, or even of speculation, for a mechanism for induction of 'metabolic syndrome' (the current fadword for 'pre-Type 2 diabetes' or 'developing insulin insensitivity', which is very different than Type 1 diabetes, which affects the beta cells in the pancreas specifically, and their ability to produce insulin), but I suspect he doesn't have a plausible one. Instead, he goes straight to 'Vaccines are bad!'

In Claussen's defense, I think an argument can be made for delaying, in these days of reasonably good herd immunity, the MMR, DPT, and Polio vaccines until 12 months, when the lymphatic system and the cellular based education process is much more mature, for numerous reasons - but if he's trying to make an argument that the act of major stimulation *itself* of the immune system in infancy is resulting in the delayed and gradual loss of response of body cells to insulin decades later, I'm sorry, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and say he's off his rocker. The immune system is being stimulated CONSTANTLY, folks, and in a major way, by all of the millions of contaminants that begin entering your sweet little baby's system the minute he/she passes through the birth canal and gets put on the nipple - it's what its spent millions of years of mammalian evolution gearing itself up for, and we have much more evidence to suggest that *lack* of exposure to 'normal' childhood antigens via our cleanliness obsession is producing more aberrant immune responses (e.g. asthma, allergies) than the controlled *exposure* in early childhood to such antigens are.


"The current data shows that vaccines are much more dangerous than the
public is lead to believe and adequate testing has never been performed even
in healthy subjects to indicate that there is an overall improvement in health
from immunization.

And while I'm up on my soapbox... You know what's much more dangerous, by a huge statistical margin, and to a much larger number of people, than the great majority of vaccines? The diseases they're designed to prevent. While I personally feel that some of the vaccines given (e.g. for chickenpox) could be restricted to at-risk populations, I'm also old enough to remember children not much older than I paralyzed by polio (my down-the street neighbor), people killed by tetanus (my great-uncle), and more than one of my rheumatologists has suggested that my own autoimmune disorder is related to my having had both varieties of measles *and* mumps within a short period of time when I was 4-5. You guys have NO idea what it would mean to go back to the days of quarantine, and as misinformation and confusion about the safety of standard childhood vaccines results in the percentage of the vaccinated dropping, and we lose herd immunity, childhood scourges like measles, mumps, diptheria, and whooping cough are making a resurgence (although fortunately, mostly among the home-schooled, thanks Darwin for having the last word ;) ). An interesting article on that topic (which prompted me to respond to this article, which I was going to let pass) here:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/08/21/measles.outbreaks.ap/index.html#cnnSTCText?iref=werecommend

While specific vaccines, given too early, and resulting in hyperstimulation of the infantile immune system, *may*, if we can ferret out cause from the thousands of other endocrinological factors, including too much damn sugar and fat in the modern diet :), be hypothetically linked with some sort of gradual autoimmune process against body cells later in life globally resulting in their diminished response to insulin, we know that diptheria, measles, mumps, whooping cough, TB for that matter, and their like kill and disable for life. While I'm not advocating that we *not* look at the safety, effacacy, components, and age and risk/vocation appropriateness of vaccines, obviously, suggesting that vaccines are *globally* bad because they 'hyperstimulate the immune system', and that the immune system is somehow not meant to handle this, is simply ridiculous and shows a fundamental lack of understanding about how the immune system functions.

Sincerely,
Nydia Ywalmoriel