Dear Dr Sheikh, There are no herpes simplex vaccines currently licensed in North America. The idea of an HSV vaccine is to prevent the initial infection from taking seat in the trigeminal ganglion and establishing a latent infection. This is why we would vaccinate children with the VZV vaccine before they have their chickenpox infection. If they have already had chickenpox, then it is too late for a childhood vaccine. It is beneficial though to vaccinate older adults with this vaccine to prevent shingles. So the child who has already had chickenpox, I would not recommend to vaccinate him/her until they were 55 to 65 years old and then vaccinate to protect against shingles. When HSV vaccines become available, then an analagous strategy should be implemented.

This only one vaccine for herpes virus family is vaccine against Herpes zoster in frame of your question. of course there varicella vaccine, but it using is driven by prevention of the disease and not reactivation.

For Herpes zoster, of course there is interest of recommending the vaccination because by stimulating enough the patient specific cell-mediated immunity you continu to keep quiet the virus for decades and prevent the VZV recurrence and all the disabiliting and painfull associated complication.

For all other RNA viruses that are not silent and niched somewhere in the body like Hepatitis, there is no indication to vaccinate expect for hep A in order to aggravate a chronic hep C or Hep B infection.

No, I would most definitely NOT vaccinate, for the very reason that you describe, Dr Sheikh. In my opinion, there's far too much uncertainty as to their safety. Ditto for GMOs (biological recombinants, contaminants, adjuvants) in the food supply. We all have a God-given right to opt-out. We really have not got a clue as to the long-term health sequelae, including the biophysical sequelae, of either parental or oral administration of biological recombinants and non-human RNA. Instead, I suggest that we invest in the R&D to develop an entire new vaccine paradigm, perhaps based in part on electromagnetic vaccination, of the type hypothesized by Liboff (2012).

Liboff, A.R. (2012). Electromagnetic vaccination. Med Hypotheses, 79, 331-333.

Interesting to read the comments. I have none to offer.

Dr. Davidson and Dr. Broxmeyer,  Thank you for your input, I am hoping to create this awareness in the healthcare providers community to start thinking and save lives, instead of sowing the seed of long term pathology.

In 2 weeks, I will be publishing the data of this question's outcome. Stay tuned.

Best Regards.

Prof. Dr. Shahid Sheikh

Yes. You should vaccinate. The level of virus retained from the vaccine in nerve cells is far lower (or non-existent) compared to the level of virus that maintains in nerve cells from the full-blown infection. This is good public health practice.

You should consider vaccinating adults over 45 with Zostavax. The life cycle by which zoster is transmitted is similar to TB. Grandparents give it to grandchildren when their immune systems start to decline. Adults under stress can have minor outbreaks of shingles. Shingles sheds virus, and grandparents vector it.

There is no evidence that any of the matters Dr. Broxmeyer brought up are meaningful. Those vaccinations prevent morbidity and mortality. Thimerosal is not a problem, and most vaccines haven't had any for many years now.

The only link to problems with vaccines that has been shown is from vaccination or illness at the end of the first month of pregnancy during development of the notochord. That's it. I would recommend that physicians make sure that if they vaccinate during pregnancy, the be sure the do so after 5 weeks. See: Patterson

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0889159108003152 - Activation of the maternal immune system alters cerebellar development in the offspring

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166432808006980 - Immune involvement in schizophrenia and autism: Etiology, pathology and animal models

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1471491411000499 - Maternal infection and immune involvement in autism

http://www.jneurosci.org/content/23/1/297.short - Maternal Influenza Infection Causes Marked Behavioral and Pharmacological Changes in the Offspring

Paul decided to put all his papers in old-line journals with paywalls. He did it because he wanted to be sure that his papers were correctly seen as top quality, which they are. We corresponded before his death this year. A very good scientist. Very thorough, very sharp. A real loss.

I am attaching a few of his papers. The last one - the lecture is a good place to start.

Dear Dr. Hanley,

I read the linked paper of Dr. Patterson on Maternal Infection and Fetal Autism.

Fetal developmental disorder he discussed was rooted in the maternal infection.

Pre-fertilization maternal or paternal chromosomal infection that results in the fetal anomaly confirms the presence of the viral RNA in the Sperm or Ova.

This testifies the deduction made by the Late Dr. Ed. Wagner of UCLA in 2004, that the Viral RNA's continue to transcribe. Therefore, these RNA's make their way to the Sperms and OVA, which is now published by your reference "Dr. Patterson" and associates.

