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Feynman told us clearly: “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.” Check anything from first principles and experience, ignoring no logical holes, and that is science. Cargo Cult Science arises when the opposing arguments aren’t emphasized. Experts then form and pass down firm beliefs that are delusions. Cargo Cult science is like a…

via Cargo Cult Science — Lifeboat News: The Blog

On most questions where a majority with authority is facing a minority of dissenters or skeptics, the majority is delusional.
IOW, you are living in the Matrix; much of what you and people believe is fundamentlaly wrong.

Reason 1 is that the majority forms its view by circular reasoning, and rejects any attempt at logical discussion without considering it seriously, so it is prone to delusion.
Reason 2 is a minority wouldn’t be holding out without a good reason, because they are punished for their opposition with scorn and hatred at least. The usual reason they are so stubborn is they are defending rational truth.
Reason 3 is there’s often big money to be made or political power to be gained by influencing the majority opinion. Rationality doesn’t have a press agent, and there’s no money in swaying the minority position.
via…
http://lifeboat.com/blog/2016/07/3-reasons-you-are-living-in-the-matrix-how-to-make-a-red-pill

Basically every paper in the vaccine safety literature is plainly so confounded as to be useless. Since there are no Randomized Placebo Controlled (RPC) trials supporting vaccines, virtually all studies report on the association (or lack thereof) between vaccines and some iatrogenic condition. But parents who believe vaccines made their kids sick, stop vaccinating them, which systematically moves sick or vaccine damaged kids in the studies into the “low vaccine”, “low thimerisol”, or etc. bin. This invalidates most studies supporting safety (and the few remaining ones suck for other reasons). Numerous studies report incredible preventative effects for vaccines, presumably because of this corruption, like having more thimerisol or more MMR’s is strongly preventative of autism and other mental development issues[28][29][30], or like having more vaccines was strongly preventative of atopy, apparently even years before patients got the vaccines[31]. The fact this confounding factor is overlooked demonstrates extreme confirmation bias and is the defining factor of Cargo Cult Science according to R.P. Feynman.[32] The above is point 3 out of 10 from

http://lifeboat.com/blog/2016/06/the-top-ten-reasons-i-believe-vaccine-safety-is-an-epic-mass-delusion

Its painful to bear views that make many think I’m an imbicile and dislike me. So please, if anybody has a rational argument why any of this is wrong, I beg to be enlightened. I’ve set up a diagram for the purpose that will support you to add your criticism exactly where it is pertinent.…

via The Top Ten Reasons I Believe Vaccine Safety Is an Epic Mass Delusion — Lifeboat News: The Blog

The Childhood Immunization Schedule and Safety: Stakeholder
Concerns, Scientific Evidence, and Future Studies

Committee on the Assessment of Studies of Health Outcomes Related to
the Recommended Childhood Immunization Schedule; Board on
Population Health and Public Health Practice; Institute of Medicine
ISBN 978-0-309-26702-1 230 pages (2013)

The most interesting thing about this work is what it doesn’t contain: citations to any of the numerous works that I have pointed out showing problems with the vaccine series.
For example, all of the animal work. Bishop et al. The Guinea-Bisseau studies. Epidemiological studies such as Miller and Goldman, Delong, or Tomljenovic and Shaw.
Any reference at all to ASIA (Autoimmune/inflammatory syndrome induced by adjuvants). Any mention of vaccine contaminants such as animal retroviruses.

Searching the Institute of Medicine report for “alum” yields discussion of four references, Nilsson et al. (2003) who compared patients receiving vaccines with aluminum phosphate adjuvant to patients receiving vaccines with aluminum phosphate adjuvants, so provide no evidence about the safety of aluminum adjuvants. Verstraeten et al (2008) who compared patients receiving vaccines with AS04 adjuvants to “control” patients also receiving vaccines with aluminum adjuvants, so too can offer no evidence about the safety of aluminum adjuvants.
Pittman, P. R. 2002[8] about which they say “Using a randomized trial, Pittman (2002) showed that the risk of adverse events was reduced if the second dose of subcutaneous anthrax vaccine, adsorbed, is given 4 months rather than 2 weeks after the first dose.”

and Gruber et al(2003)[7], which is an interesting paper. From Gruber et al:

“Children were grouped into dose percentiles according to cumulative doses of any vaccine given up to 5 years of age (<10%, 0–11 doses; 10%–50%, 12–14 doses; 51%–90%, 15–20 doses; >90%, 21–27 doses).

