http://www.safeminds.org/news/pressroom/iom-report-vaccine-adverse-effects.html
PRESS RELEASE: New IOM Report on Vaccine Adverse Effects Shows Alarming Lack of Good Science
August 25, 2011 Washington DC.
The Institute of Medicine's Panel on Adverse Effects of Vaccines issued a report today on the evidence and causality of vaccine harms. Despite a glowing press release, the report does little to allay public concerns over adverse effects of vaccines and suggests that we urgently need more science on vaccine adverse effects.
The IOM report took two years to produce, mostly behind closed doors, and was paid for by the Department of Health and Human Services, the government agency which is also a defendant against the vaccine-injured in the government's vaccine court.
The report investigated 158 potential adverse outcomes from vaccines. Of these, 135 or 85% were found to have inadequate research to accept or reject a causal association. Of the 23 outcomes where the research was deemed adequate, 18 or 78% were found supportive of harm. Vaccines were cleared of safety concerns for just five of the outcomes considered. "These statistics are hardly reassuring to parents who are now asked to give their young children over 32 vaccinations," noted Sallie Bernard, President of SafeMinds.
The report found likely causality of immune dysfunction, seizures and encephalopathy from some vaccines. These conditions are often found in individuals with autism. "It is plausible that a subset of children became autistic because of these adverse events from their vaccines. There are many cases of autism compensated by the vaccine court after having one of these conditions," noted Lyn Redwood, RN, Director of SafeMinds. Details of a recent review of compensated cases are available
here.
Due to a narrow set of objectives defined for the IOM by the government, the report only looked at a small set of published research studies linking just two vaccines to developmental disorders such as autism. Only four epidemiological studies were considered of sufficient quality to evaluate the MMR vaccine in relation to autism and no studies were deemed of sufficient quality for the DtaP vaccine and autism analysis. The committee did not attempt to evaluate six other vaccines for autism causation, the safety of the cumulative vaccine schedule and health outcomes like autism, or the safety of vaccine ingredients like mercury and aluminum in the context of chemical exposures from other sources like air pollution or consumer products. A SafeMinds review of the epidemiological studies on MMR and thimerosal and autism is available
here.
That 85% of even a small subset of health outcomes has inadequate science speaks of the critical need for more research on vaccine safety. SafeMinds calls on Congress and the Administration to institute a rigorous science program on vaccine safety. This program would include the establishment of an independent Vaccine Safety Agency (similar to the National Transportation Safety Board), the launch of a study comparing health outcomes between vaccinated and unvaccinated children, the inclusion of vaccines as an exposure variable in the National Children's Study and mandatory reporting by physicians to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System.
The Coalition for SafeMinds is a 501C-3 organization dedicated to restoring health and protecting future generations by eradicating the devastation of neurological disorders induced by mercury and other toxicants.
Background Information (see link).
http://smartvax.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=46&Itemid=37
COMPARISON OF SMARTVAX AND MAX-VAX PHILOSPHIES
SmartVax and Max-Vax are both "pro-vaccine" philosophies, in that both philosophies consider vaccines an important component in an overall children's health program, but SmartVax differs from Max-Vax in important aspects of safety, research, and policy. The SmartVax philosophy is all about being smart with vaccinations: don't over-use them, don't bypass good science, understand the risks, and ensure that the risks are not hidden from the public.
Please see link.
http://www.ageofautism.com/2012/02/scientists-with-starving-brains.html
http://www.generationrescue.org/about/board-of-directors-2/
JB Handley is the co-founder of Generation Rescue, inspired by the journey of his son, Jamison, and co-produced the documentary film “Autism Yesterday.” He is also the co-founder of Swander Pace Capital, a middle-market private equity fund with more than $1 billion under management. He is a graduate of Stanford University, and lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife, Lisa, and their three children.
February 24, 2012
Scientists with Starving Brains
By J.B. Handley
Like clockwork, a few times a year, a profoundly asinine study will appear in a scientific journal somewhere ostensibly “further refuting” the hypothesis that vaccines are causing all this autism.
<...>
I have said all these things so many times, and I will go ahead and say them again:
By 6 months of age most American children receive 19 vaccines through 3 visits to the doctor. It’s worth noting that many kids also receive a birth dose of Hepatitis B, boosting this number to 20 vaccines.
So, of the first 20 shots given to kids, how many have been studied for their relationship to autism? The answer may surprise you: ZERO. That’s right, because only one vaccine, the MMR, has ever been studied for its relationship to autism. The MMR is a vaccine first administered to American children at 13-18 months of age.
But what about the 2, 4, and 6 month well-baby visits where children receive so many vaccines? The truth is they have never been studied or considered, so no one has any idea. This would be like trying to identify the source of a plane crash, suspecting mechanical failure, solely analyzing one of the wings, and then declaring the entire airplane free of culpability. But, that’s exactly what has happened.
