I truly value the thoughts and contributions of Dr. Offit. I had a father and an uncle who were both stricken by Polio. My uncle while in basic training whose dream was farming, he lived a life of contribution in spite of permanent loss of control of his left arm, shoulders, right arm above his elbow & sometimes needing a brace for walking, he eventually died from Polio complications and side effects after he had retired. My father went from amateur wrestling, body training. life guard, & daily water sking to being unable to pull the boat back up on the trailer. Science contributes significantly to winning for humanity. Conspiracy theories and self-promotion by charlatans drags humanity backwards by generations. Self proclaimed social media Phds. are not what we need, show me the credentials first. My cause today is putting an end to "medical malmanagement" by corporations and systems whose biggest motivator is a stronger bottom line or management bonuses. Great healthcare professionals and their staff are failed miserably by medical malmanagement. I know, vision loss, permanent heart damage, etc. from multiple occurrences of this scourge on humanity and the medical profession. The total cost is incalculable.
Excellent contribution! Medicine is in dire straits with this administration. We need to speak up about the outrageous charlatans who are further damaging our already fragile health care system.
I agree that we "need to speak up about the outrageous charlatans ..." "Public health relies on trust, honesty and transparency. When influential experts make false claims, and networks fail to scrutinise them, the public is misled.”
That's a quote from Maryanne Demasi's new Substack post, “EXCLUSIVE: Internal documents show Paul Offit made false claims on CNN --Newly obtained emails contradict key claims made by the high-profile vaccine commentator.” https://blog.maryannedemasi.com/p/exclusive-internal-documents-show
The confusion and inaccuracies rampant in medical billing is exacerbated by the under-qualified RFKjr and his minions in the nearly morbid health care system .
Thank you. I'm dealing with one of our local healthcare systems that can't even get billing straight. Send me a bill, send me a refund for over payment, send me a new bill matching the refund amount. The bill is in nothing but medical coding jibberish understandable to very few including the Doctor's own office staff. My personal medical history suggests to me that much of the medical care field is simply busy tripping over it's own bureaucracy. I include insurance companies in this collage. Too many people with an expertise in spreadsheets and Power Point but, near zero knowledge of actual patient care or communication. Add in HIPPA panicked lawyers and the doctors in our life are too encumbered by this collage of bureaucracy to focus on their work.
The problem is not the fault of Democrats in Congress but the bureaucracy of the various governmental entities with their "hands in the pot" of money that fuels the practice of medicine in the US.
I at least partially agree. We definitely have a system with a "pot of money" issue. I can't begin to tell you how many "maxims" I heard working on my MBA. I think nearly every single maxim somehow has its polar opposite. Two of my favorites:
a) you can't improve what you don't measure
b) be careful what you measure because you just might get it
If you know anyone who works in the medical field, ask that person if the topic of "billable minutes" is still among the top items discussed in meetings.
Plain old fashioned greed seems to be an inescapable human curse. I'm not sure how many bureaucrats have thought much about how to measure their own contribution rather than the contribution of others. It isn't just government and politics that is over burdened with measuring the performance of "others", . I sometime refer to it as "management by MBA" which seems to be a wide spread fad in our business environment today.
I'd ask the 4 medical doctors I see more often than annually but they don't have the time to explain "billable minutes" because discussing it wouldn't count as considered billable minutes. So much for that option!
Spot on. My wife and I actually received that in a lecture at the start of her most recent appointment. If we asked questions about anything more than was on the "annual" we needed to be prepared to pay. I submitted feedback about my issues to the organization about 1-week ago. My deadline for a response is fast approaching. I'm like a grandfather clock, I wind slowly but, like Trent I can make one hell of a racket. Medical malmanagement is real, it is very similar to the death of manufacturing in the US. Widespread systemic problems are management problems, not people problems. Thanks for participating in my rant.
Dr. Offit, thanks for this post. I remember all of this, as I have been a pediatric nurse and then a nurse practitioner since 1982. I worked in the St. Chris ED in 1990 during the measles outbreak. The sickest kids (as a group) I ever saw. Real heartbreakers. Even for me, a seasoned Peds/neonatal ICU nurse. Thanks for laying out this history of hep b. It is easy to contract, and many times in my career, I have taken care of people who didn't know a member of the family had an infectious disease (think Hep B or C or HIV) until they tested positive. Someone who says, "I know I'm negative for Hep B," knows that this was true-ish (tests are not perfect) on the day of the test. Hep B is so easy to contract (easier than HIV) that household items can be contaminated. Think other adults in the home, toothbrushes, razors (did I pick up mine or someone elses?). The suffering of little kids/families from Hep B is real and far from public view. The most vulnerable among us continue to need our protection.
When I first see Dr. Offit's newletter, at first I think, "I don't have the time to read it"" But then I always realize it's worth my time. He's the ideal link to the real world of science, medicine and best pratices. And I'm always glad I took the time.
"Then they crossed a line, arguing that babies born to mothers who were not infected with hepatitis B virus didn’t need a vaccine."- Paul's ethnocentricity is showing- a short list of the nations that don’t recommend this intervention includes: Austria; Bahamas; Belgium; Canada; Denmark; Finland; France; Italy; Germany; Ireland; Switzerland; Iceland; Greece; Japan; United Kingdom; and many more. Oddly, there is no RFK, Jr. running public health in those places- just "experts."
"In 1991, the CDC further expanded its birth dose to all U.S. newborns." Right. As the NYT reported, it was a controversial decision because for the first time, kids were given a shot to protect adults. The at risk adults, it turns out, didn't want to buy the stinkin's shot, so "science" said jam it into the kids instead.
"The source of infection could be shared towels, washcloths, nail clippers, toothbrushes or even partially eaten food or candies." Not even Paul believes this fantastic tripe, but he mouths it anyway. It's gruesomely satisfying to watch him self immolate his own credibility. When this trope fails, it will be the boogeyman under the bed bringin' in the hep B. Or measles. Or whatever vaccine needs a sales boost.
Paul is done. At one time, years ago, one could believe he was passionately and ignorantly doing what he felt was right. He is now exposed as a crazed, deluded, pecuniary nitwit. Too bad, Paul- we hardly knew ye.
Josh, comparing the United States to those other countries makes almost no sense. Here are the populations of the nations you have listed:
Austria: 9.178 million
Bahamas: 401,283
Belgium: 11.88 million
Canada: 41.29 million
Denmark: 5.977 million
Finland: 5.637 million
France: 68.52 million
Italy: 58.99 million
Germany: 83.51 million
Ireland: 5.38 million
Switzerland: 9.034 million
Iceland: 404,610
Greece: 10.39 million
Japan: 124 million
UK: 69.23 million
If you do the math, adding ALL the nations together in your list, you get 509,458,893. The US population ALONE stands at 340.1 million. You're talking about nations whose populations, and thus incidence of circulating amounts of HBV, are lower than the United States by itself. What works in one nation doesn't work in all nations. There is a false equivalence created in these discussions when we say, "Well, what works for the 404,610 people from ALL of Iceland will work for the 340.1 million people in the US." We have cities that have more people than that entire nation.
Further, if you look at prevalence rates for HBV in these other nations, they're quite a bit lower than they are in the US. Compare France and the US for example:(https://data.who.int/dashboards/hepatitis/epidemiology?m49=250). According to their estimates, there are roughly 136,000 cases of known HBV infection in all of France. In the United States, there is an estimated 2.4 million people living with chronic HBV infection (https://www.hepb.org/what-is-hepatitis-b/what-is-hepb/facts-and-figures/). Thus, by raw numbers, you have a massive increased risk just living in the United States to be exposed to HBV than in France.
Further, our healthcare system is a patchwork quilt of public, private, and no insurance, and thus access to robust prenatal care is not always available or affordable. All of the nations you list have a social welfare network that greatly reduces the holes in coverage, affordability, and care (regardless of socioeconomic status). Thus, screening, vaccination, and treatment are more readily available in all the other countries than in the US. Also, they have lower HBV infection burdens.
So, again, your argument to compare multiple nation's health policy doesn't work well. There is WAY too much nuance in all of these nations (populations, access to healthcare, burden of HBV in the population, etc.) to make an equitable comparison of policy choices.
Drew, I do not doubt your statistics on other nation’s populations and health care systems. The problem is our current healthcare system is so dysfunctional and haphazard that we need to treat our infant population like herd animals like cattle and pigs. What RFK is trying to do (and the ACIP Committee he appointed) is encourage our population to be informed about medical issues and become healthier so that we don’t need to universally force vaccination on the entire population for diseases that infect or become severe for only subsets of our population. I remember when Rochelle Walensky said we needed everyone to take Covid boosters (instead of using and age and chronic disease burden approach like most European countries) because “we have such a sick population”. THAT IS THE PROBLEM that RFK, Robert Malone, Mart Makary, Vinay Prasad and others at HHS are trying to correct. They are using a nuanced approach that gives people information and leaves the final decision to them - not forced mandates. If it were not for vaccine mandates I doubt that vaccination would even be an issue.
The US before the vaccine had an incidence of less than one child in 100,000 between one and ten diagnosed with hep-B.
How many American women never see an allopathic doctor either during pregnancy or during childbirth? All who do, close to 100%, are tested for hep-B. Nearly all, like me, test negative. There is only risk, no benefit, in the children of healthy women getting the vaccine at birth. And that has nothing to do with demographics.
ACIP on Friday reasonably recommended that children born to hep-B positive women continue to get the vaccine and immuniglobulin at birth. They will otherwise probably die, so it is reasonable to accept the risk of the vaccine.
But the countries mentioned understand that it is criminal to give a dangerous vaccine to all children. It doesn’t matter if it is one million or ten million children. Asian children are at higher risk of contracting hep-B. Their parents must make the vaccine decision for them. But it is immoral to give the vaccine to all Caucasian children born to healthy mothers. My daughter reacted with vaccine encephalitis and autism to the hep-B vaccine, given without permission. She is extremely unhappy, longing to be typical, struggling to become typical and finally have friends and be accepted. But because of you and your colleagues, she was condemned at birth to lifelong suffering.
okay. so using data for other countries is no longer appropriate or applicable to the US. so when studies are used from other countries telling us that vaccines don’t cause autism we can ignore those studies!?
i don’t believe vaccines cause autism. i believe that pharmaceutical sales reps masquerading as doctors like pushing meds and misdiagnosing children. but let’s set that aside.
if what you say is now the standard and i am willing to agree then that means when you claim a vaccine is safe based on usage in a different population or a study was done proving efficacy like in israeli data, take say. we can’t use that as credible data
This comparison doesn't make sense though. Comparing the administration of a particular vaccine to a particular population (with different average health outcomes and different population size and wildly different healthcare systems, no less) is vastly different from comparing safety and efficacy studies. But what you can compare when it comes to safety and efficacy is different trials with similar sample sizes and methods. You cannot just say XYZ country says it's safe or unsafe. Risk is not even assessed the same in different countries. But it is assessed the same in high quality studies, which is why they are the gold standard. And when there's a lot of them, that all agree. THAT is what we must compare to to overturn that evidence.
if one study or country doesn’t compute and isn’t appropriate according to you, then neither is using that same data to report safety and or efficacy. you cannot have it both ways. if you get to use this data. i get to use the hep b vaccine causing multiple sclerosis in other countries because that’s what it does.
Nah bruh. You are missing the point. You are comparing apples to pianos. But you do you. It's not 'mental gymnastics' (but nice buzzword!). Read my reply again. You have missed the entire point while you try to dance around your faulty logic. You cannot compare the things you are trying to compare here. That's not how it works if you want a sound argument or comparison. THAT is the point. Also please cite your source for the MS claim. Would like to see that.
France took it off the schedule of vaccines required for school because the hep-B vaccine caused many cases of MS. But then Pharma got to it and told it to go back to forcing it on everyone. Who gives a damn about people with MS? N.B. I have MS from reactiobs to the pertussis vaccine. I never took the hep-B vaccine. The hep-B vaccine was forced on my daughter, and she has autism and bowel disease as a result. No one has the right to do this to anyone.
Well you can't have it both ways either....if you want to accept Denmark's vax schedule as magnificent, then you should also admire their studies showing MMR doesn't cause autism and that the vaccine schedule/aluminum is safe.
1) There are reasons like differences in population, population densities, prevalence of hepatitis B, health care systems, average health status, socio-economic status, and accessibility and affordability of health care why some countries have a birth dose of hepatitis B and others don't.
2) Therefore, we can ignore the scientific studies from those countries that demonstrate that vaccines do not cause autism.
i will say, there are times when i learn things from you. i do look up some of the things you say. especially when you’re wrong and i end up correcting you. you help me. you’re a hit dramatic what with all the “histrionics”.
Spare us your bullshit Mazer - about the more knowledgeable experts in UK, EU and Canada. They vaccinate for Hepatitis B at 2-months, 4-months, etc. You're just as vehemently against those regimens. You are a fraud, draped in religious sanctimony.
"a short list of the nations that don’t recommend this intervention includes: Austria; Bahamas; Belgium; Canada; Denmark; Finland; France; Italy; Germany; Ireland; Switzerland; Iceland; Greece; Japan; United Kingdom; and many more."
>a short list of the nations that don’t recommend this intervention includes
OK, but the US is far from alone in recommending Hepatitis B vaccine at birth regardless of infection (i.e. universal Hep B): here's a global visualization of all WHO member states HepB vaccination recommendation
Perhaps if the US had a better healthcare system (i.e. universal healthcare) we could have much more consistent prenatal screening for hepatitis B and therefore wouldn't need universal Hep B recommendation; the US could do a selective Hep B recommendation like those countries you've listed, many of which have much better healthcare systems than the US.
"OK, but the US is far from alone in recommending Hepatitis B vaccine at birth regardless of infection"- Paul is presenting the rational, evidence based decision- to forego universal at birth dose of hep B shot and instead still recommend within first six months- as some of voodoo doctor anti-science stupidity. It is not. He has a perseverative obsession to knock RFK, Jr. He exhibits an odd Munchausen by Proxy similar mental disorder with his frothing and irrational urges to be the hero who saves all kids from all diseases with medical interventions that make money for his patrons.
>"Paul is presenting the rational, evidence based decision- to forego universal at birth dose of hep B shot and instead still recommend within first six months- as some of voodoo doctor anti-science stupidity"
No, Offit didn't knock selective perinatal Hep B vaccination. What he did was explain (with evidence) why that policy (which RFK Jr.'s ACIP recently agreed to) didn't work in the US before and why it won't work now. Your prior argument was facile because it appealed to the fact that other developed western nations implemented selective perinatal Hep B vaccination without considering WHY those other nations decided as they did. Why do those nations have selective Hep B vaccination policies? Why did the US have a universal policy? What changed in the US with regard to Hep B that warranted the change from universal to selective? Are women being screened for Hep B more consistently? Has Hep B incidence among adults essentially cratered? I'm not aware of anything that has changed with public health. What did change is that ACIP is now filled with hand-picked anti-vaxxers and skeptics who don't know how to make informed and directionally unmotivated decisions but instead rely on preformed beliefs to drive their reasoning. That is anti-science.
"At one time, years ago, one could believe he [Dr. Offit] was passionately and ignorantly doing what he felt was right. He is now exposed as a crazed, deluded, pecuniary nitwit."
. . .
Yep, see Maryanne Demasi's new Substack post, “EXCLUSIVE: Internal documents show Paul Offit made false claims on CNN --Newly obtained emails contradict key claims made by the high-profile vaccine commentator.” https://blog.maryannedemasi.com/p/exclusive-internal-documents-show
No, Dr. Offit is not their god. But, he is a "Disciple" of their "High Priest" Dr. Stanley Plotkin. See Aaron Siri's discussion on pp. 32 -- 36 of his book "Vaccines, Amen" -- the Religion of Vaccines:
"... learned from Dr. Plotkin that when you make vaccine safety claims, no matter how ridiculous they are, you hold yourself out to be an impartial scientist ... [despite financial conflicts of interest] ... He is nonetheless regularly quoted and interviewed by news outlets as if he is an impartial voice on vaccine safety."
I look forward to Dr. Offit's commentaries, especially the damage that RFKjr shows is being done to America's health care system. Of all the many unqualified choices made by trump in filling important positions, RFKjr ranks number first place in my opinion.
I am a 70yr old family physician, rural Alabama. In my first week of clinics as a 3rd year student, I was helping remove sutures from a baby. The surgery resident I was working under said, “Let’s be really careful, because this baby has Hepatitis B.” But, eager to help, I put my hand where it did not belong and got stuck. This was 1982, before the Hep B vaccines were available. I was lucky and did not get infected with the virus, though the HBIg shot I was given made my ass hurt for days. A classmate of mine did get Hep B, however. Turned orange as a pumpkin. Scary. In those days, every medical school class experienced someone getting Hepatitis B. No one wants Hep B, especially if you a week old. I’ve encountered a number of patients who were walking around with viral hepatitis and had not known it. Nor where they got it from.
This should be a no-brainer. Vaccines make it safer for EVERYBODY. As a physician, it hard enough to convince patients to get vaccines. We do not to give people like RFK, Jr, a dangerous fool and a liar to boot, any authority or any platform to speak. He has already gotten folks killed — in Samoa, and in Texas.
