Well, psychology tries to be scientific, but it’s still relatively in its infancy.
There’s no blood test for sanity; in fact, the definition of “sanity” itself is subject to debate. For that matter, a century ago nobody was diagnosed as autistic–people exhibiting those symptoms were labelled imbeciles or insane.
Some parts of it are. Not the Bob Newhart type, but my daughter has a PhD in psychology and the experiments she runs are scientifically sound and rigorous. Her favorite present one Christmas was a Matlab book.
Yes, that was a little unfair. Let’s say instead that many psychological findings are unverifiable, or necessarily subjective.
Sorry, gotta side with ralph here (there’s a first time for everything).
Yeah, I know I’m picking on Italian courts here (and two of the dumb decisions were overturned on appeal, at least for now).
Scientific questions are determined in the arena of science; lawyers, judges and juries are overwhelmingly not qualified to settle controversial issues.
ralph was referring to our legal system, as was I. Not the Italians’.
The reason I specified Anglo-American is precisely because of the shenanigans in Italian courts. I also pointed out that courts are good for resolving mainstream scientific disputes, not controversial scientific issues.
But, Jackmannii, I don’t need or expect my PCP to evaluate the newest therapies. I’d like the ER staff and any specialists to which she sends me to be better informed, but I certainly don’t trust them to be, either.
I’ve had an ER doctor ask which of my toes I thought was broken when one of them was solid purple. I’ve had an orthopedist, radiologist, and MRI reading doctor (what are they?) all miss a broken bone; it was a small break, to be sure.
So, do I expect my PCP to be able to evaluate the statistics in a clinical study? No, I’m just happy she’s a good, solid primary care physician. I’ll evaluate the new drugs and devices.
So are many medical findings. It’s still a science.
I’m not a mathematician, but I did my best to grind some numbers for a “friend” once who asked much the same question. Here’s what I was able to come up with (he was particularly concerned with HPV, which is why I started there):
Between 2006 and January 5, 2015, we administered 67,250,524 HPV vaccines. There were 156 claims filed through the NCVIP program for adverse events. For 10 of those, the Dept. of Health and Human Services conceded that the vaccine either caused or contributed to the injury or death. For 1, a judge ruled that the vaccine either caused or contributed to the injury or death, and while the HHS did not agree, they paid without fighting the case. For 65 cases, neither a court nor HHS found that the vaccine either caused or contributed to the injury or death, but settled anyhow because reasons*. For 83 claims, no evidence linking the vaccine to the injury or death was found, or the cause of injury/death was positively identified as due to some other factor, and the claims were dismissed.
So out of 67,250,524 doses of the vaccine administered over 9 years, 11 injuries occurred that everyone agrees were caused by or contributed to by the HPV vaccine. That’s a 0.00016% adverse reaction rate.
Let’s go ahead and add in those 65 cases that were settled (with the understanding that settled cases are not settled because there’s evidence in their favor). If out of 67,250,521 doses, 76 injuries were caused by or contributed to by the HPV vaccine, that would give the vaccine a 0.0013% adverse reaction rate.
That’s what we mean by “low risk”: Sixteen one hundred thousands of one percent to thirteen ten thousandths of one percent.
What about vaccines as a whole? Of the vaccines covered by the NCVIP program, there were 2,236,678,735 doses during this time period. 2,852 claims were filed. 1,184 were dismissed. 156 conceded by HHS, 164 awarded by court decision, and 1,351 settled.
Even if I give every benefit of the doubt, that’s 1668 claims that were compensable. Out of 2,236,678,735 doses of vaccine administered. That’s an adverse event rate for all vaccines in toto of (gah! I hate exponents…left 7, right 2…) 0.00746%
So, yes, you absolutely can find me some stories of children killed by vaccines. You can find 11 stories in the last 9 years where a dose of HPV vaccine injured or killed someone, and each one of them is a tragedy, absolutely. I can find you 67,250,510 that didn’t.
