Chickenpox Vaccine When Mandated INCREASES Disease Outbreak: StudySayer Ji In 2005, the varicella (chickenpox) vaccine was mandated in South Korea for infants at 12 to 15 months of age. Despite near universal vaccine uptake (97% by 2011)[1], rather than see a reduced burden of chickenpox in South Korea as would be expected, no substantial decreases have been observed there nationwide. Quite to the contrary, the number of varicella patients reported to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) increased from 22.6 cases per 100,000 in 2006 to 71.6 cases per 100,000 in 2011. The obvious question emerges: If the chickenpox vaccine is effective, why is a population whose vaccination rates have been steadily increasing year after year seeing increasing rates of breakthrough infection? This glaring failure of varicella vaccination in South Korea lead a group of Korean researchers to conduct a series of studies to better understand the impact of varicella vaccination in South Korea, the results of which were published earlier this year in the journal Clinical and Vaccine Immunology in a study titled Varicella and varicella vaccination in South Korea. The Korean research team conducted a case-based study, a case-control study, and an immunogenicity and safety study, in order to identify the reasons for the failure of the vaccine. The results were reported as follows: The researchers compared prelicensure data on the Suduvax vaccine to the above mentioned research results and found the vaccine in actual practice has much lower immunogenicity, concluding: Suduvax (Green Cross, South Korea) may not be immunogenic enough to be effective in preventing varicella in South Korea. The current prospective case-based study and case-control study suggests that most cases of varicella occurring in South Korea are caused by breakthrough infection in vaccine compliant individuals. A breakthrough infection is defined as a vaccine recipient contracting the very disease the vaccine is intended to prevent, either through infection from the vaccine strain or a wild-type strain. Additionally, the researchers noted: Breakthrough disease is allegedly milder than varicella in unvaccinated individuals (27), but our study showed that varicella vaccination did not seem to alleviate clinical symptoms, although vaccinated patients were cared for more in the outpatient clinics with less serious appraisal of the disease by their parents. Consider that the ultimate justification for any medically unnecessary intervention like vaccination is whether the benefit of intervening outweigh the harms of not doing so. It is an irreducible empirical fact that you cant prove with absolute certainty that any single vaccine has ever prevented any single disease, because the projected beneficial outcome is always going to be a non-event (i.e. not being infected with the disease). In other words, you cant prove cause-and-effect when the cause (vaccination) can only be linked to a non-empirical effect (not contracting the vaccine specific disease) that can just as logically be attributed to our natural innate/adaptive immunity. You can, on the other hand, link vaccination to adverse effects with infinitely more plausibility. In the case of chickenpox (varicella) vaccine, for instance, not only are immediate or near immediate acute reactions observable in 1 in 4 vaccine recipients, but at least 2 dozen adverse health effects some including chronic and life-threatening have been documented in the biomedical literature. View the GreenMedInfo.com Varicella Vaccination page for direct access to the study abstracts. Clearly, if the vaccines dont work to prevent the very disease they are designed to, and the likelihood of being harmed is high, what justifies their use any longer? Varicella vaccine is not an exception, as far as failure goes. As we recently reported in another Asian population, the Chinese have one of the highest measles vaccine uptake rates in the world, but are continually facing measles outbreaks. Vaccine failure, in fact, is so extensively documented, that it is disturbing how anyone who promotes authentic vaccine awareness that is, making the public and professional castes aware of the published research on their unintended, adverse effects and/or non-effectivenes is reflexively characterized by the pro-vaccine camp as being anti-vaccine, anti-science. Beyond the antipodes of pro- and anti- vaccine is the truth. And since vaccinology and the pro-vaccine agenda is ostensibly evidence-based, criticism should remain focused on the research itself, and not those who report on it or simply exercise their legal right and responsibility (where it is still sacrosanct) to opt-out of this intervention. References [1] Lee SG, Ki M. 2011. Korea national immunization survey. Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Chungcheongnam-do, South Korea This article first appeared at GreenMedInfo. Please visit to access their vast database of articles and the latest information in natural health. 