Drugwatch.com is reporting that Merck’s shingles vaccine, Zostavax, is facing several lawsuits for causing shingles, the very thing the vaccine is supposed to protect against.

Eighteen people from across the country filed one of the first Zostavax lawsuits in New Jersey.

The lawsuit alleges the vaccine caused people to develop shingles. The outbreak led to hospitalization and chronic nerve pain called post-herpetic neuralgia.

“Merck knew or should have known that its product caused viral infection and was therefore not safe,” the suit said.

Jane Boda filed one of the early lawsuits in Wisconsin in May 2018. The lawsuit claims Zostavax gave Boda shingles. She says she suffered chronic nerve damage as a result. (Source.)

Sales for Zostavax have plummeted in the first quarter of 2018:

In the first quarter of 2018, Merck reported Zostavax made $65 million. The figure is 58 percent less than it made in the first quarter of 2017.

The number of Zostavax prescriptions also fell by 80 percent in the first quarter of 2018.

The decline in sales continued into the second quarter of 2018. Zostavax’s sales sank to $44 million. (Source.)

Merck is blaming the poor sales on the CDC’s decision to recommend its competitor’s shingles vaccine, GlaxoSmithKline’s Shingrix, and not the lawsuits.

Dangerous Shingles Vaccine a Result of Failed Chickenpox Vaccine

Earlier this week (August 2018), we published an article on the development of the varicella zoster (chickenpox) vaccine, written by Barbara Loe Fisher and Kate Raines.

They reported how a whistleblower revealed that the CDC had manipulated data about shingles in the development of the chickenpox vaccine.

Gary S. Goldman, PhD served for eight years (from January, 1995 until his resignation in October of 2002) as Research Analyst for the Varicella Active Surveillance Project (VASP) in a cooperative project with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, Atlanta, GA).

Goldman was hired to conduct studies on the impact of the Universal Chickenpox Vaccine.

When Dr. Goldman was prevented from publishing findings about the negative effects of universal use of varicella zoster vaccination by children, he resigned in 2002.

In his resignation letter, he stated,

When research data concerning a vaccine used in human populations is being suppressed and/or misrepresented, this is very disturbing and goes against all scientific norms and compromises professional ethics.

In 2005, Dr. Goldman published a paper giving evidence for the fact that shingles is suppressed naturally in human populations by repeated exposure to natural chickenpox, which provides protective asymptomatic boosting.

He predicted that widespread chickenpox vaccination would lead to a loss of natural immunity and a spike in the incidence of shingles among adults.

He noted that the pharmacological industry’s expectation was to offset the decrease in circulating chickenpox by vaccinating against shingles, Dr. Goldman said,

Using a shingles vaccine to control shingles epidemics in adults would likely fail because adult vaccination programs have rarely proved successful…There appears to be no way to avoid a mass epidemic of shingles lasting as long as several generations among adults.

Therefore, what we have in the case of these dangerous shingles vaccines is that one bad, and unnecessary vaccine, the chickenpox vaccine, has resulted in negative consequences leading to the development of another dangerous vaccine, the shingles vaccine.

Neither of these vaccines are necessary if an unvaccinated child contracts chickenpox, and develops life-long immunity.

The population suffers, while the vaccine industry profits.

While pharmaceutical companies have legal immunity in the U.S. from injuries and deaths caused by vaccines, they can be sued for fraud or concealing known side effects when the vaccine is developed, which is apparently the basis for the shingles lawsuits against Merck.