*“Settlement: The petition is resolved via a negotiated settlement between the parties. This settlement is not an admission by the United States or the Secretary of Health and Human Services that the vaccine caused the petitioner’s alleged injuries, and, in settled cases, the Court does not determine that the vaccine caused the injury. A settlement therefore cannot be characterized as a decision by HHS or by the Court that the vaccine caused an injury. Claims may be resolved by settlement for many reasons, including consideration of prior court decisions; a recognition by both parties that there is a risk of loss in proceeding to a decision by the Court making the certainty of settlement more desirable; a desire by both parties to minimize the time and expense associated with litigating a case to conclusion; and a desire by both parties to resolve a case quickly and efficiently.” Page 9 of http://www.hrsa.gov/vaccinecompensation/statisticsreport.pdf
As for side effects and adverse events that may or may have not gone through NCVIP:
Most of the childhood vaccinations share the same side effects, and they’re listed on the patient information sheet that must be given out before the vaccination is given. The most common are pain at the injection site (duh, there’s a needle going in there) and mild to moderate fever (which is actually a sign that the immune system has recognized the invaders and is working to form antibodies against it.) The prevalence of these side effects vary by the vaccine. DTP causes swelling in soreness very commonly - so commonly that I can’t find numbers on it. HepB causes pain at the injection site somewhere between 3-29% of the time, depending on which study you’re looking at.
There are definitely some risks of adverse events more worrisome than pain and fever. Luckily, they are also much rarer than pain and fever. Approximately one person per 600,000 vaccinated with HepB (HBV) has an anaphylactic reaction to it. None of these have been fatal, but they are scary as hell. Anaphylactic reaction to HepB is an absolute medical contraindication to getting another HepB shot. As we’re always balancing risks with benefits, let’s look at what happens if people aren’t vaccinated for HBV: 5% of the US population will get HBV, and approximately 2,000-5,000 persons in each U.S. birth cohort will die as a result of HBV-related liver disease. (A birth cohort is all the people born in one year.) So you have a much greater chance of being harmed by HBV than the HepB vaccine, even when its scariest most potentially fatal risk is taken into account.
MMR, in addition to causing fever in 5-15% of those who get it, can also cause a rash. The rash happens in about 5% of the people vaccinated and goes away without treatment. Central nervous system disorders, including encephalitis and encephalopathy, happen in about 1 in 1 million doses - which is actually LESS than childhood encephalitis of unknown origin without the vaccine. That strongly suggests that the vaccine isn’t causing the encephalitis, that it would have happened with or without vaccination. Febrile (fever related) seizures may also occur, which are terrifying to witness, but don’t actually cause harm, nor do they increase the risk of developing epilepsy. Thrombocytopenia (a dangerously low white blood cell count) happens in about one case per 1 million of US children vaccinated, although the number is quite a bit higher in other countries. (I don’t know if they’re using the same vaccine or not.) But again, let’s compare that to actually getting the measles or rubella: 1 in 3000 children who get the measles or rubella will develop thrombocytopenia. MMR, like HepB, as occasionally caused an anaphylactic reaction. But when I say occasionally, I mean that in the 70 million doses given since we started tracking this in 1990, only 33 cases of anaphylactic reaction have been reported, and only 11 of those happened immediately after the injection and were likely caused by it. If you’re allergic to any of the vaccine components (including gelatin and neomycin, which are not unknown to cause allergic reactions) you and your doctor should carefully weigh the risks and benefits of vaccinating.
I could go on, but I bet at this point, people are wishing I wouldn’t. But all of this information is publicly available, and it all points to the same thing: for healthy non immune compromised patients who are not allergic to the vaccine components, vaccination is vastly safer than getting the disease you’re vaccinating for, and just generally pretty darn safe overall.
But where? Some people do not know where to go for reliable information and end up being swayed by what shows up in their inboxes and Facebook feeds all the time.
We have a wonderful tool through which was can access all the information in the world, and people still have no idea how to use it.
WhyNot, that was a beautiful post. 
Thank you for taking time to compile information that, while publicly available, may be a drag to read, summarize, and compare.
The general problem seems always to come back to people’s inability to asses risk or compare risks.The obvious example is car travel. There must be very few of the anti-vaxers who do not take their children in cars yet “In the United States during 2011, more than 650 children ages 12 years and younger died as occupants in motor vehicle crashes, and more than 148,000 were injured.” cite
Compare this with the statistics given in WhyNot’s post.
That’s a good point. A big problem (the one in the OP, actually) is that people don’t trust the people with the actual numbers. The don’t trust the government or “Big Pharma” or the CDC or anything that comes out of a research institute. Then they wail that they don’t have information. There’s tons of information. (But information isn’t really what they’re looking for; they’re looking for validation.)
As I recall, my information on the NVCIP stats came from this document: http://www.hrsa.gov/vaccinecompensation/statisticsreport.pdf
The information on vaccine side effects, adverse events and rates of adverse events came from the CDC, from the drug information sheets, from studies done both by vaccine manufacturers themselves (where I was able to find quite a bit of damning information, actually, if one doesn’t understand statistics) and independent researchers, and from WHO. I wish I’d saved the links, but I didn’t. But it all came from Google and pubmed and drugs.com. Nothing I even had to pay to access.
