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yvComment solution, version="1.24.0"
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Wednesday, 17 March 2010 11:16 |
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ACG, a controversy is defined as "a dispute, especially a public one, between sides holding opposing views."
I suggest the fact we are having this discussion indicates the topic of vaccination is complex and controversial. Thanks to the rise of the internet and blogs, citizens now have access to a valuable forum to express alternative views and challenge the status quo, outside the confines and censorship of the mainstream media.
When it comes to "the complex world of scientific evidence", more discerning members of the general public are questioning the so-called evidence underpinning medical interventions such as vaccination. The rationale for ‘scientific research’ and resulting interventions needs to be more critically examined – is it a response to a demonstrated need or is it merely a means to create new markets? This is particularly important to consider in matters of public health, including the motivation behind what research findings are published and what is suppressed.
White-coated 'professionals' are assumed to be up to speed on medical best practice but, as I have discovered through personal experience, these people are not always the experts one might expect them to be. They are also heavily influenced by the marketing ploys of pharmaceutical companies, which are focused on turnover and profit rather than altruistic healthcare.
I am questioning the evidence base and safety of conventional 'preventive' products that are heavily promoted for healthy people and animals. Homeopathic treatments have recently been under attack in the UK and Australia for not being evidence-based. It follows that conventional ‘preventive’ products must also be subject to the same scrutiny.
The Australian Veterinary Association’s Code of Professional Conduct notes: “Veterinary procedures and recommendations should be based on sound evidence-based science and practice.” Yet veterinarians continue to abuse their self-appointed authority by dictating that pet owners have their pets repeatedly revaccinated with MLV vaccines, and ‘strongly recommending’ that pet businesses such as boarding kennels demand proof of repeated revaccination, without any evidence that repeated MLV revaccination is beneficial for the adult animal. Animals that have already responded to vaccination with MLV vaccines are being needlessly subjected to unnecessary and possibly harmful repeated revaccination – this is unacceptable.
Pet owners are not being advised that manufacturers’ prescriptive MLV revaccination recommendations have not been proven to be necessary. Pet owners are not being given the opportunity to consider the research of veterinary experts, referred to in international dog and cat vaccination guidelines, which indicates there is long duration of immunity with MLV vaccines. They are also not being advised of the dubious efficacy of non-core vaccines.
Pet owners are not being warned of the possible adverse reactions or long term health problems, that can result from the continuing assault on the immune system due to repeated vaccination.
In a paper titled “Postmarketing surveillance for dog and cat vaccines: new resources in changing times”, Moore et al note: “Adverse events that are relatively uncommon or that occur in high-risk subgroups (eg. elderly animals or specific breeds) are usually only detected through postmarketing surveillance. The full safety profile for a given vaccine can only be determined after the vaccine has been licensed and administered to large numbers (often millions) of individuals.”
In other words, dogs in the community are the guinea pigs for these vaccines. They (and their owners) are unknowingly part of a huge unregulated trial, the results of which are not being reported. Post-marketing surveillance is currently ineffective due to adverse reactions being grossly under-reported (as admitted by the World Small Animal Veterinary Association’s Vaccination Guidelines Group).
Due to lack of research, the consequences of repeated vaccination over the lifetime of an animal have not been determined. Michael Day, a member of the World Small Animal Veterinary Association’s Vaccination Guidelines Group, admits that few “investigations have studied the phenomenon of ‘inflammageing’ (the effect of cumulative antigenic exposure and onset of late life inflammatory disease)” in dogs and cats.
(More information on adverse reactions is included in my papers, refer to links provided in my previous comments.)
The pet belongs to the pet owner, and it is the pet owner's right to be properly informed of vaccination best practice, and not to be bullied into having non-evidence based interventions that are more in the financial interests of the veterinarian / vaccine manufacturer, than in the best interests of the pet.
On the topic of evidence-based medicine, the British Medical Journal provides this definition: “Evidence based medicine is the conscientious, explicit, and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients. The practice of evidence based medicine means integrating individual clinical expertise with the best available external clinical evidence from systematic research....”