Results. The cumulative vaccine dose was inversely related to atopic dermatitis prevalences at 6 months (13.8%, 5.2%, 5.1%, and 4.5%), 2 years (16.9%, 10.9%, 7.4%, and 3.7%), 3 years (27.6%, 16.4%, 13.5%, and 4.5%), and 5 years (28.3%, 16.0%, 9.3%, and 11.9%). Asthma followed a similar pattern at age 3 (22.4%, 8.6%, 6.7%, and 6.3%), age 4 (20.0%, 8.6%, 8.9%, and 8.1%), and age 5 (20.8%, 12.6%, 10.3%, and 5.5%). Allergic sensitization rates were inversely related to the cumulative vaccine dose at age 2 (37.5%, 29.1%, 23.8%, and 12.9%).

Conclusion. Children with a higher vaccination coverage seemed to be transiently better protected against development of atopy in the first years of life.”

This is also the only paper I’ve seen to present a result on aluminum not sharply indicating toxicity:
“Apart from diphtheria/tetanus/pertussis vaccines, relatively few children received other aluminum-containing vaccines (hepatitis B, N = 1; tick-borne encephalitis vaccine, N = 96). No dose-response relationship was found regarding atopic manifestations, total serum IgE, or allergic sensitization at 5 years of age or earlier (data not shown).”

The IOM said of this study: “the committee believes that this was a well-constructed and well-reported study and may serve as one example of a means by which the U.S. immunization schedule could be studied.”

Unfortunately, neither the IOM nor Gruber et al seem to have remarked, that there appears to be no reason to believe the correlation means the vaccine is protective against atophy and asthma, rather than the results following from parents delaying or withholding vaccination for kids they perceived damaged by earlier vaccines, at risk from vaccines, or sickly. Indeed, if Gruber et al are really doing what they say, they are binning the kids by the total amount of vaccination they had by 5. So to claim the vaccination was causing the lack of atophy at six months would imply future vaccines prevented earlier atophy. It seems much more likely earlier atophy caused lack of later vaccines. The aluminum results could well result from a combination of aluminum damage to those who got more, and patients who were more evidently damaged fleeing into the low aluminum pool by withholding further vaccinations.

There’s plenty of evidence to confirm the existence of parental concern. The 2004 IOM study on autism says they reviewed 1348 VAERS reports of autism immediately after a vaccination. Even if such events may be purely circumstantial, their perceived nature will bias the experiments by putting damaged kids into low vaccine bins. Its putting the cart before the horse to assume parents can’t ever recognize their kid be damaged, as an assumption in testing whether vaccines damage. And even if they can’t, its clear, they will often assume when their kid gets sick after a vaccine that they shouldn’t give him more, lifting him into the low vaccine, low aluminum, or low thimerisol group in the design of all these experiments.

Gruber et al is the fourth study I’ve found declaring that vaccines are strongly protective in ways never expected. There is a repeated finding that early Thimerosal is significantly preventative of general developmental disorders,unspecified developmental delay, and attention deficit disorder[1] ASD[2], and that MMR is signficantly preventative of ASD in younger siblings of ASD victims[3]. Each study’s authors put this down to chance, but the repeated finding makes this unlikely. These consistent results support the alternative hypothesis that children are having visible reactions (or in the latter case, their sibling has the reaction) and being pulled from the high vaccine or high thimerisol pool by parents choosing to delay or cancel their vaccines.

I’ve also examined most of the studies the IOM cites against vaccines causing autism.
Aside from not considering the aluminum, and the contaminants, and the early and often timing as suggested by the animal literature, they also don’t consider the possibility that the MMR vaccine itself may be contributing to autism quite aside from the Thimerisol. This is in fact indicated by studies like Singh et al[9], who reported: 60% of autistics had an unusual antibody to vaccine-strain measles and 0% of controls did, And 90% o the autistics with this antibody also had “MBP-autoantibodies suggesting a strong association between MMR and CNS autoimmunity in autism. Stemming from this evidence, we suggest that an inappropriate antibody response to MMR, specifically the measles component thereof, might be related to pathogenesis of autism. antibody implicated in autoimmune disease.” 

This limits the interest in studies such as Fombonne et al, who looked at the epidemiological change when Canada took Thimerisol out of MMR. Unfortunately, at the same time they doubled the number of doses of MMR, so its six of one half a dozen of another, no? Studies like Hviid et al (2003)[4] and Madsen et al (2003)[5] which looked at the Danish taking thimerisol out of vaccines in 1992, manage to further self-confound by using data from in-patient only till 1995, and both in and out-patient after, where more than 10 times as many diagnoses seem to have been made out-patient. So for the high-thimerisol cases, (which are before), they have relative under-diagnosis to the low-thimerisol cases (which are by definition after) by perhaps an order of magnitude. (To its credit, the IOM survey did remark on this problem.)

