Cheers
NN

Marisa,
Nobody here is claiming that vaccines are 100% safe (nor are they 100% effective). In fact it is the knowledge that they are not safe and effective for everyone that makes it more important for the rest of us to get vaccinated. This creates an effect called herd immunity. If I am not carrying the virus then I cannot transmit it to the unprotected. The vast majority of flu vaccines (perhaps all of them?) are grown in an egg medium, so people with egg allergies cannot receive them. A small percentage of children don’t build an immunity to the diseases against which they have been vaccinated. Each disease has a different threshold for herd immunity, so when the population stops getting vaccinated those with the highest threshold start to infect people first.

Dr. Sonnenberg, PAFP President-elect, on getting the flu shot:
“Inflenza is the 8th leading cause of death in the United States. More common than breast cancer. Unfortunately, we don’t have a vaccine for breast cancer.”

What’s the source for the figure of “over $2 billion…over the past two decades”? My source says the figure is less than $850 million.

More importantly:

1. No competent proponents of vaccines say they are perfectly safe – every medical intervention is risky to some extent. But the risk from vaccinations is generally around 1000 times less than the risk from the disease. While every death or serious injury from vaccines is a tragedy, I think it’s a risk worth taking in comparison with the risk from the diseases they protect against.

2. Since 1988, my figures suggest that fewer than 1000 claims were successful. Now consider how many vaccines would have been administered in this time – my guess is potentially over 1,000,000,000 (for a population of around 300 million, I’m guessing around 5 million births a year, for 20 years, with ten vaccinations each; then add in vaccinations given to older children and adults). Comparing 1000 payouts against 1 billion vaccinations, and that suggests that vaccinations are incredibly safe.

“And why does the CDC sponsor a Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System…”

Do you not know?

How about this quote from Wikipedia: “…a way for physicians and researchers to identify possible unforeseen reactions or side effects of vaccination for further study.”

Marisa said: “…on which the CDC itself acknowledges that only a small fraction of cases are actually reported?”

Reference please.

I note the same Wikipedia page says: “…VAERS has several limitations, including underreporting, unverified reports, inconsistent data quality, absence of a control group that is not vaccinated, and inadequate data about the number of people vaccinated.”

To me unverified reports are just as much a problem as underreporting. Particularly if it’s true that most reports to VAERS are being made by personal injury lawyers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine_Adverse_Event_Reporting_System#Use_in_research_and_litigation)

We can just ignore The Master – he or she is just a conspiracy theorist who doesn’t have the capacity to see the illogicality of their own argument. [ie - "I don't believe anything or trust any study, but look at this film and it's conclusive proof"] It’s pretty obvious from his/her posts that he/she subscribes to a range of whacko conspiracy theorists and arguing with this type is an exercise in futility.

But when I see a post like Marissa’s [4] I just despair. We have seen here a structured argument over several weeks in which some of the nonsense being pedalled by anti-vaxers has been systematically demolished. And still after all that evidence Marisa comes up with this.

Thank you for taking the time to respond to these comments. I hope the people who wrote them take the time to read them.

Cheers

Peter B

I BELIEVE in one thing I consider paramount, the body “knows more” about healing itself than modern medicine.

And what is the basis for this belief?

Some magic sky fairy?

Your “feelings”?

Or what?

BTW, what is wrong with questioning the validity of data from sources who have a vested interest in the out come?

In principle, nothing.

However, with respect to the pharmaceuticals industry, it is the most tightly-regulated industry on the planet. Any scepticism must be considered in light of the regulatory environment in which the industry operates. And it is in every Pharma company’s interest that the public can see the regulations working, because without faith in the regulatory agencies, the industry collapses and you’ll get a widespread resurgence of formerly-banished diseases.

Every couple of years, the site at which I work is inspected separately by both the FDA and the MHRA (the UK counterpart to the drugs arm of the FDA). We can also be inspected by the EMEA (the pan-European equivalent of the MHRA) if they so choose. If, at any point, an inspector sees something (s)he does not like, that inspector has the authority to shut us down immediately.

Good! Fortunately this is precisely how science works, none of us trust any scientific study. Never trust just one study, or even a handful of studies. What one must take into account is the total body of evidence.

This is a good point – I missed this side of “The Master”‘s comment first time I read it.

This is what the Cochrane Institute is all about.