Lyme disease vaccine/treatment resistant to Lyme D
Date: 06/19/2000 
Vaccinations in the news!!!

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Pennsylvania Lawsuit Says SmithKline Hid Arthritic Lyme Vaccine Consequences

WEST CHESTER, Pa. -- A class action lawsuit filed Dec. 14 in
Pennsylvania claims the vaccine developed to prevent Lyme disease causes an incurable form of autoimmune arthritis and, for some, could produce symptoms far worse than those brought on by the illness.

The complaint, filed in the Chester County Court of Common Pleas, alleges SmithKline Beecham, manufacturer of LYMErix, failed to warn doctors and the general public that nearly 30 percent of the population is predisposed to a degenerative autoimmune syndrome which is triggered by contents of the inoculation.

"Once this autoimmune reaction is triggered, it cannot be cured and can only be treated symptomatically for the remainder of the vaccine recipient's life," the complaint says.

(Complaint. Mealey's Document #28-991217-101.)

According to the class action, SmithKline used high concentrations of a surface protein called OspA as the foundation for its vaccine. When bitten by a Lyme-infected parasite, humans are not exposed to OspA protein. The levels of OspA that enter the blood stream at any phase of the three-dose LYMErix vaccine, however, place patients classified by genetic type HLA-DR4+ at risk of developing a condition referred to as
"treatment-resistant" Lyme arthritis, the lawsuit says