Bottom line

(a) the IOM survey contains zero basis for believing the aluminum is safe (and doesn’t discuss this problem) and
(b) pretty much every study they have that is not confounded by looking at one vaccine in kids that got dozens, is confounded by the fact that the sick kids are being put into the low vaccine bin because they are sick and often likely because their parents believe vaccines were the cause, and in fact there is considerable evidence to indicate the parents can spot it.

“My partners and I have over 35,000 patients who have never been vaccinated. You know how many cases of autism we have seen? ZERO, ZERO. “. –Dr. Mayer Eisenstein

Given the quality of the IOM’s evidence against a vaccine autism connection, I’d have to say that anecdotal experience such as Eisenstein’s wins hands down. Its far more scientific, as well as less pretentious.

But there is one feature I notice that is generally missing in cargo cult science.
That is the idea that we all hope you have learned in studying science in school–
we never explicitly say what this is, but just hope that you catch on by all the
examples of scientific investigation. It is interesting, therefore, to bring it
out now and speak of it explicitly. It’s a kind of scientific integrity, a
principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty–a
kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you’re doing an experiment, you
should report everything that you think might make it invalid–not only what
you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your
results; and things you thought of that you’ve eliminated by some other
experiment, and how they worked–to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated. — Richard P Feynman CARGO CULT SCIENCE (adapted from Caltech Commencement Address 1974)
https://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm

So did Gruber et al and the IOM committee both (a) not notice that their results could be explained by vaccines being withheld from the sickly, or (b) not bother to comment on it?
If they didn’t notice, they have a confirmation bias that is quite striking. If they did, they are by Feynman’s definition involved in Cargo Cult Science.

[1]Nick Andrews; Elizabeth Miller; Andrew Grant et al, Thimerosal Exposure in
Infants and Developmental Disorders: A Retrospective Cohort Study in the United
Kingdom Does Not Support a Causal Association, Pediatrics September 2004,
VOLUME 114 / ISSUE 3

[2]Cristofer S. Price, William W. Thompson, Barbara Goodson,et al, Prenatal and
Infant Exposure to Thimerosal From Vaccines and Immunoglobulins and Risk of
Autism, Pediatrics October 2010, VOLUME 126 / ISSUE 4
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/126/4/656

[3]Anjali Jain; Jaclyn Marshall; Ami Buikema; et al. Autism Occurrence by MMR
Vaccine Status Among US Children With Older Siblings With and Without Autism,
JAMA. 2015;313(15):1534-1540. doi:10.1001/jama.2015.3077.
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2275444

[4]Hviid A, Stellfeld M, Wohlfahrt J, Melbye M. 2003. Association between thimerosal-containing
vaccine and autism. JAMA 290(13):1763-6.

Click to access HG_8.pdf

[5]Madsen KM, Hviid A, Vestergaard M, Schendel D, Wohlfahrt J, Thorsen P, Olsen J, Melbye M. A population-based study of measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination and autism. N Engl J Med. 2002;347(19):1477-82.

[6]Thomas Verstraeten, Robert L. Davis, Frank DeStefano, et al.
Safety of Thimerosal-Containing Vaccines: A Two-Phased Study of Computerized
Health Maintenance Organization Databases
Pediatrics 2003;112;1039-1048

[7] http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/111/3/e282
Pediatrics
March 2003, VOLUME 111 / ISSUE 3
Transient Suppression of Atopy in Early Childhood Is Associated With High Vaccination Coverage
Christoph Grüber, Sabina Illi, Susanne Lau, Renate Nickel, Johannes Forster, Wolfgang Kamin, Carl-Peter Bauer, Volker Wahn, Ulrich Wahn

[8]Pittman, P. R. 2002. Aluminum-containing vaccine associated adverse events: Role of route of administration and gender. Vaccine 20(Suppl 3):S48-S50.