Keep telling it like it is, doctor. I know it’s a hard row to hoe, but please keep on keepin’ on.
Thank God we finally have experts capable of thinking in terms of actual risk/reward instead of in terms of zero tolerance of any disease at any financial or vaccine side effect cost. It's horrible what the profit motive and inability to think about risks has done to out healthcare.
There will always be mentally rootless people living under rocks, believing themselves to be possessed of the truth, which contradicts the evil forces in power.
The real question now is whether the better metaphor is we have seen a wayward asteroid hit our country, with an ensuing dust cloud blocking the light--are we the dinosaurs, now watching the creep inheriting the earth?
One-sided concern. Like virtually all vaccine proponents, Dr. Offit is very, very concerned about problems caused by infectious diseases, but quick to dismiss any problems alleged to have resulted from vaccination. There are strong incentives - both carrots and sticks - for medical professionals and medical researchers to go along with vaccinating for everything, as many times as possible; this makes it hard to trust the experts. I have never witnessed a safety concern being brought up and the medical establishment showing appropriate concern - they always disparage the evidence and shoot the messenger. I also note that there is mounting evidence of serious risks involved with many vaccines, and mounting evidence that the healthiest children are those who are completely unvaccinated. Where there is risk, there must be choice.
I also wonder about the accuracy of Dr. Offit's numbers. I have seen conflicting numbers, indicating a much smaller risk from hepatitis B. I'll have to look into that more deeply.
Finally, there are particular problems with a vaccine given on the first day of life:
ACIP member Evelyn Griffin, MD, an obstetrician and gynecologist, emphasized the rush that surrounds delivery. The birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine is expected to be given between 12 to 24 hours after birth.
“Often, how logistically this ends up happening is, a woman comes to labor and delivery, is in the throes of contractions and pain, is given a stack of papers to sign,” Griffin said. “And this may ideally happen where informed consent occurs in the prenatal visits before, but often it is not discussed.”
Once the baby is born, the birth dose becomes part of a rapid succession of events immediately after delivery, Griffin said.
“A lot has to get accomplished within the first few hours after birth, and so I have spoken with many parents. They're just unaware,” she said. “Patients are unaware that their babies are getting a lot of different interventions in the first few hours of life. There's other interventions other than hepatitis B and often, and I will challenge the media, I'll challenge the public, you know, to ask themselves: Do you know what your baby got within the first few hours of delivery? And most people are shocked to hear what happened.”
There are times when parents want to opt out of the vaccine, but the newborn ends up getting injected in the rush of treatment, a violation of parental rights, Griffin said.
Show your evidence that " I also note that there is mounting evidence of serious risks involved with many vaccines, and mounting evidence that the healthiest children are those who are completely unvaccinated," and " Where there is risk, there must be choice," I say "Duh."
You say "ACIP member" like it still has any meaning. Offit (and most people) dismiss "problems alleged to have resulted from vaccination" because there is no evidence.
You exemplify exactly what I'm talking about. So, the massive anecdotal evidence - parents describing the regression of their child or children, often within minutes or hours of a battery of vaccines, and pediatricians admitting that their unvaccinated patients are far healthier than their vaccinated ones - carries no weight? The 10 or so studies finding that completely unvaccinated children are many times less likely to be plagued with certain chronic conditions (neurodevelopmental disorders, asthma, autoimmune diseases) are all so flawed that the massive effects they found are completely false? The many, many cases won in vaccine court, with billions of dollars paid out - none of those were legitimate vaccine injuries or deaths?
I think you're blinded to the reality of these problems.
I'm glad you expanded on the "mounting evidence" here because I was going to comment on the lack of it cited in your top comment.
Evidence has quality: it can be lower or higher quality. Anecdotal evidence (i.e. parents reporting observations of their children) is of the lowest quality. Expert opinion (when treated as evidence i.e. you treating pediatricians remarking on the health of their patients as evidence) is of the lowest quality. These "10 or so" studies on unvaccinated children might be higher quality, but no one here can know which studies you are referring to and whether they're quality or junk. Vaccine court cases are evidence of nothing except that vaccines have rare debilitating side effects and sufferers of those can get compensated for them.
That said, parents observing rapid developmental regression in their children IS worth something. It doesn't have a clear identifiable cause but rather is caused by a complex interplay of factors, so parents probably never receive a satisfactory explanation, hence why they turn to seductively simple explanations like vaccines. If vaccines were related to developmental disorders like autism, massive cohort studies conducted on multiple continents would have identified even a small relationship, but they didn't. The rate at which kids develop autism and the frequency with which those kids get vaccines within the same age range means some number of those kids will first show signs of autism that the parents observe (important note: parents can miss subtle signs) around the time they received a vaccine purely by coincidence. That said (warning: I am no expert), given the complexities of rapid developmental regression, I wouldn't be surprised if vaccination played SOME part that would have otherwise been played by something else like a random fever, febrile seizure, infection, etc. which would explain why there is no observed difference in development of autism between kids who get vaccinated and those who don't. In other words, no matter whether vaccines are related or not, withholding vaccines is not going to save any kids from rapid developmental regression.
Everyone - parents, scientists, activists all - should remember the fallacy that is so old it's typically said in Latin: Post hoc ergo propter hoc. That is the false assumption that because one thing occurred after something else the latter one was caused by the former one. Obviously, that is not correct.
It's a fallacy regardless of whether you're talking about vaccines and autism symptoms or revised diagnostic criteria for autism and the rate of diagnoses.
How can you know the true answer? At the population level, that's what epidemiology is for, although it has room for improvement. At the individual level it's nearly impossible.
I generally agree, but when the deterioration starts within minutes or hours of a vaccine (or several vaccines), and is dramatic, I think the vast majority of such cases will point to a vaccine injury.
Much of what you wrote is fair enough, but I see things a bit differently.
I think anecdotal evidence is often more reliable than government statistics or peer-reviewed studies. The drug companies have incredible influence over the journals, government regulatory agencies, the news media, the medical education system, how doctors practice medicine, and much more. They can make sure that only studies they favor get published (at least in the "top" journals) and stay published (i.e., don't get retracted). Also, peer reviewers only very rarely ever get to see underlying data. Certainly, studies can be "cooked," as William Thompson of the CDC claims occurred with an autism study (see Pediatrics, Feb. 2004, Vol. 113, Issue 2; lead author is DeStefano) he was part of, in which he says a 236% elevated risk (164% excluding low birth weight children) for the condition was seen in Black, male children who received the vaccine prior to 36 months of age; the troubling data was screened out (for the most part) by changing the inclusion criteria, and then statistical significance was lost. Problem solved.
If many pediatricians are saying that their unvaccinated patients are the healthiest ones, by far, it's unlikely that they are going to be mistaken. The unvaccinated children aren't going to beat the odds, over and over. Moreover, pediatricians have no incentive to say these sorts of things, given that it opens them up to attack by the hospitals, medical boards, media, etc.; if they're saying these things, it's because it's their honest opinion. Further, many, many parents these days document virtually every day of the children's lives with videos and photos, and there are many parents who can document a steep decline in a child's health within hours of a vaccine (or a battery of vaccines). It's possible that some of these tragedies are coincidences, but given the suddenness and extremeness of so many of these declines (combined with the incredibly tight temporal relationship) it is unlikely that they will unrelated to the shots. I'm no expert, but the genetic conditions I am aware of come on slowly, with gradual deterioration over a period of years.
Regarding Vaccine Court cases, I wouldn't be so quick to call them evidence of nothing. It is really hard to know, given the unknown magnitude of underreporting to VAERS, as well as the lack of awareness of the ability to get compensation in Vaccine Court, just how "rare" serious vaccine injuries really are. We know that there were 5,000 families lined up to try and receive compensation for autism they felt was related to the vaccines, when the Omnibus Autism Proceeding took place. For my part, it's hard to look at what happened with the 6 test cases (including use of testimony of a medical expert that had been superseded by a new opinion on the part of that expert, and settlement with the Poling family for a large amount) and have confidence that the Court's finding of "no established causal link" was merited.
I think a finding of "no observed difference" in autism rates between vaccinated and unvaccinated children is generally the result of rigged studies, or studies that don't observe children for a long enough period, post-vaccination (like the recent Zervos study that was leaked by Senator Ron Johnson).
Your point is well taken that there are conflicts of interest, undue influence, perverse incentives, etc. from industry that affect our government and institutions. There are safeguards against this in the scientific and peer review process, though they are not fool-proof and certainly they need iterative improvement over time. There are also researchers whose focus is this very problem.
With respect to pediatricians, they can speak to individual patients very well and and make general broad claims about patients seen in their practice, but the value of the latter is limited by human biases, hence why research studies have such strict methods related to data-gathering, analysis, etc. Evaluating the overall health of the patients in their practice comprehensively is something you can't vibe out like these pediatricians are supposedly doing. That naturally segues into other questions: are pediatricians actually claiming as you say they claim? Who are they and how were they surveyed? What did they specifically say? How did they draw their conclusions? I don't think anyone should assume pediatricians are saying this based on your word alone; you should offer proof. Because you (like all of us) are also subject to human biases.
With respect to parents, I doubt anyone would deny what they've observed in their children. As another commenter said, "post hoc ergo propter hoc": just because something "tightly" proceeds something else temporally does not mean one caused the other. The controlled studies we have provide a significant body of evidence that there is no causal relationship between the two (vaccines and developmental disorders like autism). How do we know the triggering factor for rapid developmental regression wasn't physical pain? Or emotional pain (e.g. crying)? Both of those typically come part and parcel with vaccines in young kids.
With respect to vaccine court and VAERS, we do have a pretty good idea of how rare these side effects are. There is undoubtedly underreporting, but we have little reason to think that these rare and serious side effects are significantly underreported because parents would be most likely to report those, right?
With respect to the Poling family, this case illustrates how complicated medicine really is. There is a reason medical doctors use a tool called "differential diagnosis": many diseases and disorders can resemble each other, and this tool helps narrow the possible suspects. In the case of Hannah Poling, it does look plausible that her condition (mitochondrial disorder) was triggered by her vaccination event, and her signs/symptoms resembled autism spectrum disorder. However, her father noted in the case study he published that she improved once she received regular vitamins and enzyme cofactors related to her mitochondrial disorder. That crucial piece of information is what distinguishes her case from autism spectrum disorder, which does not go away with vitamin supplements.
You can easily claim findings from studies on autism and vaccines that refute the various and ever-evolving anti-vaxx hypotheses were "rigged" or that the follow-up period wasn't long enough. But can you support your claims with evidence i.e. evidence that specific studies were "rigged" or had inadequate follow-up?
You previously accused someone of being blinded to reality, but I think you may be blind or bleary-eyed to the ways in which humans mold their own reasoning to reach conclusions they already believe in without realizing it, and then they tell themselves they're skeptics as part of their self-narrative; I suspect you're doing that here. If there were a large cohort study (millions of children) that found a relationship between vaccines and autism, I'd start to be convinced there was a relationship. What would it take to change your view?
With respect to Hannah Poling, perhaps her father was mistaken and her improvement was due to something other than the vitamins and enzyme cofactors. Anyhow, how do you explain the 3 McDowell triplets who all regressed into autism, starting on the same day in 2007 that they all got the PCV7 vaccine?
I can’t tell you which studies were rigged. In some cases it will never be known because the data will never be made available, or the crime was otherwise covered up. I can tell you that the recent Zervos study that didn’t have a significant result for autism, only followed each patient for about 3 years, so it missed the vast majority of cases, both in the vaccinated and unvaccinated cohorts. I’m hoping that the CDC will use the Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) data, which has 10 million or so children’s long-term medical records, can elucidate this question to some extent.
No doubt I am as prone to blinding and bias as the next person, but I will ask you this: where are the large-scale, retrospective studies suggesting that vaccinated children are healthier? When FOIA’d, the CDC couldn’t come up with ANY that vindicated the vaccines given in the first six months of life - DTaP, HepB, HiB, PCV13, and IPV - from causing autism.
Thanks, Ben, for taking the time to reply in such detail. Thanks also for recognizing that research unfortunately is influenced by more than simply good science.
Regarding William Thompson, he repeatedly said that he would testify before Congress, but none of our illustrious representatives would call him to do so. He did, however, provide his data to a Congressman, William Posey. Rep of Florida’s 8th District (2009-2025), and to activist Brian Hooker, who published a study of it in Translational Neurodegeneration (it was retracted, but it was for an undisclosed financial interest, not any flaws in the paper itself). Thompson has never disavowed his allegations. By the way, the Thompson scandal was not the same as the Simpsonwood scandal; the latter was about the Verstraeten paper on thimerosal and autism, not the DeStefano paper on MMR and autism.
Regarding the recollections of pediatricians, if they’re noticing a dramatic difference, it’s unlikely that they’ve got it all wrong. Moreover, it’s drilled into pediatricians that vaccines are “safe and effective,” so most of them are going to have an unconscious bias in that direction, not the other one. And if pediatrian after pediatrician is saying the same thing that is counter to their training, you can bet good money that it’s true. A recent meta-study by Hulscher & McCullough, et al found 12 studies that show dramatically better health for unvaccinated children vs. vaccinated children; they found zero that show significantly improved health for vaccinated children. Of course, all of these studies are disparaged as deeply flawed. Often, we’re lectured that the way to settle the matter is with a prospective RCT, but conveniently (for the drug lobby), such a study is seen as “unethical” because the control group would be unprotected from infectious diseases.
You doubt that VAERS is significantly underreported, but that’s what many studies have found, including the Lazarus study using Harvard Pilgrim data, which calculated that less than 1% of vaccine adverse events are reported (although it didn’t calculate the rate for serious adverse events. Unfortunately, while most pediatricians are aware of VAERS, many other doctors are unaware of it. Deborah Conrad, a Physician’s Assistant at a NY State hospital, said that when her hospital was flooded with apparent vaccine injuries in 2021, nobody in the entire hospital was updating VAERS, and apparently virtually none of them knew about VAERS until she discovered its existence while surfing online. Moreover, she found that it was a real pain to update VAERS, and she takes exception to statements such as “anyone can access it and type in whatever they wish.” She said in an interview that CDC personnel kept calling her back, wanting more information, and that a record didn’t get assigned a permanent number until a great deal of information was recorded. Ms. Conrad also said that, due to the cumbersomeness of VAERS and the fact that there was no enforcement of the obligation to record vaccine injuries, her colleagues quickly decided they weren’t going to bother. As a result, Ms. Conrad was spending her nights and her days off inputting the VAERS data on behalf of the other doctors. For this, she was harrassed by the administration (which she secretly recorded), for making the vaccines look bad and causing vaccine hesitancy. Ultimately, she was fired.
Jim, as both Ben and Alexander above have explained, untrained or even trained anecdote, is not highly reliable. Maybe a stack of anecdotal evidence gives us all pause and encourages us to look for correlation and causation, but the anecdote alone prove nothing. Anecdotal evidence should lead us to placebo controlled, double-blind studies and anecdotal evidence shouldn't substitute for controlled, proper research. For example, if you took a poll of people and asked them if their blood pressure was high, this would be anecdotal evidence. It does not incorporate any regulated testing, expert investigation, but simply asks people what they think or feel. In this case you've proven nothing.
Here's an example: I started my career in a large mental health and addictions community practice in a large US city. I completed a lot of intake assessments for new patients. Many, many, many of them walked in the door with a diagnosis of Schizoaffective Disorder. When I say many, I mean MANY. Anecdotally, I could argue that the county and city I worked in have a larger than normal proportion of this incredibly rare mental disorder. Or, the original diagnosis was incorrect. Or the actual diagnosis(es) were a combination of various other disorders or factors (effects of EtOH, street drugs, etc.). The "or's" in this story are what are called confounders of data. When you think you find a relationship (a correlation) you have to then excise any confounders of the data which better explain what's going on.
Confounders in research help to sus out the correlation vs. causation thing. And anecdotal evidence doesn't control for any of that. Anecdote is fancy word for "experience." Lived experience of people is important and shouldn't be completely discounted. However, to be prove direct links between two things, you have to be able to show that one thing leads to the other.
Alexander beautifully gives the example of post hoc, ergo propter hoc. Here's an example, "I drank a cup of coffee this morning and my left knee started to hurt." Anecdotally, I can argue that coffee causes left knee inflammation. To prove this, I would need rigorous studies of coffee consumption and left knee pain/problems. Simply relying on I did A and B resulted is not proper evidence of anything. It's like saying, "A butterfly flapped its wings in Cleveland and caused a typhoon in the South China Sea." You'd need to prove that; simply believing it doesn't make it true.
You also referred to VAERS data. VAERS is not a research database; anyone can access it and type in whatever they wish. VAERS relies on anecdotal evidence. Sometimes it works well: A lot of anecdotal reports of myocarditis post COVID vaccination led to further investigation in a controlled manner and did in fact find a correlation and causation which is now known and warned about. So, yes, anecdotal evidence shouldn't just be dismissed right away. But we cannot believe it gives us the same level and quality of evidence as further scientific investigation.
