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DTP-Vaccinated African Infants Had a Higher Death Rate than Unvaccinated Infants, According to New “vax/unvax” Study

Urgent call to actionBy Mark Blaxill

A study published earlier this month (see HERE ) examining the effect of vaccination on mortality in 3-5 month old infants in the West African nation of Guinea-Bissau showed a fivefold higher death rates in infants who received diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (DTP) and oral polio (OPV) vaccines compared to unvaccinated infants. The study, published in the journal EBioMedicine by Danish researchers from the Statens Serum Institut (SSI), was based on infants born between 1980 and 1983 and used data collected by the SSI’s Bandim Health Project (BHP). The study of vaccinated and unvaccinated African infants represents a rare, albeit limited, example of the kind of “vaxxed/unvaxxed’ study that many critics of American vaccination policy have long called for.

In their prospective study of over 1,000 infants, the SSI authors examined the effects on infant mortality of a new vaccination program that included both OPV and DTP vaccines. They reserved their harshest assessment for the newly introduced DTP vaccine, observing pointedly that “DTP was associated with 5-fold higher mortality than being unvaccinated. No prospective study has shown beneficial survival effects of DTP.”

In a broader criticism of global vaccine policy, the authors continued, “Unfortunately, DTP is the most widely used vaccine, and the proportion who receives DTP3 [three doses of the DTP vaccine] is used globally as an indicator of the performance of national vaccination programs.” In a further criticism of DTP vaccines, the analysis suggests that the OPV, which was typically administered together with DTP vaccine, had a moderating effect on the death risk of DTP. When (due to logistical problems with OPV availability) infants were vaccinated with DTP only, the death rates were even worse: as much as ten times higher than unvaccinated infants.

Unlike the recently leaked “vax/unvaxxed” study on homeschool children (see HERE) and the more commonly understood usage today of the “vaxxed/unvaxxed” concept, this analysis was narrower. The study examined infants during a brief window of time—the period between 3 and 6 months of age--and measured a single outcome—death. Described by the authors as a “natural experiment,” the study was designed in order to address on ongoing debate over the efficacy in low-income countries of the Expanded Immunization Program (EPI) since its introduction in the 1970s. At the time, the EPI targeted countries like Guinea-Bissau that had high infant mortality rates--under-five mortality rates were close to 50% there in 1978-9—and included four vaccines for seven diseases. Since individual vaccines included in the EPI might have different effects, the authors decried the absence of “individually randomized studies,” noting that “surprisingly few studies examined the introduction of vaccines and their impact on child survival.”

Due to its specific focus, the study design has little to say about the vaccine schedule debate in high-income countries and has several key limitations. Most notably, the “unvaccinated” children in the BHP study group only remained unvaccinated for a period of less than 14 weeks between 3 and 6 months of age until they attended the “quarterly weighing sessions” when OPV and DTP vaccines were administered. Even this briefly unvaccinated group wasn’t fully unvaccinated. The authors noted that “of the 651 unvaccinated children, 219 received DTP and/or OPV before their first weighing examination. These children counted as ‘unvaccinated’ until their first weighing examination.” Even though the death rate in the unvaccinated group was lower than in the vaccinated group, death rates were high on both sides. Five of the eighteen deaths covered in the study period occurred in the unvaccinated group and the authors don’t disclose whether any of these deaths had received a vaccination before the official examination “landmarks” used to define vaccination events in the database.

Despite the unusual nature of their “natural experiment”, this new BHP paper does offer some useful information for developed world vaccination debate, in which many express concern over excessively aggressive vaccine schedules that mandate “too many, too soon”. In that debate, the question of designing alternative schedules based on different health benefits of individual vaccines has risen to the fore as a number of doctors have offered non-standard schedules that depart from officially sanctioned schedules of public health authorities like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO).

Guinea-Bissau offers an opportunity for a natural experiment in vaxxed/unvaxxed science because the population there was largely unvaccinated until late in the 20th century. The BHP “took part in the introduction of vaccines” in Bandim starting in 1981; until the launch of the WHO’s Expanded Program on Immunization in that year, vaccination coverage in Guinea-Bissau was below 5%. The EPI schedule that was introduced in Bandim included several live attenuated vaccine strains: one dose of the BCG (tuberculosis) vaccine at birth, three doses of OPV starting at 3 months and one dose of measles vaccine after 9 months. In addition, three doses of the DTP vaccine, with its three inactivated bacterial components, were given along with the OPV starting at 3 months. Since “the disease protective effects [of the EPI] were well documented,” the BHP authors said, little effort went into studying the overall health effects of the program as a whole. Instead, “the main issue was at which age to introduce the [individual] vaccine most effectively.”

