Vinay - If vaccines are as "miraculous" as you say, then it should be non-confrontational to repeal the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act which protects Pharma from any liability associated with their product and and also to make it illegal to mandate vaccines. These two factors are glaring red flags that destroy public trust, especially after what we just saw with Covid. I think it is still unclear for many people what is propaganda and what is true coming out of our public health institutions, since it is clear they are captured by Pharma. Furthermore, there may be validity that some of the earlier vaccines were and continue to be great products (Polio/Measles); however, the massive ramp up in the vaccine schedule for kids (Hep B, RV, Hib, Chickenpox, etc) against a backdrop of zero liability for harms is untenable. Public health and the medical community need to stop treating people asking questions as "dangerous". What is truly "dangerous" are mandates and regulatory capture.
The difference with vaccines and other drugs is that EVERYONE should get a vaccine, and this widespread nature of this is what undoubtedly will cause some terrible side effect for someone. But the government has decided that the benefit outweighs the risk, and I largely agree with them. (I don't agree that the COVID vaccine benefits outweigh the risks now after Delta and Omicron.) Vaccines are a different beast than other medications because of the scale at which it's administered so I agree there should be *some* protection. If you were to give penicillin to everyone when they were a baby, many babies including myself would have died. So this is what we are talking about, even effective medications if given at scale will affect a small percentage of people extremely poorly and some protection needs to be given.
1) However, they need to ensure that the risk is extremely low for the general population. That means that the pharma companies should not be allowed to release vaccines without higher-than-normal testing, if everyone, especially every child, is going to be taking this. Right now the vaccine act and EUA lets them skirt this and that is WRONG. IF they want to take advantage of the protection of the Vaccine Injury Act, the bar must be set much, much higher in terms of safety testing.
2) It should be EXTREMELY DIFFICULT for pharma companies to get approved on the childrens' vaccine schedule. Pharma companies know that it's a cash cow to create a vaccine and get every single child in the US to get vaccinated by it. Right now it's far too easy to get on the schedule and useless vaccines like HPV vaccine are being practically forced. THIS NEEDS TO STOP. Right now, we have people approving these for children that care more about corporate profits than childrens' health and that's the corporate capture that RFK Jr. needs to break. I don't think any other candidate believes this.
I agree that there are quite a few vaccines on the schedule---AND I remember when we admitted 1 infant a month with devastating hemophilus influenza B meningitis. (This HIB vaccine has decreased the number of infants dying or suffering neurologic complications to a marked degree).
HPV vaccine --"useless" ???!!! You have just undermined any credibility you have. HPV vaccine prevents 99% of cervical cancer. Let me guess you've never seen a cervix and uterus fixed to the pelvic wall because of cervical cancer. No one is forcing it on your kids; doctors, myself included, encourage vaccination. It's still patients' decisions.
Broader points about the Pharma industry being in bed with the regulatory agencies have some basis. In hindsight, Public Health officials should have admitted the unclear nature of Covid risks especially to children. And remember it was unclear exactly how transmissible covid was from children to older adults. We were in fact trying to "flatten the curve". We did ---at the cost of public trust. Without some restrictions on gathering early on, we would no doubt have had more people dying outside the ERs.
Also--Covid was a REAL thing. Ask any nurse who lived through it in the hospital if you can find him or her still in nursing.
The moment when I began to fully distrust the vaccine industry was when they came out with a chicken pox vaccine (which was shortly thereafter MANDATED by school districts).
I remember the vaccine ad in Parents magazine that screamed "40 children a year die of chicken pox." It was one of those statistical ploys designed to scare people into thinking that 40 kids *in their town* will die of chicken pox. The reality--for anyone with the clarity of thought to see it--was that chicken pox poses a very, very low risk compared to other things kids encounter in their everyday lives. And the potential risks of the vaccine itself were not mentioned at all.
The ironic thing is that the chicken pox vaccine was being pushed at just the same moment when it was being discovered that pertussis immunity from vaccination--assumed to be lifelong--was actually waning by in the teenage years, with the result that young adults were getting whooping cough and passing it to babies too young to have been vaccinated. But the vaccine industry didn't pause to think about what would happen if vaccine-induced chicken pox immunity waned in the same way.
I had first-hand experience with this, because I didn't get chicken pox until I was 12. I was flattened in bed for 2 weeks. When my best friend's younger brothers got chicken pox, a friend of the family in his 20s who had never had chicken pox before caught it and was flattened for a month. The reality is that chicken pox tends to be more severe the older you are when you get it. My youngest daughter caught it at 16 months, was only mildly ill, and was well in less than a week.
So what I saw in the mandated roll-out of a chicken pox vaccine was putting MANY future young adults with waning immunity at risk for the benefit of a very small number of kids.
And this is exactly the same kind of equation that was imposed on us during Covid. Rather that considering the ramifications and potential unintended consequences, policy was based on a futile attempt to shrink risk to zero, even in populations with a risk that was lower than the risks the policy imposed on them.
I actually don’t think most people or many at all would read that ad in Parents magazine and think it references only their town. Of course it would be best to identify the territory (presumably the U.S., although it could be worldwide).
> HPV vaccine --"useless" ???!!! You have just undermined any credibility you have. HPV vaccine prevents 99% of cervical cancer.
I meant to say it's useless for children. Regardless, this is from the CDC:
"About 10% of women with HPV infection on their cervix will develop long-lasting HPV infections that put them at risk for cervical cancer."
So 10% of women infected with HPV have a "risk" for cervical cancer. Not even 10% of infected women get cervical cancer from HPV, only 10% are AT RISK for cervical cancer. They can't even quantify the risk because it's so small. And for this infinitesimal risk you want to vaccinate ALL CHILDREN? No doctor, even YOU, mention the actual risks. All you say is "everyone should get the vaccine and if you don't you're an anti-vaxxer and you undermine your credibility!" I think it's YOU who undermined your own credibility by not actually understanding what risk means. I bet you didn't even know that such a tiny percentage of women who get HPV actually get cervical cancer. You probably assumed it was much higher, like 50%+. Shame on you for advocating ALL children get vaccinated for such a small risk.
Give me a break. And you're telling me that I should vaccinate MY SON for HPV, even though he doesn't have a cervix to get cancer from? Don't you EVER say it's up to the parents. The amount of religious indoctrination that doctors have over vaccines is scary and I had to fight our pediatrician and my wife tooth and nail initially. She insisted our son get the HPV vaccine until I pointed out the logic around the issue, showed her the actual risk to girls, which was tiny, told her that it's not a disease that targets boys and then she asked the very logical question "Why do all boys need to get it then?"
> Also--Covid was a REAL thing.
I never said COVID wasn't a real thing. I do believe COVID vaccines for kids were another way to enrich the pharma companies because they knew it was ineffective. Even the CDC lowered the bar below 50% efficacy because the children's vaccines were so useless. Now, with the COVID vaccine for children I say unequivocally that they are USELESS.
Well, the pedos can't freely abuse kids without detection if the kid shows up with an HPV infection.
Yeah, I know that's extremely cynical. But pushing HPV vaccinations to a younger and younger age *does* shield pedophiles from one potential means of detecting their crimes.
You know, a few years ago, I would have considered a comment like this as tinfoil hat conspiracy theory. Now, watching the Epstein revelations keep pouring out and the pervasive and sick sexualization of children in real time?
Sadly, there is truth to this. We live in sick times.
Bill - your enthusiasm for your position is getting in the way of your critical thinking. The doctor you are excoriating said that 99% of cervical cancers can be prevented by the HPV vaccine. If you believe this is false, let's hear your data. Otherwise, preventing 99% of cervical cancers is a highly worthy goal.
The observation that most women won't get cervical cancer is no more relevant than the observation that most children won't get polio. If the disease prevented and the number of cases prevented are meaningful and if the intervention is safe and modest, it is a sensible public policy intervention.
As for your son, unless he is gay or plans to remain celibate, he is likely to have a girlfriend or wife whom he would place at risk if he carries the virus.
I never said that 99% of cervical cancers can’t be prevented by HPV vaccines. I said that the number of women who contract cervical cancer AFTER getting infected by HPV is vanishingly small. So the conditional probability is (Percentage of Women who get HPV) * (Percentage of Women who get cervical cancer from HPV) which is even smaller than percentage of women who get cervical cancer from HPV. And for the record, the first study that showed that the HPV vaccine even worked came out in 2020 and it wasn't even conducted in the US. So children were getting vaccinated for years without actual proof. Is this something you agree with?
Vaccinating every single child for a disease that a vanishingly small number of women will get is borderline criminal. It's a perfect way for vaccine manufacturers to make billions by convincing doctors that the moral choice to to vaccinate every child, even though logically it doesn't make sense. Telling parents that boys should get vaccinated is doubling their free money when it's completely ineffective.
If my son doesn't get vaccinated, but his girlfriend does, then can you please explain to me why my son needs to get vaccinated, or why all males need to get vaccinated for HPV before they are 10? Your enthusiasm for your position is getting in the way of your critical thinking.
Is there a single study that shows that males who vaccinate won't transmit the HPV virus to women? Or have you fallen into the arguments that the pharma companies want you to believe because it appeals to your morality? I'm sorry but I prefer science over religion.
