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Australia Ends Free Whooping Cough Vaccines for Adults: Doesn’t Protect Babies

May 10, 2012 by admin in Featured, Vaccines with 0 Comments

In a bow to reality, Australia has just ended free pertussis vaccines for adults. The idea of cocooning—protecting babies from diseases by vaccinating adults—simply hasn’t borne out. When they finally tried to find evidence in support of cocooning, it turned out not to be there.

Pertussis is whooping cough, which produces a body-wracking cough that is, in most cases, a fairly mild, though unpleasant disease. The DTaP (diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis) vaccine is routinely given at two months of age. The vaccine is known to lose effectiveness rapidly, so that adults generally have no protection against whooping cough. The concept of cocooning suggests that adults may infect babies before they are old enough to be vaccinated. Therefore, if adults who come into contact with an infant are vaccinated, the infant won’t get the disease.

That’s the idea, anyway.

The problem is that the concept of cocooning is an idea, not a fact. It hadn’t been tested. So Australians were a testing ground for the idea of cocooning. That is, the people were equivalent to lab rats—since 2009, they’ve been subjected to injected toxins to see if it might prevent whooping cough in babies.

It didn’t work.

The Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee examined the situation and found that cocooning wasn’t providing any benefit. Divisional Executive Director, Chris Brooks, stated:

The PBAC, which is totally independent and very expert, has determined that there is no clinical effectiveness of this strategy. …

… So all jurisdictions who have been in this program will be effectively ceasing the cocooning strategy as of the end of June this year.

Naturally, when asked about why the program had been implemented in the first place, we’re told that it was “the best evidence that we had at the time.” But that’s not entirely true. The whole truth is that there wasn’t any good evidence in support of cocooning. Most of what has passed as evidence is actually articles that explain the concept and promote it—not studies based on real people.

Will they ever admit that the best way to protect newborns against whooping cough is adults who have contracted the disease naturally? They have lifetime immunity, and therefore cannot infect anyone else.

Further, mothers with natural immunity pass it to their babies, making the newborns highly resistant to the disease until they’re older and strong enough to manage the infection themselves.

At least, though, the Australian government has faced up to Big Pharma on this issue. I suppose it’s too much to hope that they’ll look at the entire vaccination program and consider scrapping it, too. Will other nations pay attention to Australia’s experience? To be quite frank, I doubt it. There’s just too much money for Big Pharma to make.