Dr. Peter Aaby, the senior author on this month’s paper, has long made the case for assessing the broad health effects of individual vaccines. Aaby founded the BHP in 1978 and has observed vaccination programs in Africa for decades since. He has argued for some time that there is a distinction between the health effects of live attenuated and inactivated vaccines. Aaby has argued for instance, that the health benefits of measles vaccination (an attenuated live virus) go beyond the prevention of deaths associated with acute measles infection. By contrast, Aaby has argued that DTP vaccines have had no such broad benefit. In this most recent study, he makes the case against DTP even more strongly, demonstrating that DTP vaccines sharply increased death rates in African infants.

Aaby’s theory that the “non-specific effects” (NSEs) of vaccination outweigh their effect on disease prevention suggests a more nuanced view of vaccination schedules than the simple “pro-vaccine vs anti-vaccine” controversy touted in most media coverage of the vaccine debate. If different vaccines can have opposing non-specific effects, then the net benefits of an overall schedule would require close monitoring and the detailed design of vaccine schedules would be a subject for policy debate rather than the all-or-nothing stance of many public health officials. In their recent paper, the BHP authors offer support for the need to assess the health effects of the entire EPI schedule rather than the disease protection effects of individual vaccines. Despite past BHP publications providing evidence for beneficial NSEs of the measles vaccines contained in the EPI introduced in Guinea-Bissau, the overall health outcomes that ensued following the EPI’s introduction were negative. In their new paper, the BHP authors showed that infant death rates following the new vaccine program introduction more than doubled, going from 4.7 per 100 person-years in 1980 to 12.1 in 1983.

Harsh criticism of one of the foundational pieces of the modern immunization schedule is notable when it comes from an insider like Dr. Aaby. His conclusion that “all currently available evidence suggests that DTP vaccine may kill more children from other causes than it saves from diphtheria, tetanus or pertussis” is an urgent call for action from the WHO.




Jeannette Bishop

@Sigh...sighing is a little like yawning, kind of mentally, or in some other way maybe, contagious...but my gregarious interpretation of what they are finding is that killed virus vaccines particularly leave the recipient vulnerable to all infectious (maybe that's all other infections, excluding the vaccine antigen, but I'm not certain). I've heard that most of these babies were succumbing to pneumonia once DTP vaccinated (OPV in conjunction with DTP appeared to reduce the risk, though that is not saying OPV alone compared to an unvaccinated control group would come off as a life-saver, but it might be at least counteracting some of the harm of the DTP's effect on the immune system).

These's some crash course discussion in this video of various aspects of some vaccinations' effects on the immune system and body (this link starts at the portion regarding various evaluations made with this data--the only all-cause mortality evaluations for a vaccine with something close to a true control group that I'm aware of):


So, just from the highlights... "children who received DTP and OPV early had 5-fold higher mortality than still unvaccinated children".

Those who received it early. Though this study does point out negative effects that may be caused by DTP, it also points out that the mortality rate increase may be caused because the vaccine protects them from the Diphtheria/Tetanus/Pertussis but may leave them susceptible to other infections.

Also, I notice this study and many other studies cited within it are centered on urbanized "developing" country data sets. I am not saying that the conclusions are wrong, but as people regularly point out to others yet fail to mention in studies such as this, "Correlation does not equal causality." In other words, yes that mortality rate was higher in this test group, but what caused the deaths? Was the DTP/OPV involved? Probably, but how much and what actually caused the deaths, what environmental factors outside of vaccination and breastfeeding were involved? Diets? All sorts of information I would be looking into.

But, by all means, go crazy over it. Don't bother posting anything about the increasing evidence of genetic involvement in autism, or that sudden rate increases also correspond with wider definition autism spectrum disorders. Just find a couple pieces of a complex condition to latch onto. Thank you so friggin' much Jenny McCarthy.

Jeannette Bishop

With the link I just posted I wanted to highlight Dr. Humphries saying that the nutritional status of the "unvaccinated" was not equivalent with (worse than) the vaccinated group in this study, so this data may understate the risk of the DTP vaccine that much more.

