- polio
- diphtheria
- tetanus
- hepatitis B
- haemophilus influenzae B
- meningitis B
- meningitis C
- measles
- mumps
- rubella
- whooping cough
- chickenpox
The photo of a child attempting a smile but effecting a strange sort of grimace accompanies the article:
Compare this photograph to that accompanying articles that are skeptical of vaccinations:
This news set me to wondering what pressures had been brought to bear on the Italian Government to implement such legislation (if children are not vaccinated by the age of six, the school starting age, their parents will be fined). An article from Politico titled Italy fights vaccines fear gives some clue. To quote from the article (21st April 2016):
“The Italian situation is unique. Italy has been called out by the WHO [World Health Organization] because the vaccine coverage of the country is falling,” said Lorenzo Moja, an Italian public health expert with the global health body, adding that in some regions, about one in five children do not complete the recommended vaccination schedule.
The article says that in 2015 the Italian Government launched a €700 million National Vaccination Plan with special attention being paid to any doctors who might have reservations:
“We also reached an agreement with the order of physicians, who will be paying close attention to those doctors that discourage parents from vaccinating their kids.” Monitoring these anti-vaccine doctors is key to encourage parents to vaccinate their children.
Further investigation led to an article about a pair of Italian scientists who had published some disturbing findings about contaminants in vaccines. The article titled Dirty Vaccines: New Study Reveals Prevalence of Contaminants (January 30th 2017) appears in a blog called "The Driven Researcher" on the website CRMSI (Children's Medical Safety Research Institute) and begins:
Every Human Vaccine Tested Was Contaminated by Unsafe Levels of Metals and Debris Linked to Cancer and Autoimmune Disease, New Study Reports
Researchers examining 44 samples of 30 different vaccines found dangerous contaminants, including red blood cells in one vaccine and metal toxicants in every single sample tested – except in one animal vaccine.
Using extremely sensitive new technologies not used in vaccine manufacturing, Italian scientists reported they were “baffled” by their discoveries which included single particles and aggregates of organic debris including red cells of human or possibly animal origin and metals including lead, tungsten, gold, and chromium, that have been linked to autoimmune disease and leukemia.
In the study, published this week in the International Journal of Vaccines and Vaccination, the researchers led by Antonietta Gatti, of the National Council of Research of Italy and the Scientific Director of Nanodiagnostics, say their results “show the presence of micro- and nano-sized particulate matter composed of inorganic elements in vaccine samples” not declared in the products’ ingredients lists.
There is a link to the study. It leads to a PDF file hosted on a site called MedCrave that promotes the publishing of scientific papers without the peer review process of the well known scientific journals. To be fair, MedCrave does claim that its paper are peer reviewed. However, the site is listed as one of many accused by the scientific community of "predatory publishing" (publishing articles of dubious scientific merit in exchange for money). The site does have its defenders however, and while it does not have the imprimatur of the scientific establishment, it does seem to be offering a genuine service. A number of online journals are hosted and the International Journal of Vaccines & Vaccinations is just one of many. The study appears in Volume 4 Issue 1 2017.
The study seems professional enough and seems to show that vaccines contain a disturbing number of contaminants. However, a harsh criticism of the study can be found here. The author writes:
I’ve frequently written about what I like to refer to as the “toxins gambit” with respect to vaccines. Basically, in the hard core (and even soft core) antivaccine crowd, vaccines are feared as being loaded with all sorts of “toxins,” such as aluminum, formaldehyde, mercury, and various chemicals that are dangerous enough separately, but, when combined, “poison” young babies, resulting in their becoming autistic, acquiring asthma and autoimmune diseases, or even dying of sudden infant death syndrome. Of course, many of the scary-sounding chemicals to which antivaccinationists point actually are in vaccines, but, as Paracelsus put it, the dose makes the poison, and the amount in vaccines is very much low enough not to pose a health threat. Also, formaldehyde is a product of normal metabolism present in the bloodstream of infants at a level much higher than what any vaccine contains.It's an interesting argument and I'm not trying to decide here if the author's criticisms are valid or not. What I started out to investigate was the reason why the Italian government decided to make vaccinations mandatory. I've established that the government was already under pressure from WHO and had launched a vaccination drive back in 2015. The Italian researchers' article appeared in January 2017 and, coming as it did from Italians, it would have been noticed. The rebuttal from Orac, the nom de blog of a surgeon named David Gorski, was posted on ScienceBlogs. Maybe the MedCrave article was the catalyst for the legislation but who knows?
There is definitely politics involved. According to this source:
The ruling parties accuse the opposition 5-Star movement for feeding the climate of fear over vaccines. The populist movement criticised the vaccination reform as a gift to pharmaceutical companies.So this polarisation, between the ruling party and the opposition regarding attitudes to vaccination, may have played a role as well. It's clear that mandatory vaccination is quite a contentious issue in Italy and there is far from unanimous support for it.
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