[9] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12145534
J Biomed Sci. 2002 Jul-Aug;9(4):359-64.
Abnormal measles-mumps-rubella antibodies and CNS autoimmunity in children with autism.
Singh VK, Lin SX, Newell E, Nelson C.
Abstract

Autoimmunity to the central nervous system (CNS), especially to myelin basic protein (MBP), may play a causal role in autism, a neurodevelopmental disorder. Because many autistic children harbor elevated levels of measles antibodies, we conducted a serological study of measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) and MBP autoantibodies. Using serum samples of 125 autistic children and 92 control children, antibodies were assayed by ELISA or immunoblotting methods. ELISA analysis showed a significant increase in the level of MMR antibodies in autistic children. Immunoblotting analysis revealed the presence of an unusual MMR antibody in 75 of 125 (60%) autistic sera but not in control sera. This antibody specifically detected a protein of 73-75 kD of MMR. This protein band, as analyzed with monoclonal antibodies, was immunopositive for measles hemagglutinin (HA) protein but not for measles nucleoprotein and rubella or mumps viral proteins. Thus the MMR antibody in autistic sera detected measles HA protein, which is unique to the measles subunit of the vaccine. Furthermore, over 90% of MMR antibody-positive autistic sera were also positive for MBP autoantibodies, suggesting a strong association between MMR and CNS autoimmunity in autism. Stemming from this evidence, we suggest that an inappropriate antibody response to MMR, specifically the measles component thereof, might be related to pathogenesis of autism.

Immunization Safety Review: Vaccines and Autism
Immunization Safety Review Committee
Institute of Medicine of the National Academies
ISBN: 0-309-53275-2, 214 pages, 6 x 9, (2004)
http://www.nap.edu/catalog/10997.html

“The committee reviewed the extant published and unpublished
epidemiological studies regarding causality and studies of potential biologic
mechanisms by which these immunizations might cause autism. The committee
concludes that the body of epidemiological evidence favors rejection of a causal
relationship between the MMR vaccine and autism. The committee also concludes
that the body of epidemiological evidence favors rejection of a causal
relationship between thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism. The committee
further finds that potential biological mechanisms for vaccine-induced autism
that have been generated to date are theoretical only.”
The survey does not consider aluminum, contaminants, or multiplicity and timing interactions. Nor do they consider the possibility that vaccine virus takes lodge in the gut of some individuals and causes autism. For all of these there are peer reviewed papers that tie them to autism or brain damage. It does not consider the possibility of multiple causes– which invalidates pretty much all the studies they cite. If both thimerisol and
timing or contaminants or aluminum of other vaccines are independently contributing to autism, its going to obscure and make it impossible to see any statistically significant effect in the studies they consider, which compare kids getting numerous vaccines to kids getting numerous vaccines.

They do not consider the possibility that parents see their kids damaged by vaccines and thus stop vaccinating or delay vaccinations.
A kid that visibly develops problems on the first thimerisol shot may well never get another. And also, kids miss vaccinations and have them delayed because they are sick.
It is a systematic and huge bias in every study they consider that some kids are placed into the low vaccine or low thimerisol bin *because* they were vaccine damaged or sickly. This by itself invalidates all the studies they rely on for establishing safety.

There’s plenty of evidence to confirm such visible problems. The IOM study in fact says they reviewed 1348 VAERS reports of autism immediately after a vaccination. Even if adverse events may be purely circumstantial, their perceived nature will bias the experiments putting damaged kids into low vaccine bins. Its putting the cart before the horse to assume parents can’t ever recognize their kid be damaged, as an assumption in testing whether vaccines damage.

In fact there is significant evidence to show this is exactly what is happening. There is a repeated finding that early Thimerosal is significantly preventative of general developmental disorders, unspecified developmental delay, and attention deficit disorder[1] ASD[2], and thatMMR is signficantly preventative of ASD in younger siblings of ASD victims[3]. Each study’s authors put this down to chance, but the repeated finding makes this unlikely. These consistent results support the alternative hypothesis that children are having visible reactions (or in the latter case, their sibling has the reaction) and being pulled from the high vaccine or high thimerisol pool by parents choosing to delay or cancel their vaccines.

[1]Nick Andrews; Elizabeth Miller; Andrew Grant et al, Thimerosal Exposure in
Infants and Developmental Disorders: A Retrospective Cohort Study in the United
Kingdom Does Not Support a Causal Association, Pediatrics September 2004,
VOLUME 114 / ISSUE 3

[2]Cristofer S. Price, William W. Thompson, Barbara Goodson,et al, Prenatal and
Infant Exposure to Thimerosal From Vaccines and Immunoglobulins and Risk of
Autism, Pediatrics October 2010, VOLUME 126 / ISSUE 4
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/126/4/656

[3]Anjali Jain; Jaclyn Marshall; Ami Buikema; et al. Autism Occurrence by MMR
Vaccine Status Among US Children With Older Siblings With and Without Autism,
JAMA. 2015;313(15):1534-1540. doi:10.1001/jama.2015.3077.
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2275444

The studies the IOM rely on have other problems as well.

Hviid A, Stellfeld M, Wohlfahrt J, Melbye M. 2003. Association between thimerosal-containing vaccine and autism. JAMA 290(13):1763-6.