Jeannette Bishop

Further discussion by Dr. Humphries & Dr. Wakefield:

Jeannette Bishop

Pretty much all vaccine inserts say not tested for reproductive harm or cancer causing risk (even though they contain carcinogens, teratogens, etc). Shouldn't the package inserts also be updated to include "not tested for increased risk of death post vaccination" except for this particular DTP vaccine (which should probably come with a huge red-box warning)?


Thank you Cait;
Now I wonder how they decided that the TB shot helped to begin with. It would be interesting to see how they set up that study.

You have to watch every word written out of their little finger tips.

Cait from Canada

Benedetta, sorry, just saw your question. If I remember correctly, he said that the effects of the 2 vaccines on brain development more or less cancelled each other out.


One takeaway from this is that the DPT has been killing infants for over 30 years, similar to the MMR. The regulatory agencies simply have not been protecting the public for whatever reason, continued employment being one. I'm saddened by the level of corruption in our government and big pharma and it's too late for my son . Merck, Pfizer, and Glaxo drive it forward each day in search of higher profits while dreams are crushed and lives lost. Tom Price, please have the FDA put a black box warning on the MMR, DPT, and Gardisil. Thank you


Thank You Mr. Washington for the link.
It looks like I did understand it pretty well. When given together the two vaccines cancel each other out most times.

BCG cancels out the inflammation caused by the Hep B; but the Hep B stops the advantages the rat would have received from the BCG.

Maybe it is a ploy to encourage us to beg them to make BCG mandatory here in the the good ol'e USA like most of the rest of the world .

Mr. Washington


JB Handley was referring to the 2015 China study (Li et al). It seems it was brought to Handley's attention by Vaccine Papers. VP's writeup on this study here:

Cynthia Morningstar


Were the deaths caused by the diseases they were vaccinating for? Somehow I don't think so. Time and money would have been better spent on sanitation clean water, improved nutrition...


What did you think of that? Did I understand that right; that if the BCG was giving with the Hep B ; the side effects of the Hep B were less? Or did I just jump to conclusions?


Cait from Canada;
Thank you so much for looking that up and getting it straight for me.

Hard to believe that this vaccine for tuberculosis that also causes Kawasaki's came out that way for rat brains. More to know there would be my guess.


If history is our guide .. WHO will respond with usual .. nothing to worry about here .. vaccines are safe and efficient .. move on.


Of course they will, that's the whole reason why 'organizations' like this were created. They exist to legitimize all aspects of pharma crime.

No different than the Food and Drug Administration, the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, ......

The foxes are guarding the hen house, and they have been from day one.

JP Sand

There was a related study published at the British Medical Journal (BMJ) on October 16, 2016: "Association of BCG, DTP, and Measles Containing Vaccines with Childhood Mortality: Systematic Review" by Julian P T Higgins et al. PLEASE NOTE: the full text can be accessed via a 14 day free trial. See link:

The comments on the study are still current and ongoing in the "Responses" section. See link:

The original paper states that "Receipt of DTP (almost always with oral polio vaccine) was associated with a possible increase in all cause mortality" of 38%. However, expert commentary from Frank Shahn, one of the paper's official reviewers, corrects the record to reflect that: "DTP is associated with a 91% increase in all-cause mortality".

Cait from Canada

Benedetta: Handley was talking about the TB vaccine (also known as BCG, for bacillus calmette-guérin) and the Hep B vaccine. Apparently the BCG vaccine had a beneficial effect on rat brain development, whereas the Hep B vaccine's effect was negative.

John Stone


I can't think of anything sage. It would not be the first time an article from this source has subverted orthodoxy but it is certainly the most damning.



What are your thoughts on the emergence of this study and I wonder what prompted researchers to look now.

Jeannette Bishop

Thank you for analyzing this research.

Dr. Humphries spends some time discussing various non-specific effects here:

Some of the material is canvassed in her Vaccine Re-education videos also.

"Health authorities" may try to sell attenuated vaccines as "better life-savers" than killed virus vaccines while not admitting that killed virus vaccines appear to be life-takers.

But somewhere in the above lectures I remember Dr. Humphries saying those that survived measles infection were seen to have improved mortality risk after recovery (compared to the vaccinated I think). We ought to consider whether resources spent reducing natural disease mortality instead of natural disease incidence might have the best outcomes overall.