Also, to comment: "I think a finding of "no observed difference" in autism rates between vaccinated and unvaccinated children is generally the result of rigged studies, or studies that don't observe children for a long enough period, post-vaccination (like the recent Zervos study that was leaked by Senator Ron Johnson)." I cannot link them all here, but there have been literally hundreds of high quality studies completed on any supposed link between autism and vaccination (they've looked at specific vaccine formulas; the presence of thimerosal, etc.) and they have been completed in numerous countries and regions (Denmark, UK, US, Canada, Finland, Japan, pan-Asian) involving millions of individual children, siblings, and twins. They have all found the same thing: nothing; no connection between vaccines and autism. And these studies were in a variety of formats, some being longitudinal in nature (meaning they took place over a lengthy period of time). There is no relationship between autism and vaccines. If you're saying that scientists at multiple facilities in 6 countries and all of Southeast Asia are rigging their studies, I would like to see the evidence for that. Rigging studies would involve a conspiracy among thousands of study workers. You're telling me that every single one of those workers was involved in a big cover-up? And if that is true, not a single one of them has been able to speak up and share that fact?
Funny you should bring up the issue of “literally hundreds of high quality studies completed on any supposed link between autism and vaccination,” because Del Bigtree’s nonprofit, the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN), submitted FOIA requests to the CDC for “all studies relied upon by CDC to claim that [the vaccines given in the first six months of life - DTaP, HepB, HiB, PCV13 and IPV] do not cause autism.” It should have been easy, right? Yet, the CDC didn’t respond within the statutory 20 days, so ICAN had to take them to court. The CDC then produced a list of a mere 20 studies, only one of which was (partially) relevant to the request — a study of a potential autism connection with MMR, thimerosal, and DTaP (an IOM study from 2012 titled, “Adverse Effects of Vaccines: Evidence and Causality”; it found that the available evidence of a connection between DTaP and autism was “inadequate” to draw a conclusion one way or the other). Breakdown of the other 19 studies: 13 on thimerosal, 4 on MMR and thimerosal, 1 on MMR alone, 1 on antigen exposure. ICAN followed up this request with a FOIA asking for “any” studies (not just the ones relied upon when the agency decided to state “Vaccines do not cause autism” on its website) that the CDC is aware of that support its implicit assertion that the vaccines given in the first six months of life do not cause autism. The CDC provided the same list. So, perhaps you should bring this mountain of asian and other studies to the attention of the CDC. If you don’t mind, please provide me with, say, 3 of these studies so I can look at them.
With respect to the possibility of rigging studies, I don’t think it’s as hard as you claim. In the CDC study that William Thompson was part of, a small team with an alignment of interests (i.e., to absolve the MMR vaccine) played around with the data until they came up with a solution: tighten the selection criteria in a particular way, which happened to reduce the numbers and take the result (greater autism in Black, males who got the MMR jab before 36 months of age) out of significance. Then they made up a story of why this change in selection criteria should be made, and the rest of the team went along. Many, many researchers don’t want to rock the boat. It’s my understanding that, normally, a study should be carried out strictly according to the original study plan, for obvious reasons, but that in too many cases, this important rule is ignored when it is inconvenient to those running a study.
I am aware of confounders. Still, I think you are underestimating anecdotal evidence. If my pediatrician were to tell me that his unvaccinated patients were far healthier than his vaccinated ones, I would take that very seriously. For one thing, he would be putting his career in jeopardy by making statements like that, so I would feel that he must be very sure about it. I would be far more impressed if I was hearing the same thing from other pediatricians. In fact, I’ve heard more than a few pediatricians say that their unvaccinated patients were far and away their healthiest patients, and I’ve never, ever heard the reverse. Regarding parents, if they document that their child (or children, such as the McDowell triplets, all vaccinated on the same day in 2007 with PCV7) declined dramatically, minutes or hours after a vaccine appointment, ultimately descending into autism within hours, days, weeks or months, I’m going to be very, very wary of whatever vaccines their child received. I wouldn’t need to wait for a highly conflicted medical establishment to produce and publish a trustworthy study on the matter. By the way, all 3 McDowell children descended into autism after that shot. Unless they were exposed to a chemical spill on that same day, I’m going to assume that the problem was the PCV7 vaccine.
I mentioned VAERS in the context that serious adverse events often go unreported, because the parents don’t know about VAERS. In fact, many doctors don’t know about VAERS. Deborah Conrad, a Physician’s Assistant at a NY State hospital, said that when her hospital was flooded with apparent vaccine injuries in 2021, nobody in the entire hospital was updating VAERS, and apparently virtually none of them knew about it until she discovered its existence while surfing online. Moreover, she found that it was a real pain to update VAERS, and she takes exception to statements such as “anyone can access it and type in whatever they wish.” She said in an interview that CDC personnel kept calling her back, wanting more information, and that a record didn’t get assigned a permanent number until a great deal of information was recorded. Ms. Conrad also said that, due to the cumbersomeness of VAERS and the fact that there was no enforcement of the obligation to record vaccine injuries, her colleagues quickly decided they weren’t going to bother. As a result, Ms. Conrad was spending her nights and her days off inputting the VAERS data on behalf of the other doctors. For this, she was harrassed by the administration (which she secretly recorded), for making the vaccines look bad and causing vaccine hesitancy. Ultimately, she was fired. You say that VAERS isn’t a research tool, but shouldn’t it have been set up so it could be used as a research tool? Why not automate input or enforce input with stiff penalties for noncompliance? A study team working with Harvard Pilgrim data tried to automate VAERS, but when they filed a preliminary report to the CDC noting that adverse events are underreported by over 99% (unfortunately, they didn’t distinguish between reporting rates for serious adverse events versus overall), the CDC ghosted them and the study had to be shut down. If the medical establishment cares about vaccine safety and wants the public to have confidence in the vaccine program, why not come up with a quality safety monitoring system that can be used for research (rather than a vague, haphazard early warning system)?
Anecdote NEVER points to anything other than the need for RESEARCH. Period.
I have never seen ANY legitimate data that reflects the fact that unvaccinated children are healthier than unvaccinated children. Reference is continuously made to a notorious South Korean study that says no such thing, as well as a Danish study that, likewise, say no such thing. They are both duly cautious and scientifically careful to limit their final comments based on the actual data they derived - not on some "career protective scheme."
Cases are not WON in vaccine "court," as there is no "trial" or rendering of a "verdict." Perhaps you should acquaint yourself with the terms of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 (NCVIA) which created the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP). The VCIP is a "no-fault" compensation program where you only need demonstrate that there was a vaccination, an injury/death pursuant to a table of injuries in a given timeline, and with medical documentation. Contrary to popular myth, if you lose your claim in the VICP, you CAN then file a civil claim in court against the pharmaceutical manufacturer.
Totally disagree about anecdotal evidence. Studies can be fixed, but people's lived experience can't be fixed. I especially pay attention to frontline healthcare workers such as nurses - they see everything.
Regarding unvaccinated/vaccinated studies, I suspect that if a study was done by God and it found that unvaccinated children were healthier, you would say it was shoddy. Have you seen the McCullough/Hulscher meta-study on vaccines and autism? Based on 12 such studies (although a few were simply surveys), among other evidence, they concluded:
"We found strong and remarkably consistent evidence that children who were healthy at birth and remained completely unvaccinated through childhood and into early adulthood exhibited superior long-term health outcomes. Across cohorts, they showed substantially lower rates of allergic, autoimmune and neuropsychiatric disorders including ASD, together with the lowest overall health-care utilization of any group studied. Importantly, even among vaccinated populations, large government-funded analyses have failed to demonstrate any reduction in all-cause mortality. In the CDC Vaccine Safety Datalink study of more than 300,000 U.S. children, McCarthy et al (2017) found no significant difference in mortality between fully vaccinated and under-vaccinated groups. The null finding indicates that adherence to the full vaccine schedule does not translate into improved survival. Together, these data undermine the rationale that increasing vaccination exposure confers net population-level health benefit and instead support individualized, risk-stratified approaches to future vaccination policy."
On vaccine "court," there may be no trial, nor a traditional verdict, but I think most people would concede that it was a "win" for the claimant if there was either of the following outcomes: (1) HHS conceded the injury as compensable or (2) HHS didn't concede that the injury was compensable but the claims court found that the vaccine likely caused the injury and ruled in favor of the claimant. A third scenario is a little murkier, that is, where no initial concession was made, and a negotiated settlement was reached before the court issued a ruling. If a substantial settlement was obtained, I would also call that a "win." After all, the claimant - unless their case is a clear table injury - has to bear the burden of proof. They are going up against the justice department with all of its resources, and so it's an achievement to get any meaningful compensation. Only those with the most promising cases tend to bother to file a claim. Since 1988, of the 26,171 adjudicated claims, 12,507 have been determined to be compensable (by the court or by HHS, explicitly or implicitly by settling), and 13,664 have been dismissed as non-compensable.
And who will decide if a study is "fixed? You? Me? Your "trusted" authors? Your trusted "nurses?" Some article in 2014 from a disgruntled employee of a journal? Where exactly does it end? The last time you discussed this issue with me, and I pointed out that scientists frequently exercise justifiable caution and express further research is necessary pursuant to the limitations of the data they have at their disposal, you suggested this was because actually honesty would somehow "end their careers." This is complete and total foolishness and you are suggesting a purely arbitrary and capricious standard that you will pick, thereby allowing you alone to choose the "correct" data to fit your argument. You are promoting nothing but confirmation bias, plain & simple.
I certainly have seen the McCollough study and it is FULL of confounding errors, misrepresentations, and other significant design errors including confirmation bias. For heaven's sake, Mr. Shaw, I teach a graduate course in epidemiology, and these errors were immediately apparent to me and my students! McCollough published this flawed "study" on Zenado because I am sure no legitimate journal would publish it because of these errors. I repeat: I have NEVER, ever seen a legitimate study that confirms that unvaccinated children are healthier than vaccinated children. Period, McCollough notwithstanding. Poor science, is ALWAYS undeniably poor science.
I absolutely make no apology for following a canon of traditional scientific inquiry that is at once transparent, yet is always open to examination, curiosity, as well as legitimate correction. NEVER but never, paint yourself into a corner was a lesson I learned very early on. But NEVER compromise on the research values you know to be ethical and sustaining. NEVER.
I'm not saying it's always easy to tell which studies are fixed, but it undoubtedly happens. And often, it's very hard to discover, especially in that the underlying data is typically kept under wraps. Another problem is that, even absent fixing, there is a bias agains publishing anything inconvenient to the drug companies or the establishment in general. Moreover, young researchers fresh out school will nearly always be burdened by huge debts, and they will be very reluctant to rock the boat. More than a few "excommunicated" researchers have claimed that graduate students and other young researchers have approached them and said that they were highly impressed by their work, but that they couldn't risk their careers by working with them. Beyond that, I will say that, based on what I've observed in terms of institutional behavior, I highly value lived experience as a counter to official thinking. This inclines me to take very seriously the pediatricians - and there are quite a few - who are saying that their unvaccinated patients are by far their healthiest ones. And, in fact, I've never heard a pediatrician make the opposite claim.
If you are so uncompromising of your research principles, I can only wish that there were more researchers like you.
Wow. Paul, you have even lost the masking alone in the car Blue Sky lefties at The Atlantic. Like I said, the trainwreck of your credibility is both gruesome and weirdly satisfying to obseerve.
"So why is Prasad’s allegation that a very small number of kids have died from COVID shots being treated as some unholy aberration? I reached out to Paul Offit, a former member of the CDC’s immunization advisory committee who had described the memo’s assertions as being “fairly fantastic.” He told me that although Prasad’s claim may ultimately pan out, he does not consider the published case reports definitive, nor does he believe that the shots have led to any deaths. “It’s not terribly convincing that this vaccine killed anybody,” he said."
"The 21 Korean deaths, in particular, were verified by a panel of specialists in cardiology, infectious disease, and epidemiology. Surely these, at least, should meet the bar for establishing a person’s cause of death—but the doctors and public-health professionals I spoke with for this story insisted that such reports don’t amount to slam-dunk proof.."
"Accepting and acknowledging reasonable proof of that reality would be an important part of effectively combating the government’s current vaccine skepticism. How can medical professionals discuss the favorable risk-benefit profile of these shots if they aren’t willing to acknowledge their worst risk?"
Each of those reasons are of greater concern in the circles you cater for, Contrarian Joey. Treat us to another "Why we don't necessarily have to charge Dr. Fauci with treason" thought piece, Maga-Farmer Marine.
They're bound to offer you an HHS gig soon, Joey; they're running out of DC-area bootlicking (former) academic clinicians.
You are inadvertently making the perfect argument as to why RFK jr.'s panel should not be a homogeneous body of known anti-vaccine affiliated individuals.
Yes they should have a diversity of views. But ACIP has long been dominated by too narrow a group of experts that has fallen into groupthink and lost touch with the public. This is what allowed them to make the disastrous mistake of rubberstamping annual covid boosters for healthy kids. Now everything is being questioned. It is why we are where we are. Scapegoating one person is not going to solve the problem.
Unfortunately, I was not "scapegoating." RFK jr. is an imbecile who took it upon himself to resolve an undefined "problem" by gutting the ACIP and filling it, not with independent virology "experts," but with an homogeneous group of individuals with no known experience in the area in which they are to provide EXPERT opinion and policy. It seems to me their inability to even clarify WHAT they are voting upon at the time of a vote, two successive sessions - Spring & Winter - in a row, speaks for itself. As to the matter of "groupthink." I see pre-ordained "groupthink" - good heavens, the media was filled with their decision weeks before ACIP even met - while the prior ACIP was characterized by scientific "consensus." As to your comment, "lost touch with the public," seriously, children are vaccinated a handful of times in their entire lifetime. I believe the APA guidelines provide wonderful direction for parent-physician interactions, and are compassionate, loving, and carefully written.
"Scapegoating" was a general comment, not directed toward you. The authors post frequently starts with "RFK,Jr" because the name is triggering and grabs attention. There is intense ad hominem focus on a person and not the issues raised. They are not going away even if the person does.
Your last statement is apposite. “Expertise in one domain does not translate into expertise in others.”
This is exactly right, and why a panel meant to have the expertise to determine the US vaccination recommendations should be packed with vaccine experts (like it used to be), and not a bunch of wannabes, some with zero medical experience at all.
Let’s say you are flying from NY to Paris, and there’s an issue with one of the plane’s engines.
Would you like an aeronautical engineer check it out?
Hmmmm…maybe not. After all, experts can be wrong, so let’s play it safe, and have the fault checked out by the guy who drives the baggage truck, shall we? 🙄
You know Marine I don't go spreading bullshit lies in adult cardiology circles about statins, why don't you stay out of something here you have no expertise in? You take care of your patients.
Dr. Paul Offit has a growing passion for trying to convince the American public that RFK Jr. is not only anti-vaccine, but anti-science as well, intending to put our children at risk (aggressively and with malintent). Unsurprisingly, I heard those same words from another alleged expert at the same institution where Paul works: fear- mongering dressed as science keeps their business booming. Could Dr. Paul Offit, one of the greatest spokespersons for vaccine safety and an expert pediatric physician, possibly be missing some scientific details that put a new spin on people’s perception?
Let us start with his rotavirus vaccine and allow me to oblige Paul and judge him objectively by scientific standards. Rotavirus has been known to be a contributing factor to type I diabetes for quite some time (doi:10.1371/journal.ppat.1007965). What else are contributing factors? Epstein Barr virus (EBV), herpes simplex virus (HSV-1), and influenza virus, although the exact role these viruses play has not been well-characterized… just yet. A phenomenon of molecular mimicry is suggested, whereby components of the virus “look like” a human protein. This has been demonstrated with rotavirus. So why has it been ignored in the context of vaccinology? Because a mechanism of action has yet to be identified. And because Paul says it is safe. But that does not make Paul correct. It’s simply the word of an expert with limited information, because any studies that might prove otherwise have not been conducted. Nevertheless, it makes a good first impression upon those who are scientifically illiterate.
Now enter another area of expertise (an area of science Paul is not as familiar with). I worked in the field of HLA disease association testing for over 34 years. In this field of science, we study how foreign proteins are recognized by the immune system, and how antibodies are generated.
One of the most prominent features of autoimmune diseases like type I diabetes is the presence of autoantibodies. An autoantibody is an antibody (the same type of protein we make after receiving a vaccine) that can target one’s own body: a recipe for disease. It is “believed” that autoimmunity is due to errors in the immune system. But that is a belief, it has no backing based on science. Let’s stick to the science, instead of hocus-pocus tricks meant to distract us. It just so happens that type I diabetes patients often develop autoantibody that can target a protein, abbreviated IA-2 on pancreas cells, that can destroy insulin-making cells. This immune-driven process can result in diabetes.
