Senator Cassidy: Did you notice these limitations in the study you cited?
1 vaccine, 1 heavy metal exposure, only 10 studies, and no VAERS data?
During RFK, Jr.’s confirmation hearing Thursday, Senator Cassidy cited a paper,
“Vaccines are not associated with autism: An evidence-based meta-analysis of case-control and cohort studies”, by Luke E. Taylor, Amy L. Swerdfeger, Guy D. Eslick,
as “proof” all vaccines do not cause autism.
I remember when this “meta-analysis” was published. It was heralded in the news as “The last nail in the coffin of the vaccine - autism connection”.
As a non-scientist, three issues jumped out at me:
First issue.
“2.2. Eligibility criteria”
This meta-analysis did not look at all “vaccines”, only MMR & Hg.
It only reviewed certain papers; “Studies were included that looked at either MMR vaccination, cumulative mercury (Hg) or cumulative thimerosal dosage from vaccinations to ensure all proposed causes of ASD or regression were investigated.”
What about all of the other vaccines on the schedule?
What about all the other ingredients?
MMR and heavy metal exposures are only two of the “proposed causes of ASD or regression”.
What about immune dysregulation, certain vaccine combinations, multiple vaccines administered in a single visit, the cumulative impact of the full schedule, the timing of the vaccine administration, vaccinating an ill child, “hot lots” of defective product, uniquely susceptible sub-populations, etc.?
There are a myriad of scientific issues with this meta-analysis, and the studies it analyzed, better addressed by those with a deeper understanding of research study design, execution, and interpretation. PhD Brian Hooker explains some of this on a Children’s Health Defense’s program here starting at 14 minutes: https://live.childrenshealthdefense.org/chd-tv/shows/good-morning-chd/the-confirmation-hearings-of-rfk-jr--austrailian-regulators-knew-about-dna-contamination/
Under these criteria only ten studies were included.
Here is a website with over 200 peer reviewed papers related to potential vaccine autism connection. https://howdovaccinescauseautism.org/
Second issue.
“2.2. Eligibility criteria”
No studies incorporating VAERS data.
“Papers that recruited their cohort of participants solely from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) in the United States were not included due to its many limitations and high risk of bias including unverified reports, underreporting, inconsistent data quality, absence of an unvaccinated control group and many reports being filed in connection with litigation.”
“Papers that recruited … participants solely from VAERS …
were not included due to …
absence of an unvaccinated control group.”
The question is,
how would an adverse event reporting system generate an
“unvaccinated control group”?
Are parents supposed to call or file reports that say,
“My child was not vaccinated,
and did not experience an adverse event”?
Imagine that phone call.
VAERS operator: “Hello this is VAERS, how can I help you?”
Parent: “Thank you, I am calling to report that I did not vaccinate my child, and they did not have an adverse event.”
VAERS operator: “Why are you calling? This is an Adverse Event Report System.”
Does the VAERS report form have that option?
Isn’t that absurd?
Public Health has a schizophrenic relationship with VAERS.
When VAERS does not show any signal for vaccine injury, then it is reliable.
When VAERS does show a signal, it has, “… many limitations and high risk of bias including unverified reports, underreporting, and inconsistent data quality…”.
VAERS is supposed to be the premier vaccine safety monitoring system in the United States, but if its data is so unreliable that it cannot be used for adverse event reporting analysis, shouldn’t improving VAERS be the first priority?
Third issue.
“5. Epilogue”
Gaslighting parents who do see adverse events.
In the “Epilogue”, in an effort to assuage parents’ concerns, Taylor reports that two of his children had experienced febrile seizures after vaccination, that he considered acceptable, and that the seizures did not prevent him from vaccinating his third child.
Taylor lists some mitigation measures he took for his third child- morning vaccination to be able to observe reactions, paracetamol, etc.
But the kicker is,
“For parents who do notice a significant change in their children’s cognitive function and behavior after a vaccination I encourage you to report these events immediately to your family physician and to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System”.
Where that report can be excluded and ignored from any future meta-analysis on the vaccine autism connection?
Taylor lacked the self-awareness of his work to realize he is instructing parents to report
“significant change in their child’s cognitive function and behavior after a vaccination“
into a system his team considered to be too unreliable to be used in vaccine safety research.
Excellent. I ALSO sent Cassidy a letter and included a link to Steve Kirsch's substack most recently to Sen. Maggie. . . whatever her name is.