I was completely on board with "flatten the curve". But as someone who actually paid attention in stats 101, I also understood that the area under the curve would always be the same. We were all going to be infected eventually. The goal was not to get infected at once and overwhelm the hospitals. But a flat curve means a smaller number along the y axis (current infections) and a higher number along the x axis (time). But the cost of each increment along that axis varied for each of us according to factors like job and SES. If you were wealthy and could work from home and didn't have kids or could afford tutors or private school, then it cost you little to "do your part" at keeping the y small and the x large. Ofc, this describes the demo of the ppl with the power to make these decisions. The infuriating part was that they either refused to acknowledge that it was more costly to those who could already least afford it, but (even worse) that they convinced themselves that they had the moral high ground.
Would love to see the research you’ve studied to make the statement that HPV vaccines prevents 99% of cervical cancer. Not being snarky-real question. Because you are claiming to know what does not happen ie cancers that never occurred.
This is a bullshit article , like most written about vaccine effectiveness. Did you even read it? "Studies and clinical trials to date have consistently shown that HPV vaccines are extremely effective at reducing infections with the types of the virus that can lead to cancer, as well as cervical precancers. *****But because of the long time between infection and cancer, it had yet to be shown that HPV vaccination prevents cervical cancers."*****
HPV vaccine HAS NEVER BEEN SHOWN TO PREVENT CERVICAL CANCER.
I've seen two women under the age of thirty die of cancer of the cervix, both in the same small rural practice. The benefit of the HPV vaccine is quite clear. It was a struggle to get the province to approve it for boys though. Their reasoning was that if the girls are protected the boys will eventually benefit as they won't catch the virus from the girls (and if a few die in the meantime....). Problem was that there is a population of men that would not be protected by this means - gay men. Oral squamous cell cancer and anal cancers are caused by HPV. They are particularly nasty ways to die. Eventually it was approved for boys too. BTW, it has to be given young, before first sexual activity, and no matter how much you pray for them, some of the little devils will be at it as soon as they can, eh? As for your last point, you labour under the impression that vaccines are easily approved. Not so, it is already extremely difficult to get approval either for adults or children. You are hardly the first person to assume the world welcomes new vaccines uncritically. You should ask Edward Jenner about that. There were riots by people demanding, in effect, the right to die of smallpox because they were stupid and did not understand. The only reason you have never known of a case of smallpox is because Jenner's vaccine (ever think about that word? Look it up!) worked so well that smallpox was the first infectious disease ever eradicated in the wild.
> I've seen two women under the age of thirty die of cancer of the cervix
Thanks for your anecdotal evidence. It will be taken into consideration with my anecdotal evidence which is I know 0 people that have had any effect from HPV.
> BTW, it has to be given young, before first sexual activity
Really? Don't you mean before first INFECTION? Do you know the difference?
> You should ask Edward Jenner about that.
Wow, are you talking about a vaccine that is decades old? I'm talking about the bivalent COVID vaccine that was approved after being tested on 8 mice and told that ALL CHILDREN should take the bivalent vaccine without any human safety tests.
Or did you not know this? I'm willing to bet you didn't know this. Then all the vaccine religious ideologues have been trying to force all kids to take the bivalent booster because it was "recommended by the CDC". All while the CDC knew that it was less than 50% effective, and they knew it caused myocarditis in young men at a rate of 1 in 3500. I have a friend that runs clinical trials at a major biopharma company and he was shocked that they kept pushing this, even though his drug trials were cancelled for adverse reactions that were far less than this.
So no, I DO NOT believe that vaccines somehow go through a rigorous process. The CDC and FDA have both FAILED the American people by letting us completely faith in their ability to protect us. They care more about corporate profits than the safety of American lives. This is the corporate capture that I hope RFK Jr. breaks.
In which it states "According to the US Centre for Disease Control director Dr Rochelle Walensky, if one million children are fully immunized against COVID-19, 30-40 children may get mild myocarditis, however, this will prevent 8000 cases of COVID-19, 200 hospital admissions, 50 intensive care unit (ICU) stays and one death in this age group."
What would you guess the fatality rate of covid-19 to be? A lot more than one death per million cases. See what I mean?: we know vaccines are not perfect. Certainly they can have side effects, and some can be fatal. The ONLY question for you is simply is it safer to have the vaccine or to have the disease? Can you not see that is all I am saying?
> You must go and do some reading. Try the late 18th century.
I was choosing between "hundreds of years" and "decades". I chose decades because I knew it wasn't 200 years and since 10 decades is a hundred years I chose that. But if you want to quibble over tiny details, then let's do it. By the way, you didn't address any of the things I brought up in my reply, probably because you had nothing to dispute?
> You quote an incidence of 1 in 3500 of myocarditis. It's not often fatal.
I never said myocarditis were all fatal. But if you want to go in that direction, cervical cancer is often not fatal either. Is that point even relevant?
Myocarditis from the vaccine is "often not fatal" but 1/3 of children who get myocarditis from the vaccine are unable to engage in physical activity 90 days after diagnosis. But you didn't know that, did you?
Meanwhile most of the children labelled as "hospitalized with covid" are known to have been overcounted because most of the children were in the hospital for other problems. So the data you're using is wildly wrong.
The point is, the numbers thrown out by CDC are deeply flawed but they didn't correct them because it maintained their agenda of getting children vaccinated even though the COVID vaccine was provably ineffective. They tested it on 8 mice and then rushed to get EUA. The CDC knew that it was less than 50% effective, so they lowered the bar for approval, and strongly recommended that every one get it. All this does is expose children, especially young males, to myocarditis of which 1/3 of them ( or 1 in 10,000) to myocarditis that renders them incapable of doing physical activity 90 days after onset. Anyone with a modicum of critical thinking would realize that none of this makes sense to try to force upon children, except to enrich Pfizer. Thank God only a small percentage of parents decided to get their children vaccinated with the bivalent booster. I deeply regret exposed my children to the original vaccine because their fear tactics got to me, but never again.
If you look at this data and still think that in 2023 the bivalent booster should be forced on kids given the ineffectiveness of the COVID vaccine, that it was tested on 8 mice before released, and given the risk of adverse reactions especially in young males, then you aren't using logic, and you aren't qualified to be a medical doctor.
You're lying. No study has shown that HPV prevents cervical cancer. The studies show it prevents infection, not cancer. You need to learn about vaccines. I recommend Suzanne Humphries "Dissolving Illusions." Another is "Turtles All The Way Down." Also Mary Holland's "HPV Vaccine On Trial."
And may I add there should be permissible exceptions, which we do not have in CA. Doctors cannot really write exemptions because of fear of investigation, loss of license. As a result children have to take risks or be denied access to schools. My son had a seizure after the MMR. I had to get him a 2nd if he wanted to go to school. It didn't go well for him. He's had 2 seizure which increased his risk of epilepsy. 2 hospital visits that cost of tens of thousands of dollars, plus in the first episode he stopped breathing and turned blue. We thought he had died. It was traumatic and it happened in front of my toddler. We cannot get an exemption for him. He recently had to get another DTap because he skippes a grade he wasn't yet due, but CA mandates vaccines based on grade not need, no exception for a child who skips grades (he just skipped another). He got very sick and ended up with Rhabdomyolysis. Each time he got a vaccine in his life he would get very sick - unexplained high fevers (up to 105) and virus for months following. The sad thing is many doctors actually agree with us that he is sensitive to vaccines but they feel their hands are tied with vaccine mandate. Pediatricians still recommended bundling them all together even though he had these sensitivities. How would we know which one/ones he struggled with. We had to go to family doctors, neurologist (lots out of pocket costs here) to get rational opinions. The system does not support individualized medicine. It shouldn't be so hard to justify that some people don't do well with vaccines. On the other had he does great with viruses. No vaccine. His covid experience was a fever for about 6 hours and then 100% fine. No other symptoms.
Speaking as a lawyer, the problem is that our tort system for product liability in the United States has become disconnected from any reality about risk taking. We now require consumers to be adequately warned of the dangers of any product. Perhaps a reasonable requirement on its face, but in the details devilishly hard to apply in practice.
First, there are risks that should be intuitively obvious to any reasonable person and for which no warning should be required. We get wheelbarrows with warnings like "Not intended for highway use" (that's right, for highway use you need a special, motorized wheelbarrow that can keep up with traffic on a highway, duh), and baby/child strollers with warnings like, "Remove child before collapsing" (so like if I have a heart attack I need to remove the baby from the stroller before I collapse to the sidewalk? Oh! You meant before I fold up the stoller. Could you be more obtuse?)
So, because of the lack of a reasonably defined bright line between non-hidden, obvious dangers that every reasonable person should know without being told and the hidden or non-obvious dangers about which we need warning, we get product inserts in fine print that run on with so many pages of warnings (most of which are about non-hidden, obvious dangers we already know about) that only one in 50,000 consumers actually reads them. Then, because we could have read the insert, the law deems us all warned, when in fact few of us are actually warned of about the hidden or non-obvious dangers because they are buried amongst so much obvious junk reading that we have all learned not to read the fine-printed warnings inserts.