As I alluded to earlier, there is also a very strong HLA association with type I diabetes (HLA-DR3 and HLA-DR4). By taking into account metabolic changes that take place during stress, and the viral and HLA disease associations with type 1 diabetes, one can identify not only 1, but 3 distinct IA-2 antibody targets, and 6 distinct HLA-DR3 targets, whose roots trace back to the combination of rotavirus and EBV. If that were not enough, one can also deduce 3 distinct autoantibody targets on insulin, and 4 distinct HLA-DR4 targets, whose roots trace back to the combination of influenza and EBV. And HSV-1 joins the party with EBV for another 4 insulin targets and another 7 distinct HLA targets. The combination of viral targets can produce autoantibodies that are responsible not only for type I diabetes, but also cause organ transplant rejection. This is not limited to diabetes, but to over 600 chronic diseases. In laymen’s terms, the immune system cannot distinguish one virus from another when elements from both are presented to the immune system at the same time and place. When components from multiple viruses get jumbled together, the immune system recombines them to identify what appears to be a human protein, giving rise to a weaker viral response but also the opportunity for autoimmunity or transplant rejection. This is a natural process, which can be exacerbated or caused by vaccination. Considering that this data has not been published just yet, perhaps this is something that inexperienced scientists like Paul should rule out before making sweeping assertions about vaccine safety. Or has Paul just been ignoring the obvious and become a little too overconfident in his assertions, willing to disseminate misinformation to the public at the expense of the public’s health?
Now let me ask you a common-sense question, regardless of your familiarity with the science I have just described in very rough detail. If you already have a protein inside you which is a target for causing type I diabetes (IA-2 or insulin), and you know that over 95% of the population already has been exposed to EBV, which lives with you the rest of your life and can be transferred from any mother to a newborn child… then why would you want to introduce multiple organisms into your body voluntarily, let alone your children? (via vaccination) Are you a glutton for punishment or a common-sense individual capable of making rational decisions?
As Paul’s audience continues accusing RFK of being a charlatan, perhaps they might want to do a little research before demonizing the man further. Afterall, Paul’s insistence on mandatory vaccination prompts several ethical concerns after learning this new information. Can vaccination not only increase chronic disease and transplant rejection, but also his employer’s profits- at the expense of a scientifically illiterate and innocent public? Has this any relation to why we distinguish between a medical exemption and a religious one- to make those with a strong belief sound like scientific ignoramuses or just plain idiots? If the beliefs held by science for the past 7 decades are wrong, and I have found much evidence that they are, then Paul and others stand to be held accountable not only for misinformation, but for disinformation and the consequences they have wreaked upon us over the past 30 years.
Educate yourself to the point of being an expert. Or figure out how to question the experts beyond their comfort zone. You might get fired for it. I did, by Paul’s employer. What I discovered wasn’t good for business. Dissent during the COVID crisis was censored rather frequently in case you haven’t figured that out yet. Sometimes the truth puts one in uncomfortable situations that have uncomfortable consequences. But it's worth upholding the truth to protect the ones you love. Because charlatans come in all colors, shapes and sizes, and can even masquerade as vaccine experts.
After a brief scan of the article, and referencing similar articles in distinct countries, it does appear at first glance that it is difficult to argue that the vaccine could be a contributing factor to causing T1D. That being said, one must figure out how a signal could be missed in these studies. This is where the role of HLA (immune recognition proteins) and their association with specific diseases comes into play. There are over 40,000 distinct HLA proteins known, from which an individual inherits only about 6-20 from each parent. Different HLA appear in higher frequency depending on one's ethnicity. The frequency of HLA-DR3 (strongly associated with T1D) in Austria is about 11%. So if the study does not have exclusion criteria that accounts for the frequency of the HLA associated with a specific disease, any signal that would otherwise indicate a positive association between the vaccine and a specific disease will get lost. The signal becomes “overdiluted” by not segregating individuals who have the relevant HLA. Also, there are age stratifications in the study. And we do see a distinct change from the younger cohort vs older. This may be indicative of the older cohorts being exposed to other environmental stimuli (going to daycare or school & being exposed to environmental stressors not encountered in the home, including infections), accumulating the necessary components for the disease (T1D) , which incidentally peaks between ages 10-14.
Notably, while there was a 15% decline in incidence of T1D among age group 0-4, the article mentions no evidence of follow-up among individuals into the period of peak T1D incidence; the statistical modeling has its limitations. Interestingly, in a study by the same group (doi:10.1111/pedi.13038), the T1D frequency in the 0-4 age group appears to be declining before the advent of the vaccine, after which it continues upon the same steady, declining trajectory even after the advent of the vaccine. There is no dip in the incidence of T1D as one would expect if rotavirus vaccine contributed to halting the disease.
The question then becomes, does rotavirus actually contribute to T1D? There is evidence both through clinical studies and molecular mimicry studies (https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.ppat.10079650) that rotavirus plays a role. However, this study uses synthetic peptides (to identify regions of mimicry between the virus and the human protein that is implicated in the disease). The problem with this type of study is that just because molecular mimicry can be identified, it does not necessarily correlate with a natural biological mechanism. So until a study is properly designed to include/exclude correlate HLA variables, and correlates with a natural biologic mechanism, I do not see how one can reliably rule out the possibility that the vaccine can be a contributor to the disease. And for this and several other studies, HLA is not even alluded to, nowhere on the radar. So the data becomes convincing to publish, but the data is not necessarily revealing a reliable signal to address the hypothesis (the truth).
From a different angle, the molecular mimicry I uncovered is based on a biological mechanism that accounts for changes in metabolism that are consistent with disease progression and the immune response. But I still have to prove it in a laboratory (I currently do not have the resources to do that, and collaborators are quite reluctant to jump on board as you can imagine).
Please note that I am not saying that the rotavirus vaccine is ineffective at reducing mortality from rotavirus-induced diarrhea. What I am saying is that there are no studies to date, to my knowledge, which can indisputably rule out that a particular vaccine may contribute one of several variables that must be in place before a particular chronic disease may begin to show symptoms. And until there is, Dr. Offit should not be making sweeping statements and culling dissent by his audacious assertions which have no reliable basis. That is not science, it is public manipulation.
I take your points about the HLA types and other confounding variables.
However, irrespective of lack of adjustment for these, studies on T1D don’t seem to show a correlated signal for vaccination against Rota, so it’s logical to conclude there is no causal link.
I agree one should not be dogmatic in science and claim certainty, especially claiming that absence of evidence is evidence of absence, but then one can never prove a negative.
I'm not sure you got my point: These studies don't show correlation because they contain inherent bias (while they appear convincing). They are designed such that they are unlikely to ever demonstrate a correlation between vaccines contributing to chronic disease. You can come to your conclusion only by unaccounting for what you write off as "irrespective." You cannot find correlation, if it is there, without these crucial variables. It's a great way to keep everyone in the dark. It's also consistent with the viruses' ability to remain undetected because of natural modifications, and with the rising trend of chronic diseases since the advent of government-sponsored childhood vaccines and immunity to the companies that make them. If you don't understand what you are looking for, you can search for it until your heart is content yet never find it. It may still be there, but you'll never find it until you change your experimental design strategy. I have a pretty easy experiment that can identify whether I may be right or wrong- whether there is evidence that molecular mimicry contributes to chronic disease. That's the first hurdle before determining whether a vaccine can also. But it's $$$ and unfortunately, no one's providing the opportunity or funding just yet. Meantime, everyone sticks to their current belief system. That's not science. That's religion, as much as someone may not like the association. And while RFK and Paul are busy grinding their axes against one another, it's keeping the rest of us in the dark, divided and from possibly seeing a very different view. That may work for both of them... but not for those with the disease. I see an advantage to RFK's strategy. For researchers, it forces a gap in time where more children may be unvaccinated, where a signal can be detected that shows the contrary to what Paul has been advocating. Paul fears that as much as RFK being a nincompoop. Consequences could go in either direction. It's a risk. But there is evidence that it may be a risk worth taking. And I'm not particularly fond of mandates or paying off companies who may have been pulling the proverbial wool over every taxpayer's eyes for the past 3 decades. Especially since they're in no hurry to provide evidence they might be wrong. I get it, why shoot yourself in the foot? Instead, find a workaround before someone discovers what's been missing for so long. I'm not suggesting every study is built with malintent or that scientists may be malicious. I'm not a conspiracist. But there are missing links and errors laced into science that need to be corrected. That is a blind spot. You can console yourself in the fact there may be no proof. I can't. I know more about it than most people. Paul and RFK have an axe to grind with one another. Mine is to get to the truth, whichever way that goes. But that requires more work to be done first. And I've got to travel that road a bit longer, or until I run out of energy. My point is, we need to leave room for dissent, questioning the status quo and disruptive experimentation. Paul demonstrated to me that he has an unhealthy inclination to stick to his assets. RFK does too. We need a middle ground free of bias. And from my background, I don't see that in either of them. I am sorry to disappoint you and you are free to disagree with me. As for me, you won't find me or anyone I have influence over rushing to be vaccinated. And if someone wants to argue the ethics of that, they better come prepared and be just as willing to walk through the evidence I show them. There may be some unexpected surprises.
And I’m not sure you get my point, which is that just because there may be a plausible role for molecular mimicry inducing autoimmune responses triggering islet cell damage, that doesn’t mean that this mechanism operates during vaccination.
First principle in science is to detect an observable outcome, then explore hypotheses to explain it. In the case of rota vaccine, no one seems to have reliably detected an increased signal in T1D (if anything clinical and epidemiological studies show the reverse is true), so hypothesising the mechanisms for a phenomenon that hasn’t been observed seems to fail the test of scientific plausibility.
You say you are happy to walk people through the evidence, so please go ahead and demonstrate an increase in T1D after rotavaccination is real and we can take matters from there. But so far all you have are plausible mechanisms for a phenomenon that doesn’t occur.
There are reasons why vaccine induced immune responses wrt molecular mimicry are not the same as those following natural infection anyhow. One is that natural infection results in sustained high levels of replication with very high viral loads, whereas vaccination produces much lower viral loads and replication is confined to the gut. Also, for molecular mimicry to cause type 1 diabetes, I would expect there to be full sequence similarity (and correct me if I am wrong but my limited foray into the literature here shows the vaccine Rota VP7 peptide has only partial functional similarity?), accompanied by a “failure” of normal immunoregulation.
The vaccine VP7 sequence typically differs by 2 or three substitutions from natural VP7. If a substitution occurs at an HLA anchor residue or a TCR-facing residue, this might be sufficient to alter any mimicry occurring.
Now I certainly know less about these things than yourself, obviously, but it seems to me that the a claim that molecular mimicry following vaccination is identical to that following natural infection is pushing things rather.
And as I say, clinical studies looking at T1D incidence between vaxed and unvaxed children show if anything a lower risk in the vaccinated, and epidemiological studies do not appear to show population increases in T1D following national introductions of vaccination, which comes back to the fact that vaccine induced diabetes seems to be a non-phenomenon.
You say you won’t rush to get [rotavirus] vaccinated (I assume this would apply to any kids you might have), vaccination carries ring risks of other adverse effects, but overall has a substantial risk/benefit profile.
You obviously have a better understanding than most. Is this a vicarious identity thing I'm up against? Cross reactivity is concentration dependent as well as upon amino acid sequence homology (identical sequence). This does not require linear sequence identity of viral protein or peptide with the correlate human protein. Because proteins are folded, mimicry at the protein surface may require gapping in the linear sequence. The higher the concentration of viral antigen the greater the magnitude of the stimulus and opportunity for "epitope spreading" and cross-reaction with similar human epitopes. Amino acids in a protein have some some flexibility also. Generally, autoantibodies are relatively low affinity. This makes sense if they are polyreactive, which most are. Polyreactive implies that they can bind to more than one antigen (Zorn E, et al.). As I mentioned earlier, I observed these antibodies in the context of HLA following viral COinfection. This does not always imply simultaneous infection. The timing between infections (or infection plus vaccination) can be spread out. Superinfection, invasion of a single cell by more than one organism, may take years. This is more likely what is ocurring. Regardless, follicular dendritic cells in lymph nodes can "hold" antigen for years, "waiting" for the 2nd pathogen to appear. This is also another mechanism of immunological memory. There is a good probability that the higher avidity of the antibodies is due to the antibody targeting (6 peptide) components from at least two pathogens simultaneously (there are 6 distinct loops to an antibody binding site, facilitating complementarity to 6 distinct T cells). The question then becomes, why doesn't the immune system recognize the individual virus components from memory at the same time both are present? Because during stress, virus components can be reactivated, and post-translational protein modifications upregulated by stress can alter their protein structure (adding or subtracting distinct modifications) and completely change the antibody-binding profile of the protein, enabling both viruses to escape detection- particularly since most testing is performed on peripheral blood samples, not from deep infected tissue. Differences in viral antigenicity on infected cells vs whole virus particles has been documented since the 60's. As I said, this whole hypothesis needs to be proven, but the coinfection patterns I observed and subsequent appearance of antibody were very reproducible. The algorithm I created predicts that the human autoantigen equivalent of the virus epitopes are surface accessible, and each viral protein contains a peptide that shares mimicry with its HLA correlate that matches the HLA disease association. But the viral epitopes can be masked by carbohydrates on the wild-type virus. These carbs can be digested by enzymes upregulated during stress. I once had preliminary experimental evidence that supported my hypothesis but no longer have access to it. It's stuck in a drawer or computer or worse. If cross-reactivity can be demonstrated, and I am sure it can, this concept along with idiotype antibodies (it gets more complicated) can potentially explain deferred timing of disease onset, inability to detect signal, and the HLA disease associations which must be incorporated. Without data, I'm at a loss to prove it. I currently do not have the resources available to me, otherwise it would have been published by now, one way or the other. But every aspect of it is supported by scientific literature. It is both metabolically and immunologically feasible. Furthermore, the virus epitopes are conserved. If you have digested all that, you need to tell me what you do for a living.
Very interesting and well-written. So sorry you got fired for raising inconvenient questions.
I express my opinions on drugs and vaccines (among other health topics) quite freely, and I'm often asked, "Do you think that you know more than the experts?" or "Do you think you're smarter than the experts?" My answer to these is an unqualified, "No," but I think that is beside the point. The real questions, to me, are (1) Do the people developing drugs and vaccines know what they're doing? (that is, is their knowledge sufficient, relevant to the inherent complexity of the human body and what they're trying to accomplish?); and (2) Given massive conflicts of interest and medical indoctrination, can we trust the experts? I think the answer to both of these questions is a resounding "No."
I truly value the thoughts and contributions of Dr. Offit. I had a father and an uncle who were both stricken by Polio. My uncle while in basic training whose dream was farming, he lived a life of contribution in spite of permanent loss of control of his left arm, shoulders, right arm above his elbow & sometimes needing a brace for walking, he eventually died from Polio complications and side effects after he had retired. My father went from amateur wrestling, body training. life guard, & daily water sking to being unable to pull the boat back up on the trailer. Science contributes significantly to winning for humanity. Conspiracy theories and self-promotion by charlatans drags humanity backwards by generations. Self proclaimed social media Phds. are not what we need, show me the credentials first. My cause today is putting an end to "medical malmanagement" by corporations and systems whose biggest motivator is a stronger bottom line or management bonuses. Great healthcare professionals and their staff are failed miserably by medical malmanagement. I know, vision loss, permanent heart damage, etc. from multiple occurrences of this scourge on humanity and the medical profession. The total cost is incalculable.
Excellent contribution! Medicine is in dire straits with this administration. We need to speak up about the outrageous charlatans who are further damaging our already fragile health care system.
I agree that we "need to speak up about the outrageous charlatans ..." "Public health relies on trust, honesty and transparency. When influential experts make false claims, and networks fail to scrutinise them, the public is misled.”
That's a quote from Maryanne Demasi's new Substack post, “EXCLUSIVE: Internal documents show Paul Offit made false claims on CNN --Newly obtained emails contradict key claims made by the high-profile vaccine commentator.” https://blog.maryannedemasi.com/p/exclusive-internal-documents-show
P.S. Mike S told me her article is now pay walled. But, you can read it on Children's Health Defense's website: https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/offit-lied-acip-meeting-hepatitis-b-data-cnn-didnt-fact-check-him/
The confusion and inaccuracies rampant in medical billing is exacerbated by the under-qualified RFKjr and his minions in the nearly morbid health care system .
Thank you. I'm dealing with one of our local healthcare systems that can't even get billing straight. Send me a bill, send me a refund for over payment, send me a new bill matching the refund amount. The bill is in nothing but medical coding jibberish understandable to very few including the Doctor's own office staff. My personal medical history suggests to me that much of the medical care field is simply busy tripping over it's own bureaucracy. I include insurance companies in this collage. Too many people with an expertise in spreadsheets and Power Point but, near zero knowledge of actual patient care or communication. Add in HIPPA panicked lawyers and the doctors in our life are too encumbered by this collage of bureaucracy to focus on their work.
The problem is not the fault of Democrats in Congress but the bureaucracy of the various governmental entities with their "hands in the pot" of money that fuels the practice of medicine in the US.
I at least partially agree. We definitely have a system with a "pot of money" issue. I can't begin to tell you how many "maxims" I heard working on my MBA. I think nearly every single maxim somehow has its polar opposite. Two of my favorites:
a) you can't improve what you don't measure
b) be careful what you measure because you just might get it
If you know anyone who works in the medical field, ask that person if the topic of "billable minutes" is still among the top items discussed in meetings.
