Health Officials Push Whooping Cough Vaccine Amid Uptick in Cases, But Scientists Say Shots Don’t Prevent Transmission

Public health officials are pushing the pertussis vaccine for babies, kids and pregnant women. Scientists told The Defender the vaccines contain dangerous toxins and don’t prevent transmission.

by Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D., John-Michael Dumais

Public health officials are urging families to get vaccinated against whooping cough, citing an uptick in cases, particularly among adolescents. However, critics say the vaccine doesn’t prevent transmission and contains dangerous toxins that may harm human health.

Connecticut Department of Public Health Commissioner Manisha Juthani said that there were 111 confirmed cases of pertussis in the state so far in 2024 — nearly a 10-fold increase compared to 2023, NBC Connecticut reported this week.

Juthani told The Hour that public health officials are concerned the spread will increase when school begins in just a few weeks.

“We are raising attention to this, both to providers and to families,” she said, “so that theoretically, people can get back up to date on their vaccines before children potentially are going back to day care, are going back to school.”

Other states, including New York and Pennsylvania, have also seen an uptick in whooping cough cases this year, Newsweek reported in early June. Outside the U.S., the United Kingdom and Australia have also reported increases.

Whooping cough, also known as pertussis, is a highly infectious respiratory tract infection, according to the Mayo Clinic. Deaths from it are rare and typically occur in infants.

It’s caused by a bacteria called Bordetella pertussis, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The CDC recommends that “everyone” — from babies as young as 2 months old to adults, particularly pregnant women — vaccinate against the illness by getting either a DTaP or Tdap vaccine, which also ostensibly protect against tetanus and diphtheria.

According to the CDC, the vaccine is “the best way to prevent whooping cough.”

Pertussis can be treated with antibiotics

However, Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., senior research scientist at Children’s Health Defense (CHD) told The Defender the pertussis vaccine may contribute to the spread of the infection — because it doesn’t prevent transmission.

“The pertussis vaccine is one of those that breaks the mold of what we think a vaccine is,” Jablonowski said. “Pertussis is probably the best case I can think of for a vaccine that does not prevent transmission.”

He added, “Every time there is a case of it, health officials will get on TV urging people to get vaccinated — wrongfully believing it will stop transmission.”

As The Defender recently reported, the CDC has been tracking changes in the prevalence of bacteria causing whooping cough for years.

Although the CDC’s whooping cough website still says the illness is caused by Bordetella pertussis, the most recent CDC data found that the Bordetella parapertussis type of whooping cough has significantly overtaken Bordetella pertussis in prevalence — and according to research published in Vaccines in March, the existing vaccines “scarcely provide protection” against this strain.

Brian Hooker, Ph.D., CHD chief scientific officer, told The Defender pertussis can be treated with antibiotics — “erythromycin and azithromycin are standard,” he said — and high doses of vitamin C.

The CDC’s website acknowledges whooping cough can be treated with antibiotics and fails to explain why the agency favors vaccination over antibiotics.

Pertussis vaccine may prevent herd immunity

Earlier this year, Jablonowski spoke on the poor efficacy and high-risk profile of the pertussis vaccine before Tennessee lawmakers as they weighed a bill to prohibit the state’s Department of Children Services from “requiring an immunization as a condition of adopting or overseeing a child in foster care if an individual or member of an individual’s household objects to immunization on the basis of religious or moral convictions.”

During March testimony before the Tennessee General Assembly Civil Justice Committee, Jablonowski cited scientific studies that debunk the notion that the vaccine is the best way to prevent whooping cough.

For instance, a 2016 review published in JAMA that reviewed more than 10,000 whooping cough cases found that more than half the cases in the five largest statewide outbreaks occurred in individuals who were partially or fully vaccinated against pertussis.

A 2019 review published in the Journal of the Pediatric Infectious Disease Society concluded that “all children who were primed by DTaP vaccines will be more susceptible to pertussis throughout their lifetimes, and there is no easy way to decrease this increased lifetime susceptibility.”

Another review, also published in 2019, concluded that pertussis vaccines “do not reduce the circulation of B. pertussis and do not exert any herd immunity effect.”

Jablonowski told lawmakers that not only does the pertussis vaccine not “exert” a herd immunity effect, but the vaccine “has a negative effective on herd immunity.”

He explained:

“A vaccinated person can asymptomatically carry and transmit the disease, and cannot then learn how to fight it naturally.

“If you accept that in order to achieve herd immunity 90% of the population needs to not retransmit the bacteria once exposed to it, then once you have vaccinated more than 10% of the population herd immunity becomes impossible, as the vaccinated citizens will be contracting and transmitting the disease.”

Jablonowski told The Defender the only two scenarios in which getting the vaccine might protect someone else is when it’s given during pregnancy or to a nursing mother.

According to the CDC, pregnant women should get the Tdap vaccine to provide their babies with the “best protection” from whooping cough, ideally between 27 and 36 weeks gestation. Protective antibodies pass from the pregnant woman’s body to the fetus, the agency said.