Click to access HG_8.pdf

This paper took advantage of the fact that Denmark reformulated its Pertussis vaccine to take out the thimerisol for a while to try to compare kids who got more thimerisol vaccines to kids who got less thimerisol vaccines. “Doses administered before June 1, 1992, were considered to contain thimerosal, and doses administered after June 1, 1992, were considered thimerosal free.”
The first problem as noted above is that if parents observe the child having problems, they withhold or delay further vaccines, which biases the problem children to the low thimerisol group.

A second problem is they changed the definition how they diagnose autism during the period from in patient to in and out. “In 1991-1994, only inpatients were included in the Danish Psychiatric Central Register. From 1995, both inpatients and outpatients were included.”
So the kids getting high thimerisol (early) are almost certainly more underdiagnosed (or less overdiagnosed) than the kids getting low thimerisol (later in the period.)
And this relative underdiagnosis appears plausibly to be by an order of magnitude or more, since another study on Danish Data reported 13.5 times as many outpatient diagnosis
as inpatient.
Madsen KM, Hviid A, Vestergaard M, Schendel D, Wohlfahrt J, Thorsen P, Olsen J, Melbye M. A population-based study of measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination and autism. N Engl J Med. 2002;347(19):1477-82.

Thomas Verstraeten, Robert L. Davis, Frank DeStefano, et al.
Safety of Thimerosal-Containing Vaccines: A Two-Phased Study of Computerized
Health Maintenance Organization Databases
Pediatrics 2003;112;1039-1048

Patients were classified not by total Thimerosal, rather by Thimerosal in a period such as 0-3 or 0-7 months, and then the patients are evaluated later. In Vaerstraten et al, for example, only neuro-developmental diagnoses made after 1 year are included, so that patients that were more immediately damaged by early Thimerosal could have been excluded and the low- Thimerosal patients may be diagnosed due to proximate effects from post 1yo Thimerosal containing vaccine administration that the high-Thimerosal patients were not subject to, having had them earlier.

Vaerstraten et al also observed that the patients who received the most Hg in the
first 7 months of life also had many more well-child visits, and many more URI visits
in the second year of life. Rather than contemplate the possibility that this is
evidence that the Thimerosal or the vaccines are damaging the immune systems of
the patients, they adopted criteria that selected sicker than random controls, using
controls “restricted to children who had made at least 1 visit to a clinic or an
emergency department at the same month of age as cases.”

And, of course, their study is invalidated by parents observing vaccine damage and withheld vaccines.

Its also interesting to note that some of these same authors were making presentations on their data showing relative risk of as high as 7.6 in the high thimerisol group, but somehow these results never were published. See http://mercury-freedrugs.org/docs/00mmdd_EISAbstractSubmission_IncreasedRiskOfDevelopmentalNeurologicImpairmentAfterHighExposureToThimerosal-containingVaccine_.pdf
for the abstract of such presentation.
and for additional evidence see:
http://www.safeminds.org/blog/2014/01/23/new-disclosures-vaccine-safety-datalink-vsd/

Adverse Effects of Vaccines: Evidence and Causality
Kathleen Stratton, Andrew Ford, Erin Rusch, and Ellen Wright Clayton,
Editors; Committee to Review Adverse Effects of Vaccines; Institute of
Medicine, The National Academies press 2011. 862 pages.
PDF Adverse Effects of Vaccines: Evidence and Causality

The authors consider vaccine condition pairs, to decide if the literature supports or rejects the hypothesis the vaccine causes the iatrogenic condition. Looking at table D3, which looks at vaccine- condition pairs for causality, there are 14 for which the evidence is said to convingly support causality, the vaccine is causing the condition.
There are 4 where the evidence is said to favor acceptance.
There are 5 where  the evidence is said to favor rejection, including MMR causing autism.
And there are 123 where the evidence is insufficient to evaluate.

Also, the survey pretty much only looks at vaccines as individually causing conditions. It doesn’t address at all the safety of the aluminum, the contaminants, the timing and multiplicity of vaccines interacting with development of brain and immune system, which are iatrogenic vectors that I believe are well established by the scientific literature.

Immunization Safety Review: Multiple Immunizations and Immune Dysfunction Kathleen Stratton, Christopher B. Wilson and Marie C. McCormick, Editors, Immunization Safety Review Committee, Board on Health Promotion and Disease Prevention http://www.nap.edu/catalog/10306.html     ISBN: 0-309-50866-5, 152 pages, 6 x 9, (2002) Institute of Medicine.