Plain old fashioned greed seems to be an inescapable human curse. I'm not sure how many bureaucrats have thought much about how to measure their own contribution rather than the contribution of others. It isn't just government and politics that is over burdened with measuring the performance of "others", . I sometime refer to it as "management by MBA" which seems to be a wide spread fad in our business environment today.
I'd ask the 4 medical doctors I see more often than annually but they don't have the time to explain "billable minutes" because discussing it wouldn't count as considered billable minutes. So much for that option!
Spot on. My wife and I actually received that in a lecture at the start of her most recent appointment. If we asked questions about anything more than was on the "annual" we needed to be prepared to pay. I submitted feedback about my issues to the organization about 1-week ago. My deadline for a response is fast approaching. I'm like a grandfather clock, I wind slowly but, like Trent I can make one hell of a racket. Medical malmanagement is real, it is very similar to the death of manufacturing in the US. Widespread systemic problems are management problems, not people problems. Thanks for participating in my rant.
Out with the experts, in with the ignoramuses.
Spoken like a true ignoramus
Ah, I wondered when the flying monkey squad would arrive....you never disappoint.
Philly B <-- "a true ignoramus"
In every sense of the word.
The silly little troll is back!
Phillacious Philly <-- "The silly little troll is back!"
Holds a mirror up to his arsehole masquerading as a cakehole.
Here's what happens when people actually get rid of expert help: https://thescamdoctor.substack.com/p/doing-your-own-research-could-kill?r=6hgshq
Dr. Offit, thanks for this post. I remember all of this, as I have been a pediatric nurse and then a nurse practitioner since 1982. I worked in the St. Chris ED in 1990 during the measles outbreak. The sickest kids (as a group) I ever saw. Real heartbreakers. Even for me, a seasoned Peds/neonatal ICU nurse. Thanks for laying out this history of hep b. It is easy to contract, and many times in my career, I have taken care of people who didn't know a member of the family had an infectious disease (think Hep B or C or HIV) until they tested positive. Someone who says, "I know I'm negative for Hep B," knows that this was true-ish (tests are not perfect) on the day of the test. Hep B is so easy to contract (easier than HIV) that household items can be contaminated. Think other adults in the home, toothbrushes, razors (did I pick up mine or someone elses?). The suffering of little kids/families from Hep B is real and far from public view. The most vulnerable among us continue to need our protection.
When I first see Dr. Offit's newletter, at first I think, "I don't have the time to read it"" But then I always realize it's worth my time. He's the ideal link to the real world of science, medicine and best pratices. And I'm always glad I took the time.
"Then they crossed a line, arguing that babies born to mothers who were not infected with hepatitis B virus didn’t need a vaccine."- Paul's ethnocentricity is showing- a short list of the nations that don’t recommend this intervention includes: Austria; Bahamas; Belgium; Canada; Denmark; Finland; France; Italy; Germany; Ireland; Switzerland; Iceland; Greece; Japan; United Kingdom; and many more. Oddly, there is no RFK, Jr. running public health in those places- just "experts."
"In 1991, the CDC further expanded its birth dose to all U.S. newborns." Right. As the NYT reported, it was a controversial decision because for the first time, kids were given a shot to protect adults. The at risk adults, it turns out, didn't want to buy the stinkin's shot, so "science" said jam it into the kids instead.
"The source of infection could be shared towels, washcloths, nail clippers, toothbrushes or even partially eaten food or candies." Not even Paul believes this fantastic tripe, but he mouths it anyway. It's gruesomely satisfying to watch him self immolate his own credibility. When this trope fails, it will be the boogeyman under the bed bringin' in the hep B. Or measles. Or whatever vaccine needs a sales boost.
"To their credit, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) immediately stood up for America’s children." Bullshit. AAP always and unswervingly stands for $$$$$ https://archive.nytimes.com/well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/09/28/coke-spends-lavishly-on-pediatricians-and-dietitians/
Paul is done. At one time, years ago, one could believe he was passionately and ignorantly doing what he felt was right. He is now exposed as a crazed, deluded, pecuniary nitwit. Too bad, Paul- we hardly knew ye.
Josh, comparing the United States to those other countries makes almost no sense. Here are the populations of the nations you have listed:
Austria: 9.178 million
Bahamas: 401,283
Belgium: 11.88 million
Canada: 41.29 million
Denmark: 5.977 million
Finland: 5.637 million
France: 68.52 million
Italy: 58.99 million
Germany: 83.51 million
Ireland: 5.38 million
Switzerland: 9.034 million
Iceland: 404,610
Greece: 10.39 million
Japan: 124 million
UK: 69.23 million
If you do the math, adding ALL the nations together in your list, you get 509,458,893. The US population ALONE stands at 340.1 million. You're talking about nations whose populations, and thus incidence of circulating amounts of HBV, are lower than the United States by itself. What works in one nation doesn't work in all nations. There is a false equivalence created in these discussions when we say, "Well, what works for the 404,610 people from ALL of Iceland will work for the 340.1 million people in the US." We have cities that have more people than that entire nation.
You also have to appreciate that all of the nations you listed...ALL OF THEM...have universal healthcare with robust screening during prenatal care for any number of things. This study (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36906494/) indicates serious gaps in the US healthcare system's approach to HBV over a 5 year period. Most estimates list that 84-88% of women in the US are screened for Hep B. Taking the UK as an example, their screening rate is OVER 99% (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/idps-isoss-hepatitis-b-outcome-report-2023/isoss-hepatitis-b-report-2023).
Further, if you look at prevalence rates for HBV in these other nations, they're quite a bit lower than they are in the US. Compare France and the US for example:(https://data.who.int/dashboards/hepatitis/epidemiology?m49=250). According to their estimates, there are roughly 136,000 cases of known HBV infection in all of France. In the United States, there is an estimated 2.4 million people living with chronic HBV infection (https://www.hepb.org/what-is-hepatitis-b/what-is-hepb/facts-and-figures/). Thus, by raw numbers, you have a massive increased risk just living in the United States to be exposed to HBV than in France.
Further, our healthcare system is a patchwork quilt of public, private, and no insurance, and thus access to robust prenatal care is not always available or affordable. All of the nations you list have a social welfare network that greatly reduces the holes in coverage, affordability, and care (regardless of socioeconomic status). Thus, screening, vaccination, and treatment are more readily available in all the other countries than in the US. Also, they have lower HBV infection burdens.
So, again, your argument to compare multiple nation's health policy doesn't work well. There is WAY too much nuance in all of these nations (populations, access to healthcare, burden of HBV in the population, etc.) to make an equitable comparison of policy choices.
Thank you for all the additional information! Very helpful and clearly presented.
Drew, I do not doubt your statistics on other nation’s populations and health care systems. The problem is our current healthcare system is so dysfunctional and haphazard that we need to treat our infant population like herd animals like cattle and pigs. What RFK is trying to do (and the ACIP Committee he appointed) is encourage our population to be informed about medical issues and become healthier so that we don’t need to universally force vaccination on the entire population for diseases that infect or become severe for only subsets of our population. I remember when Rochelle Walensky said we needed everyone to take Covid boosters (instead of using and age and chronic disease burden approach like most European countries) because “we have such a sick population”. THAT IS THE PROBLEM that RFK, Robert Malone, Mart Makary, Vinay Prasad and others at HHS are trying to correct. They are using a nuanced approach that gives people information and leaves the final decision to them - not forced mandates. If it were not for vaccine mandates I doubt that vaccination would even be an issue.
"So nuanced!" 🤣 😂
The US before the vaccine had an incidence of less than one child in 100,000 between one and ten diagnosed with hep-B.
How many American women never see an allopathic doctor either during pregnancy or during childbirth? All who do, close to 100%, are tested for hep-B. Nearly all, like me, test negative. There is only risk, no benefit, in the children of healthy women getting the vaccine at birth. And that has nothing to do with demographics.
ACIP on Friday reasonably recommended that children born to hep-B positive women continue to get the vaccine and immuniglobulin at birth. They will otherwise probably die, so it is reasonable to accept the risk of the vaccine.
But the countries mentioned understand that it is criminal to give a dangerous vaccine to all children. It doesn’t matter if it is one million or ten million children. Asian children are at higher risk of contracting hep-B. Their parents must make the vaccine decision for them. But it is immoral to give the vaccine to all Caucasian children born to healthy mothers. My daughter reacted with vaccine encephalitis and autism to the hep-B vaccine, given without permission. She is extremely unhappy, longing to be typical, struggling to become typical and finally have friends and be accepted. But because of you and your colleagues, she was condemned at birth to lifelong suffering.
okay. so using data for other countries is no longer appropriate or applicable to the US. so when studies are used from other countries telling us that vaccines don’t cause autism we can ignore those studies!?
i don’t believe vaccines cause autism. i believe that pharmaceutical sales reps masquerading as doctors like pushing meds and misdiagnosing children. but let’s set that aside.
if what you say is now the standard and i am willing to agree then that means when you claim a vaccine is safe based on usage in a different population or a study was done proving efficacy like in israeli data, take say. we can’t use that as credible data
This comparison doesn't make sense though. Comparing the administration of a particular vaccine to a particular population (with different average health outcomes and different population size and wildly different healthcare systems, no less) is vastly different from comparing safety and efficacy studies. But what you can compare when it comes to safety and efficacy is different trials with similar sample sizes and methods. You cannot just say XYZ country says it's safe or unsafe. Risk is not even assessed the same in different countries. But it is assessed the same in high quality studies, which is why they are the gold standard. And when there's a lot of them, that all agree. THAT is what we must compare to to overturn that evidence.
oh okay. so we’re getting more mental gymnastics.
if one study or country doesn’t compute and isn’t appropriate according to you, then neither is using that same data to report safety and or efficacy. you cannot have it both ways. if you get to use this data. i get to use the hep b vaccine causing multiple sclerosis in other countries because that’s what it does.
pick one because you can’t have it both ways.
Nah bruh. You are missing the point. You are comparing apples to pianos. But you do you. It's not 'mental gymnastics' (but nice buzzword!). Read my reply again. You have missed the entire point while you try to dance around your faulty logic. You cannot compare the things you are trying to compare here. That's not how it works if you want a sound argument or comparison. THAT is the point. Also please cite your source for the MS claim. Would like to see that.
France took it off the schedule of vaccines required for school because the hep-B vaccine caused many cases of MS. But then Pharma got to it and told it to go back to forcing it on everyone. Who gives a damn about people with MS? N.B. I have MS from reactiobs to the pertussis vaccine. I never took the hep-B vaccine. The hep-B vaccine was forced on my daughter, and she has autism and bowel disease as a result. No one has the right to do this to anyone.
nah, i think i got it right. YOU want to compare apples to pianos when it suits you. when it doesn’t no one else is supposed to be able to.
pick one because you can’t use both. i say the same thing with observational studies. they’re not worth very much.
Well you can't have it both ways either....if you want to accept Denmark's vax schedule as magnificent, then you should also admire their studies showing MMR doesn't cause autism and that the vaccine schedule/aluminum is safe.
i agree. i DONT think we should use foreign data to support vaccines, safety, or efficacy in the US.
happy we could come to that agreement.
Oma Logic:
"i don’t believe..."
I mean, who the fv<k cares what this fvkwit BELEIVES.
We follow the science!
GOOD FRIGGIN' HEAVENS!
okay. you should be all set then. what i say shouldn’t matter. i know it does matter to you. that has to sting…
Oma Logic :)
1) There are reasons like differences in population, population densities, prevalence of hepatitis B, health care systems, average health status, socio-economic status, and accessibility and affordability of health care why some countries have a birth dose of hepatitis B and others don't.
2) Therefore, we can ignore the scientific studies from those countries that demonstrate that vaccines do not cause autism.
OMAR LOCKE. OMA LOGIC
What a freak boy!
you’re the one coping here. not me. you can’t ignore those studies if you then use them for in other areas. either they’re valid or they’re not
Come on, Whitey, tell me what a category error is.
You can look it up because even that would be hard for a seriously cognitively impaired lunatic like you.
Now p!$$ off before I kick your lilywhite butt.
i will say, there are times when i learn things from you. i do look up some of the things you say. especially when you’re wrong and i end up correcting you. you help me. you’re a hit dramatic what with all the “histrionics”.
Spare us your bullshit Mazer - about the more knowledgeable experts in UK, EU and Canada. They vaccinate for Hepatitis B at 2-months, 4-months, etc. You're just as vehemently against those regimens. You are a fraud, draped in religious sanctimony.
"a short list of the nations that don’t recommend this intervention includes: Austria; Bahamas; Belgium; Canada; Denmark; Finland; France; Italy; Germany; Ireland; Switzerland; Iceland; Greece; Japan; United Kingdom; and many more."
>a short list of the nations that don’t recommend this intervention includes
OK, but the US is far from alone in recommending Hepatitis B vaccine at birth regardless of infection (i.e. universal Hep B): here's a global visualization of all WHO member states HepB vaccination recommendation
(https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/fact-checking-the-cdc-panels-reasons-for-dropping-universal-newborn-hepatitis-b-vaccine-recommendation).
Perhaps if the US had a better healthcare system (i.e. universal healthcare) we could have much more consistent prenatal screening for hepatitis B and therefore wouldn't need universal Hep B recommendation; the US could do a selective Hep B recommendation like those countries you've listed, many of which have much better healthcare systems than the US.
Really good commentary amidst what has been shown above!
"OK, but the US is far from alone in recommending Hepatitis B vaccine at birth regardless of infection"- Paul is presenting the rational, evidence based decision- to forego universal at birth dose of hep B shot and instead still recommend within first six months- as some of voodoo doctor anti-science stupidity. It is not. He has a perseverative obsession to knock RFK, Jr. He exhibits an odd Munchausen by Proxy similar mental disorder with his frothing and irrational urges to be the hero who saves all kids from all diseases with medical interventions that make money for his patrons.
>"Paul is presenting the rational, evidence based decision- to forego universal at birth dose of hep B shot and instead still recommend within first six months- as some of voodoo doctor anti-science stupidity"
No, Offit didn't knock selective perinatal Hep B vaccination. What he did was explain (with evidence) why that policy (which RFK Jr.'s ACIP recently agreed to) didn't work in the US before and why it won't work now. Your prior argument was facile because it appealed to the fact that other developed western nations implemented selective perinatal Hep B vaccination without considering WHY those other nations decided as they did. Why do those nations have selective Hep B vaccination policies? Why did the US have a universal policy? What changed in the US with regard to Hep B that warranted the change from universal to selective? Are women being screened for Hep B more consistently? Has Hep B incidence among adults essentially cratered? I'm not aware of anything that has changed with public health. What did change is that ACIP is now filled with hand-picked anti-vaxxers and skeptics who don't know how to make informed and directionally unmotivated decisions but instead rely on preformed beliefs to drive their reasoning. That is anti-science.
Thanks again for civility. Your point is taken.
Best-
JAM
Annapolis, Md
Wow! Excellent observations! Thanks.
"At one time, years ago, one could believe he [Dr. Offit] was passionately and ignorantly doing what he felt was right. He is now exposed as a crazed, deluded, pecuniary nitwit."
. . .
Yep, see Maryanne Demasi's new Substack post, “EXCLUSIVE: Internal documents show Paul Offit made false claims on CNN --Newly obtained emails contradict key claims made by the high-profile vaccine commentator.” https://blog.maryannedemasi.com/p/exclusive-internal-documents-show
P.S. Mike S told me her article is now pay walled. But, you can read it on Children's Health Defense's website: https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/offit-lied-acip-meeting-hepatitis-b-data-cnn-didnt-fact-check-him/
Most people here will not be interested to see her article. Offit is their god.
No, Dr. Offit is not their god. But, he is a "Disciple" of their "High Priest" Dr. Stanley Plotkin. See Aaron Siri's discussion on pp. 32 -- 36 of his book "Vaccines, Amen" -- the Religion of Vaccines:
"... learned from Dr. Plotkin that when you make vaccine safety claims, no matter how ridiculous they are, you hold yourself out to be an impartial scientist ... [despite financial conflicts of interest] ... He is nonetheless regularly quoted and interviewed by news outlets as if he is an impartial voice on vaccine safety."
You “America first” morons sure do like fawning over Europe (who we’re currently alienating atm)
Which drama school did Paul go to? His ability to keep up the pretense is quite something.
I look forward to Dr. Offit's commentaries, especially the damage that RFKjr shows is being done to America's health care system. Of all the many unqualified choices made by trump in filling important positions, RFKjr ranks number first place in my opinion.
Here's RFK Jr trying to disparage aluminum and it backfires on him:https://thescamdoctor.substack.com/p/how-to-cherry-pick-data-to-scam-people?r=6hgshq
Thank You, Dr Offit. Great information.
