Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System

Welcome to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) Web site.
The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System is a cooperative program for vaccine safety of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). VAERS is a post-marketing safety surveillance program, collecting information about adverse events (possible side effects) that occur after the administration of US licensed vaccines.
This Web site provides a nationwide mechanism by which adverse events following immunization (AEFI) may be reported, analyzed and made available to the public. The VAERS Web site also provides a vehicle for disseminating vaccine safety-related information to parents/guardians, healthcare providers, vaccine manufacturers, state vaccine programs and other constituencies.

Because of a recent posting on a study concerning aluminum hydroxide I started looking at some information I had found previously. I found the following statement which was released by the FDA and can be found in its entirety here

Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis
Two comments to the docket reported amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) following administration of AVA. This brings to a total of three patient reports to VAERS of a diagnosis of ALS following administration of AVA. The reports involved 1 female and 2 males, ages 27, 44, or 50 years old. Initial symptoms and interval relative to vaccination were reported as follows. One patient had right hand twitching l-2 months after her third dose of anthrax vaccine, and right upper extremity weakness approximately 1 month after her fourth dose. Another patient had an episode of being unable to stand after falling 3 days after his first dose of anthrax vaccine, and inability to stand on tiptoes. The third patient developed diarrhea, headaches, memory loss, low back pain, and foot drop, with symptoms beginning the same Spring as his fourth dose of anthrax vaccine. He developed bilateral lower extremity weakness approximately 22 months after his fourth dose. In these 3 ALS reports, the onset interval between vaccination and signs attributable to ALS varied or is difficult to assess. Also, the number of doses prior to onset varied. The reporting rate for ALS, based on 3 reports from approximately 1.3 million persons vaccinated with 5.3 million doses, is 0.23 per 100,000 persons or 0.057 per 100,000 doses. Estimates of the annual background incidence of ALS vary from 0.6 to 2.4 per 100,000 persons (J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 1992;55: 1106-l 115 .). The incidence among Gulf War veterans has been reported as 0.43 per 100,000 persons per year and varied by deployment status (Neurology 2003;61:742-749). Background incidence rates per year are useful, but the optimal comparison period is not known and may be less than a year such as weeks or months. Considering all these factors and uncertainties, these reports of ALS do not provide significant support for causality by the anthrax vaccine.

I know for a fact that my data was not included in the database because I didn't know I needed to submit it until recently. I would have to believe this applies to veterans mostly but if anyone has been vaccinated with an immunization containing aluminum hydroxide such as anthrax, hepatitis A or B, diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, polio, meningitis, typhoid, Lyme, small pox please enter your data. This data was used in part to allow the mandatory Anthrax Vaccination Immunization Program to be reinstated in February 2007.

The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) webpage can be found here.

The online data reporting form can be found here.

I filed my report yesterday and today I received a call from VAERS requesting additional information and telling me that a researcher has been assigned to my report and will be investigating further. They also wanted to contact my neurologist. For all I know this could be normal procedure but I kind of doubt it.
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