The recent IOM vaccine survey restricted itself to the last 10 years of studies, referencing the 2002 survey as having looked at the impact of multiple vaccines in depth up to that time. I wanted to be sure I hadn’t missed any earlier important studies that might contain cogent evidence against the hypotheses of multiple vaccine damage vectors. So I went to
see what they were relying on. The 2002 study states:

The scope of the committee’s inquiry can be summarized in the following
three questions:
1. Do multiple immunizations have adverse short-term effects on the developing
infant immune system that are reflected in increased susceptibility to heterologous
infection (infections other than those targeted by the immunization)?
2. Does exposure to multiple antigens, as administered in vaccines, directly
and permanently redirect or skew the immune system toward autoimmunity, as
reflected in type 1 diabetes?
3. Does exposure to multiple antigens, as administered in vaccines, directly
and permanently redirect or skew the immune system toward allergy, as reflected
in asthma?
The committee was unable to address the concern that repeated exposure of
a susceptible child to multiple immunizations over the developmental period
may also produce atypical or non-specific immune or nervous system injury that
could lead to severe disability or death (Fisher, 2001). There are no epidemiological
studies that address this. Thus, the committee recognizes with some discomfort
that this report addresses only part of the overall set of concerns of
some of those most wary about the safety of childhood immunization.

Note for starters that they explicitly conclude that there is no published evidence to address whether multiple vaccinations can cause death or severe disability or mental damage. This is a problem because autism comes under mental damage and animal studies show mental damage and there is significant epidemiology, even some discussed in this IOM survey, to indicate death. So its interesting already to see how anybody could conclude vaccines are safe, when the IOM is saying there isn’t published information to address whether the series will kill you or damage your nervous system.

Next note that they don’t address the safety of the aluminum at all, as may be verified by searching the pdf on “alum”. There is some discussion about the merits of alum as an adjuvant, but zero consideration of iatrogenic effects or toxicity. Also the document doesn’t contain the term “contaminant” or “retrovirus” or “circovirus”. My contention is that the scientific literature strongly supports the hypotheses that vaccine aluminum is highly toxic in the quantities administered, that early and or multiple vaccines are damaging brain and immune system development, and that contaminants such as animal viruses are damaging, and that there are no papers in the peer reviewed literature whatsoever providing cogent evidence against any of these three hypotheses. Apparently the IOM 2002 aren’t going to rebut most of that.

They claim to review 2. multiple antigens and auto-immunity and 3. multiple antigens causing asthma, but I haven’t reviewed that part because antigens seems to be a less interesting vector, as we saw in discussing De Stefano et al 2014.  DTP has over 3000 antigens and almost nothing else has more than a handful. Both sides of a study are going to have had multiple immunizations and aluminum and multiple opportunities for contaminants, which may largely mask any effect of multiple antigens if one exists. If you read them and find something striking let me know. The IOM report itself says “the committee concludes that the epidemiological and clinical evidence is inadequate to accept or reject a causal relationship between multiple immunization and an increased risk of allergic disease, particularly asthma.”
So they haven’t claimed its safe wrt asthma. Isn’t the law that the FDA is supposed to certify drugs are safe before they go on the market? How can they when the IOM admits they don’t have evidence on the subject? Shouldn’t patients at least be warned vaccines may cause asthma and allergies?

Now lets review what the IOM say about (1) heterologous infection.
“Heterologous Infection
The committee reviewed several case-control or cohort studies (Black et al.,
1991; Burstein and Fleisher, 1994; Davidson, 1991; Griffin et al., 1992; Kristensen
et al., 2000) and a randomized controlled trial (Otto et al., 2000)…
Despite these variations and limitations, the overall findings from the studies consistently demonstrated either no effect or a beneficial effect of multiple immunizations on heterologous disease. Therefore, the committee concludes that the epidemiological and clinical
evidence favors rejection of a causal relationship between multiple immunizations
and an increased risk of heterologous infections.“[Bold in the original].

So I reviewed the studies they reviewed. As I will detail, my conclusion based on my review is that all the studies they reviewed but one are so hopelessly confounded as to provide no useful evidence on the subject. The one study remaining suggests strongly that the vaccines are causing damage. It has been confirmed by other independent studies since their study.

General Non-specific Morbidity is Reduced After Vaccination Within the Third Month of Life – the Greifswald Study S. Otto, B. Mahner, I. Kadow, J. F. Beck, S. K.W. Wiersbitzky and R. Bruns, Journal of Infection (2000) 41, 172–175, doi: 10.1053/jinf.2000.0718

Otto et al is the only “randomized controlled trial” so lets start with that. Otto et al randomly selected some kids to go into a pool to have their 2 month vaccines at 3 months and then asked the mothers to keep a record of whether the kids had any symptoms, “unspecific, morbidity-related signs… with a diary card.” 