I am a 70yr old family physician, rural Alabama. In my first week of clinics as a 3rd year student, I was helping remove sutures from a baby. The surgery resident I was working under said, “Let’s be really careful, because this baby has Hepatitis B.” But, eager to help, I put my hand where it did not belong and got stuck. This was 1982, before the Hep B vaccines were available. I was lucky and did not get infected with the virus, though the HBIg shot I was given made my ass hurt for days. A classmate of mine did get Hep B, however. Turned orange as a pumpkin. Scary. In those days, every medical school class experienced someone getting Hepatitis B. No one wants Hep B, especially if you a week old. I’ve encountered a number of patients who were walking around with viral hepatitis and had not known it. Nor where they got it from.
This should be a no-brainer. Vaccines make it safer for EVERYBODY. As a physician, it hard enough to convince patients to get vaccines. We do not to give people like RFK, Jr, a dangerous fool and a liar to boot, any authority or any platform to speak. He has already gotten folks killed — in Samoa, and in Texas.
Keep telling it like it is, doctor. I know it’s a hard row to hoe, but please keep on keepin’ on.
I am furious, more so they are now coming after the RSV antibody injection. Anti-vaxxers want our children sick and dead.
Thank God we finally have experts capable of thinking in terms of actual risk/reward instead of in terms of zero tolerance of any disease at any financial or vaccine side effect cost. It's horrible what the profit motive and inability to think about risks has done to out healthcare.
Once again you are the voice of science and reason. You are healthcare’s hero and I appreciate your efforts.
There will always be mentally rootless people living under rocks, believing themselves to be possessed of the truth, which contradicts the evil forces in power.
The real question now is whether the better metaphor is we have seen a wayward asteroid hit our country, with an ensuing dust cloud blocking the light--are we the dinosaurs, now watching the creep inheriting the earth?
Those people did their own research: https://thescamdoctor.substack.com/p/doing-your-own-research-could-kill?r=6hgshq
One-sided concern. Like virtually all vaccine proponents, Dr. Offit is very, very concerned about problems caused by infectious diseases, but quick to dismiss any problems alleged to have resulted from vaccination. There are strong incentives - both carrots and sticks - for medical professionals and medical researchers to go along with vaccinating for everything, as many times as possible; this makes it hard to trust the experts. I have never witnessed a safety concern being brought up and the medical establishment showing appropriate concern - they always disparage the evidence and shoot the messenger. I also note that there is mounting evidence of serious risks involved with many vaccines, and mounting evidence that the healthiest children are those who are completely unvaccinated. Where there is risk, there must be choice.
I also wonder about the accuracy of Dr. Offit's numbers. I have seen conflicting numbers, indicating a much smaller risk from hepatitis B. I'll have to look into that more deeply.
Finally, there are particular problems with a vaccine given on the first day of life:
ACIP member Evelyn Griffin, MD, an obstetrician and gynecologist, emphasized the rush that surrounds delivery. The birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine is expected to be given between 12 to 24 hours after birth.
“Often, how logistically this ends up happening is, a woman comes to labor and delivery, is in the throes of contractions and pain, is given a stack of papers to sign,” Griffin said. “And this may ideally happen where informed consent occurs in the prenatal visits before, but often it is not discussed.”
Once the baby is born, the birth dose becomes part of a rapid succession of events immediately after delivery, Griffin said.
“A lot has to get accomplished within the first few hours after birth, and so I have spoken with many parents. They're just unaware,” she said. “Patients are unaware that their babies are getting a lot of different interventions in the first few hours of life. There's other interventions other than hepatitis B and often, and I will challenge the media, I'll challenge the public, you know, to ask themselves: Do you know what your baby got within the first few hours of delivery? And most people are shocked to hear what happened.”
There are times when parents want to opt out of the vaccine, but the newborn ends up getting injected in the rush of treatment, a violation of parental rights, Griffin said.
Show your evidence that " I also note that there is mounting evidence of serious risks involved with many vaccines, and mounting evidence that the healthiest children are those who are completely unvaccinated," and " Where there is risk, there must be choice," I say "Duh."
You say "ACIP member" like it still has any meaning. Offit (and most people) dismiss "problems alleged to have resulted from vaccination" because there is no evidence.
You exemplify exactly what I'm talking about. So, the massive anecdotal evidence - parents describing the regression of their child or children, often within minutes or hours of a battery of vaccines, and pediatricians admitting that their unvaccinated patients are far healthier than their vaccinated ones - carries no weight? The 10 or so studies finding that completely unvaccinated children are many times less likely to be plagued with certain chronic conditions (neurodevelopmental disorders, asthma, autoimmune diseases) are all so flawed that the massive effects they found are completely false? The many, many cases won in vaccine court, with billions of dollars paid out - none of those were legitimate vaccine injuries or deaths?
I think you're blinded to the reality of these problems.
I'm glad you expanded on the "mounting evidence" here because I was going to comment on the lack of it cited in your top comment.
Evidence has quality: it can be lower or higher quality. Anecdotal evidence (i.e. parents reporting observations of their children) is of the lowest quality. Expert opinion (when treated as evidence i.e. you treating pediatricians remarking on the health of their patients as evidence) is of the lowest quality. These "10 or so" studies on unvaccinated children might be higher quality, but no one here can know which studies you are referring to and whether they're quality or junk. Vaccine court cases are evidence of nothing except that vaccines have rare debilitating side effects and sufferers of those can get compensated for them.
That said, parents observing rapid developmental regression in their children IS worth something. It doesn't have a clear identifiable cause but rather is caused by a complex interplay of factors, so parents probably never receive a satisfactory explanation, hence why they turn to seductively simple explanations like vaccines. If vaccines were related to developmental disorders like autism, massive cohort studies conducted on multiple continents would have identified even a small relationship, but they didn't. The rate at which kids develop autism and the frequency with which those kids get vaccines within the same age range means some number of those kids will first show signs of autism that the parents observe (important note: parents can miss subtle signs) around the time they received a vaccine purely by coincidence. That said (warning: I am no expert), given the complexities of rapid developmental regression, I wouldn't be surprised if vaccination played SOME part that would have otherwise been played by something else like a random fever, febrile seizure, infection, etc. which would explain why there is no observed difference in development of autism between kids who get vaccinated and those who don't. In other words, no matter whether vaccines are related or not, withholding vaccines is not going to save any kids from rapid developmental regression.
Everyone - parents, scientists, activists all - should remember the fallacy that is so old it's typically said in Latin: Post hoc ergo propter hoc. That is the false assumption that because one thing occurred after something else the latter one was caused by the former one. Obviously, that is not correct.
It's a fallacy regardless of whether you're talking about vaccines and autism symptoms or revised diagnostic criteria for autism and the rate of diagnoses.
How can you know the true answer? At the population level, that's what epidemiology is for, although it has room for improvement. At the individual level it's nearly impossible.
I generally agree, but when the deterioration starts within minutes or hours of a vaccine (or several vaccines), and is dramatic, I think the vast majority of such cases will point to a vaccine injury.
Much of what you wrote is fair enough, but I see things a bit differently.
I think anecdotal evidence is often more reliable than government statistics or peer-reviewed studies. The drug companies have incredible influence over the journals, government regulatory agencies, the news media, the medical education system, how doctors practice medicine, and much more. They can make sure that only studies they favor get published (at least in the "top" journals) and stay published (i.e., don't get retracted). Also, peer reviewers only very rarely ever get to see underlying data. Certainly, studies can be "cooked," as William Thompson of the CDC claims occurred with an autism study (see Pediatrics, Feb. 2004, Vol. 113, Issue 2; lead author is DeStefano) he was part of, in which he says a 236% elevated risk (164% excluding low birth weight children) for the condition was seen in Black, male children who received the vaccine prior to 36 months of age; the troubling data was screened out (for the most part) by changing the inclusion criteria, and then statistical significance was lost. Problem solved.
If many pediatricians are saying that their unvaccinated patients are the healthiest ones, by far, it's unlikely that they are going to be mistaken. The unvaccinated children aren't going to beat the odds, over and over. Moreover, pediatricians have no incentive to say these sorts of things, given that it opens them up to attack by the hospitals, medical boards, media, etc.; if they're saying these things, it's because it's their honest opinion. Further, many, many parents these days document virtually every day of the children's lives with videos and photos, and there are many parents who can document a steep decline in a child's health within hours of a vaccine (or a battery of vaccines). It's possible that some of these tragedies are coincidences, but given the suddenness and extremeness of so many of these declines (combined with the incredibly tight temporal relationship) it is unlikely that they will unrelated to the shots. I'm no expert, but the genetic conditions I am aware of come on slowly, with gradual deterioration over a period of years.
Regarding Vaccine Court cases, I wouldn't be so quick to call them evidence of nothing. It is really hard to know, given the unknown magnitude of underreporting to VAERS, as well as the lack of awareness of the ability to get compensation in Vaccine Court, just how "rare" serious vaccine injuries really are. We know that there were 5,000 families lined up to try and receive compensation for autism they felt was related to the vaccines, when the Omnibus Autism Proceeding took place. For my part, it's hard to look at what happened with the 6 test cases (including use of testimony of a medical expert that had been superseded by a new opinion on the part of that expert, and settlement with the Poling family for a large amount) and have confidence that the Court's finding of "no established causal link" was merited.
I think a finding of "no observed difference" in autism rates between vaccinated and unvaccinated children is generally the result of rigged studies, or studies that don't observe children for a long enough period, post-vaccination (like the recent Zervos study that was leaked by Senator Ron Johnson).
Your point is well taken that there are conflicts of interest, undue influence, perverse incentives, etc. from industry that affect our government and institutions. There are safeguards against this in the scientific and peer review process, though they are not fool-proof and certainly they need iterative improvement over time. There are also researchers whose focus is this very problem.
With respect to William Thompson (i.e. the Simpsonwood conspiracy), it's been over ten years and he still has yet to come forward publicly with any evidence to support his claims. The facts are laid out pretty thoroughly here (https://vaccinateyourfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Whistleblower_QA012017_updatedSept2020.pdf).
With respect to pediatricians, they can speak to individual patients very well and and make general broad claims about patients seen in their practice, but the value of the latter is limited by human biases, hence why research studies have such strict methods related to data-gathering, analysis, etc. Evaluating the overall health of the patients in their practice comprehensively is something you can't vibe out like these pediatricians are supposedly doing. That naturally segues into other questions: are pediatricians actually claiming as you say they claim? Who are they and how were they surveyed? What did they specifically say? How did they draw their conclusions? I don't think anyone should assume pediatricians are saying this based on your word alone; you should offer proof. Because you (like all of us) are also subject to human biases.
With respect to parents, I doubt anyone would deny what they've observed in their children. As another commenter said, "post hoc ergo propter hoc": just because something "tightly" proceeds something else temporally does not mean one caused the other. The controlled studies we have provide a significant body of evidence that there is no causal relationship between the two (vaccines and developmental disorders like autism). How do we know the triggering factor for rapid developmental regression wasn't physical pain? Or emotional pain (e.g. crying)? Both of those typically come part and parcel with vaccines in young kids.
With respect to vaccine court and VAERS, we do have a pretty good idea of how rare these side effects are. There is undoubtedly underreporting, but we have little reason to think that these rare and serious side effects are significantly underreported because parents would be most likely to report those, right?
With respect to the Poling family, this case illustrates how complicated medicine really is. There is a reason medical doctors use a tool called "differential diagnosis": many diseases and disorders can resemble each other, and this tool helps narrow the possible suspects. In the case of Hannah Poling, it does look plausible that her condition (mitochondrial disorder) was triggered by her vaccination event, and her signs/symptoms resembled autism spectrum disorder. However, her father noted in the case study he published that she improved once she received regular vitamins and enzyme cofactors related to her mitochondrial disorder. That crucial piece of information is what distinguishes her case from autism spectrum disorder, which does not go away with vitamin supplements.
You can easily claim findings from studies on autism and vaccines that refute the various and ever-evolving anti-vaxx hypotheses were "rigged" or that the follow-up period wasn't long enough. But can you support your claims with evidence i.e. evidence that specific studies were "rigged" or had inadequate follow-up?
You previously accused someone of being blinded to reality, but I think you may be blind or bleary-eyed to the ways in which humans mold their own reasoning to reach conclusions they already believe in without realizing it, and then they tell themselves they're skeptics as part of their self-narrative; I suspect you're doing that here. If there were a large cohort study (millions of children) that found a relationship between vaccines and autism, I'd start to be convinced there was a relationship. What would it take to change your view?
*** Part 2 ***
With respect to Hannah Poling, perhaps her father was mistaken and her improvement was due to something other than the vitamins and enzyme cofactors. Anyhow, how do you explain the 3 McDowell triplets who all regressed into autism, starting on the same day in 2007 that they all got the PCV7 vaccine?
I can’t tell you which studies were rigged. In some cases it will never be known because the data will never be made available, or the crime was otherwise covered up. I can tell you that the recent Zervos study that didn’t have a significant result for autism, only followed each patient for about 3 years, so it missed the vast majority of cases, both in the vaccinated and unvaccinated cohorts. I’m hoping that the CDC will use the Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) data, which has 10 million or so children’s long-term medical records, can elucidate this question to some extent.
No doubt I am as prone to blinding and bias as the next person, but I will ask you this: where are the large-scale, retrospective studies suggesting that vaccinated children are healthier? When FOIA’d, the CDC couldn’t come up with ANY that vindicated the vaccines given in the first six months of life - DTaP, HepB, HiB, PCV13, and IPV - from causing autism.
*** Part 1 ***
Thanks, Ben, for taking the time to reply in such detail. Thanks also for recognizing that research unfortunately is influenced by more than simply good science.
Regarding William Thompson, he repeatedly said that he would testify before Congress, but none of our illustrious representatives would call him to do so. He did, however, provide his data to a Congressman, William Posey. Rep of Florida’s 8th District (2009-2025), and to activist Brian Hooker, who published a study of it in Translational Neurodegeneration (it was retracted, but it was for an undisclosed financial interest, not any flaws in the paper itself). Thompson has never disavowed his allegations. By the way, the Thompson scandal was not the same as the Simpsonwood scandal; the latter was about the Verstraeten paper on thimerosal and autism, not the DeStefano paper on MMR and autism.
Regarding the recollections of pediatricians, if they’re noticing a dramatic difference, it’s unlikely that they’ve got it all wrong. Moreover, it’s drilled into pediatricians that vaccines are “safe and effective,” so most of them are going to have an unconscious bias in that direction, not the other one. And if pediatrian after pediatrician is saying the same thing that is counter to their training, you can bet good money that it’s true. A recent meta-study by Hulscher & McCullough, et al found 12 studies that show dramatically better health for unvaccinated children vs. vaccinated children; they found zero that show significantly improved health for vaccinated children. Of course, all of these studies are disparaged as deeply flawed. Often, we’re lectured that the way to settle the matter is with a prospective RCT, but conveniently (for the drug lobby), such a study is seen as “unethical” because the control group would be unprotected from infectious diseases.
You doubt that VAERS is significantly underreported, but that’s what many studies have found, including the Lazarus study using Harvard Pilgrim data, which calculated that less than 1% of vaccine adverse events are reported (although it didn’t calculate the rate for serious adverse events. Unfortunately, while most pediatricians are aware of VAERS, many other doctors are unaware of it. Deborah Conrad, a Physician’s Assistant at a NY State hospital, said that when her hospital was flooded with apparent vaccine injuries in 2021, nobody in the entire hospital was updating VAERS, and apparently virtually none of them knew about VAERS until she discovered its existence while surfing online. Moreover, she found that it was a real pain to update VAERS, and she takes exception to statements such as “anyone can access it and type in whatever they wish.” She said in an interview that CDC personnel kept calling her back, wanting more information, and that a record didn’t get assigned a permanent number until a great deal of information was recorded. Ms. Conrad also said that, due to the cumbersomeness of VAERS and the fact that there was no enforcement of the obligation to record vaccine injuries, her colleagues quickly decided they weren’t going to bother. As a result, Ms. Conrad was spending her nights and her days off inputting the VAERS data on behalf of the other doctors. For this, she was harrassed by the administration (which she secretly recorded), for making the vaccines look bad and causing vaccine hesitancy. Ultimately, she was fired.
Jim, as both Ben and Alexander above have explained, untrained or even trained anecdote, is not highly reliable. Maybe a stack of anecdotal evidence gives us all pause and encourages us to look for correlation and causation, but the anecdote alone prove nothing. Anecdotal evidence should lead us to placebo controlled, double-blind studies and anecdotal evidence shouldn't substitute for controlled, proper research. For example, if you took a poll of people and asked them if their blood pressure was high, this would be anecdotal evidence. It does not incorporate any regulated testing, expert investigation, but simply asks people what they think or feel. In this case you've proven nothing.
Here's an example: I started my career in a large mental health and addictions community practice in a large US city. I completed a lot of intake assessments for new patients. Many, many, many of them walked in the door with a diagnosis of Schizoaffective Disorder. When I say many, I mean MANY. Anecdotally, I could argue that the county and city I worked in have a larger than normal proportion of this incredibly rare mental disorder. Or, the original diagnosis was incorrect. Or the actual diagnosis(es) were a combination of various other disorders or factors (effects of EtOH, street drugs, etc.). The "or's" in this story are what are called confounders of data. When you think you find a relationship (a correlation) you have to then excise any confounders of the data which better explain what's going on.
