Source: http://www.cfids.org/archives/2001rr/2001-rr1-article03.asp - for complete article, go to website
By Charles Shepherd, MD, ME Association, United Kingdom
There is widespread agreement that a variety of infections are capable of precipitating chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) in susceptible individuals. In l988, Lloyd et al reported that several of their patients had linked the onset of CFS to receiving a vaccination in the absence of any coincidental infection. Since then, other anecdotal reports have also linked vaccinations to the onset of CFS.2,3
The explanation for vaccine-induced CFS may be because the primary purpose of any vaccine is to mimic the effects of infection on the immune system. If an antigenic challenge by infection can precipitate CFS, then it is conceivable that vaccines could act in a very similar manner.
This reasoning is further strengthened by the fact that immunologically based illnesses, such as arthritis, can occur when a susceptible host and an environmental trigger, such as an infection or vaccination, interact.4 It is also interesting to note that vaccinations have been suggested as a possible precipitating factor in the development of Gulf War illness.
Causal vaccines...This data (although unpublished) suggests that tetanus, typhoid, influenza, and hepatitis B are the most commonly implicated vaccines in cases of CFS. I have reports of very few cases involving hepatitis A (using immunoglobulin), polio, or rubella vaccine, or those predominantly given during childhood--with the possible exception of Bacillus Calmette--Guerin vaccine (three cases)....
Health care providers caring for CFS patients who require vaccinations clearly must weigh the pros (i.e., how effective? how necessary?) and cons (i.e., risks of adverse effects and exacerbation of CFS symptoms) for each individual vaccine....
[for complete article go to link at bottom of this page]
NATIONAL VACCINE INFORMATION CENTER
When it happens to you or your child, the risks are 100% Vol.1, No.4, Sept./Oct. 1995, Barbara Loe Fisher, Editor Published bimonthly by the National Vaccine Information...
In what could be one of the most important scientific discoveries of this decade, an award winning pathologist and immunologist at the University of Southern California, W. John Martin, M.D., Ph.D., has discovered an atypical virus infecting both children and adults who are exhibiting neurological, psychiatric and autoimmune disorder symptoms with diagnoses including chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, depression, schizophrenia, anxiety disorder, seizures, developmental delays, autism, lupus, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, unexplained encephalopathy and chronic vegetative states. Martin and his colleagues at USC's Infectious Diseases and Molecular Pathology Laboratories have been meticulously culturing out stealth viruses from patients for the past eight years and, in a stunning development earlier this year, successfully identified one of the viruses as being of African green monkey origin by using DNA sequence analysis. Kidney tissues from African green monkeys have been used to make the live oral polio vaccine (OPV) as well as other viral vaccines during the past three decades.
A distinctive feature of the virus Martin and his colleagues has characterized is that it belongs to a novel class of atypical cytopathic viruses (capable of causing pathologic changes in cells), which they refer to as "stealth viruses" because they have the ability to evade detection by the body's cellular defense mechanisms and appear to lack the antigens which normally cause an inflammation typical of most infections that damage cells and body tissues. The monkey-related stealth virus they are studying is a cytomegalovirus belonging to the herpes virus family that causes an atypical viral infection of the brain - a "stealth virus encephalopathy" - that can produce a spectrum of disease symptoms without evoking an inflammatory response. Therefore, a person can also become infected and can carry and transmit the virus to others without exhibiting symptoms. The stealth virus can remain dormant in an infected but symptomless individual throughout life. However, in some infected individuals the virus can become active, triggered perhaps by significant mental or physical stress, and go on to cause atypical responses to normal sensory input into the brain resulting in sudden, unexplained neurological symptoms. It is thought that a stealth virus can be transmitted, like HIV, hepatitis B or polio, by coming into direct contact with the virus (such as ingesting or being injected with a contaminated vaccine) or coming into contact with the blood or body fluids of an infected individual
In an August 1994 article published in American Journal of Pathologv. Dr. Martin and his colleagues describe how over a three year period they repeatedly cultured out an atypical cytopathic virus from a 43-year old woman who became suddenly ill in 1990 with a sore throat, muscle aches, intense headaches, fever and eventually was hospitalized with suspected encephalitis/meningitis - although all tests came back negative. She continued to feel ill and eventually was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome accompanied by severe headaches, insomnia, memory loss and brain dysfunction. In that same article, Martin et al confirm that they also cultured out the same atypical virus from a patient with severe encephalopathy who had a four year history of manic depression.