Second, we as a society no longer believe that when, as individuals, we choose to take a risk, we (and not someone else) should bear the cost when our risk taking harms us. Thus, those of us who choose to live on sea coasts in hurricane territory believe that others should cover their home lose from a hurricane either through disaster relief paid from our tax dollars or by subsidizing their insurance so it costs the same as in non-hurricane areas rather than the astronomically high true actuarial cost of insuring homes in hurricane territory. We believe that the driver who upon seeing a yellow light accelerates to get through on the "pink" should, when they get t-boned by a driver who drove into the intersection when their light turned green, still get some compensation from insurance on the basis of comparative fault.
As to vaccinations, ask yourself why anyone has to be warned that they may suffer some temporary redness, swelling, and/or pain at the sight of the shot. And yet, that's the warning we all get, every time (in the product insert).
Everyone's DNA is slightly different. Everyone's microbiome is slightly different. Everyone's medical and physical condition and medical history is slightly different. It is impossible for any drug company to test against every possible DNA, microbiome, medical, physical, and medical history possibility. It is equally impossible for any health professional to know that this patient has happens to have the anomaly of a nerve running where 99.99999% of people do not, namely right in the spot I have been trained to jab the needle. So, we all need to just accept that every time we choose to take a vaccine, we risk temporary or permanent harm, including death.
So, were I to rewrite the Vaccine Injury Act it would require only that vaccines be supported by a proper randomized, controlled trials conducted by independent (not government) researchers funded by a tax on every dose of vaccine administered (meaning that the companies who sell the most vaccines would contribute the most to the fund--yes I know the cost will ultimately get passed on to the consumer.) To preclude manufacturers from abusing the system by testing junk that should not be tested I would require them to post the estimated cost of the trials and forfeit the cost if the vaccine is not approved. The independent researchers would be highly compensated from the fund for their work, making it an attractive occupation, but precluded from accepting any other compensation (in cash or in kind) directly or indirectly from pharmaceutical industry. They would also be precluded from taking employment in pharmaceutical industry or in government pharmaceutical regulation for five years after their last compensation from the fund (and vice-versa). All revolving doors closed.
As to any vaccines that got through that process, patients would only have to be warned about contra-indications that arose during the trial or arose from an adverse event reporting system. I need to think more about the adverse event reporting system that needs to be in place and the control, monitoring, analysis, and reporting from that system. Certainly, it needs to be way better than what we have now. I would like to figure out how to get it out of government's hands. Perhaps an independent entity funded by the tax on each vaccine dose (i.e. vaccine consumers).
With all that, I would only allow recovery for an adverse event if it were the result of a known contra-indication about which warning should have, but was not, given, on the basis that the individual who chooses to take the risk of getting a vaccine (including the children whose parents make that choice for them) bear all other risk of adverse events. Finally, if a government (local, state, or federal) mandates a vaccination or conditions participation in any activity or service (other than new--as opposed to continued--employment) on a vaccination, then the government takes the risk and must compensate for all adverse events (if government limits people's choice to avoid the risk, then government assumes the risk).
This seems pretty well thought out. I think you would also need to ban health insurance companies from bribing pediatric practices with huge cash awards for high rates of compliance to the full CDC vax schedule. That's a pernicious and growing problem in many states: pediatricians "fire" their patients/families if the parents don't agree to the whole schedule "as is" (ie. no picking and choosing or delaying immunizations), because the practice stands to make hundreds of thousands of dollars in "bonus" money from insurance companies if they can show a 95%+ compliance rate among their patients.
Leah, thanks for the reply. As I am at the grandparent stage of life I did not know about this issue. As I will explain, I am confounded about how what you explain is happening works. I assume it is not the medical malpractice carriers who are paying this incentive to their own insured pediatric practices, because the med-mal carriers would seem to have no profit incentive to do so. Thus, I conclude it must be the parent's health insurance carriers who would be providing such awards. I suppose they do have a financial incentive to do that. For example, it presumably costs them less to pay for an MMR vaccination that it does to pay for the treatment of measles, mumps, or rubella. What I do not understand is how any insurer would know what the overall vax compliance rate is across an entire pediatric practice (as opposed to the vax rate among their own insureds), since the patients probably have many dozens of carriers among them. Even if there were some data sharing among insurers or some common vax database they have, I would think some small insurers would elect not to offer such incentives and thus become "free riders" letting the big carriers carry the water. From that I intuit that the incentives you refer to are more likely United Health paying a bonus for a certain level of vax compliance among all their insureds who use that pediatric practice, and Aetna paying a bonus for a certain level of vax compliance among all their insureds who use that pediatric practice, etc. If so, it would seem like different carriers might have different compliance thresholds, and different incentive structures.
If this problem really exists, I think before I would start legislating about it, I would need some pretty strong, non-anecdotal data showing that parents who want to pick, choose, or delay simply cannot find pediatricians for their children. Until that proof surfaces, I would assume there will be a sufficient number of pediatricians that will allow parents to pick, choose,, or delay (indeed who might see a practice growth opportunity in catering to those parents) to handle that small minority of parents. I would also think that with today's social media the information about which pediatricians are and are not willing to do so would be well known among those parents who want to pick, choose, and delay. That said, for parents stuck in medical plans that do not let them choose their own doctors, I could see legislating that those carriers and their doctors will bel treated as I would treat a government vax mandate--you effectively mandate the vax and remove the choice whether to take the risk or not from the patient, then you assume all the risk and the patient can sue you and recover any and all damages (not just medical costs, but pain, suffering, disability, etc. with no cap) for any adverse event. I suspect having to shoulder that liability would be sufficient incentive for those carriers and doctors to allow choice.
You ask "What I do not understand is how any insurer would know what the overall vax compliance rate is across an entire pediatric practice (as opposed to the vax rate among their own insureds), since the patients probably have many dozens of carriers among them. "
Part of healthcare reform under the Obama administration was the initiation of "quality" bonuses. To qualify for these, practices have to submit data on all of their patients, regardless of their insurance. Not all insurance companies give these quality bonuses, but the large ones, do, including Medicare. Vaccines are a part of this, and not just childhood vaccines, but pneumonia vaccines and influenza vaccines for adults are, too. The bonuses can be quite significant, especially if the practice is large. Since most physicians are now employed by large corporate hospital systems, there is significant pressure to meet the benchmark for the bonus. So, yes, there is pressure for physicians to make you get your shots (and your colon cancer screening, and take medicine to make your blood pressure reach a benchmark goal, and many other things.)
Thank you for the additional information. So, what did the government (Obama administration) do to initiate quality bonuses? Did they just allow them and then leave it medical insurers to decide it is in their financial interest to give them out? Or did the government incent the behavior by the insurers somehow, and if so, how?
I completely see how physicians in the large captive practices that have been captured by the large hospital chains could be pressured (either by financial bonuses for achievement or financial penalties for non-achievement) to do as much preventive medicine as possible. I actually see this with every annual physical since I turned 65 when my doctor started giving me a blank sheet of paper and asking me to draw a clock, and then she gives me a time and I have to draw the hour and minute hands correctly. I quickly surmised this is some silly dementia test for which Medicare compensates the doctor. My own experience watching people grow old is that dementia is usually a lack of memory for recent learning, but old learning (like how to tell time) can be quite stable. So, I would think that anyone who shows up on time for their appointment unassisted by anyone else is pretty much guaranteed to pass the test. Unfortunately, I cannot control how the government spends my money. So my feeling is that if it going to spend my tax dollars so frivolously, I certainly want my doctor to eat from the trough. So, I cheerfully take the test every year.
My doc and I have settled into a relationship where she knows that I am going to turn down some of the treatment and medication she suggests. So, she suggests what she is supposed to, but does not pressure me when I decline, because she knows if she does I won't give her top ratings on the follow-up survey her employer emails me. I surmise the ratings on those surveys count more for her income and job security than patient compliance with required suggestions. The surveys always include one or more, "Did your doctor suggest" questions and I always answer yes.
The quality payments were first implemented by Medicare. How commercial payers came on board or why, I am not sure, but they probably saw an opportunity to maximize their profits. My experience was that for the first couple of years the quality payments were truly bonuses, but then the insurers decreased their fee for service payment so that it became necessary to participate in the quality measures in order to maintain income stream. Another possibility as to why the commercial payers adopted them is that so many of them also run Medicare Advantage plans that they had to collect the quality data for those, so they expanded it to their other products as well.
I can assure you this problem exists. I'm also of grandparent age, but I started following the vaccine safety/informed consent issue when I was pregnant with our first child 32 years ago.
The first pediatrician we used, who had her own private practice, disagreed strongly with our decision not to vaccinate but worked with me as a partner in our child(ren)'s health. The idea of forcing parents to vaccinate children by refusing service was not a thing back then (and I don't believe this doctor would have taken that approach, regardless; nor would have most doctors).
When she retired in 1998, I found another pediatric office with multiple doctors, one of whom was very respectful of parental rights and, while also disagreeing with our decision, was willing to partner with us for our kids' health. But I could feel things changing, as the other doctors in that practice weren't similarly respectful. When she left to become a medical school professor, I quit the practice (luckily we were nearing the end of needing a pediatrician by then).
Fast-forward to today, and that same pediatric practice now provides a notice for new patients on their website that links parents of prospective patients to their immunization policy, which states the following:
"Because we are committed to protecting the health of your children through vaccination, we require all of our patients to be vaccinated. Infants will receive all age-appropriate recommended vaccines by three months of age, with additional recommended vaccines as well as booster doses by two years of age. Children will receive additional recommended booster doses by the time they are seven years old, and will be given recommended 11–12-year preteen vaccinations by the time they are 13 years old. We will complete 16-year teen vaccinations before each child’s 17th birthday. And, we will also give your child/teen an annual influenza vaccination unless they receive it at a school clinic or pharmacy.
