PEOPLE ARE turning away from much needed health services that will protect all of us. Time to counteract the ethically dubious acts of certain people.
The results of the investigation by the forensic pathologists at the Philippine General Hospital (PGH) of the 14 children autopsied and who were originally claimed by Dr. Erfe of the Public Attorney’s Office (PAO) as having died due to Dengvaxia have been released.
We would like to share these findings in layman’s terms so that they may be better understood. What do the findings mean?
None of the deaths of the 14 children autopsied were proven to be due to Dengvaxia. In fact, the deaths of 13 of them were totally unrelated to the vaccine.
In reviewing the press release of the DOH based on the PGH findings, it now appears that only one case might be causally associated with the vaccine. That is the one with dengue and with antibodies to dengue.
However, it has yet to be determined if the vaccine had anything to do with the death. In two of the children autopsied, it was noted that vaccine failure may have been the cause. This means that antibodies were produced and so they could not have suffered from an antibody enhanced reaction. Hence, the 2 most likely died of dengue not due to the vaccine.
These findings mean that in diagnosing all 14 autopsied children as having dengue as a complication of Dengvaxia, Dr. Erfe of the PAO was wrong in practically all of the 14. He may at the very best have been correct in only 1 of 14 of the cases, or 7 percent; and wrong in 13 of 14 or 93 percent. In actuality he is probably wrong in all given that any actual causative relationship between the death of the one child to the vaccine is yet to be determined.
In light of these findings by the pathologists of the Philippine General Hospital, it makes no sense for any more families to be subjected to the torture of having a loved one exhumed and cut up only to find out that no useful information was derived from the cruel act.
We urge the Department of Justice to order the PAO to stop performing autopsies on these children and to leave the matter of determining the cause of death to competent forensic pathologists.
(Statement of Doctors for Public Welfare on the claim of PAO that 14 deaths were due to dengue)