The Placebo effect is the very well established effect that something like 1/3 of patients are helped if the Doctor prescribes a placebo. The exact flip side of this is patients who don’t get a placebo have to think they are worse off than the patients who do. In this case, you have Mothers being told they have to wait for their kid’s vaccine, which they have been repeatedly told is highly necessary to his health. Its clear they were anxious, because 13 of them insisted on changing to the early vaccination group. Then the study doesn’t even ask that the kids be sick, or even go to the Doctor. They have the mothers keep a journal. Since the disparity in reported symptoms is much less than I would have expected from the placebo effect, I would say this study is perfectly consistent with the vaccines actually doing a lot of damage to the immune system, being masked by an even bigger placebo effect given the way the experiment was carried out.

The authors comment on not doing the experiment double blind by giving all the kids injections at 2 months half of which would be placebos. They say that would be unethical because it would expose half the kids to an extra saline injection. Let me get this straight. It would be unethical, with parental permission, to give half the kids in one experiment an extra saline injection, but its just fine giving all the kids in the world dozens of injections full of aluminum and antigens without any RPC tests against actual placebos?

This study also suffers from the common problem that putting kids who get vaccinated exactly on time into a “high vaccine” pool is highly prejudicial because (a) parents who succeed in getting them vaccinated exactly on time are being selected by a real world intelligence/achievement test which is likely a proxy for prior propensity to produce smart/healthy children and (b) kids miss the date because they are sick (or in other experiments because they’ve had a prior vaccine reaction) which puts sick or vaccine damaged kids into the “low vaccine” group. This was not a small effect in this study: 114 out of 335 kids (36%) who were assigned to the early vaccine group were dropped because they didn’t get it on time.

Next we have Black SB, Cherry JD, Shinefield HR, Fireman B, Christenson P, Lampert D. Apparent decreased risk of invasive bacterial disease after heterologous childhood immunization. Am J Dis Child. 1991;145:746–769.

This is yet another paper that finds a protective effect for vaccines that is not expected,
and ignores a plausible hypothesis explaining this protective effect but invalidating
or even reversing the study’s impact on vaccination safety.

Black et al compare invasive bacterial disease victims to controls drawn from a sample of patients. Its clear from their table 2, that the invasive bacterial disease victims
are drawn from a distribution that doesn’t go to the doctor often for well care visits.
73 of the cases had 0 or 1 well care visits in the previous 6 months, against only 23 with 2; whereas for the controls the ratio was 15 to 22. Presumably patients who don’t go for a well care visit, for whatever reason, are a priori unlikely to have been vaccinated, since
vaccinations typically occur at well patient visits. Clearly, however, there is no basis in their data to conclude the vaccines failed to make the disease more likely, without some better understanding of the subpopulation from which  invasive bacterial disease patients are drawn. They missed the lede. Their data are demonstrating nothing about vaccines, because they demonstrate there is a sub-population highly susceptible to invasive bacterial disease which isn’t getting medical care, perhaps children of drug addicts.

Does recent vaccination increase the risk of occult bacteremia?
Burstein JL, Fleisher GR. Pediatr Emerg Care. 1994 Jun;10(3):138-40.

Burstein et al compare patients who are sick with one complaint to patients who are sick with other complaints and all of who are getting lots of antibiotics, as well as lots of vaccinations. Perhaps that would make sense if you were interested in one complaint, or one vaccine. Obviously its not going to tell you anything reliable in a climate where multiple vaccinations are causing multiple complaints, which is precisely what the evidence indicates.They are compared on the recency of vaccination, which also biases patients who got the vaccine further from the disease also got it younger, yet another confounding factor. But perhaps the biggest problem is, the animal data reports vaccine simulants damage immune systems permanently, they damage development. So you need to look for lasting or even increasing damage from vaccines as well as damage proximate to the vaccine.

Next:
DTP Immunization and Susceptibility to Infectious Diseases Is There a Relationship?
Michael Davidson, MD, MPH; G. William Letson, MD; Joel I. Ward, MD; Angela Ball, MD; Lisa Bulkow, MS; Peter Christenson, PhD; James D. Cherry, MD, MSc
Am J Dis Child. 1991;145(7):746-749. doi:10.1001/archpedi.1991.02160070046020.