"Finally, if you should absolutely refuse to vaccinate your child despite all our efforts, we will ask you to find another healthcare provider who shares your views."
To be clear, this means that all children using this practice must receive 16 different vaccines for a total of 69 doses by the time they're 18 years old—actually, it's more than that now that the Covid vax has been added, along with those boosters (if they've been added).
In areas of the country where firing patients has become an issue, parents are foregoing pediatricians and using physicians of family or general medicine to avoid the rigidity and lack of choice. Hopefully they will not be similarly bribed.
And regarding the insurance bribery, you're correct—it is the various patient carriers who are offering doctors "incentives" (as they euphemistically term them) for high compliance rates. I have on my computer at this moment a pdf of a 2016 booklet from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan titled "Provider Incentive Program." I'd share it with you if there was a way to link it here.
Under childhood immunizations, which in this booklet is directed to kids two years old and under, the single exemption their "incentive" program allows is for "Children who are documented with an anaphylactic reaction to the vaccine or its components." Which means pediatricians participating in this "incentive" program are disincentivized to recognize parental reports of any other kind of adverse reaction. The threshold for the program is a 63% compliance rate and the payout is $400 per kid. In this program, which is the "Combo 10," the insurance company defines an "eligible member" as a child who has been enrolled for 12 consecutive months prior to their second birthday and has received the following ten vaccines and doses by age two:
4 DTaP
3 IPV
1 MMR
1 VZV
3 HiB
3 Hep B
4 PCV
1 Hep A
2 or 3 RV
2 Influenza
I could go on, but I imagine you get the point. It's all about the money. That's where this outrageous practice of "one size fits all" medicine comes from.
Wow!!! I am speechless. Perhaps someone should sue that practice for fraud (defined as when someone makes a false statement that they know or should know is false, with intent that another relies on it, and the other person does rely on it and is harmed). Here they say "Because we are committed to protecting the health of your children through vaccination," which appears to be false and should say, "Because we only make lots of money if all our patients are vaccinated, we require all our patients to be vaccinated."
So, their statement is arguably false. If it is, they certainly know it. All we need to complete proof of fraud is one plaintiff who thought they were telling the truth, and got their child vaccinated, with an adverse event.
In terms of proof it only comes down to convincing a jury the statement is false. If successful on that all the other elements essentially become a given.
A good tort lawyer could put on the evidence of the financial incentives the practice receives, and probably come up with some examples of other preventive medicine for which there is little or no financial incentive to force on patients and which the practice does not force on patients. That might be enough for a jury to agree the statement is false and award damages.
Then unless they want to face more successful fraud claims they would have to retract their statement or modify it to tell the truth (probably take the first choice).
Were the subject of such a tort anything other than vaccines, I'm sure your strategy could be a winner. But "vaccines saved humankind" is the sacred cow, the first tenet of modern medicine's orthodoxy, and it's what our population is conditioned to believe is beyond question. The con of the Covid "vax" has woken up a lot more people, but most normies still presume the rest of our vaccines are "safe and effective" and—above all—*necessary* for the health of our communities. So, the logic of the tort claim you present notwithstanding, I'd be shocked if a jury would side with a plaintiff against a pediatric practice who is "just doing everything they can to keep children safe and healthy."
Local school districts would SCREAM if they had to be responsible for harm caused by the vaccinations required to go to school.
And there's an unintended consequence here: parents would likely delay vaccinating until the child was school age, so that the vaccine requirements would put the school district on the hook for any harm caused.
Also, people being what they are, there are parents who would try to milk this cash cow by trying to connect any problem experienced by their child to the required vaccinations.
Yep, and all those local school districts have to do to avoid that problem is not have a vax mandate. I will say that if the local school districts are not the source of the mandate, but it comes from say a county or state health department or education department so the local school has no choice about it, then my legislation would not impose liability on the local school. The liability lands on the government entity that is the source of the mandate. Also, governments can buy insurance against their liabilities just like everyone else can, and if no insurers are willing to insure the risk, that is a sure sign it is a bad government policy.
I believe it is the state health agencies who typically decide which vaccines are mandated for school attendance (maybe county health agencies, in some places? I believe enforcement is typically the purview of county health departments, in any case). And state laws, passed by state legislatures, determine which—if any—exemptions (medical, religious, philosophical) are allowable for those mandates. All of which means that state taxpayers would bear the risks of the mandated vaccines in their own state.
I would not complain at all if state governments were put on the hook for vaccine damage caused by any vaccines given in their state that are mandated for public school students in their state. Let THEM go after BigPharma for reimbursement of their costs.
But I still think it would make more sense for pharmaceutical companies to be on the hook for any damages caused by the medicines they produce, unless those medicines are classified strictly experimental and those taking experimental medicines sign waivers. And of course those experimental medicines should NOT be mandated. Again, any entity that mandates the use of an experimental medicine should be fully on the hook for damages.
Perhaps it is not what you meant, but your wording "any damages caused by the medicines they produce" suggests some type of strict liability. I am sorry, but I cannot support strict liability for pharma or any other private entity, except for harm knowingly and intentionally inflicted.
If a consumer is warned about the non-obvious risks that a business should reasonably know about, and the consumer voluntarily accepts those risks (and I propose the consumer is deemed to have known and accepted all the obvious risks as to which no warning should be required), then the business should not be liable, in my humble opinion.
Let us not forget that businesses cannot stay in business unless they can generate sufficient revenue to cover all their costs (which include the cost of defending against and paying damage claims, whether they insure, self-insure, or both). So, if we require businesses to pay any damages caused by their products, including harm arising from risks known to, and voluntarily accepted by, the consumer, then the cost of all those damages must find its way into the cost of the product which all consumers of that product will then pay, or the business will fail.
Effectively, strict liability forces all consumers to bear the cost of insuring all harm to everyone, even harm arising from risks knowingly taken. People can disagree about such total socialization of risk, but I fall into the group that does not agree with it. I hope you do to after you think about it.
I would add that when it comes to harm resulting from risks that neither the consumer nor the business could reasonably know about, the case for socializing those risks gets stronger (providing the consumer was using the product properly and for intended purposes). But in those cases neither party can be said to be at fault. Those who argue for putting all the cost in those cases on the business argue that it is the business who got all the revenue from selling the product. But most of that revenue usually goes to paying employees, landlords, suppliers, debt, taxes, etc. Usually only a very small part of that revenue goes to owners or shareholders as profit (for example sake let us assume 10% of less. Ordinarily, but not always, when the profit margins are high competition is usually attracted which brings profits back into line). To me that argument devolves to, "OK the product cost the consumer $100, and 10% of that was profit, so the business owes the injured consumer $10." "Oh, no, you might say; that is not enough." OK, then make the business refund the whole $100. "Oh, no, you might say; that is not enough if the consumer had $10,000 in damages." My answer is, "I am sorry about that. But the business was not a fault, because in this case it did not, and could not reasonably know about the risk from which the harm arose. So why should the business bear a $10,000 cost when it only earned $100 in gross (of which only $10 was profit)? Remember, it was a voluntary exchange between the consumer and the business. Yes, the business sought to gain $100 in revenue most of which it used to pay its bills. But in every voluntary exchange both sides seek gain. The consumer sought whatever benefit the consumer saw in the product. So why inflict harm on the business beyond the gain it got (be it $100 or $10 take your choice) from the exchange with that consumer?"
The bottom line is that if we are going to inflict no fault liability in these unfortunate circumstances, I argue it needs to be shared between the parties. Some people would favor just putting some overall cap on damages in these circumstances. But arguably that can be unfair to those consumers who suffer damages greater than cap. Many would think it unfair that less injured consumers get fully compensated for their loss while those with greater injuries do not.
Let's acknowledge that it is likely impossible to devise any system that everyone (including all injured parties) would agree is fair. There will always be disagreement whenever what is fair is up for debate. The best we can achieve is compromising on something that can gain support from as large a majority as possible.
For starters, I would favor another alternative--allowing recovery for all hard damages (out of pocket expenses including things like past and the present value of reasonably expected future medical expenses and lost income and the like). But disallow recovery of soft damages (pain, suffering, disfigurement, impairment [except as it translates to lost income], etc.). If necessary to get large majority support, I could be talked into compromising on recovery of both hard and soft damages, but with a pretty low cap on the soft damages (e.g. $250,000).
My problem with allowing pharmaceutical companies to be shielded from liability is that IF their products are as safe as they claim, the potential loss from damages should be very small. Indeed, it ought to be small enough to be INSURABLE (that is, the company should be able to get insurance that protects them in case of customer injuries).
The biggest problem I see with exempting vaccines, in particular, from liability is that the "choice" is not "informed" in a meaningful way. Parents have a "small print" paper shoved in their faces that says there are risks of harm involved with vaccines, but the parents are simultaneously threatened with various kinds of *other* harm to their child (anywhere from "your kid will die of this disease" to "you will be dismissed from our practice") if they don't comply with allowing their child to be vaccinated.
"Take this risk with your child OR ELSE!" is not a position from which it is legitimate to demand exemption from liability.