Now, the vaccine of the same virus is obviously going to further enhance the same viruses RNA proliferation to just the above; give rise to Autism, CP, incomplete development and many other conditions.

Instead of the vaccination, the Immunization must be undertaken.

Dr. Shahid Sheikh

Patterson's work never suggested anything about infection of ova or sperm. He began his studies because he knew that thalidomide had been implicated in autism during a very short window of notochord development. He tested to see if the same window of development could cause autism if the mother was infected with a virus, vaccinated, immunized, injected with RNA, etc. He showed that the same thing happened in rodents.

I don't know what you mean when you differentiated vaccination from immunization.

Vaccination is the injection of the attenuated pathogen, whereas the immunization is the to injected something to enhance the immune system with complimentary therapy, i.e. Immulox, or Thymopentin.

HOWEVER, THE VIRAL RNA PROLIFERATION IS BEST PRESENTED BY THE LA DR. EDWARD WAGNER OF UCI IN 2004. PLZ REVIEW IT FOR YOURSELF.  

The Dr. Wagner (http://darwin.bio.uci.edu/~faculty/wagner/) who died in 2006? Please clarify what you are referring to. Wagner worked on herpes viruses. I am pretty well versed in how various viruses proliferate.

Immulox and thymopentin do nothing beyond short term, and generally speaking, they don't work very well in someone who is sick. Using the term immunization to describe Immulox and thymopentin is incorrect use of the word. Those are immune stimulants, but do not produce immunity to anything specific. If you are using them in place of vaccination, you are gravely mistaken. Patients will not be protected against polio by this method.

Vaccination is the stimulation of the adaptive immune system with antigen. There are multiple kinds of vaccines.

1. Attenuated live virus vaccine. Most measles, mumps, rubella, and polio vaccines are of this type. Live vaccines produce better, longer-lasting immunity.

The two problems with live attenuated vaccines are:

A.They require a perfect cold chain. The viruses will be destroyed by heat, to some degree by freezing. As a result, for instance, average efficacy of measles vaccine in Africa was around 50%. Much of the vaccine was dead when it was injected, and so it produced little or no result.

B. That viruses mutate as they reproduce. RNA viruses mutate at much higher rates than DNA viruses do. So they can revert to native virulence. Polio is an RNA virus. One version of the polio vaccine requires only two mutations to revert to become pathogenic again. (Sabin-2) Two others require many more, and are more stable. Reversion has been documented in Africa. This is how the vaccine can produce the virus in areas where polio has been nearly eradicated. The more mutations require to restore pathogenicity of the virus, the less likely it is. I am not aware of this happening with measles. However, measles is still endemic, so it would be hard to tell.

2. Killed virus.A pathogenic virus is cultured, then treated (typically with formalin) to kill the virus. This type is usually provided together with adjuvants. Adjuvants are materials that stimulate the immune system to present the antigen for production of antibodies.  The most common adjuvant is aluminum hydroxide. These must be injected. The Salk polio vaccine is of this kind. Yearly influenza vaccines are also of this type. Hepatitis vaccines are usually of this type. The antibody titer produced is lower than live virus unless a course of multiple injections is given. But even a single injection can be enough to prime the immune system to recognize the disease if an infection occurs, and make the illness less damaging.

3. Sterile virus-like particles. The HPV vaccine is an example of this. The virus capsid proteins are produced, then allowed to form into particles that stick together like the real virus does, but without the nucleic acid. There has also been an Ebola vaccine of this type (experimental) that produced very good results in monkeys.

4. Recombinant live virus chimeric vaccines. These vaccines add the key antigen proteins for the virus to the outside of another virus. The vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) based Ebola vaccine is of this type. ( http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/204/suppl_3/S1075.full ) Several animal virus vaccines (for instance Yilma's Rinderpest vaccine and a wild-inoculation rabies vaccine) are based on vaccinia virus. These vaccines combine the high antibody titers of the live-attenuated vaccines with the safety of using a foundation virus that does not cause serious disease in most people.

5. Component vaccines. These are made from purified proteins, glycoproteins or glyco-lipid fractions of the virus or bacteria. The proteins are generally produced by fermentation in bacteria, but there are other methods. For instance, plants can be induced to produce materials and purified from plants.  When combined with an adjuvant, these can make a vaccine.

