Vaccines and side effects
While the world is trying to recover from the scandal that plagued the vaccine field due to the infamous link to autism (read Andrew Wakefield's story), the issue is still in the minds of moms and dads everywhere. While hopefully, the link between MMR vaccines and autism stays debunked at least in the scientific world where data alone triumphs, there have been issues with vaccines and will continue to do so. Nothing is ever perfect.
Between June 2006 and March 2014, approximately 67 million doses of HPV vaccines were distributed and the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) received approximately 25,000 adverse event reports occurring in girls and women who received HPV vaccines and of these, 92% were classified as 'non-serious', suggesting 2000 cases were serious. Should we be rethinking vaccine formulations?
In another controversial decision, the journal Translational Neurodegeneration (paper by Brian Hooker) removed a paper that was published, citing serious concerns about the validity of its conclusions. It appears that in 2004, the CDC published results of a study showing that among children vaccinated between 12 and 17 months of age encompassing 624 children with autism (ages 3-10) and 1824 healthy controls (same age group), there was no link between age children were given their first MMR shot and autism diagnoses nor did they find a statistically significant increased risk for a particular racial group (DeStefano et al., Pediatrics, 2004).
However, Hooker found that there was an increased risk for African-American boys developing autism based on the same data but said that the CDC study deliberately limited the number of participants included in the analysis as they did not have a birth certificate and this skewed the data and altered the results. It also appears that the 2004 study in Pediatrics was funded by the vaccine industry. This needs a little probing around, but the aim of this blog is not to debunk or support any study but to look at the hard facts-its all in the data.
Between June 2006 and March 2014, approximately 67 million doses of HPV vaccines were distributed and the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) received approximately 25,000 adverse event reports occurring in girls and women who received HPV vaccines and of these, 92% were classified as 'non-serious', suggesting 2000 cases were serious. Should we be rethinking vaccine formulations?
In another controversial decision, the journal Translational Neurodegeneration (paper by Brian Hooker) removed a paper that was published, citing serious concerns about the validity of its conclusions. It appears that in 2004, the CDC published results of a study showing that among children vaccinated between 12 and 17 months of age encompassing 624 children with autism (ages 3-10) and 1824 healthy controls (same age group), there was no link between age children were given their first MMR shot and autism diagnoses nor did they find a statistically significant increased risk for a particular racial group (DeStefano et al., Pediatrics, 2004).
However, Hooker found that there was an increased risk for African-American boys developing autism based on the same data but said that the CDC study deliberately limited the number of participants included in the analysis as they did not have a birth certificate and this skewed the data and altered the results. It also appears that the 2004 study in Pediatrics was funded by the vaccine industry. This needs a little probing around, but the aim of this blog is not to debunk or support any study but to look at the hard facts-its all in the data.
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