Diphtheria

As usual, the info is mostly gathered from Vaccine Saftey Manual For Concerned Families and Health Practitioners

Diphtheria is the "D" part of the DTaP or DT vaccination.

So what is Diphtheria? It's a contagious bacterial disease of the upper respiratory system.

How do you get it? Like a cold...it spreads through coughing and sneezing.

What are the symptoms? A few days after you contract Diphtheria you will have a sore throat, headache, coughing, fever, swollen lymph nodes in the neck. As the days go on you'll get a thick membrane that forms in the throat which can interfere with swallowing and breathing.

Is it treatable? Yes, with antibiotics.

Is it common? On average, in the USA, there is about 1 case during an entire year.

Side effects (taken straight from the CDC):
Mild Problems (Common): fever (1 in 4 children), sometimes the 4th or 5th dose of DTaP vaccine is
followed by swelling of the entire arm or leg in which the shot was given, lasting 1-7 days (up to about 1
child in 30), fussiness (1 in 3 children), tiredness or poor appetite (1 in 10 children), vomiting (1 in 50 children)
Moderate Problems (Uncommon): seizure (jerking or staring; 1 out of 14,000 children), non-stop crying, for 3 hours or more (1 out of 1,000 children), high fever, over 105 (1 out of 16,000 children)
Severe Problems (Very Rare): serious allergic reaction (less than 1 out of a million
doses), Several other severe problems have been reported
after DTaP vaccine, they include: long-term seizures, coma, lowered consciousness, and permanent brain damage.

Details:
I could sit here and talk about everything I read about the vaccination from the time it came out until now, but we'd be here awhile. Just know that death rates were higher in the vaccinated people, doctors were not for this vaccination (due to so many people dying within the hour after getting it), and in countries that where this vaccination was required the death rates were thousands more than in countries that didn't require it (for instance one country had 50 unvaccinated people, while another country required the vaccine and saw over 14,000 deaths).

Some more recent studies (from 1969 and on) have shown the following:
- The 1969 outbreak in Chicago, IL reported that 38% of the people who were part of the outbreak had received the entire vaccination series and showed "serological evidence of full immunity." Over "50% of the cases had been partially or completely vaccinated prior to contracting the disease." Another outbreak showed that 14 of the 23 people who were infected had been fully vaccinated.

- In 1975 the FDA stated that the vaccination is not as effective as they thought it would be and that permanent immunity is "open to question."

- In the mid 1990's the British Medical Journal stated that the diphtheria booster vaccination for adults "is insufficient to obtain adequate protection."

- In 1999 the FDA announced that the diphtheria vaccinations that were being given to children in 1998 were "too weak to protect against diphtheria." Since diphtheria is so rare in the USA it wasn't recommended that new vaccinations be given to the children who received that worthless ones.

Do with this information what you would like. No where in my reading have I found that they never made any improvements to the diphtheria vaccination to try and make it more effective.