The Journal of the American Medical Association provides additional definition: “Evidence-based medicine de-emphasizes intuition, unsystematic clinical experience, and pathophysiologic rationale as sufficient grounds for clinical decision making and stresses the examination of evidence from clinical research. Evidence-based medicine requires new skills of the physician, including efficient literature searching and the application of formal rules of evidence evaluating the clinical literature.”
In Seminars in Perinatology, David Sackett notes that: “Without current best external evidence, practice risks becoming rapidly out of date, to the detriment of patients. The practice of evidence-based medicine is a process of life-long, self-directed learning in which caring for our own patients creates the need for clinically important information about diagnosis, prognosis, therapy, and other clinical and health care issues…”
For years many veterinarians in countries such as the UK, Australia and the US, have ignored evidence of long duration of immunity of MLV core vaccines, contained in the scientific literature and international dog and cat vaccination guidelines. This information has been withheld from pet owners’ consideration.
Pet owners should be advised that there is no evidence to support repeated revaccination of pets with MLV core vaccines, and that there is evidence that most dogs are likely to be protected from serious viral diseases such as parvovirus, distemper virus and adenovirus after the final puppy MLV core vaccination at 16 weeks. No further revaccination is likely to be required for these diseases, although pet owners can seek serological testing if they wish to verify their dog’s antibody status.
The World Small Animal Veterinary Association’s Guidelines for the Vaccination of Dogs and Cats advise that “the principles of ‘evidence-based veterinary medicine’ would dictate that testing for antibody status (for either pups or adult dogs) is better practice than simply administering a vaccine booster on the basis that this should be ‘safe and cost less’”.
It should be a matter of course that vaccination guidelines be regularly updated to ensure advice on vaccination best practice is relayed to pet owners.
References:
- Moore, G.E., Frana, T.S., Guptill, L.F., Ward, M.P., Lewis, H.B., Glickman, L.T. 2005. Postmarketing surveillance for dog and cat vaccines: new resources in changing times. JAVMA. Vol. 227, No. 7, October 1, 2005, pp. 1066-1069.
- Day, M.J. Ageing, immunosenescence and nflammageing in the dog and cat. J Comp. Pathol. 2010 Jan; 142 Supl. 1:S60-9. Epub 2009 Dec 14.
- Editorial. Evidence based medicine: what it is and what it isn’t. British Medical Journal. 1996. 312. 71-72 (13 January).
- Evidence-based medicine: A new approach to teaching the practice of medicine. JAMA. November 4 1992. Vol 268, No. 17.
- Sackett, D.L. Evidence-based medicine. Seminars in Perinatology. Vol. 21, No.1 (February) 1997: pp 3-5.
- Australian Veterinary Association’s (AVA) “Draft Policies and Position Statements – For members’ comment by 13 March 2009”refers to “Responsible use of veterinary vaccines for dogs and cats”. This draft policy admitted that “annual vaccination is the currently accepted practice in Australia”. The AVA has now ostensibly moved to ‘triennial’ vaccination. The new policy is available on their website.
- The 2006 AAHA canine vaccine guidelines recommend “every three years or longer” (My emphasis). Paul, M.A., Carmichael, L.E., Childers, H., Cotter, S., Davidson, A., Ford, R., Hurley, K.F., Roth, J.A., Schultz, R.D., Thacker, E., Welborn, L. 2006 AAHA Canine Vaccine Guidelines, Revised: http://www.aahanet.org/PublicDocuments/VaccineGuidelines06Revised.pdf
However, my correspondence with veterinary schools in the US indicates that an ‘every three years’ recommendation is taught there.
- In Britain, the British Veterinary Association fact sheet ‘Vaccination – The Facts’ states that: “Vets must use vaccines in accordance with the licence stipulations. It should be noted that it would be negligent of a vet to deviate from the medicinal data available to them and/or use a vaccine not in accordance with the instructions on the label and the summary of the product characteristics or data sheet.”: Vaccination – The Facts. Enc 7, Annex C. British Veterinary Association. If British vets are using MLV vaccines “in accordance with the (current) licence stipulations” I suggest they are unnecessarily revaccinating pets.
- WSAVA Guidelines: http://www.wsava.org/PDF/Misc/VGG_09_2007.pdf
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