I haven’t read the article, because it is critiqued in the paper itself, as described in the IOM study. “The authors note that a possible explanation for the lack of difference
observed in the study is overmatching. Overmatching is where cases and controls
closely resemble each other on factors related to the exposure of interest. In
this study, matching based on the number of DTP vaccines received may have
resulted in the lack of difference in the timing of DTwP immunization between
cases and controls. However, the authors observed that matching according to
the number of DTP vaccines was necessary and reduced potential confounders
such as those related to health status.”
Apparently the controls got the same number of DTP’s as the cases, so again not very informative.

For the second part of the study, the IOM notes:
“The authors note that the higher frequency of disease in the pre-DTP group compared to the post-DTP group may have resulted from a “well-child effect,” whereby immunization of children with illnesses was postponed until they were well.”

Seems sensible. If some of the parents wait till the kids have been healthy for 30 days before administering DTP, which might be a sensible precaution, then you are definitely going to get distorted results.
Finally the IOM committee read:
Kristensen I, Aaby P, Jensen H. Routine vaccinations and child survival: Followup study in Guinea-Bissau, West Africa. BMJ. 2000;321:1435–1438.

In rural Guinea-Bisseau, scientists polled 15,351 mothers of 6 month olds to see which infants were vaccinated, and then came back a year later to see who was still alive. Kids who’d gotten at least one vaccine had a relative mortality of .74 compared to kids who’d gotten none. After cluster, age, and other vaccines were adjusted for, BCG was associated with mortality (0.55 (0.36 to 0.85)). However, recipients of at least one dose of DTP had relative mortality (1.84 (1.10 to 3.10)) and recipients of one dose of OPV had relative mortality 1.81 (1.07 to 3.05). Recipients of measles vaccine had a mortality ratio of 0.48 (0.27 to 0.87). When deaths from measles were excluded from the analysis the mortality ratio was 0.51 (0.28 to 0.95).

The difference between this study and the previous studies reviewed above is: this study is a lot cleaner, it is looking at mortality in a very clean before and after fashion, and the result it is finding is opposite to the very obvious bias that the kids getting vaccines are also getting better care and have wealthier parents and better sanitation. All the previous studies, as we have seen, are worthless. This study actually is interesting evidence that DTP at least is doing damage.

Since the IOM report in 2002, a second study in Guinea-Bisseau confirmed the first, reporting that having previously gotten DTP in addition to OPV more than doubled mortality for kids in the pediatric ward up to 5 years of age compared to kids who only got OPV, from 6% to 15%.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15297050 Vaccine. 2004 Aug 13;22(23-24):3014-7. Oral polio vaccination and low case fatality at the paediatric ward in Bissau, Guinea-Bissau. Aaby P, Rodrigues A, Biai S, Martins C, Veirum JE, Benn CS, Jensen

These results suggest that DTP, and possibly OPV, are doing harm. As I have reviewed, there is significant literature indicating vaccine aluminum, vaccine interactions with brain and immune system development especially as shown in the animal literature, and vaccine contaminants are doing harm. So its a plausible hypothesis that DTP is damaging the immune systems of the recipients so that they die of various causes. Moreover, BCG is a scratch, not an injection, so it seems unlikely to contribute to the vaccine damage vectors I have identified, and it’s effectiveness is controversial even among people who usually accept vaccines. A hypothesis consistent with these facts is that BCG vaccine is serving largely as a placebo, doing neither harm nor good but merely a proxy for propensity to get vaccinated, a hidden factor representing parental circumstances and child raising skills. If that is the correct explanation, then the true increased mortality compared to a placebo for DTP in Guinea-Bisseau would be at least 3. Since measles deaths were not a factor, and MMR is given at 18 months and does not contain adjuvants, MMR could have a similar role here as a proxy for good care.

Conclusion
I have also previously reviewed, of course, much other evidence that the vaccines are damaging. Here our purpose was to review the IOM 2002 study, demonstrating that it had no rational basis for claiming safety, and that it cited  no papers cogently opposing our remarks on the dangers of vaccine aluminum, contaminants, or developmental interactions as reported in the animal literature. Its worth emphasizing however, one thing I discovered in this review, that the IOM survey explicitly declined to claim safety in several aspects after examining the literature. They said they found insufficient literature to state that multiple vaccines weren’t causing atypical or non-specific immune or nervous system injury that could lead to severe disability or death, nor did they find sufficient literature to state that they weren’t causing asthma or allergies.

“So there came a time in which the ideas, although accumulated very slowly, were all accumulations not only of practical and useful things, but great accumulations of all types of prejudices, and strange and odd beliefs. Then a way of avoiding the disease was discovered. This is to doubt that what is being passed from…

via TruthSift: A Platform for Collective Rationality — Lifeboat News: The Blog