Parents Avoiding Hepatitis Shot

June 1999 - Two-year-old Ben Converse was hugged by his mother, Judy, after suffering a nightmare of nerve damage after a state-required shot at birth for hepatitis-B at Falmouth Hospital. Although the disease is primarily a problem for needle drug-users and homosexual men, the state requires that all babies get the shot at birth instead of at a later age.

Parents are allowed to bypass the shot and wait until the child is older before deciding whether to vaccinate if they receive a religious exemption. The exemption allows the child to enter school without the shot. A number of parents decided to do that after reading about Ben.

The shot is required even though there were only 279 cases of hepatits-B reported in children under 14-years-of-age in the entire U.S. in 1996. However, 872 serious injuries and 48 deaths occurred in children who received the hepatitis-B vaccine with other vaccines, and 214 serious reactions and 13 deaths occurred in children who received the vaccine alone.

Biogen corporation of Cambridge patented the vaccine, which was then licensed to Merck and to Smith Kline Beecham for manufacture and marketing. In 1997, the sale of vaccines reportedly brought in $1 billion for Merck, the nation's leading vaccine producer.

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