... "The animal stealth virus we have identified has an unstable genome and it mutates easily. It doesn't grow very well in culture and so it can be easily overlooked during testing. Of concern is the fact that, when you introduce unstable animal stealth viruses into man, there is a risk of recombinant (the formation of new combinations of linked genes) events occurring which can produce new kinds of diseases. Now that we have the technology, it is very important to act immediately to screen viral vaccines for stealth viruses, to determine who is already infected and to develop therapies to interrupt activation as well as treat those who already have symptoms."
... Martin describes several more patients who tested positive for stealth virus infection such as the woman who had been diagnosed by various doctors as having multiple sclerosis, lupus and cerebral pseudotumor and a woman who was diagnosed as schizophrenic at age 19, then manic depressive with delusions. Four years later she experienced a near-fatal encephalopathy with cardiac arrest and has remained in a vegetative state for five years. In one family being studied by Martin and his colleagues, four family members have tested positive for stealth virus infection including a husband and wife diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome, the wife's mother diagnosed with atypical Parkinson's disease and a son diagnosed with schizophrenia. All of these patients are now being diagnosed as suffering from stealth virus encephalopathy....
In an article published in the July 1995 issue of Clinical and Diagnostic Virology, Martin and his colleagues describe how they conducted DNA and amino acid sequence comparisons showing that the stealth virus isolated from a patient with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) was "more closely related to the Colburn strain of simian cytomegalovirus than to cytomegalovirus of either human or rhesus monkey origin or to any other sequenced herpes virus." These comparisons were confirmed using polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The scientists concluded that "the findings implicate the African green monkey as the probable source of the virus isolated from this CFS patient." They go on to suggest that "the potential introduction of pathogenic viral variants into humans through the use of African green monkey-derived cell lines in live virus vaccine production should be evaluated."
Martin and his colleagues have performed more than 1,000 cultures in their eight-year study of the stealth virus and have found that not only is there a clustering of culture positive findings in members of the same families, but that there is also a pattern of unexplained neurological illnesses in the pet dogs and cats of patients diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome, indicating that the stealth virus may also be capable of infecting and being carried by animals....
... The Lab has been forced to drastically cut back on its research linking the proliferation of atypical neurologic, psychiatric and immune system disorders in children and adults to the detection of an atypical cytomegalovirus whose genetic code is almost identical to that of a virus that is commonly present in the kidney tissues of the African green monkey and could have, therefore, been inadvertently transmitted to humans during the production of the oral polio vaccine....
Martin and his colleagues concluded their appeal to the FDA to give them a six-month grant to fund their work with these words: FDA is responsible for the safety of biological products including vaccines and the Nation's blood supply. ... The findings will also have bearing on the possible need to screen blood donors for the presence of stealth viruses."...
Reprinted in Issue No. 87 of the " Leading Edge International Research Journal "
Leading Edge Research Group, P.O. Box 7530, Yelm, Washington 98597 USA - E-Mail: trufax@cco.net
http://www.tetrahedron.org/articles/vaccine_awareness/Vaccines_and_John_Martin.html
Just as tuberculosis, once believed to have been eradicated by modern medicine, has now returned in more virulent, drug-resistant strains, so may polio be with us again in a disguised form. We may be mistakenly calling it chronic fatigue syndrome (U.S.) or myalgic encephalomyelitis (England). According to William Campbell Douglass, M.D., editor of the medical newsletter Second Opinion, polio is more common than ever and may actually be caused by the polio vaccination. This intriguing and potentially electrifying theory is based on information Dr. Douglass gleaned from several clinical studies.
Dr. Douglass argues that the Salk and Sabin vaccines, widely administered to children in the 1950s for poliomyelitis, did not eliminate polio at all, but forced it to change its form.... The sustained use of polio vaccines for over 40 years has resulted in "at least 72 viral strains that can cause polio-like diseases," says Dr. Douglass.
page 67, Chronic Fatigue, fibromyalgia & Lyme Disease, 2nd edition, by Burton Goldberg and Larry Trivieri, Jr., Celestial Arts, 2004