Vaccine safety is often discussed on the basis "is this vaccine safe"? But we never, ever ask if there alternatives to vaccines that are safer? It is time we did so.
The Chikungunya vaccine, Ixchiq, is in the news - although only if you look very, very closely at what is happening in the world of health! It has been effectively banned by the USA drug regulator, the FDA.
Vaccine safety is an important issue, and although this article concerns the saga of the withdrawal of Ixchiq, it concerns the safety of all vaccines, and whether drug regulators around the world are protecting us, and our children, from harm. So whenever ‘Chikungunya’ is mentioned, please feel free to substitute it with any other virus for which there is a vaccine - measles, mumps, rubella, pertussin, diphtheria, tetanus, and a whole multitutde of others.
First, I want to endorse everything Meryl wrote in her recent CHAOS article on Substack about the Chikungunya vaccine. She reports that the USA drug regulator, the FDA, has pulled the licence for Ixchiq, a live attenuated vaccine for the disease. This follows 21 hospitalisations, and three deaths linked to it. Better late than never, she says! Finally the drug regulator in the USA is seeking to protect people from dangerous pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines - which is the primary role of all drug regulators around the world.
But could and should more be done?
The Chikungunya Vaccines Saga
Not many people will have heard about the Chikungunya virus, or that there was a vaccine that was purported to prevent it! Chikungunya is a mosquito-borne virus characterised by fever and joint pain. It is rarely a serious illness, and most people who contract it recover within a week.
The primary role of drug regulators is protect us, and our children, from dangerous pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines. They should be doing this not just for vaccines, but every drug and vaccines that the pharmaceutical industry wants to sell us.
So to the saga we have just witnessed.
The Ixchiq vaccine received FDA approval for use in the USA on 9th November 2023. Presumably they were assured that the vaccine was “safe and effective”. Indeed, the approval was done under FDA’s Accelerated Approval pathway which allows the agency to approve drugs or vaccines for serious or life-threatening conditions more quickly. Chikungunya is not serious of life-threatening, but the FDA was said to have reviewed data showing that “the vaccine triggered a strong immune response in clinical trials”.
Barely 18 months later the same drug regulator halted the use of the same vaccine (although only for those over 60 years old) after reports of two deaths, as reported here by ‘The Vaccine Reaction’.
“On May 9, 2025, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended a temporary pause in the use of Ixchiq, a live virus vaccine designed to prevent chikungunya virus infection, in adults aged 60 years and older. The recommendation follows reports of serious post-marketing adverse events, including neurological and cardiac complications, in individuals within this age group who received the vaccine”.
A Medscape article in May 2025 confirmed the ‘pause’ in the use of Ixchiq after reports of “serious neurologic, cardiac, and other adverse events in vaccine recipients is ongoing, according to a safety communication issued jointly by the USA’s FDA and US CDC”.
However, in July 2025 Medscape announced that the restriction (imposed in May) had been lifted; but with warnings about “potential dangers”.
Then, just a few days before writing this, in late August 2025, the vaccine was banned following more ‘adverse vaccine reactions’. So let me summarise the saga.
A vaccine for a minor virus received ‘fast track’ approval meant only for serious viruses. The FDA must have been deemed to be “safe”. Yet within 18 months they found to be ‘unsafe’. Then, two months later, they found it to be safe (with reservations) again. And barely one month after this the vaccine was banned.
Does this fill you with confidence that we are being properly protected by our national drug regulators - not just in the USA but throughout the world?
But what about alternative medical treatment for Chikungunya? For example, does homeopathy have treatment which is more effective and safer than vaccination? As the magazine What Doctors Don’t Tell (WDDTY) pointed out recently, vaccines may be considered by conventional medicine to be “standard” for preventing disease, but there is credible evidence that supports homeopathy - and its superior safety profile.
“In 2006 a group of Indian doctors distributed a homeopathic preventive remedy for mosquito-borne viral disease chikungunya to 1,061 people. Only 17% who took remedy contracted disease (with usually milder symptoms. 73% of unprotected contracted it. There were no reported side effects from the H treatment”.
When I practiced as a homeopath, and a parent asked me about alternatives to vaccination for their children, I always reached for “A handbook of Homeopathic Alternatives to Immunisation” by Susan Curtis. It was published in 1994, ISBN 1 874581 02 9. It does not have a chapter on Chikungunya! But it had brilliant chapters on Cholera, Diphtheria, Hepatitis, Influenza, Malaria, Measles, Meningitis, Mumps, Polio, Rubella, Tetanus, Tuberculosis, Typhoid, Whooping Cough (Pertussin) and Yellow Fever.
No drug regulator is aware of these safer and more effective alternatives to vaccination. Indeed, the entire Conventional Medical Establishment, beholden as it is to pharmaceutical drugs/vaccines, will not tell us about them, and unfortunately that includes our doctors, our hospitals, our mainstream media, and government.
But people, especially parents, do need to know about this - so that they are able to make an informed decision about protecting themselves, and their children, from illness. Once they are aware it can be revelatory, removing most of the fear of the disease (which is simply treated), and giving reassurance that these are treatable illnesses which can be safely and effectively treated.