Worse, somehow, scientists and the press have decided that mercury, a single ingredient in some vaccines, should serve as a proxy for ALL vaccines and ALL ingredients and that if they can, in many convoluted ways, demonstrate that mercury is somehow safe than by association vaccines should be safe, too. How else, after the UK study above gets published, does the Atlantic conclude:
Study Shows Vaccines Still Don't Cause Autism
Having personally spent the time to critically read every study produced to "prove" vaccines don’t cause autism, I was dumbfounded by their inadequacy. And, comments public officials make about these studies are even more absurd and unsupportable. Consider, from some of the studies, some of the actual questions that were asked (versus the way the press reported it):
Q: Do children with autism and without have different levels of mercury in their urine? [a wholly unreliable way to assess body burden of mercury]
Q: Do children receiving more thimerosal in their vaccines have different neurological outcomes from children receiving less thimerosal in their vaccines?
Q: Are autism rates different for children who received 62.5 mcg or 137.5 mcg of mercury?
Q: Did children who all received DTP vaccine with thimerosal have higher or lower rates of developmental disorders based on when they got the shots?
Q: Do Thimerosal containing vaccines administered to children raise mercury blood levels above safe standards?
Q: Does the use of RhoGam shots during pregnancy have a correlation with autism?
These 6 examples above come from 6 of the most commonly listed studies cited as "proof" that "vaccines do not cause autism." Yet, not one of them comes close to addressing this issue or answering the question we all really care about that goes something like this:
Our children receive 36 vaccines by the time they are five, including 20 by their first birthday. Is the administration of so many vaccines causing autism in certain children?
That question, so important to the health of our children and our nation, has never been asked, so it cannot yet be answered. And yet, scientists and the press, continue to publish and report on useless studies that insult the intelligence of integrity of both parents and well-meaning professionals alike.
JB Handley is the co-founder of Generation Rescue http://www.generationrescue.org/about/board-of-directors-2/
http://www.ageofautism.com/2011/01/the-offit-index-tracking-a-patent-owners-ongoing-financial-interest-in-one-vaccines-sales.html
http://www.safeminds.org/about/executive-board.html
Mark Blaxill is the father of a daughter diagnosed with autism, editor at large for Age of Autism, a director of SafeMinds and a frequent speaker at autism conferences. He writes often on autism, science and public policy issues for Age of Autism and has published a number of articles, letters and commentaries on autism in journals such as Public Health Reports, the International Journal of Toxicology, the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, Neurotoxicology and Medical Hypotheses. He has also been invited to peer review articles in journals such as theNew England Journal of Medicine, the American Journal of Epidemiology, Pediatrics and the International Journal of Toxicology.
He received a bachelor’s degree summa cum laude from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and an MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School. In his professional career, he is Managing Partner for 3LP Advisors, an advisory firm focused on intellectual property transactions...
January 15, 2011
The Offit Index: Tracking a Patent Owner’s Ongoing Financial Interest in One Vaccine’s Sales
By Mark Blaxill
Vaccine developer Paul Offit has just published a new book, De
adly Choices, in which he turns up the volume and the rhetoric against what he likes to call “the anti-vaccine movement.” His target, he argues, has launched a dangerous assault on the public health, and its misguided disciples are everywhere, including people like you and me. Based on the advance description, I don’t plan on boosting his sales.
But my friend and colleague Dan Olmsted has read it and wrote about it
HERE. Dan found the tone mean-spirited and describes Offit’s work as “a score-settling screed against anyone who's ever criticized him or vaccine safety surveillance.” Offit isn’t alone in his name calling, it seems the public relations mavens of the medical industry have been working overtime to pin the “anti-vaccine” label to anyone they can find. The reality, however, is that the movement Offit and his industry cronies criticize so ruthlessly is really a grass-roots consumer movement, concerned about the health of children, distrustful of the “public-private partnership” that has emerged with the vaccine industry and its regulators, and is speaking out with increasing force for long-overdue improvements in vaccine safety management.
This movement is good for children’s health, but not for the vaccine industry’s profits, which is why the propaganda is escalating. In his new book, Offit takes the hate speech to a new level, asking all Americans to fear this diverse community of concerned consumers because, “the anti-vaccine movement threatens us all.
Even for Offit, this new book is an escalation. He has written three books before this one,
What Every Parent Should Know About Vaccines (a standard “vaccines are always safe” propaganda piece published in 1998),
The Cutter Incident (a revisionist history of one of the great breakdowns of vaccine safety, in which he offers the bizarre complaint in 2005 that fear of litigation was driving vaccine manufacturers away from the industry, even as industry revenues and profits were exploding like never before) and
Autism’s False Prophets (a 2008 attack on the autism parent community for raising concerns over vaccine safety). The thread in Offit’s writing is clear, making the world safe for vaccine manufacturers. But why would a man like Offit, so obviously concerned for his public reputation, get down and dirty on vaccine safety advocates, parents like Barbara Loe Fisher, Jenny McCarthy and our own J.B. Handley? One possible answer is the simplest one of all.
They’re costing him money.
More at link...
= new reply since forum marked as read