James Grundvig

"Population control?" Not crazy at all. The writing is on the wall, even in today's WSJ:
Robots will outnumber humans.

Yes, this sounds Sci-Fi, but it's not. Also take into account that Deep State/Big Pharma only pushes vaccines: 1. The WHO ignored off-the-shelf remedy to treat the host and the not virus of Ebola, but vaccines were ramped up as 10,000 people died, likely due to bureaucratic selection and not Darwin; 2. Zika virus was handle day 1 as a Vaccine R&D program and suckered Congress to fork over $1 billion for a vaccine no one will ever need; 3. Bill "Eugenics" Gates coming out and crying wolf about 30 million people will die from a bioterror attack (likely from his Foundation's vaccine and not the VX-agents used to kill half-bro of Kim Jong Un); 4. the CDC Quarantine rule that was never debated in Congress, which allows Deep State (CDC, DHS, etc.) to pull anyone off the street and qurantine them, catch them up on their vaccines.

This is all crystal clear. It's a Depoulation program all right. 99.99% of ASD children won't reproduce. So this is why more and more vaccines are being introduced. Japan appears to be the only modern country to fight back on this issue with some success.


And Bob Moffit just said what we all are thinking. It has always been about population control. I know it makes us sound crazy, but when you dig into this .

But at the same time; I have always been interested in the CDC and watch the Discovery Channel on any documentary on the people that work there, what they think, what is their job for the past 40 years.

They are not or at least they do not come off as some of the smartest people on the planet, but come off many times as a little more that dorky and not in an intellectual way even there.


and - and - my daughter's Fourth - the big 4 - DPT vaccine at age 18 months caused her Kawaskis.
She received the recommended (mandatory) fifth one at age 5 as she entered kindergarden.

So three for this little third world nation for kids 5 and under.
Five for the first world nations of kids 5 and under.

We are in trouble.


I suppose a good study brings forth more questions.
They did not know if the kids before they came in to be weighed had been vaccinated and vaccinated them again?
And - geesh -- do I understand that if they received the other vaccines along with the DPT that the other vaccines caused the death rate to be lower? Is that right?

J.B. Handley said in his article that the TB vaccine along with the MMR or was it the DPT (someone straighten me out, if they have a second to go back and check) had some kind of protection against a vaccine reaction. His article went on to state that the study found that the TB vaccine actually had a protective factor for the brain.

I know that there is a well documented case of a TB vaccine causing Kawaskis in a child in Turkcy. It even started at the injection site and spread. I can tell you right now that having every small blood vessels in your entire body - including brain is not a protective factor for the brain.


I don't think this is all that hard, this is what you get when you are being lied to at every turn.
Kawasakis is a vascualar disease and

david m burd

Mark, As you and Dan wrote in your book The Age Of Autism, starting pages 148-149, the diphtheria toxoid vaccines were first widely implemented in the early-mid 1930's in the U.S. - AND - these toxoid vaccines contained ethylmercury in the thimerosal mixture, having the brand name Merthiolate, as you have written.

Thus, from your book, it seems ALL these toxoid vaccines put into public use contained ethlymercury, and so began the "age of autism" directly caused by the ethylmercury as your book reveals. Unlike this new paper recording the high mortality of vaccinated babies in Guinea-Bissau who quickly died from non-diphtheria cause(s), there doesn't seem to be any parallel of the U.S. recording back in the 1930's of likely similar non-diphtheria, toxoid-vaccine-caused deaths. Without honest surveillance for such an increase of non-diphtheria deaths (and similar such surveillance for all the other vaccines foisted upon the public) the public has surely been "led down the garden path" to the massive vaccine carnage being presently inflicted.

John Stone


One may conjecture. I think most people were/are in denial and doing their job.

Bob Moffit

@ John

"Saving children is not the purpose - I think for a lot of the participants employment was the purpose"

I hope you are right ... "employment" was the purpose ... not .. "population control" .. an agenda this particular vaccine seems to have worked rather well on.


This study is of the utmost importance as there is chatter amongst those in the medical industrial complex to bring back the whole cell DTP vaccine to replace the ineffective DTaP vaccine given to babies in the US. The current, sporadic outbreaks of pertussis in the US are allegedly driving these thoughts and potential, future recommendations for our population.

John Stone

This is a horrible, horrible product. They have always known. Saving children is not the purpose - I think for a lot of the participants employment was the purpose.

Bob Moffit



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