6. Self-adjuvant native proteins. Vaccination with ascending (initially tiny) amounts of snake venom is of this type. There are a few people that do this. Mostly this is done in animals such as horses to produce antivenin. In horses, it has been found that there is no adjuvant that will increase the response to the venom, because the venom itself has such a strong stimulant effect. The principle is to use the native protein. Sometimes the proteins are denatured in some way to make them less damaging. For instance, some snake-charmers use a preparation of snake venom mixed with hot tea before injecting it. This makes the venom mostly inactive. Technically, the tea in such a preparation probably acts as an adjuvant. I don't know of any disease where this is done.

7. DNA vaccines. These are fairly new in vaccination, which is the oldest form of modern medicine. DNA vaccines are plasmids that code for some proteins in a virus. The plasmid is injected intradermally or intramuscularly. Sometimes this is combined with electroporation to increase expression. These vaccines have been shown to be effective at preventing significant illness. A measles vaccine of this type was created, aimed at use in Africa, where many children see a doctor only once, when they are infants and cannot be immunized with normal vaccines. http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/189/11/2064.long

The three big positives with DNA vaccines are, first, that they are absolutely safe. Nobody will get sick from it. That can't happen. So they can be given to immune suppressed people and you don't need to worry. Second, DNA vaccination is the only type of vaccination that is capable of generating immune response during the period of protection by maternal antibody. And third, DNA vaccines can be made quite heat stable when freeze-dried. So they will retain efficacy.

The reasons very few DNA vaccines are available are several. First, DNA vaccination produces cellular immune response more than antibody response. Antibodies can be quite low.  But cellular immunity is what clears an infection, and quite a few animal studies have shown efficacy against challenge with virus, including in monkeys. (measles, influenza and Ebola.) Second, they are new, and medicine is conservative. Third, DNA vaccines can be expensive to produce. They don't have to be. Ten years ago, 2-3 grams of DNA plasmid would cost around $10,000-$20,000. Now that same production will cost you $500,000. This is all regulatory compliance cost for the most part. Animal study material is still the $10,000 - $20,000 cost.

Summary-

There are many kinds of vaccination. This is not all of them, but it covers most. What they all have in common is that they trigger the adaptive immune system to produce antibodies (humoral immunity) and activated CD8 cells (cellular immunity) to attack and destroy antigen. Antigen can be live viruses, live bacteria, dead bacteria or virus, any protein, etc. There are some VERY simple ways to make a vaccine, even in the field. One of the strongest adjuvants known is a mix of 70-30% oil with water, a little detergent, and endotoxin (the killed, broken cell walls of bacteria, typically mycobacteria). Mix that with antigen, and you have a crude, workable (albeit harsh) vaccine.

Interesting discussion! IMO, there's the very real possibility of a systemic hemorrheologic problem and microvascular ischemia with current vaccine policy and the growing list of scheduled vaccines, in addition to the known and well-studied neurotoxicant properties of Al and Hg.

Dr. Broxmeyer,

Thank you for your posting the chart.

Best Regards.

Shahid

Our blood is a colloidal suspension that flows. We should not treat our vascular systems as if they were rivers and oceans that have an unlimited capacity for pollution with xenobiotics. I suggest that there is a hemorrheologic "price" to be paid. Gaze palsies have been reported in association with a number of vaccines. I'd like to better understand why "cationized" bovine serum albumin is present in a number of vaccines. I'd also be interested in knowing which studies were performed to establish long-term safety of such a practice. Thanks!

Dr. Davidson,

You are the luminary scientist. Presence of Albumin in the vaccine is really a good issue to raise a better understanding of its role to enhance the domestic immunity or to chaperon the attenuated pathogen. 

Prof Shahid H. Sheikh - Both Lawrence Broxmeyer and Robert Davidson are dingbats. They are not luminary scientists.  They throw around myths, complete fabrications, and half-truths to scare people about vaccinations. They have only made your errors worse.

Mr. Broxmeyer has published dingbat nonsense about how HIV doesn't cause AIDS, etc. http://aras.ab.ca/articles/scientific/AIDS-HIV-Mycobacteria-Broxmeyer.pdf This idea is complete garbage. Mr. Broxmeyer is not associated with University of Southern California.  Frankly, I think there is something wrong with him.

Mr. Davidson is perhaps worse.

My primary point remains. You, Dr. Sheikh, have a terrible misunderstanding of how the immune system works. You are in grave error.  You should vaccinate your patients properly. Use of short term immune stimulants does NOT create adaptive immunity that protects your patients.