Please explain and justify why we vaccinate neonates for Hep B which is overwhelmingly spread by IV drug use and sex? The shot wears off in about a decade, so how does injecting one-day old babies make sense if the mother does not test positive for Hep B infection (mothers are tested)? Why do other countries not follow this practice? Why do we have the highest day-one mortality? Day one and our vaccine schedule flunks any rational risk/benefit analysis. Our infants are being served up as a market for drug companies. Thanks for defending them!
the only explanation imo is that even though expectant mothers are routinely tested for Hep B (and other STDs), this policy represents a blanket protocol that will catch some small number of cases (where HepB mothers refuse to test prior to birth, or fathers stray or use IV drugs late term and possibly infect mom late term) and because it's 'harmless' there is no effect on the vast majority of normal neonates. The other possibility would be to prevent liability from mistakes in the hospital, especially if a neonate needs heightened care.
The precautionary principle should obviously preclude the vaccination in any of these cases but public health doesn't care about individual outcomes, only population level outcomes.
At the time the CDC approved it for the schedule they specifically said it was because its target population (prostitutes and IV drug users) are unlikely to seek preventative care and so they would just give it to all babies, on the erroneous presumption that it would confer lifelong immunity. It doesn't.
Any sane healthcare system truly seeking to protect its patients-in this case the most vulnerable—would revisit this policy via open discussion, not seek to demonize and deplatform those who ask questions.
Wouldn't it be more logical to give it only to babies whose mothers did NOT seek prenatal care and/or did not have a negative test shortly before birth? That's a pretty clear and easy thing to determine.
But no, Big Pharma gets paid for every dose given.
My first baby was born just days ago. We were asked by those cleaning up the baby - minutes after birth, before we even held him - if we wanted him to receive the Hep B vaccine. I was taken aback. Surrounded by our OB and nurses, we said yes. If we said no…I wonder what glances we would have received from those making sure our baby was breathing ok. I didn’t appreciate it, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.
I was under the impression that neonates were only vaccinated if their mothers were positive for Hep B or never had prenatal care. Could a HCP with knowledge enlighten me?
I have two young daughters. With both they tried to vaccinate within hours of life. For the first I accepted out of shock I was being asked, for the second I refused.
I appreciate Dr. Prasad’s point of view. But it’s all unsubstantiated opinions. This whole piece reads “I’m a doctor many of you trust so you should believe me when I tell you RFKjr is wrong on medical issues because I’m a doctor and he’s not.” Yet, he doesn’t cite any actual science, research, or studies in this piece. He uses the same kind of sweeping generalizations that other public health officials did that led to the pandemic in the first place. I would have hoped for a more nuanced discussion of the facts and science. Perhaps Dr. Prasad would debate RFKjr on JRE. I’d love to see that.
I would much rather see Dr. Prasad debate Kennedy, than Hotez. That would be a truly useful match up. But I would hope Vinay would read IN DEPTH the many studies RFK Jr does, in fact, cite to support his arguments, including those of HCQ and IVM. I'd like Vinay to read the Simpsonwood transcript (mentioned on the JRE podcast) and actually investigate the money trail behind the many studies that "thoroughly investigated" and dismissed the link between autism and vaccines.
My problem, when I listen to Vinay and Bari and everyone else who parrots The Narrative™ on vaccine safety is that they so clearly have not delved deeply into the literature on the other side of the argument and thus they fail to address the compelling specifics of RFK Jr.'s claims. Vinay indicates his views of RFK's "low quality causal reasoning" are based on interviews he's seen of RFK Jr.. GO DEEPER, Vinay! Please! Read these books: Turtles All the Way Down, Dissolving Illusions, and How To End the Autism Epidemic. If you want the source material for RFK's stances, you'll find them there. But just stop with the unconvincing and facile (mis)characterizations of RFK Jr.'s reasoning. He isn't arguing off the top of his head or from leaps of logic. He isn't making claims in a vacuum. He has reams of data to support his views. PLEASE READ IT.
I couldn’t agree more. It seems that Dr. Prasad is either a) unaware of the reams of research, or b) unwilling to acknowledge the research. Giving him the benefit of the doubt I’d have to go with A. But then, why would you write an opinion column holding yourself out as an expert in epidemiology if you haven’t actually familiarized yourself with all the research available from which RFKjr makes his alleged “leaps of logic”?
I’d love for someone to offer the counter point (of view?) to The Real Anthony Fauci, which details a long (and seemingly sordid) history of vaccines over the past 40 some years. If RFK Jr is so off base, where are all the scientists that should be able to easily put down these arguments? Seems to me that they’re unwilling to assess they’re own presumptions.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Regarding HCQ and IVM. Two aspects of this issue I found pertinent in real time during the pandemic.
1. My own research into each at the time, when no treatment could have been immediately provable, was to look at research done pre Covid which found themto be overwhelmingly safe for their long use in other contexts. (And anecdotally my use of HCQ for malaria prophylaxis)
2. The reason the best studies are double blind, placebo controlled against the target substance is because, to some degree…..PLACEBOS WORK! So in the face of nothing known to be effective against Covid19 early on I determined that safe for sure (unless the virus would have some strange and unlikely bad effect specifically to these) was the best option to at least lever the placebo effect in favor of strengthening innate immune responses.
Subsequent studies showed them not to work well (ie better than placebo) but no harm was done by my minimal employment of those potentialities in our time of ignorance.
And I'm still waiting for Dr. Prasad to address the merits of why Kennedy says certain HCQ and ivermectin studies should be excluded from the meta analyses - namely because they were designed to fail. Dr. Prasad either needs to defend the methods used in those studies or concede the point to RFK Jr.
We can agree though that autism rates have went up, even though mercury has been eliminated from virtually all vaccines, except for flu vaccines. RFKs discussion on Joe Rogan was almost exclusively about mercury in vaccines.
Of course, that seems self-evident that rates have gone up. While the JRE conversation covered the mercury in vaccines in more detail, The Real Anthony Fauci covers the broader vaccine history and context across four decades. Detailing what appears to be collusion across pharma and govt agencies that I’ll admit before the pandemic I would have been incredulous. But understanding the history, the COVID vaccine rollout from the pandemic seems to have been pulled right out of a well-worn playbook. And those in power assume we don’t care enough or are too dumb to ask better questions.
The key clue was that the Covid "vaccines" were labeled "safe and effective" before they had even existed for a year, much less been deployed that long. IOWs, without a shred of longterm data. Reveals that it's a marketing slogan, not a determination of science.
This link is to a Megyn Kelly interview of RFK jr. At around 47 minutes, a couple of Fauci clips concerning vaccines. The 2nd one is pretty old, Fauci looks young, but he says about the HIV vaccines they were working on, that after 12 years all hell broke loose. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKEjftGvrcw
Aluminum has replaced mercury as the adjuvant in many of the vaccines, and is also a potent neurotoxin. I believe he talked about this on the Joe Rogan podcast
For those who may not know, Dr. Prasad was a stalwart on Twitter providing a reasonable voice in opposition to the captured CDC and the credentialist tyrants like Hotez, Yamey, etc during the darkest days of the Covid response. He fought the fight against closed schools, forced masking, and vaccine mandates, and he fought it well. I am eternally grateful to him for that.
That’s exactly why I was surprised to see this opinion piece so lacking in real content or information. I have appreciated Dr. Prasad’s seemingly balanced approach and pushback on the mainstream narrative. So, I was surprised to find his critique of RFKjr so lacking in substance.
💯 agree. I think most of us probably like Vinay from Twitter, but this article is still giving “trust me I’m a dr” vibes. I do think rfk addressed that Denmark study Prasad links re vaccines not causing autism (and I’m not saying they do).
The fact RFK Jr is willing to debate, and no one is willing to debate him speaks volumes. Instead we get article after article, mostly from news outlets funded by the pharmaceutical industry, that dismiss his claims without a shred of evidence showing how he’s got it wrong. I expected more from The Free Press, but not surprised to find more of the same.
In an open format like Rogan’s, RFK was allowed to speak at great length, authoritatively, on the topics of vaccines and the environment, without notes, because he’s been living and working in these fields for decades, as an activist and as an attorney. I’ve also heard him speak with great humility and openness when he’s confronted with ideas or opinions he hadn’t considered.
Anyone who thinks he’s unschooled, foolish or corrupt should be more than willing to debate him; it would be like shooting fish in a barrel, right?
Pathogenic priming is something that I just heard of, and, as I understand, prior attempts to develop a coronavirus vaccine (before the pandemic) often resulted in pathogenic priming, leading to an auto-immune response, which can be deadly. The link will take you to a Megyn Kelly interview with RFK jr. and if you go to around 47- 48 minutes into the video, you will see two Fauci clips that are of significance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKEjftGvrcw
I totally disagree with you that trials proved IVM and HCQ ineffective. There are ways to skew trial results and much has been written about the late stage infection status of patients, the very high dosages, and the compilation of data weeks out from initial dosage that watered down the results. Further, clinical data from frontline doctors Pierre Kory, Paul Marek and Zev Zelenko proved without doubt that these medications worked--very few of their patients were hospitalized, let alone died, and we’re talking about the elderly, many with co-morbidity. Tens of thousands of saved lives.
