What we’ve heard
Vaccines are:
Safe and Effective ♦ Save Lives ♦ Science is Settled
Anything else is:
Misinformation ♦ Quackery ♦ Conspiracy Theory
What we should have heard
About fast-tracking a CoVID-19 (or any) vaccine:
Jonathan Kimmelman, director of McGill University’s biomedical ethics unit, on skipping critical animal testing before proceeding to human clinical trials1
‘Outbreaks and national emergencies often create pressure to suspend rights, standards and/or normal rules of ethical conduct … Often our decision to do so seems unwise in retrospect.’
About the flu vaccine:
Stanley Plotkin, preeminent vaccinologist, vaccine developer, consultant to vaccine manufacturers, author of the book Plotkin’s Vaccines2
By and large, we think of vaccines as highly efficacious … Not so with inactivated influenza vaccine, which we recommend each year for both children and adults but without expecting high efficacy. 3
… This immunization program has been predicated on assumptions on top of assumptions.
About the measles vaccine:
Gregory A. Poland, MD, MACP, Editor-in-Chief, VACCINE4
This leads to a paradoxical situation whereby measles in highly immunized societies occurs primarily among those previously immunized.
About the mumps vaccine
Stanley Plotkin5
A radical improvement in the mumps vaccine is preferable [to a third dose] to solve the problem of waning immunity.
About the whooping cough (pertussis) vaccine
Christopher J. Gill, MD, Associate Professor, Global Health, Boston University6
we layered assumptions upon assumptions, and now find ourselves in the uncomfortable position of admitting that we made some crucial errors…
About the DTP vaccine
Dr. Peter Aaby, Medical Researcher, founder of a health and demographic surveillance of all the tracking system deliveries, child interventions and survival7
That vaccine [DTP] is actually killing children. It’s not just a differential effect. It’s killing children.
About aluminum and mercury in vaccines
Martin Myers, acting director of the National Vaccine Program Office8
…those of us who deal with vaccines have really very little applicable background with metals and with toxicological research.
Dr. Clements, World Health Organization
“The public is very much concerned with mercury and it is not so surprising that thimerosal with its mercury generated so much interest. Aluminum is not perceived, I believe, by the public a dangerous metal and, therefore, we are in a much more comfortable wicket in terms of defending its presence in vaccines. …9
Vaccine safety science
Professor Heidi Larson and the Global Vaccine Safety Summit, Dec. 2-3, 201910
You can’t repurpose the same old science to make it sound better if you don’t have the science that’s relevant to the new problems.
We need much more investment in safety science.The biggest problem with vaccine skepticism online is that
…‘a lot of it is not misinformation’… there is ‘a lot of ambiguity in the safety field.’
Dr. Peter Aaby
… no routine vaccine was tested for all the effect on mortality [all cause mortality] in randomized trials before being introduced. I guess most of you think that we know what all our vaccines are doing, we don’t.
Footnotes
