Betrayed by those who promised to help – vaccine volunteer Brianne Dressen [05/12/24]

LAST month we published Brianne Dressen’s story. Today, the mother of two, disabled in AstraZeneca’s US covid vaccine trial, recounts her personal experience of the American health system’s failure to help her despite promising they would. The book, Worth A Shot? Secrets of the Clinical Trial Participant Who Inspired a Global Movement – Brianne Dressen’s Story by Caroline Pover, has more details. All proceeds go UKCVFamily and React19, charities supporting the vaccine injured and bereaved.

WHEN thousands of covid vaccine-injured US citizens reached out to their health system for help, they expected an urgent co-ordinated effort to support them. What happened was a double cover-up. While regulatory bodies hid damning trial data, they simultaneously played cat and mouse with victims, dismissing their disabling health issues as psychological.

Desperately unwell and in need of medical support, the injured sent individual pleas and a detailed science-based petition written by a Doctor of Chemistry headlined ‘PLEASE HELP US’. The White House and regulatory bodies got copies; all had publicly claimed they would address vaccination harm.

It was submitted shortly after Heidi Ferrer, a successful Californian screenwriter and mother to a disabled son, committed suicide in May 2021. Ms Ferrer, 50, best known for the TV series Dawson’s Creek, had long covid, recovered 75 per cent of her health, received the vaccine and crashed, left with 15 per cent function of her normal capacity. Her husband Nick Guthe, who described his wife as ‘sunshine in a dress’, left her alone for just five minutes. Not wanting to burden her family further, she took her own life. This was despite reassurances that the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) were about to start studying hundreds of vaccine victims. In a cruel irony, the NIH, the primary agency in the US for biomedical and public health analysis, took Ms Ferrer’s body parts for research.

The professional petition was based on hundreds of emails sent to Brianne Dressen, a vaccine-injured preschool teacher who set up React19, a charity for the vaccine-injured and bereaved which has 36,000 members. Her husband Dr Brian Dressen (chemistry PhD) wrote it, and Dr Danice Hertz, a retired vaccine injured gastroenterologist from Los Angeles, edited it.

Often in tears, Mrs Dressen read hundreds of emails as people who had ‘done the right thing’, described their myriad vaccine-induced health issues. They were scared and alone with no help. One said: ‘I feel as though my time is running out.’ Another said: ‘It has been six months with no end in sight.’

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) responsible for public health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) who decide public health policies, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) who record adverse drug events submitted by healthcare professionals and the public, and the White House, received copies. Only the FDA responded but did nothing.

Dr Avindra Nath, director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) at the NIH, was co-ordinating a hands-on vaccine injured study. Mrs Dressen said he and his staff personally met hundreds of citizens with severe adverse reactions at their fortified headquarters in Maryland, flying them in at a rate of two people per week.

She was number one participant and trusted the NIH to take care of them. Dr Nath gave the impression that he and his colleagues were going way beyond their job descriptions. Mrs Dressen said: ‘Dr Nath was so kind and would make so much time for us, even making the effort to talk to us on Sundays. He was soft-spoken, and his voice felt like a rare source of comfort coming from someone who represented the government. He always signed his emails “Avi” rather than using his full name or title.’

She met him in June 2021, eight months after she developed debilitating paraesthesia in AstraZeneca’s vaccine trial. Keen to help, the NIH paid for Dr and Mrs Dressen to fly four-and-a-half hours to their facility. They provided them with accommodation in a nearby hotel for a week, and transport to and from the NIH where a different set of tests were conducted daily. Tests confirmed Mrs Dressen had nerve damage to her leg, memory loss, and issues with her autonomic nervous system that explained the problems affecting her digestive, urinary, circulatory and cardiovascular systems. The NIH diagnosed her with ‘post vaccine neuropathy’, not a psychological condition, and agreed that intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) was the best treatment. IVIG treats autoimmune and inflammatory conditions with antibodies derived from healthy plasma. It is almost impossible to access in the UK because of cost.

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