IVQ was effective in all stages of the illness, but especially when treatment began early. Time for randomized control trials amounted to a death sentence, and the State propaganda calling IVQ a horse paste was not relying on any government study--they smeared it despite the clinical results from front line Covid critical doctors--none of who had a political ax to grind, all of whom were highly experienced, credentialed and qualified.
IVM has been administered billions of times, is proven safe at correct dosages, and is inexpensive. Your assertion that after unremarkable RCT results the case for IVM should have been closed is outrageous and suggests to me that you yourself are captured and what they call controlled opposition.
The experimental Covid gene therapy has injured or killed millions of people, and it serves the public to dig deeper into the harms that other vaccines have caused. Ed Dowd, Robert Malone, Peter McCullough, and Michael Yeadon, among others, have documented the harms and questioned the pseudoscience promoted during the lockdowns.
This was a totalitarian play, well rehearsed - and RFK has it right. We have to question EVERYTHING we are being told about EVERYTHING!
I wonder how many patients you lost during the pandemic. I’d wager those prescribing IVM off label did much better.
I keep referring back to this page (https://c19ivm.org/), which appears to show quite a bit of pretty good data in support of IVM for COVID. Am I reading it wrong?
I just read a new, excellent book called The War in Ivermectin by ICU doctor Pierre Kory who treated thousands of patients during Covid. He makes a very compelling, credible case for Ivermectin being effective and provides much data. Worth reading as he has been in the trenches treating Covid and has excellent qualifications, unlike most pontificating health bureaucrats we have heard from in the last few years.
When I used to counsel a vaccine-reluctant mother, I would take this line. All vaccines can have side-effects. Some, very rarely, can have very serious side-effects. The diseases they prevent can also be dangerous, sometimes frequently, sometimes rarely. The only question to ask yourself is this: is it safer to have the vaccine, or not have it and risk the disease? Many mothers (it always seemed to be the mothers) would reply that childhood diseases are now rare, and as long as other kids had the vaccine then their child would be safe. The only arguments to counter that is that for herd immunity to work, some highly infectious diseases (measles for example) require a very high vaccination rate, and if two in every ten parents think that way your unvaccinated child will get measles. Also, just because you've never heard of anyone getting diphtheria, doesn't mean the disease has gone—look at what happened after the collapse of the USSR: 4,000 deaths from diphtheria withing two years of the vaccination schedule being disrupted.
I'm old enough to have seen children die of chickenpox encephalitis and whooping cough, be born disabled from rubella, seen measles kill babies, and watched meningitis kill children. All preventable. Even the earaches that destroyed most of my hearing are prevented with pneumococcal, meningococcal and H.influenzae vaccinations. The pancreatitis I had after mumps doesn't happen now, if you have your MMR. Even the old pertussis vaccine that really did cause encephalitis in 1:10,000 doses was safer than the death rate from whooping cough (the new acellular vaccine doesn't have that issue).
I'm afraid RFK Jr. is totally wrong, dangerous even, to be against vaccination. Certainly there is a question of individual liberty, but remember you are making a decision on behalf of your child, not for yourself, and that public health considerations—herd immunity— are important. I have had to put my money where my mouth is, having recently had a bone marrow transplant for leukemia, which leaves me with a brand new immune system and no immunity to anything, so I have had to have the full childhood immunization schedule in my sixties! Same consideration for me as for infants: is it safer to have them, or not to have them? Easy decision.
I think that this argument misses the point and forces mothers to make a false choice between two harms. RFK's point is quite clear: make vaccines safe. When any corporation loses the potential for any legal or financial liability, then we are blindly hoping in the better angels of their inherently profit driven motive. It never works in any industry to rely on such an inclination. We should collective agree that companies that wish to push a vaccine on children should be held liable for the risks since they receive the profits without limitation. Also, you should respond to the first post: explain why a child must take a Hep B vaccine nearly immediately after they are born? We do not need to defend corporations and actually fight against tighter regulation and greater transparency because they hang the sword of death and sickness over our necks.
Do you think it possible to make a totally safe vaccine, or medication? Even if it were, one day, possible, why not follow the safer course, the lesser risk, right now, and use a vaccine rather than have the disease and its risks? You're saying we must not use vaccines because they are not perfect, which is an excellent example of "cutting off your nose to spite your face."
Why must I respond to a comment about Hepatitis B vaccines? Where I practiced, in the UK and in Canada we do not give Hepatitis B vaccine until grade 7
The 1986 Childhood Vaccine Act that gives pharma indemnity from vaccine safety risks literally says in the act that vacinnes are “unavoidably unsafe.” That doesn’t mean they don’t do good. But to J. Yeats point, the incentive to make them safer (such as removing mercury, etc) doesn’t exist. There is only upside. And I don’t know all the history, but based on RFKjr’s book the original Dtap vaccine was not approved by the FDA (although that original one was approved for use in Africa where pharma makes big money off something that was too unsafe even for the US).
Here's the problem I see. When a child contracts measles that is followed by encephalitis and ends up disabled or deceased, the medical community makes a causal link and says the injury/death was due to measles, because it caused the encephalitis, ergo measles is dangerous. When a child is given the MMR vaccine and spikes a high fever with high pitch shrieking and/or has a seizure and/or contracts encephalitis and either dies, or recovers but with the parents witnessing a permanent regression in the child's abilities and behaviors, the medical community does not make a causal link and say the injury/death was due to the vaccine. They say it was just a sad coincidence because vaccines are "safe and effective."
Precisely! I personally know a number of people with vaccine-damaged children, so I am not comfortable with the cavalier attitude of the medical community.
You fail to address a third option: delayed vaccination. Rather than injecting infants with a cocktail of multiple vaccines at 2, 4, and 6 months of age, vaccinations are spread out over the the first year, with pertussis prioritized. Considering that breastfed infants maintain some immunity from their mothers, and that most infants are highly unlikely to be exposed to these diseases until after they have been vaccinated, it seems better to allow their immune systems to mature a bit more before subjecting them to the challenges of vaccination.
The "my way or else" attitude of the medical establishment is a big part of why people are no longer willing to trust doctors as if they were gods.
RFK doesn't say to NOT vaccinate. He says to do your research on the vaccines and make the best choice for yourself and family. He himself has been vaccinated against a variety of diseases.
I believe before a vaccine is to be mandated, it should undergo long-term animal and then long-term human trials. Also, I have heard that past efforts to create a coronavirus vaccine (before Covid-19) that there were issues with pathogenic priming, which could lead to an auto-immune response, sometimes deadly. How can we know if there is no long-term study? Go to 47-48 minutes in the Megyn Kelly interview of RFK jr. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKEjftGvrcw
Question - if through vaccination we have minimized the opportunity for diseases such as chickenpox and measles is it that rather than the spreading out of vaccinations as I had they are applying them all within months/days of birth? How does that seem rational?
There is no need for immediate vaccination after birth, as there is some temporary passive immunity from the mother with antibodies crossing the placenta and in breast milk. When this passive immunity wears off, the diseases of childhood can strike. For this reason we start immunizing babies at three months here.
"The BIG question that has never been asked of nor answered by Big Pharma: Why has there been no research on the cumulative effect of all the childhood vaccines introduced since the 1986 Vaccine Act? None. Not only that, there have been no studies conducted on the combination of vaccines given at the same time in the same ‘well child’ visit. As mentioned, up to 9 different antigens can be introduced into a developing child’s immune system in one visit (and more now, see footnote ‘1’ below). No studies. Nada. None. Except the uncontrolled one that has been going on real-time in our children for going on 3 decades now."
I really wanted to hear something substantial in this article - I did not. Correlation is not causation - sure we get this. However, the national disregard for the drastic increase in autism in this country is shocking. Something is causing it. Perhaps it is not vaccines but there is something - and older parents seems like an unlikely answer. I think your article points to RFK's bravery to challenge a system that has obviously run amuck. As an oncologist you know this all too well Dr. Prasad. Oncologists live and die off of the chemo rebates.
RFK Jr. also states that the vaccine/autism stats are correlation, not causation. But he's the only one willing to investigate this (or other causes) as he's not in the back pocket of big Pharma and big Agro.
He also states that there are probably additional contributing factors, like the pesticides and herbicides sprayed liberally on our food crops. On Rogan, he discusses the rise in celiac disease and gluten sensitivities didn't occur until BigAg started using them as a desiccant on wheat crops to harvest them sooner.
RFK Jr questions what is in the vaccines. You never address his points that mercury in vaccines could be behind the rise in autism. He cites a study that the mercury disappears in the blood rapidly but crosses the blood brain barrier and thus could be at root to brain damage and autism. He is not against vaccines but wants to have Big Pharma make SAFE vaccines. Who opposes that desire?
An excellent analysis, Dr. Prasad. However, as someone who knew Dr. Zelenko and whose “Zelenko Protocol” results from Rockland County were validated by a study, as well as hundreds of studies around the world showing that early treatment of COVID with hydroxychloroquine, zinc and Azythromycin showed efficacy, I remain skeptical about the dismissal of all of these studies. Have you looked at them? I would trust you more if you said you had looked at them and determined all were flawed compared to the negative studies. Remember that highly touted Lancet study about hydroxychloroquine that was withdrawn after results were found to be fraudulent. This, along with the censorship, diminishes public trust.