Confounders in research help to sus out the correlation vs. causation thing. And anecdotal evidence doesn't control for any of that. Anecdote is fancy word for "experience." Lived experience of people is important and shouldn't be completely discounted. However, to be prove direct links between two things, you have to be able to show that one thing leads to the other.
Alexander beautifully gives the example of post hoc, ergo propter hoc. Here's an example, "I drank a cup of coffee this morning and my left knee started to hurt." Anecdotally, I can argue that coffee causes left knee inflammation. To prove this, I would need rigorous studies of coffee consumption and left knee pain/problems. Simply relying on I did A and B resulted is not proper evidence of anything. It's like saying, "A butterfly flapped its wings in Cleveland and caused a typhoon in the South China Sea." You'd need to prove that; simply believing it doesn't make it true.
You also referred to VAERS data. VAERS is not a research database; anyone can access it and type in whatever they wish. VAERS relies on anecdotal evidence. Sometimes it works well: A lot of anecdotal reports of myocarditis post COVID vaccination led to further investigation in a controlled manner and did in fact find a correlation and causation which is now known and warned about. So, yes, anecdotal evidence shouldn't just be dismissed right away. But we cannot believe it gives us the same level and quality of evidence as further scientific investigation.
Also, to comment: "I think a finding of "no observed difference" in autism rates between vaccinated and unvaccinated children is generally the result of rigged studies, or studies that don't observe children for a long enough period, post-vaccination (like the recent Zervos study that was leaked by Senator Ron Johnson)." I cannot link them all here, but there have been literally hundreds of high quality studies completed on any supposed link between autism and vaccination (they've looked at specific vaccine formulas; the presence of thimerosal, etc.) and they have been completed in numerous countries and regions (Denmark, UK, US, Canada, Finland, Japan, pan-Asian) involving millions of individual children, siblings, and twins. They have all found the same thing: nothing; no connection between vaccines and autism. And these studies were in a variety of formats, some being longitudinal in nature (meaning they took place over a lengthy period of time). There is no relationship between autism and vaccines. If you're saying that scientists at multiple facilities in 6 countries and all of Southeast Asia are rigging their studies, I would like to see the evidence for that. Rigging studies would involve a conspiracy among thousands of study workers. You're telling me that every single one of those workers was involved in a big cover-up? And if that is true, not a single one of them has been able to speak up and share that fact?
*** Part 2 ***
Funny you should bring up the issue of “literally hundreds of high quality studies completed on any supposed link between autism and vaccination,” because Del Bigtree’s nonprofit, the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN), submitted FOIA requests to the CDC for “all studies relied upon by CDC to claim that [the vaccines given in the first six months of life - DTaP, HepB, HiB, PCV13 and IPV] do not cause autism.” It should have been easy, right? Yet, the CDC didn’t respond within the statutory 20 days, so ICAN had to take them to court. The CDC then produced a list of a mere 20 studies, only one of which was (partially) relevant to the request — a study of a potential autism connection with MMR, thimerosal, and DTaP (an IOM study from 2012 titled, “Adverse Effects of Vaccines: Evidence and Causality”; it found that the available evidence of a connection between DTaP and autism was “inadequate” to draw a conclusion one way or the other). Breakdown of the other 19 studies: 13 on thimerosal, 4 on MMR and thimerosal, 1 on MMR alone, 1 on antigen exposure. ICAN followed up this request with a FOIA asking for “any” studies (not just the ones relied upon when the agency decided to state “Vaccines do not cause autism” on its website) that the CDC is aware of that support its implicit assertion that the vaccines given in the first six months of life do not cause autism. The CDC provided the same list. So, perhaps you should bring this mountain of asian and other studies to the attention of the CDC. If you don’t mind, please provide me with, say, 3 of these studies so I can look at them.
With respect to the possibility of rigging studies, I don’t think it’s as hard as you claim. In the CDC study that William Thompson was part of, a small team with an alignment of interests (i.e., to absolve the MMR vaccine) played around with the data until they came up with a solution: tighten the selection criteria in a particular way, which happened to reduce the numbers and take the result (greater autism in Black, males who got the MMR jab before 36 months of age) out of significance. Then they made up a story of why this change in selection criteria should be made, and the rest of the team went along. Many, many researchers don’t want to rock the boat. It’s my understanding that, normally, a study should be carried out strictly according to the original study plan, for obvious reasons, but that in too many cases, this important rule is ignored when it is inconvenient to those running a study.
*** Part 1 ***
Thanks, Drew, for sharing your perspective.
I am aware of confounders. Still, I think you are underestimating anecdotal evidence. If my pediatrician were to tell me that his unvaccinated patients were far healthier than his vaccinated ones, I would take that very seriously. For one thing, he would be putting his career in jeopardy by making statements like that, so I would feel that he must be very sure about it. I would be far more impressed if I was hearing the same thing from other pediatricians. In fact, I’ve heard more than a few pediatricians say that their unvaccinated patients were far and away their healthiest patients, and I’ve never, ever heard the reverse. Regarding parents, if they document that their child (or children, such as the McDowell triplets, all vaccinated on the same day in 2007 with PCV7) declined dramatically, minutes or hours after a vaccine appointment, ultimately descending into autism within hours, days, weeks or months, I’m going to be very, very wary of whatever vaccines their child received. I wouldn’t need to wait for a highly conflicted medical establishment to produce and publish a trustworthy study on the matter. By the way, all 3 McDowell children descended into autism after that shot. Unless they were exposed to a chemical spill on that same day, I’m going to assume that the problem was the PCV7 vaccine.
I mentioned VAERS in the context that serious adverse events often go unreported, because the parents don’t know about VAERS. In fact, many doctors don’t know about VAERS. Deborah Conrad, a Physician’s Assistant at a NY State hospital, said that when her hospital was flooded with apparent vaccine injuries in 2021, nobody in the entire hospital was updating VAERS, and apparently virtually none of them knew about it until she discovered its existence while surfing online. Moreover, she found that it was a real pain to update VAERS, and she takes exception to statements such as “anyone can access it and type in whatever they wish.” She said in an interview that CDC personnel kept calling her back, wanting more information, and that a record didn’t get assigned a permanent number until a great deal of information was recorded. Ms. Conrad also said that, due to the cumbersomeness of VAERS and the fact that there was no enforcement of the obligation to record vaccine injuries, her colleagues quickly decided they weren’t going to bother. As a result, Ms. Conrad was spending her nights and her days off inputting the VAERS data on behalf of the other doctors. For this, she was harrassed by the administration (which she secretly recorded), for making the vaccines look bad and causing vaccine hesitancy. Ultimately, she was fired. You say that VAERS isn’t a research tool, but shouldn’t it have been set up so it could be used as a research tool? Why not automate input or enforce input with stiff penalties for noncompliance? A study team working with Harvard Pilgrim data tried to automate VAERS, but when they filed a preliminary report to the CDC noting that adverse events are underreported by over 99% (unfortunately, they didn’t distinguish between reporting rates for serious adverse events versus overall), the CDC ghosted them and the study had to be shut down. If the medical establishment cares about vaccine safety and wants the public to have confidence in the vaccine program, why not come up with a quality safety monitoring system that can be used for research (rather than a vague, haphazard early warning system)?
Anecdote NEVER points to anything other than the need for RESEARCH. Period.
I have never seen ANY legitimate data that reflects the fact that unvaccinated children are healthier than unvaccinated children. Reference is continuously made to a notorious South Korean study that says no such thing, as well as a Danish study that, likewise, say no such thing. They are both duly cautious and scientifically careful to limit their final comments based on the actual data they derived - not on some "career protective scheme."
Cases are not WON in vaccine "court," as there is no "trial" or rendering of a "verdict." Perhaps you should acquaint yourself with the terms of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 (NCVIA) which created the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP). The VCIP is a "no-fault" compensation program where you only need demonstrate that there was a vaccination, an injury/death pursuant to a table of injuries in a given timeline, and with medical documentation. Contrary to popular myth, if you lose your claim in the VICP, you CAN then file a civil claim in court against the pharmaceutical manufacturer.
Totally disagree about anecdotal evidence. Studies can be fixed, but people's lived experience can't be fixed. I especially pay attention to frontline healthcare workers such as nurses - they see everything.
Regarding unvaccinated/vaccinated studies, I suspect that if a study was done by God and it found that unvaccinated children were healthier, you would say it was shoddy. Have you seen the McCullough/Hulscher meta-study on vaccines and autism? Based on 12 such studies (although a few were simply surveys), among other evidence, they concluded:
"We found strong and remarkably consistent evidence that children who were healthy at birth and remained completely unvaccinated through childhood and into early adulthood exhibited superior long-term health outcomes. Across cohorts, they showed substantially lower rates of allergic, autoimmune and neuropsychiatric disorders including ASD, together with the lowest overall health-care utilization of any group studied. Importantly, even among vaccinated populations, large government-funded analyses have failed to demonstrate any reduction in all-cause mortality. In the CDC Vaccine Safety Datalink study of more than 300,000 U.S. children, McCarthy et al (2017) found no significant difference in mortality between fully vaccinated and under-vaccinated groups. The null finding indicates that adherence to the full vaccine schedule does not translate into improved survival. Together, these data undermine the rationale that increasing vaccination exposure confers net population-level health benefit and instead support individualized, risk-stratified approaches to future vaccination policy."
On vaccine "court," there may be no trial, nor a traditional verdict, but I think most people would concede that it was a "win" for the claimant if there was either of the following outcomes: (1) HHS conceded the injury as compensable or (2) HHS didn't concede that the injury was compensable but the claims court found that the vaccine likely caused the injury and ruled in favor of the claimant. A third scenario is a little murkier, that is, where no initial concession was made, and a negotiated settlement was reached before the court issued a ruling. If a substantial settlement was obtained, I would also call that a "win." After all, the claimant - unless their case is a clear table injury - has to bear the burden of proof. They are going up against the justice department with all of its resources, and so it's an achievement to get any meaningful compensation. Only those with the most promising cases tend to bother to file a claim. Since 1988, of the 26,171 adjudicated claims, 12,507 have been determined to be compensable (by the court or by HHS, explicitly or implicitly by settling), and 13,664 have been dismissed as non-compensable.
And who will decide if a study is "fixed? You? Me? Your "trusted" authors? Your trusted "nurses?" Some article in 2014 from a disgruntled employee of a journal? Where exactly does it end? The last time you discussed this issue with me, and I pointed out that scientists frequently exercise justifiable caution and express further research is necessary pursuant to the limitations of the data they have at their disposal, you suggested this was because actually honesty would somehow "end their careers." This is complete and total foolishness and you are suggesting a purely arbitrary and capricious standard that you will pick, thereby allowing you alone to choose the "correct" data to fit your argument. You are promoting nothing but confirmation bias, plain & simple.
I certainly have seen the McCollough study and it is FULL of confounding errors, misrepresentations, and other significant design errors including confirmation bias. For heaven's sake, Mr. Shaw, I teach a graduate course in epidemiology, and these errors were immediately apparent to me and my students! McCollough published this flawed "study" on Zenado because I am sure no legitimate journal would publish it because of these errors. I repeat: I have NEVER, ever seen a legitimate study that confirms that unvaccinated children are healthier than vaccinated children. Period, McCollough notwithstanding. Poor science, is ALWAYS undeniably poor science.
I absolutely make no apology for following a canon of traditional scientific inquiry that is at once transparent, yet is always open to examination, curiosity, as well as legitimate correction. NEVER but never, paint yourself into a corner was a lesson I learned very early on. But NEVER compromise on the research values you know to be ethical and sustaining. NEVER.
I'm not saying it's always easy to tell which studies are fixed, but it undoubtedly happens. And often, it's very hard to discover, especially in that the underlying data is typically kept under wraps. Another problem is that, even absent fixing, there is a bias agains publishing anything inconvenient to the drug companies or the establishment in general. Moreover, young researchers fresh out school will nearly always be burdened by huge debts, and they will be very reluctant to rock the boat. More than a few "excommunicated" researchers have claimed that graduate students and other young researchers have approached them and said that they were highly impressed by their work, but that they couldn't risk their careers by working with them. Beyond that, I will say that, based on what I've observed in terms of institutional behavior, I highly value lived experience as a counter to official thinking. This inclines me to take very seriously the pediatricians - and there are quite a few - who are saying that their unvaccinated patients are by far their healthiest ones. And, in fact, I've never heard a pediatrician make the opposite claim.
If you are so uncompromising of your research principles, I can only wish that there were more researchers like you.
They are better off having a home birth and avoiding the ultrasound etc. The 'vaccine' is long after the assault has began.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-0IbNN-1PE
Heres an example where I address a chiropractors concern with the Hep B vaccine: https://substack.com/@thescamdoctor/note/c-185306569?r=6hgshq&utm_source=notes-share-action&utm_medium=web
Wow. Paul, you have even lost the masking alone in the car Blue Sky lefties at The Atlantic. Like I said, the trainwreck of your credibility is both gruesome and weirdly satisfying to obseerve.
"So why is Prasad’s allegation that a very small number of kids have died from COVID shots being treated as some unholy aberration? I reached out to Paul Offit, a former member of the CDC’s immunization advisory committee who had described the memo’s assertions as being “fairly fantastic.” He told me that although Prasad’s claim may ultimately pan out, he does not consider the published case reports definitive, nor does he believe that the shots have led to any deaths. “It’s not terribly convincing that this vaccine killed anybody,” he said."
"The 21 Korean deaths, in particular, were verified by a panel of specialists in cardiology, infectious disease, and epidemiology. Surely these, at least, should meet the bar for establishing a person’s cause of death—but the doctors and public-health professionals I spoke with for this story insisted that such reports don’t amount to slam-dunk proof.."
"Accepting and acknowledging reasonable proof of that reality would be an important part of effectively combating the government’s current vaccine skepticism. How can medical professionals discuss the favorable risk-benefit profile of these shots if they aren’t willing to acknowledge their worst risk?"
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/yes-some-children-may-have-died-from-covid-shots/ar-AA1RW3UR
HepB aside, there are many reasons in general not to "trust" experts.
1. Experts can be wrong.
2. Experts can be dishonest.
3. Experts are just as subject to bias and poor judgment as anyone else.
4. Expertise may lead to arrogance and self-righteousness.
5. Experts can construct cultures of groupthink and epistemic bubbles controlled by a handful of "thought leaders."
6. Expertise in one domain does not translate into expertise in others. Experts are prone to forgetting this fact.
There are many others.
Each of those reasons are of greater concern in the circles you cater for, Contrarian Joey. Treat us to another "Why we don't necessarily have to charge Dr. Fauci with treason" thought piece, Maga-Farmer Marine.
They're bound to offer you an HHS gig soon, Joey; they're running out of DC-area bootlicking (former) academic clinicians.
Nice. You make a great case for the expert class. I will have to rethink my position.
You are inadvertently making the perfect argument as to why RFK jr.'s panel should not be a homogeneous body of known anti-vaccine affiliated individuals.
Yes they should have a diversity of views. But ACIP has long been dominated by too narrow a group of experts that has fallen into groupthink and lost touch with the public. This is what allowed them to make the disastrous mistake of rubberstamping annual covid boosters for healthy kids. Now everything is being questioned. It is why we are where we are. Scapegoating one person is not going to solve the problem.
Unfortunately, I was not "scapegoating." RFK jr. is an imbecile who took it upon himself to resolve an undefined "problem" by gutting the ACIP and filling it, not with independent virology "experts," but with an homogeneous group of individuals with no known experience in the area in which they are to provide EXPERT opinion and policy. It seems to me their inability to even clarify WHAT they are voting upon at the time of a vote, two successive sessions - Spring & Winter - in a row, speaks for itself. As to the matter of "groupthink." I see pre-ordained "groupthink" - good heavens, the media was filled with their decision weeks before ACIP even met - while the prior ACIP was characterized by scientific "consensus." As to your comment, "lost touch with the public," seriously, children are vaccinated a handful of times in their entire lifetime. I believe the APA guidelines provide wonderful direction for parent-physician interactions, and are compassionate, loving, and carefully written.
"Scapegoating" was a general comment, not directed toward you. The authors post frequently starts with "RFK,Jr" because the name is triggering and grabs attention. There is intense ad hominem focus on a person and not the issues raised. They are not going away even if the person does.
They are not going away for now.
Your last statement is apposite. “Expertise in one domain does not translate into expertise in others.”
This is exactly right, and why a panel meant to have the expertise to determine the US vaccination recommendations should be packed with vaccine experts (like it used to be), and not a bunch of wannabes, some with zero medical experience at all.
Pretty fallacious reasoning there, Joseph.
Let’s say you are flying from NY to Paris, and there’s an issue with one of the plane’s engines.
Would you like an aeronautical engineer check it out?
Hmmmm…maybe not. After all, experts can be wrong, so let’s play it safe, and have the fault checked out by the guy who drives the baggage truck, shall we? 🙄
An honest and competent engineer, sure.
