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Vaccines should be mandatory: AMRIC CEO

Vaccines should be mandatory, says the CEO and scientific director of Sudbury's Advanced Medical Research Institute of Canada. Dr.
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Dr. Francisco Diaz-Mitoma, CEO and scientific director of Sudbury's Advanced Medical Research Institute of Canada, says vaccines should be mandatory, within the confines of the law, because without them we would not have a healthy society. File photo.

Vaccines should be mandatory, says the CEO and scientific director of Sudbury's Advanced Medical Research Institute of Canada.

Dr. Francisco Diaz-Mitoma has conducted vaccine research for more than 30 years, and said vaccines are too important for public health to be left to a choice – unless it's not medically feasible for a person to receive an injection, or the law allows for a valid exemption.

“There's a proportion of people who have concerns about vaccines, but I think we cannot highlight enough the importance of vaccines to maintain a healthy society,” he said. “Without vaccines we would not have a healthy society.”

Due to a number of measles outbreaks across Canada – including a recent case in Elliot Lake – the debate around vaccination has reached a fevered pitch.

“We have measles here in Canada and we shouldn't have measles here,” Diaz-Mitoma said. “Why do we have measles in Canada? Because people don't believe vaccinating their children is safe. That's against the evidence, and it's against history.”


Diaz-Mitoma said he can remember a time when polio was common, and children were often paralyzed due to the infectious disease.

He said he also saw smallpox cases when he was younger. The disease was eradicated in 1979, thanks in large part to vaccines, says the World Health Organization.

But Diaz-Mitoma said some infectious diseases have made a return because some young parents are not getting their children vaccinated.

“Young adults and young parents are not used to seeing the impacts of infectious diseases on their children,” he said.

But Heather Fraser, a spokesperson with Vaccine Choice Canada, said current exemptions are the only way parents can protect their children from the potential side effects of some vaccines.

“There are benefits to vaccines, of course, but we're attempting to help balance the narrative,” she said.

When her son, who is now 20, was an infant, Fraser said he was given two pentavalent vaccines that offered protection against diphtheria, tetanus, acellular pertussis, polio and Haemophilus influenzae type B.

“It was the first ever routinely administered five vaccines in a single needle,” she said.

The first year after receiving his vaccines, Fraser said her son developed atrophy, asthma, eczema, environmental allergies and a peanut allergy.

Fraser said the adverse effects of vaccines are often downplayed, and are not as rare as people are led to believe.

In 2013 Fraser made an access to information request to the Public Health Agency of Canada to learn more about the pentavalent vaccines her son received in the mid-1990s.

She discovered the agency had received 11,000 adverse event reports related to the vaccines. While most were for minor reactions, such as coughing, bruising and fevers, some were more severe, including seizures, asthma symptoms and even neurological damage.

Fraser said there were 15 deaths following pentavalent vaccinations from 1993 to 1998.

But the report she obtained said a “clear causal relationship is difficult to establish” between the vaccines and any adverse effects a person experiences later.

“In considering these data, it should be recognized that the majority of adverse events to vaccines are neither serious nor unexpected,” the document said. “This extract should not be used to calculate incidence rates, reporting rates, describe trends of AEFI reporting in Canada, nor to describe/interpret the safety profile of vaccines in Canada.”

Fraser said doctors and the government need to take more responsibility for the potential adverse effects of vaccines.

She said better screening should be in place for children's kidney and liver functions before they receive vaccines.

The vaccine her son received has been discontinued.

According to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States, there are no health concerns related to a current vaccine for diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough.

A separate vaccine for Haemophilus influenzae type B also has a “long track record of being very safe and effective.”

The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention have said the vaccine was found to cause redness and swelling in up to one out of four children, and a fever over 101 F in one out of 20 children.

Alfred Hauk, chair of the Ontario Association of Naturopathic Doctors, said vaccines are important for public health, but agreed they should not be mandatory.

“There are reasons why some people don't vaccinate,” he said. “They're fearful of things and they may have someone in their community or their family they feel has been hurt by vaccinations. Just to make fun of those people, or to hold a gun to their head, I'm not sure it's going to solve very much.”

Vaccines fall outside the scope of naturopaths, but their provincial association officially supports vaccinations for infectious diseases.

Hauk moved to Canada as a child, after he and his family were able to escape from East Germany.

“Everyone lines up, just as they're told, and takes whatever the government gives them,” he said about the former communist state. “I'm not sure that's an ideal thing.”


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Jonathan Migneault

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