Sandy Gottstein on Vaccination "Duty" in Anchorage Daily News
Thank you to our friend Sandy Gottstein of Vaccination News for this editorial letter Compass: Parents right to question need for vaccines and potential dangers in the Anchorage Daily News in Alaska. Please leave a comment and take note of the comment thread. Dorit Reiss jumped in second after I left a comment. Strange how she finds our work so quickly....
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In "Vaccination is a duty we owe to others," The Washington Post's Michael Gerson wrote a convincing piece - that is, if one is unaware of certain facts.
Gerson states "...vaccines have a very small risk of serious side effects..." mostly based on his wholesale dismissal of adverse events reported to VAERS, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System instituted and maintained at a great cost by the CDC and the FDA. As of May 4, 2014, the CDC website had processed 37,433 serious vaccine-related adverse events. Former FDA Commissioner David Kessler once stated that only 1 percent of serious adverse events are reported in a passive reporting system such as VAERS. A vaccine manufacturer testified to an Institute of Medicine Committee that under-reporting of passively followed adverse vaccine events was 50-fold.
It is unknown what percentage the 37,433 reported serious events actually represent, but to assert that the administration of multiple vaccines and vaccine combinations only results in a very small risk of serious side effects is scientifically unfounded.
Furthermore, by dismissing serious reported side effects, Gerson upends scientific inquiry and clinical observation by holding vaccines to a different standard than the FDA applies to all other approved medications. This is particularly outrageous given that over half of those serious adverse events occurred within three days of vaccination and in over 26 percent of reported cases they occurred on the very same day.
Some "experts" would have us believe that such incidents are "normal" and thus merely "coincidental". But normal for whom? We know virtually nothing about the incidence of such events among those who have never been vaccinated simply because they have never been studied and compared. In the absence of properly designed and conducted vaccination studies using the only appropriate "control group", the never-vaccinated, all we do know is that the vaccinated have the same outcome(s) as the vaccinated, including autism. And until we know what does cause the now 1 in 68 to have an autism spectrum disorder, we do ourselves no favors subscribing to the "anything but vaccines" theory of its causation.
Read more here: http://www.adn.com/2014/05/26/3484908/compass-parents-right-to-questin.html?sp=/99/328/#storylink=cpy
They can send all the bots they want to comment but I really think they are losing. Parents simply aren't buying the hype of needing so many vaccines for their babies and prenatally.
Posted by: In any case... | May 29, 2014 at 11:18 PM
Sandy;
Can you only do the reply if you have a face book account?
I don't have one-- hubby has one -- but not me.
I tried to get on through google --
If I could get on -- I don't even feel like arguing any more -- I just want to tell Dorit's last comment to blow it out her ear.
Posted by: Benedetta | May 29, 2014 at 06:44 PM
I would really appreciate it those who agree with the following statement would go to http://www.adn.com/2014/05/26/3484908/compass-parents-right-to-questin.html and "like" it:
Sandy Gottstein · Top Commenter · University of Pennsylvania
Once again, I have repeatedly called for studies comparing the vaccinated to the never-vaccinated in order to determine whether or not the kinds of events reported to VAERS are causally related, on a population basis, to vaccines. (It is far harder to establish causality on an individual basis.) I have never said they can be assumed to be causally related. STOP SAYING I HAVE. These reports, however, should result in follow-up. That is the point of collecting them.
On the one hand, some who do not question vaccines and vaccination policy adamantly insist things like "dtap" is not associated with encephalitis" but if you produce evidence that it has been associated, and reported to VAERS (There were over 50 reports which I will post when I get a chance to create the link), the VAERS reports are pooh-poohed. There seems to be no interest in understanding to what extent the relationship may be real, no calls for follow-up, nada. Little recognition that these reports might be red flags, which is why the system was set up in the first place. Instead, dismissal, denial. Nothing but insistence that most, if not all, is well in vaccine-land.
Even the FDA mentions the limitations of data without an unvaccinated control group. It's science 101! A control group is non-intervention. The only non-intervention in a study about the safety of vaccination is a group that has not been vaccinated.
You can babble on and on about the ethics of such a study. But it is unethical to make safety claims in the absence of it. So call for properly designed and conducted retrospective studies and if health differences between the vaccinated and never-vaccinated are found, we can then set out finding out what the reasons are. Might be vaccines, might be something else. But stop acting like it is wrong to call for such studies.
There is a whole, growing world out there of parents who are certain their child(ren) were harmed by vaccines. Insults, shaming, manipulation will not work on them. Platitudes about no evidence will not work on them. A sincere effort to understand what has happened to their children would work wonders, though. Caring about what happened to their children would work wonders. Treating them like collateral damage in a so-called war on preventable disease, not so much.
Diseases can maim and kill. Vaccines can maim and kill. And those harmed by vaccines are as important as those harmed by diseases, although you wouldn't know it by looking at the some of the posts here. We need to set about seriously and honestly trying to understand how many and why.
Posted by: Sandy Gottstein | May 29, 2014 at 04:10 PM
Why are all the commentor's going on about measles and MMR failure. There were 8 or so cases of mumps in I think NY and all mumps affected parties had had the 2 recommended doses of MMR. Now that's a fail!
Posted by: In any case... | May 28, 2014 at 09:34 PM
HI Carolyn, Do you mean Sandy?
Posted by: Sandy Gottstein | May 28, 2014 at 03:45 PM
I would urge everyone in agreement with Susan (Sandy -Ed) to visit the site where the article is posted and express appreciation to her and the Anchorage Daily News. Then please, if you are harassed by some of the pro-vaccine folks, report them to FB. We've been successful in reporting the offensive harassment that has taken place on this page and removing some of those doing so from FB.
Additionally Ms. Reiss will eventually be seen for what she does. As you will see, more and more folks come in to support her. It's amazing that these are the same individuals that came forth to shut down the Chili's promotion for NAA. If we do continue to allow this, they will get away with the bullying and harassment. If we expose this for what it is, by not bantering with them but sharing our stories, we will win in the end.
Their behavior is obviously obsessive to anyone that looks at these incidents and follows the posts.
Posted by: Carolyn | May 28, 2014 at 03:03 PM
Dorit must have the day off--she's spending all day attempting damage control.
Do we have any lawyers here?
She mentions Prince v. Massachusetts, claiming that the is no right, as determined by the Supreme Court in 1944, too avoid vaccination on religious grounds because of the risk of harm to others.
But can't that be turned around? Can't we also claim that those believing in the religion of vaccines have no right to cause risk of harm to others, especially against their will?
For that matter, can't someone sure Dorit if her recently vaccinated son infects someone by transmitting pertussis, since the vaccine appears symptoms but not transmission?
Or if a fence-sitter is convinced by Dorit' less to vaccinate her child, and the child has a severe reaction, can that person then sue Dorit?
Posted by: DoritReissIsEvil | May 28, 2014 at 01:42 PM
"Vaccination is a duty we owe to others," says Washington Post's Michael Gerson.
It is too bad that Gerson did not write about the "duty" public health officials owes "our children" when recommending and approving vaccines that are .. according to a majority of the Supreme Court .. "unavoidably unsafe"?
After all .. if it is . as Gerson believes .. "our duty" to vaccinate "our children" .. wouldn't Gerson also agree .. it the "duty of public health officials" .. to create a vaccine that is "absolutely safe"?
Saying there is "no evidence of harm" is sophistry masquerading as science. Common sense suggests .. the absence of evidence .. is .. in fact .. not evidence.
Posted by: Bob Moffitt | May 28, 2014 at 08:34 AM