Thank you. I was really on a tear the week I wrote those, and several others, during one of the measles outbreaks. Luckily, I had the presence of mind to save them so I could find, cut and paste them later if I ever wanted to. Last night, I finally did.
I also wrote this one around the same time, in response to a friend who believed that doctors and Big Pharma were “not immune to greed and corruption,” and therefore suppressing data which showed harm from vaccines, in the same way that some of them have been caught suppressing data about other drugs, like Vioxx. The OP may get a chuckle out of it. Again, it’s not actually very effective in changing minds that don’t want to be changed…but it was pretty cathartic to write. 
This one, I was smart enough to include links. Not sure if they all still work, but there’s enough info in the addresses to figure them out.
To add even more perspective, compare those 11 acknowledged injuries attributed to the vaccine to the toll resulting from HPV infection.
In one recent year according to the CDC, there were over 12,000 new cases of cervical cancer diagnosed, and about 4100 deaths. In addition, cervical dysplasia (precursor to cancer) affected between 250,000 and 1 million women per year. All those dysplasia cases require medical followup and frequently invasive procedures. Severe dysplasia commonly is treated by surgical procedures which cause pain and may result in complications and outcomes like sterility.
I have mentioned this before, but the federal database that collects reports of claimed vaccine injuries contains some real doozies, especially when it comes to the HPV vaccine. There have been VAERS reports (which can be filed by anyone) connecting suicides, a traffic accident and even a young woman falling down a well to their previously having gotten HPV shots. Even the news media has contributed to hysteria over the vaccine.
Part of the furor over the HPV vaccine may be due to its protecting against a sexually transmitted disease, and the perception that promoting the shot encourages licentiousness among young people, insane as that belief is.
The Isodicentric 15 genetic mutation has already been traced to autism. Problem is, not everyone who has it is autistic and not all autistics have it. Which is why autism is seen as a spectrum, people with autism are all over the map in terms of symptoms and behaviors.
Thank you for the links you could share. If only we had some simple way to save websites of interest on our computers …
I do a fair amount of low level research on .gov sites, but not at CDC or even ClinicalTrials, so thanks. If you ever need links on the FDA site, let me know.
Oh, and yeah, what s/he said.
Autism is basically a grouping of symptoms on a spectrum and not all cases are caused by the same thing.
25% of cases are likely caused by maternal auto-antibody related Autism
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/807760
It relates to the Hygiene Hypothesis, basically certain women have antibodies in their blood that can cause this. Gamma Immunoglobulins pass through the placenta and change the normal development of the fetal brain. Women with autoimmune disorders like Rheumatoid Arthritis and Lupus have children with autism at higher rates. They even did a study where they injected these antibodies into pregnant monkeys and the offspring had a sort of form of monkey autism and did not socialize normally with the other monkeys.
There’s also the aspect of chromosomes and this may explain why more boys than girls are diagnosed with autism. Girls have two X chromosomes so if one is damaged the other can basically make up for it but if a boy inherits a damaged X chromosome that’s all they have and so they could have a disorder from it.
A lot of people were quick to blame vaccines because a lot of children are diagnosed shortly after the MMR vaccine was given but that’s just coincidence. I know someone whose child was diagnosed shortly after this and they never thought there was a problem but when they looked back on old home movies all the signs were there. When the child was a very small infant they avoided eye contact, during feeding the baby would stare at their hand and engage in “hand-flapping”, a form of stimming, a common symptom of autism.
Very informative thread and thanks to all contributors. I’m surprised no anti-vaxxers have landed. Is our children learning?
Unverifiable findings in medical science are not medical science.
link requires an account, no thank you.
I suspect in the case of anti-vaxxers there may be some element of failure to realise the minimal nature of the risk compared to other known risks - as you suggest. However, I suspect a larger part of the problem is a failure to accurate perceive the upside that justifies the risk.
In your car example, if you asked an anti-vaxxer why they were prepared to take their children around in a car despite the risk they would say the convenience was enough to justify the risk. But in the vax example, we have had it so good for so long that the upside to vaccines has become too intangible for anti-vaxxers to appropriately perceive.
I saw an interview of a formerly anti-vax mother from a community that had just experienced a measles outbreak. She said she was sure as hell about to get all her children vaccinated now, and so were all her friends. The fear of the risk of vaccines was easily overcome once a tangible upside was perceived.