Hey there, the argument is not an absolute one: no vaccines or produce vaccines with zero harm. Rather, we should treat vaccines as we treat every other medication provided to the general population, namely that they should be properly tested via double blind studies and that corporations face legal and financial liability for negligence. Also, there should be a strictly enforcement mechanism to track any harms. It is the lack of transparency that is making folks refuse to take any vaccines which may cause more harm in the end. Again, pharmas have so captured the debate that they make us believe in an all or nothing approach: either free us from all risk or there are no vaccines. A false choice that we and corporations do not accept for other medical treatments. agree re your response on hep b... point was to point that corporations are pushing vaccines onto children for no apparent health reason.
This is the elephant in the room: why are vaccinations exempt from all of the liability that other drugs and procedures are subject to?
When the medical establishment says "You must allow us to inject this substance, but if you experience any harm as a result, you cannot sue the manufacturer, and no one will be held responsible for the damage you experience," it's no wonder that people are hesitant, despite the risks of not getting vaccinated.
What continues to be missing in the vaccine conversation is the understanding that how they are made is different from vaccine to vaccine. They are not all the same. Just because they have the same name does not mean they are all made the same. Different mechanisms of actions, live virus, dead virus, different adjuvents, MRNA, etc. How about this for a change - what if it is not the theory of vaccination that is the issue, but how they are made and how and when they are administered. The devil is in the details. Why can't we all get behind the idea that some of the practices that are now conventional wisdom are showing to be problematic and adjust accordingly? It also feels very appropriate to me that in a new born infant there is all sorts of "permeability" happening, their skin is so fragile, their immune system just beginning to be formed, their skull isn't even fully formed, their digestive system still fragile and growing, doesn't it seem also reasonable that the blood brain barrier is also still forming? Gosh even adults have leaky gut and leaky brain. To me, that all seems so obvious and it's a shame that we make the conversation so polarized and there is no understanding of nuance. As well, we all understand that too much of a good thing can also become a bad thing. Why can't we understand that overloading a newborn's system, or heck even an adult's system with massive doses of a vaccine's mechanism of action could be problematic? Finally, why can't we also agree that as our understanding of health and immunity and the human body evolves, so too does our understanding of science. We used to get behind so many things that now make us laugh, we also didn't get behind things that now would be seen as inconceivable, why can't we also allow the conversation about vaccines to evolve as well without triggering people and ostracizing, cancelling or just plain disregarding those who are offering a different viewpoint?
I cannot wait to cast my vote for RFK, he is much much more than an opinion on vaccines. Wake up people.
I get incredibly frustrated when i see anybody—doctors, politicians, anybody—reinvent the wheel. When Sweden kept lower and middle schools open and Finland didn’t and they compared stats, no difference in teacher covid rates was reported. But no, we Americans knew better and handicapped a generation of low income kids for life.
Then when docs Fareed and Tyson in southern CA treat thousands of Covid patients with no deaths, we ignore their successful protocol and in fact, try to outlaw it. Overcoming the COVID-19 Darkness: How Two Doctors Successfully Treated 7000 Patients https://a.co/d/2Z5fPJo
Vinay - If vaccines are as "miraculous" as you say, then it should be non-confrontational to repeal the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act which protects Pharma from any liability associated with their product and and also to make it illegal to mandate vaccines. These two factors are glaring red flags that destroy public trust, especially after what we just saw with Covid. I think it is still unclear for many people what is propaganda and what is true coming out of our public health institutions, since it is clear they are captured by Pharma. Furthermore, there may be validity that some of the earlier vaccines were and continue to be great products (Polio/Measles); however, the massive ramp up in the vaccine schedule for kids (Hep B, RV, Hib, Chickenpox, etc) against a backdrop of zero liability for harms is untenable. Public health and the medical community need to stop treating people asking questions as "dangerous". What is truly "dangerous" are mandates and regulatory capture.
Yes, legal liability must be restored to Big Pharma in this case.
The difference with vaccines and other drugs is that EVERYONE should get a vaccine, and this widespread nature of this is what undoubtedly will cause some terrible side effect for someone. But the government has decided that the benefit outweighs the risk, and I largely agree with them. (I don't agree that the COVID vaccine benefits outweigh the risks now after Delta and Omicron.) Vaccines are a different beast than other medications because of the scale at which it's administered so I agree there should be *some* protection. If you were to give penicillin to everyone when they were a baby, many babies including myself would have died. So this is what we are talking about, even effective medications if given at scale will affect a small percentage of people extremely poorly and some protection needs to be given.
1) However, they need to ensure that the risk is extremely low for the general population. That means that the pharma companies should not be allowed to release vaccines without higher-than-normal testing, if everyone, especially every child, is going to be taking this. Right now the vaccine act and EUA lets them skirt this and that is WRONG. IF they want to take advantage of the protection of the Vaccine Injury Act, the bar must be set much, much higher in terms of safety testing.
2) It should be EXTREMELY DIFFICULT for pharma companies to get approved on the childrens' vaccine schedule. Pharma companies know that it's a cash cow to create a vaccine and get every single child in the US to get vaccinated by it. Right now it's far too easy to get on the schedule and useless vaccines like HPV vaccine are being practically forced. THIS NEEDS TO STOP. Right now, we have people approving these for children that care more about corporate profits than childrens' health and that's the corporate capture that RFK Jr. needs to break. I don't think any other candidate believes this.
I agree that there are quite a few vaccines on the schedule---AND I remember when we admitted 1 infant a month with devastating hemophilus influenza B meningitis. (This HIB vaccine has decreased the number of infants dying or suffering neurologic complications to a marked degree).
HPV vaccine --"useless" ???!!! You have just undermined any credibility you have. HPV vaccine prevents 99% of cervical cancer. Let me guess you've never seen a cervix and uterus fixed to the pelvic wall because of cervical cancer. No one is forcing it on your kids; doctors, myself included, encourage vaccination. It's still patients' decisions.
Broader points about the Pharma industry being in bed with the regulatory agencies have some basis. In hindsight, Public Health officials should have admitted the unclear nature of Covid risks especially to children. And remember it was unclear exactly how transmissible covid was from children to older adults. We were in fact trying to "flatten the curve". We did ---at the cost of public trust. Without some restrictions on gathering early on, we would no doubt have had more people dying outside the ERs.
Also--Covid was a REAL thing. Ask any nurse who lived through it in the hospital if you can find him or her still in nursing.
The moment when I began to fully distrust the vaccine industry was when they came out with a chicken pox vaccine (which was shortly thereafter MANDATED by school districts).
I remember the vaccine ad in Parents magazine that screamed "40 children a year die of chicken pox." It was one of those statistical ploys designed to scare people into thinking that 40 kids *in their town* will die of chicken pox. The reality--for anyone with the clarity of thought to see it--was that chicken pox poses a very, very low risk compared to other things kids encounter in their everyday lives. And the potential risks of the vaccine itself were not mentioned at all.
The ironic thing is that the chicken pox vaccine was being pushed at just the same moment when it was being discovered that pertussis immunity from vaccination--assumed to be lifelong--was actually waning by in the teenage years, with the result that young adults were getting whooping cough and passing it to babies too young to have been vaccinated. But the vaccine industry didn't pause to think about what would happen if vaccine-induced chicken pox immunity waned in the same way.
I had first-hand experience with this, because I didn't get chicken pox until I was 12. I was flattened in bed for 2 weeks. When my best friend's younger brothers got chicken pox, a friend of the family in his 20s who had never had chicken pox before caught it and was flattened for a month. The reality is that chicken pox tends to be more severe the older you are when you get it. My youngest daughter caught it at 16 months, was only mildly ill, and was well in less than a week.
So what I saw in the mandated roll-out of a chicken pox vaccine was putting MANY future young adults with waning immunity at risk for the benefit of a very small number of kids.
And this is exactly the same kind of equation that was imposed on us during Covid. Rather that considering the ramifications and potential unintended consequences, policy was based on a futile attempt to shrink risk to zero, even in populations with a risk that was lower than the risks the policy imposed on them.
I actually don’t think most people or many at all would read that ad in Parents magazine and think it references only their town. Of course it would be best to identify the territory (presumably the U.S., although it could be worldwide).
Not consciously, but subconsciously. Humans are very bad with numbers where risk is involved.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2014/03/17/why-were-awful-at-assessing-risk/6530753/
https://www.wired.com/2007/03/security-matters0322/
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-inertia-trap/201303/why-are-people-bad-evaluating-risks
> HPV vaccine --"useless" ???!!! You have just undermined any credibility you have. HPV vaccine prevents 99% of cervical cancer.
I meant to say it's useless for children. Regardless, this is from the CDC:
"About 10% of women with HPV infection on their cervix will develop long-lasting HPV infections that put them at risk for cervical cancer."
So 10% of women infected with HPV have a "risk" for cervical cancer. Not even 10% of infected women get cervical cancer from HPV, only 10% are AT RISK for cervical cancer. They can't even quantify the risk because it's so small. And for this infinitesimal risk you want to vaccinate ALL CHILDREN? No doctor, even YOU, mention the actual risks. All you say is "everyone should get the vaccine and if you don't you're an anti-vaxxer and you undermine your credibility!" I think it's YOU who undermined your own credibility by not actually understanding what risk means. I bet you didn't even know that such a tiny percentage of women who get HPV actually get cervical cancer. You probably assumed it was much higher, like 50%+. Shame on you for advocating ALL children get vaccinated for such a small risk.