You know Marine I don't go spreading bullshit lies in adult cardiology circles about statins, why don't you stay out of something here you have no expertise in? You take care of your patients.
Adult cardiologists should stay in their adult lane.
I really don't know what to say anymore about this hideous man.
Unfortunately thousands of people will have to sicken and die before his power is destroyed.
Dr. Paul Offit has a growing passion for trying to convince the American public that RFK Jr. is not only anti-vaccine, but anti-science as well, intending to put our children at risk (aggressively and with malintent). Unsurprisingly, I heard those same words from another alleged expert at the same institution where Paul works: fear- mongering dressed as science keeps their business booming. Could Dr. Paul Offit, one of the greatest spokespersons for vaccine safety and an expert pediatric physician, possibly be missing some scientific details that put a new spin on people’s perception?
Let us start with his rotavirus vaccine and allow me to oblige Paul and judge him objectively by scientific standards. Rotavirus has been known to be a contributing factor to type I diabetes for quite some time (doi:10.1371/journal.ppat.1007965). What else are contributing factors? Epstein Barr virus (EBV), herpes simplex virus (HSV-1), and influenza virus, although the exact role these viruses play has not been well-characterized… just yet. A phenomenon of molecular mimicry is suggested, whereby components of the virus “look like” a human protein. This has been demonstrated with rotavirus. So why has it been ignored in the context of vaccinology? Because a mechanism of action has yet to be identified. And because Paul says it is safe. But that does not make Paul correct. It’s simply the word of an expert with limited information, because any studies that might prove otherwise have not been conducted. Nevertheless, it makes a good first impression upon those who are scientifically illiterate.
Now enter another area of expertise (an area of science Paul is not as familiar with). I worked in the field of HLA disease association testing for over 34 years. In this field of science, we study how foreign proteins are recognized by the immune system, and how antibodies are generated.
One of the most prominent features of autoimmune diseases like type I diabetes is the presence of autoantibodies. An autoantibody is an antibody (the same type of protein we make after receiving a vaccine) that can target one’s own body: a recipe for disease. It is “believed” that autoimmunity is due to errors in the immune system. But that is a belief, it has no backing based on science. Let’s stick to the science, instead of hocus-pocus tricks meant to distract us. It just so happens that type I diabetes patients often develop autoantibody that can target a protein, abbreviated IA-2 on pancreas cells, that can destroy insulin-making cells. This immune-driven process can result in diabetes.
As I alluded to earlier, there is also a very strong HLA association with type I diabetes (HLA-DR3 and HLA-DR4). By taking into account metabolic changes that take place during stress, and the viral and HLA disease associations with type 1 diabetes, one can identify not only 1, but 3 distinct IA-2 antibody targets, and 6 distinct HLA-DR3 targets, whose roots trace back to the combination of rotavirus and EBV. If that were not enough, one can also deduce 3 distinct autoantibody targets on insulin, and 4 distinct HLA-DR4 targets, whose roots trace back to the combination of influenza and EBV. And HSV-1 joins the party with EBV for another 4 insulin targets and another 7 distinct HLA targets. The combination of viral targets can produce autoantibodies that are responsible not only for type I diabetes, but also cause organ transplant rejection. This is not limited to diabetes, but to over 600 chronic diseases. In laymen’s terms, the immune system cannot distinguish one virus from another when elements from both are presented to the immune system at the same time and place. When components from multiple viruses get jumbled together, the immune system recombines them to identify what appears to be a human protein, giving rise to a weaker viral response but also the opportunity for autoimmunity or transplant rejection. This is a natural process, which can be exacerbated or caused by vaccination. Considering that this data has not been published just yet, perhaps this is something that inexperienced scientists like Paul should rule out before making sweeping assertions about vaccine safety. Or has Paul just been ignoring the obvious and become a little too overconfident in his assertions, willing to disseminate misinformation to the public at the expense of the public’s health?
Now let me ask you a common-sense question, regardless of your familiarity with the science I have just described in very rough detail. If you already have a protein inside you which is a target for causing type I diabetes (IA-2 or insulin), and you know that over 95% of the population already has been exposed to EBV, which lives with you the rest of your life and can be transferred from any mother to a newborn child… then why would you want to introduce multiple organisms into your body voluntarily, let alone your children? (via vaccination) Are you a glutton for punishment or a common-sense individual capable of making rational decisions?
As Paul’s audience continues accusing RFK of being a charlatan, perhaps they might want to do a little research before demonizing the man further. Afterall, Paul’s insistence on mandatory vaccination prompts several ethical concerns after learning this new information. Can vaccination not only increase chronic disease and transplant rejection, but also his employer’s profits- at the expense of a scientifically illiterate and innocent public? Has this any relation to why we distinguish between a medical exemption and a religious one- to make those with a strong belief sound like scientific ignoramuses or just plain idiots? If the beliefs held by science for the past 7 decades are wrong, and I have found much evidence that they are, then Paul and others stand to be held accountable not only for misinformation, but for disinformation and the consequences they have wreaked upon us over the past 30 years.
Educate yourself to the point of being an expert. Or figure out how to question the experts beyond their comfort zone. You might get fired for it. I did, by Paul’s employer. What I discovered wasn’t good for business. Dissent during the COVID crisis was censored rather frequently in case you haven’t figured that out yet. Sometimes the truth puts one in uncomfortable situations that have uncomfortable consequences. But it's worth upholding the truth to protect the ones you love. Because charlatans come in all colors, shapes and sizes, and can even masquerade as vaccine experts.
What is your view on the research indicating a lower risk of T1D in cohorts of Rotavirus-vaccinated infants?
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2721243#xd_co_f=NDgxNzM2NTYtZDU2MS00MTU1LTljZDAtNzg5ZjM3NjVhNWUy~
Fascinating.
After a brief scan of the article, and referencing similar articles in distinct countries, it does appear at first glance that it is difficult to argue that the vaccine could be a contributing factor to causing T1D. That being said, one must figure out how a signal could be missed in these studies. This is where the role of HLA (immune recognition proteins) and their association with specific diseases comes into play. There are over 40,000 distinct HLA proteins known, from which an individual inherits only about 6-20 from each parent. Different HLA appear in higher frequency depending on one's ethnicity. The frequency of HLA-DR3 (strongly associated with T1D) in Austria is about 11%. So if the study does not have exclusion criteria that accounts for the frequency of the HLA associated with a specific disease, any signal that would otherwise indicate a positive association between the vaccine and a specific disease will get lost. The signal becomes “overdiluted” by not segregating individuals who have the relevant HLA. Also, there are age stratifications in the study. And we do see a distinct change from the younger cohort vs older. This may be indicative of the older cohorts being exposed to other environmental stimuli (going to daycare or school & being exposed to environmental stressors not encountered in the home, including infections), accumulating the necessary components for the disease (T1D) , which incidentally peaks between ages 10-14.
Notably, while there was a 15% decline in incidence of T1D among age group 0-4, the article mentions no evidence of follow-up among individuals into the period of peak T1D incidence; the statistical modeling has its limitations. Interestingly, in a study by the same group (doi:10.1111/pedi.13038), the T1D frequency in the 0-4 age group appears to be declining before the advent of the vaccine, after which it continues upon the same steady, declining trajectory even after the advent of the vaccine. There is no dip in the incidence of T1D as one would expect if rotavirus vaccine contributed to halting the disease.
The question then becomes, does rotavirus actually contribute to T1D? There is evidence both through clinical studies and molecular mimicry studies (https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.ppat.10079650) that rotavirus plays a role. However, this study uses synthetic peptides (to identify regions of mimicry between the virus and the human protein that is implicated in the disease). The problem with this type of study is that just because molecular mimicry can be identified, it does not necessarily correlate with a natural biological mechanism. So until a study is properly designed to include/exclude correlate HLA variables, and correlates with a natural biologic mechanism, I do not see how one can reliably rule out the possibility that the vaccine can be a contributor to the disease. And for this and several other studies, HLA is not even alluded to, nowhere on the radar. So the data becomes convincing to publish, but the data is not necessarily revealing a reliable signal to address the hypothesis (the truth).
From a different angle, the molecular mimicry I uncovered is based on a biological mechanism that accounts for changes in metabolism that are consistent with disease progression and the immune response. But I still have to prove it in a laboratory (I currently do not have the resources to do that, and collaborators are quite reluctant to jump on board as you can imagine).
Please note that I am not saying that the rotavirus vaccine is ineffective at reducing mortality from rotavirus-induced diarrhea. What I am saying is that there are no studies to date, to my knowledge, which can indisputably rule out that a particular vaccine may contribute one of several variables that must be in place before a particular chronic disease may begin to show symptoms. And until there is, Dr. Offit should not be making sweeping statements and culling dissent by his audacious assertions which have no reliable basis. That is not science, it is public manipulation.
I take your points about the HLA types and other confounding variables.
However, irrespective of lack of adjustment for these, studies on T1D don’t seem to show a correlated signal for vaccination against Rota, so it’s logical to conclude there is no causal link.
I agree one should not be dogmatic in science and claim certainty, especially claiming that absence of evidence is evidence of absence, but then one can never prove a negative.
I'm not sure you got my point: These studies don't show correlation because they contain inherent bias (while they appear convincing). They are designed such that they are unlikely to ever demonstrate a correlation between vaccines contributing to chronic disease. You can come to your conclusion only by unaccounting for what you write off as "irrespective." You cannot find correlation, if it is there, without these crucial variables. It's a great way to keep everyone in the dark. It's also consistent with the viruses' ability to remain undetected because of natural modifications, and with the rising trend of chronic diseases since the advent of government-sponsored childhood vaccines and immunity to the companies that make them. If you don't understand what you are looking for, you can search for it until your heart is content yet never find it. It may still be there, but you'll never find it until you change your experimental design strategy. I have a pretty easy experiment that can identify whether I may be right or wrong- whether there is evidence that molecular mimicry contributes to chronic disease. That's the first hurdle before determining whether a vaccine can also. But it's $$$ and unfortunately, no one's providing the opportunity or funding just yet. Meantime, everyone sticks to their current belief system. That's not science. That's religion, as much as someone may not like the association. And while RFK and Paul are busy grinding their axes against one another, it's keeping the rest of us in the dark, divided and from possibly seeing a very different view. That may work for both of them... but not for those with the disease. I see an advantage to RFK's strategy. For researchers, it forces a gap in time where more children may be unvaccinated, where a signal can be detected that shows the contrary to what Paul has been advocating. Paul fears that as much as RFK being a nincompoop. Consequences could go in either direction. It's a risk. But there is evidence that it may be a risk worth taking. And I'm not particularly fond of mandates or paying off companies who may have been pulling the proverbial wool over every taxpayer's eyes for the past 3 decades. Especially since they're in no hurry to provide evidence they might be wrong. I get it, why shoot yourself in the foot? Instead, find a workaround before someone discovers what's been missing for so long. I'm not suggesting every study is built with malintent or that scientists may be malicious. I'm not a conspiracist. But there are missing links and errors laced into science that need to be corrected. That is a blind spot. You can console yourself in the fact there may be no proof. I can't. I know more about it than most people. Paul and RFK have an axe to grind with one another. Mine is to get to the truth, whichever way that goes. But that requires more work to be done first. And I've got to travel that road a bit longer, or until I run out of energy. My point is, we need to leave room for dissent, questioning the status quo and disruptive experimentation. Paul demonstrated to me that he has an unhealthy inclination to stick to his assets. RFK does too. We need a middle ground free of bias. And from my background, I don't see that in either of them. I am sorry to disappoint you and you are free to disagree with me. As for me, you won't find me or anyone I have influence over rushing to be vaccinated. And if someone wants to argue the ethics of that, they better come prepared and be just as willing to walk through the evidence I show them. There may be some unexpected surprises.
And I’m not sure you get my point, which is that just because there may be a plausible role for molecular mimicry inducing autoimmune responses triggering islet cell damage, that doesn’t mean that this mechanism operates during vaccination.
First principle in science is to detect an observable outcome, then explore hypotheses to explain it. In the case of rota vaccine, no one seems to have reliably detected an increased signal in T1D (if anything clinical and epidemiological studies show the reverse is true), so hypothesising the mechanisms for a phenomenon that hasn’t been observed seems to fail the test of scientific plausibility.
You say you are happy to walk people through the evidence, so please go ahead and demonstrate an increase in T1D after rotavaccination is real and we can take matters from there. But so far all you have are plausible mechanisms for a phenomenon that doesn’t occur.
There are reasons why vaccine induced immune responses wrt molecular mimicry are not the same as those following natural infection anyhow. One is that natural infection results in sustained high levels of replication with very high viral loads, whereas vaccination produces much lower viral loads and replication is confined to the gut. Also, for molecular mimicry to cause type 1 diabetes, I would expect there to be full sequence similarity (and correct me if I am wrong but my limited foray into the literature here shows the vaccine Rota VP7 peptide has only partial functional similarity?), accompanied by a “failure” of normal immunoregulation.
The vaccine VP7 sequence typically differs by 2 or three substitutions from natural VP7. If a substitution occurs at an HLA anchor residue or a TCR-facing residue, this might be sufficient to alter any mimicry occurring.
Now I certainly know less about these things than yourself, obviously, but it seems to me that the a claim that molecular mimicry following vaccination is identical to that following natural infection is pushing things rather.
And as I say, clinical studies looking at T1D incidence between vaxed and unvaxed children show if anything a lower risk in the vaccinated, and epidemiological studies do not appear to show population increases in T1D following national introductions of vaccination, which comes back to the fact that vaccine induced diabetes seems to be a non-phenomenon.
You say you won’t rush to get [rotavirus] vaccinated (I assume this would apply to any kids you might have), vaccination carries ring risks of other adverse effects, but overall has a substantial risk/benefit profile.
You obviously have a better understanding than most. Is this a vicarious identity thing I'm up against? Cross reactivity is concentration dependent as well as upon amino acid sequence homology (identical sequence). This does not require linear sequence identity of viral protein or peptide with the correlate human protein. Because proteins are folded, mimicry at the protein surface may require gapping in the linear sequence. The higher the concentration of viral antigen the greater the magnitude of the stimulus and opportunity for "epitope spreading" and cross-reaction with similar human epitopes. Amino acids in a protein have some some flexibility also. Generally, autoantibodies are relatively low affinity. This makes sense if they are polyreactive, which most are. Polyreactive implies that they can bind to more than one antigen (Zorn E, et al.). As I mentioned earlier, I observed these antibodies in the context of HLA following viral COinfection. This does not always imply simultaneous infection. The timing between infections (or infection plus vaccination) can be spread out. Superinfection, invasion of a single cell by more than one organism, may take years. This is more likely what is ocurring. Regardless, follicular dendritic cells in lymph nodes can "hold" antigen for years, "waiting" for the 2nd pathogen to appear. This is also another mechanism of immunological memory. There is a good probability that the higher avidity of the antibodies is due to the antibody targeting (6 peptide) components from at least two pathogens simultaneously (there are 6 distinct loops to an antibody binding site, facilitating complementarity to 6 distinct T cells). The question then becomes, why doesn't the immune system recognize the individual virus components from memory at the same time both are present? Because during stress, virus components can be reactivated, and post-translational protein modifications upregulated by stress can alter their protein structure (adding or subtracting distinct modifications) and completely change the antibody-binding profile of the protein, enabling both viruses to escape detection- particularly since most testing is performed on peripheral blood samples, not from deep infected tissue. Differences in viral antigenicity on infected cells vs whole virus particles has been documented since the 60's. As I said, this whole hypothesis needs to be proven, but the coinfection patterns I observed and subsequent appearance of antibody were very reproducible. The algorithm I created predicts that the human autoantigen equivalent of the virus epitopes are surface accessible, and each viral protein contains a peptide that shares mimicry with its HLA correlate that matches the HLA disease association. But the viral epitopes can be masked by carbohydrates on the wild-type virus. These carbs can be digested by enzymes upregulated during stress. I once had preliminary experimental evidence that supported my hypothesis but no longer have access to it. It's stuck in a drawer or computer or worse. If cross-reactivity can be demonstrated, and I am sure it can, this concept along with idiotype antibodies (it gets more complicated) can potentially explain deferred timing of disease onset, inability to detect signal, and the HLA disease associations which must be incorporated. Without data, I'm at a loss to prove it. I currently do not have the resources available to me, otherwise it would have been published by now, one way or the other. But every aspect of it is supported by scientific literature. It is both metabolically and immunologically feasible. Furthermore, the virus epitopes are conserved. If you have digested all that, you need to tell me what you do for a living.
Very interesting and well-written. So sorry you got fired for raising inconvenient questions.
I express my opinions on drugs and vaccines (among other health topics) quite freely, and I'm often asked, "Do you think that you know more than the experts?" or "Do you think you're smarter than the experts?" My answer to these is an unqualified, "No," but I think that is beside the point. The real questions, to me, are (1) Do the people developing drugs and vaccines know what they're doing? (that is, is their knowledge sufficient, relevant to the inherent complexity of the human body and what they're trying to accomplish?); and (2) Given massive conflicts of interest and medical indoctrination, can we trust the experts? I think the answer to both of these questions is a resounding "No."