Hep B Vaccine Infant Deaths Reported In VAERS - Even though fewer than 10 percent of all doctors report health problems following vaccination, there are more than 16,000 reports of hospitalizations, injuries and deaths following hepatitis B vaccination that have been reported to the U.S. government Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) since July 1990. There are reports of deaths in infants under one month of age following hepatitis B vaccination in VAERS, with most of the deaths being classified as sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), even though SIDS is not historically recognized in the medical literature as occurring in babies under two months of age.

One of those death reports was made for a 15-day old baby boy who died within 48 hours of his first dose of hepatitis B vaccine. His father testified at a 1995 Institute of Medicine Vaccine Safety Forum workshop. He described what happened:

"For the first 13 days of his life, Nicholas was no different than any other baby. He ate well. When he slept, he slept well. He acted just like my first son acted when he came home from the hospital." Nicholas was given a hepatitis B shot at his regular check up at the pediatrician's office on the 13th day of his life. His father said:

"That night when I got home from work, I noticed that Nicholas was crying a lot more than usual. In fact, he was screaming some of the time. He was acting differently, but because we had just taken him to the doctor for a checkup and they told us he was a big healthy boy, we thought everything was OK. When he was just acting fussy, like babies sometimes do, we didn't know anything about vaccines or that they can cause problems for some babies."

"Nicholas cried on and off for most of the night. When I got up and went to work the next day, he was still crying on and off. He continued during most of the day and into the evening. The next morning, his mother found him dead in his crib. From the way he looked, he had been dead for several hours."

An autopsy was done the next day. A couple of weeks later, our pediatrician told us over the phone that the autopsy showed Nicholas had died of sudden infant death syndrome. He told us Nicholas was one of the healthiest babies he had ever seen…. What I didn't know then but I know now is that the pediatrician had made a report within 17 days of Nicholas' death to the government's Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, VAERS. In VAERS, Nicholas' death is listed as SIDS. Even though I didn't know anything about vaccines or SIDS, something told me that there was a reason why Nicholas died, and I had to find out why."

After seeing an article in the Washington Post about the Institute of Medicine report on adverse events associated with childhood vaccines, Nicholas's father called the National Vaccine Information Center and began talking to experts and researching infant death and vaccines. Eventually a clinical professor of pathology, who had reviewed Nicholas' medical records, autopsy and slides, stated in writing that Nicholas did not die of SIDS but died a cardiac death, caused by passive congestive changes with pulmonary edema and hemorrhage caused by the active immunization with hepatitis B vaccine. The pathologist stated "I do not believe this was a sudden infant death syndrome death. Sudden infant death syndrome is the most abused diagnosis in pediatric pathology. In this particular case, the infant was two weeks old. Sudden infant death at two weeks old is so rare as to be virtually unheard of."

The pathologist went on to say that Nicholas was at high risk for congestive heart failure because his mother had gestational diabetes, but that he would definitely have survived were it not for the stress induced by the hepatitis B vaccination.

Nicholas's father, in his testimony before the Institute of Medicine, asked "How many other newborn babies are dying from the effects of hepatitis B vaccine, but are being wrongly diagnosed as SIDS and no one ever knows the difference? I looked at the computer printouts of VAERS reports at the National Vaccine Information Center, and I saw there were other reports of babies just a few days or weeks old, who have died shortly after hepatitis B vaccination. Many are listed as SIDS deaths, but are they?"

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