Researchers funded by the pharmaceutical company Sanofi — which sells pertussis vaccines — in 2022 published a statement saying that vaccination against pertussis during the second or early third trimester of pregnancy is “highly protective” against pertussis in young infants.

Both the CDC and Jablonowski said that vaccinating nursing mothers doesn’t appear to be effective in protecting babies from whooping cough.

A 2012 study conducted in a Houston area hospital found that giving postpartum moms the Tdap vaccine didn’t reduce the number of infections in babies when compared to prior years in which the hospital didn’t readily give the vaccine postpartum.

The hospital implemented a standing order that all new mothers get Tdap, Jablonowski said.

The researchers looked at health data from moms and babies 7.5 years before and almost 1.5 years after this standing order, he said. “Cases of infant pertussis practically doubled and the mortality rate practically tripled” after the standing order.

Vaccine contains aluminum and formaldehyde

Both of the two current formulations of the pertussis vaccine contain toxins known to harm human health, including aluminum and formaldehyde, Jablonowski told the lawmakers.

Aluminum is a known neurotoxin that can affect more than “200 important biological reactions” and cause “negative effects on [the] central nervous system,” according to a 2018 paper published in the Journal of Research in Medical Sciences.

Formaldehyde is a known carcinogen that is toxic to the respiratory system, central nervous system, optic nerve, kidney, liver, testicles and other body systems.

The pertussis vaccine, typically administered as part of combination vaccines like DTaP or Tdap, contains several other potentially harmful ingredients. These typically include inactivated B. pertussis toxin and several of its components, polysorbate 80, gluteraldehyde, 2-phenoxoyethanol and in some cases, trace amounts of mercury, according to the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC).

Some researchers suggest the chemically inactivated pertussis toxin in DTaP may retain some bioactivity, potentially inducing brain inflammation in certain individuals.

CDC didn’t follow up on 2012 report on adverse events following DTaP/Tdap vaccines

For the past 70 years, researchers have used the pertussis toxin in animal studies to purposefully trigger various physiological responses. Responses include heightened sensitivity to histamine, serotonin and endotoxins. Researchers also used the pertussis toxin to induce experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis.

The toxin’s ability to penetrate the blood-brain barrier under certain conditions has long been a concern. This property makes brain inflammation, or encephalitis, and its potential for lasting neurological damage a particularly severe complication associated with both whooping cough infection and pertussis vaccination.

According to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), from 1990 to 2024, there were 190,994 injury reports following pertussis-containing vaccines, including 3,377 deaths, according to NVIC. Over 85% of these deaths occurred in children under age 3.

While this data includes pre-1996 reports, when the whole-cell pertussis portion of the DTP vaccine formulation was changed due to its serious side effects, it’s important to note that a significant portion would be related to the DTaP vaccine given its widespread use since 1996.

Over 6,000 claims for injuries from pertussis-containing vaccines were submitted to the federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) as of Aug. 1, 2024. The cases include 872 deaths and over 5,000 serious injuries. Pertussis-containing vaccines comprise the highest number of VICP death claims and the second most compensated vaccine injury claims.

A 2012 study published in JAMA found an increased risk of febrile seizures in children 3-5 months old on the day of or day after receiving the first two doses of DTaP-containing vaccines.

The Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) 2012 report, “Adverse Effects of Vaccines: Evidence and Causality,” evaluated 26 reported adverse events following DTaP/Tdap vaccination. They included encephalopathy, encephalitis, chronic hives, autism, sudden infant death syndrome, arthritis, Guillain-Barré syndrome, diabetes mellitus, immune thrombocytopenic purpura, transverse myelitis and others.

For 24 of the 26 adverse events, the committee said there was not enough data either to support or reject vaccine-related causality, primarily due to a lack of adequate studies.

To date, the CDC has not conducted any additional studies in response to IOM’s recommendations, according to the authors of “Vax-Unvax: Let the Science Speak,” Hooker and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., CHD’s chairman on leave.

A 2017 study led by Dr. Anthony Mawson published in the Journal of Translational Science, compared the health outcomes of vaccinated and unvaccinated children ages 6-12. The study found that while vaccinated children had fewer cases of chicken pox and pertussis, they had significantly higher rates of other health issues.

According to the study, vaccinated children were more likely to be diagnosed with allergic rhinitis, eczema and neurodevelopmental disorders. The vaccinated group also showed higher rates of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, autism, learning disabilities and chronic health problems.

Additionally, the study reported that vaccinated children had a higher incidence of pneumonia and ear infections compared to unvaccinated children.

The Defender on occasion posts content related to Children’s Health Defense’s nonprofit mission that features Mr. Kennedy’s views on the issues CHD and The Defender regularly cover. In keeping with Federal Election Commission rules, this content does not represent an endorsement of Mr. Kennedy, who is on leave from CHD and is running as an independent for president of the U.S.