4MyChild: Help and Hope for Life

November 21, 2006

Cerebral Palsy: Vaccinations and Reactions to Vaccines

This is a very moving, interesting and insightful testimony of a mother with a child diagnosed with cerebral palsy and that had a severe reaction to the DPT vaccine. The DPT vaccine is a combination of three vaccines to immunize against diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus.
Severe problems after DPT immunization do happen. These include a serious allergic reaction, prolonged seizures, a decrease in consciousness, lasting brain disease, or even death. Such severe neurologic events occur after approximately 1 in 140,000 doses of the DPT vaccine (0.0007%). Most of the reactions to DPT injection are attributed to the pertussis (also known as whooping cough) vaccine.
The key information in the story is that no child with a possible history or signs of neurological damage or child weighing less than 10lbs should be given the vaccine.

Dear Dr. J. Thomas Megerian,

My name is Krista Thompson and I am the mother of a child damaged by the DPT
vaccine at 2 months of age and I am a litigation lawyer, non practising at
the moment, with 6 years of legal research and writing background. I have
read your recent letter to MS. Winkler and feel that I have some information
to share that you need to hear.

I do not propose to argue all of the points in your letter. I will
highlight a few and start by sharing my daughter, Kaisha’s story.

We adopted Kaisha at birth. She was pronounced healthy, but had minor
tremours in her legs. At 10 days old our family doctor saw Kaisha for the
first time and suggested we get a paediatric consult regarding the tremours
and the prolonged crying spells (which the family doctor suspected were
‘colic’ type spells). She stated that we may need to see a neurologist, but
would start with the paediatrician. The paediatrician suspected the birth
mother may have used drugs (unconfirmed) or drugs used during labour could
have been inducing the tremours and crying. He suggested we wait and see
what happened. At 7 weeks the tremours and crying had virtually disappeared
and the paediatrician recommended vaccination.

To read the entire article, please go here:

http://whale.to/vaccines/thompson.html