Give me a break. And you're telling me that I should vaccinate MY SON for HPV, even though he doesn't have a cervix to get cancer from? Don't you EVER say it's up to the parents. The amount of religious indoctrination that doctors have over vaccines is scary and I had to fight our pediatrician and my wife tooth and nail initially. She insisted our son get the HPV vaccine until I pointed out the logic around the issue, showed her the actual risk to girls, which was tiny, told her that it's not a disease that targets boys and then she asked the very logical question "Why do all boys need to get it then?"
> Also--Covid was a REAL thing.
I never said COVID wasn't a real thing. I do believe COVID vaccines for kids were another way to enrich the pharma companies because they knew it was ineffective. Even the CDC lowered the bar below 50% efficacy because the children's vaccines were so useless. Now, with the COVID vaccine for children I say unequivocally that they are USELESS.
Show me the study that shows HPV vaccine prevents cervical cancer. You can't, because it hasn't been done.
Well, the pedos can't freely abuse kids without detection if the kid shows up with an HPV infection.
Yeah, I know that's extremely cynical. But pushing HPV vaccinations to a younger and younger age *does* shield pedophiles from one potential means of detecting their crimes.
You know, a few years ago, I would have considered a comment like this as tinfoil hat conspiracy theory. Now, watching the Epstein revelations keep pouring out and the pervasive and sick sexualization of children in real time?
Sadly, there is truth to this. We live in sick times.
Bill - your enthusiasm for your position is getting in the way of your critical thinking. The doctor you are excoriating said that 99% of cervical cancers can be prevented by the HPV vaccine. If you believe this is false, let's hear your data. Otherwise, preventing 99% of cervical cancers is a highly worthy goal.
The observation that most women won't get cervical cancer is no more relevant than the observation that most children won't get polio. If the disease prevented and the number of cases prevented are meaningful and if the intervention is safe and modest, it is a sensible public policy intervention.
As for your son, unless he is gay or plans to remain celibate, he is likely to have a girlfriend or wife whom he would place at risk if he carries the virus.
I never said that 99% of cervical cancers can’t be prevented by HPV vaccines. I said that the number of women who contract cervical cancer AFTER getting infected by HPV is vanishingly small. So the conditional probability is (Percentage of Women who get HPV) * (Percentage of Women who get cervical cancer from HPV) which is even smaller than percentage of women who get cervical cancer from HPV. And for the record, the first study that showed that the HPV vaccine even worked came out in 2020 and it wasn't even conducted in the US. So children were getting vaccinated for years without actual proof. Is this something you agree with?
Vaccinating every single child for a disease that a vanishingly small number of women will get is borderline criminal. It's a perfect way for vaccine manufacturers to make billions by convincing doctors that the moral choice to to vaccinate every child, even though logically it doesn't make sense. Telling parents that boys should get vaccinated is doubling their free money when it's completely ineffective.
If my son doesn't get vaccinated, but his girlfriend does, then can you please explain to me why my son needs to get vaccinated, or why all males need to get vaccinated for HPV before they are 10? Your enthusiasm for your position is getting in the way of your critical thinking.
Is there a single study that shows that males who vaccinate won't transmit the HPV virus to women? Or have you fallen into the arguments that the pharma companies want you to believe because it appeals to your morality? I'm sorry but I prefer science over religion.
I was completely on board with "flatten the curve". But as someone who actually paid attention in stats 101, I also understood that the area under the curve would always be the same. We were all going to be infected eventually. The goal was not to get infected at once and overwhelm the hospitals. But a flat curve means a smaller number along the y axis (current infections) and a higher number along the x axis (time). But the cost of each increment along that axis varied for each of us according to factors like job and SES. If you were wealthy and could work from home and didn't have kids or could afford tutors or private school, then it cost you little to "do your part" at keeping the y small and the x large. Ofc, this describes the demo of the ppl with the power to make these decisions. The infuriating part was that they either refused to acknowledge that it was more costly to those who could already least afford it, but (even worse) that they convinced themselves that they had the moral high ground.
Would love to see the research you’ve studied to make the statement that HPV vaccines prevents 99% of cervical cancer. Not being snarky-real question. Because you are claiming to know what does not happen ie cancers that never occurred.
see https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/cancer-currents-blog/2020/hpv-vaccine-prevents-cervical-cancer-sweden-study
Oh yes, a study by the NIH. The exact institution that has been captured by big pharma.
This is a bullshit article , like most written about vaccine effectiveness. Did you even read it? "Studies and clinical trials to date have consistently shown that HPV vaccines are extremely effective at reducing infections with the types of the virus that can lead to cancer, as well as cervical precancers. *****But because of the long time between infection and cancer, it had yet to be shown that HPV vaccination prevents cervical cancers."*****
HPV vaccine HAS NEVER BEEN SHOWN TO PREVENT CERVICAL CANCER.
👏
I've seen two women under the age of thirty die of cancer of the cervix, both in the same small rural practice. The benefit of the HPV vaccine is quite clear. It was a struggle to get the province to approve it for boys though. Their reasoning was that if the girls are protected the boys will eventually benefit as they won't catch the virus from the girls (and if a few die in the meantime....). Problem was that there is a population of men that would not be protected by this means - gay men. Oral squamous cell cancer and anal cancers are caused by HPV. They are particularly nasty ways to die. Eventually it was approved for boys too. BTW, it has to be given young, before first sexual activity, and no matter how much you pray for them, some of the little devils will be at it as soon as they can, eh? As for your last point, you labour under the impression that vaccines are easily approved. Not so, it is already extremely difficult to get approval either for adults or children. You are hardly the first person to assume the world welcomes new vaccines uncritically. You should ask Edward Jenner about that. There were riots by people demanding, in effect, the right to die of smallpox because they were stupid and did not understand. The only reason you have never known of a case of smallpox is because Jenner's vaccine (ever think about that word? Look it up!) worked so well that smallpox was the first infectious disease ever eradicated in the wild.
> I've seen two women under the age of thirty die of cancer of the cervix
Thanks for your anecdotal evidence. It will be taken into consideration with my anecdotal evidence which is I know 0 people that have had any effect from HPV.
> BTW, it has to be given young, before first sexual activity
Really? Don't you mean before first INFECTION? Do you know the difference?
> You should ask Edward Jenner about that.
Wow, are you talking about a vaccine that is decades old? I'm talking about the bivalent COVID vaccine that was approved after being tested on 8 mice and told that ALL CHILDREN should take the bivalent vaccine without any human safety tests.
Or did you not know this? I'm willing to bet you didn't know this. Then all the vaccine religious ideologues have been trying to force all kids to take the bivalent booster because it was "recommended by the CDC". All while the CDC knew that it was less than 50% effective, and they knew it caused myocarditis in young men at a rate of 1 in 3500. I have a friend that runs clinical trials at a major biopharma company and he was shocked that they kept pushing this, even though his drug trials were cancelled for adverse reactions that were far less than this.
So no, I DO NOT believe that vaccines somehow go through a rigorous process. The CDC and FDA have both FAILED the American people by letting us completely faith in their ability to protect us. They care more about corporate profits than the safety of American lives. This is the corporate capture that I hope RFK Jr. breaks.
Well you do you. "Anecdotal evidence"? Or "decades old"? You must go and do some reading. Try the late 18th century.
You quote an incidence of 1 in 3500 of myocarditis. It's not often fatal.
Let me quote you a study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9419896/
In which it states "According to the US Centre for Disease Control director Dr Rochelle Walensky, if one million children are fully immunized against COVID-19, 30-40 children may get mild myocarditis, however, this will prevent 8000 cases of COVID-19, 200 hospital admissions, 50 intensive care unit (ICU) stays and one death in this age group."
What would you guess the fatality rate of covid-19 to be? A lot more than one death per million cases. See what I mean?: we know vaccines are not perfect. Certainly they can have side effects, and some can be fatal. The ONLY question for you is simply is it safer to have the vaccine or to have the disease? Can you not see that is all I am saying?
You're out of your element here.
> You must go and do some reading. Try the late 18th century.
I was choosing between "hundreds of years" and "decades". I chose decades because I knew it wasn't 200 years and since 10 decades is a hundred years I chose that. But if you want to quibble over tiny details, then let's do it. By the way, you didn't address any of the things I brought up in my reply, probably because you had nothing to dispute?
> You quote an incidence of 1 in 3500 of myocarditis. It's not often fatal.
I never said myocarditis were all fatal. But if you want to go in that direction, cervical cancer is often not fatal either. Is that point even relevant?
Myocarditis from the vaccine is "often not fatal" but 1/3 of children who get myocarditis from the vaccine are unable to engage in physical activity 90 days after diagnosis. But you didn't know that, did you?
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36152650/
Meanwhile most of the children labelled as "hospitalized with covid" are known to have been overcounted because most of the children were in the hospital for other problems. So the data you're using is wildly wrong.
https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2021/05/covid-19-hospitalizations-among-kids-likely-overcounted.html
The point is, the numbers thrown out by CDC are deeply flawed but they didn't correct them because it maintained their agenda of getting children vaccinated even though the COVID vaccine was provably ineffective. They tested it on 8 mice and then rushed to get EUA. The CDC knew that it was less than 50% effective, so they lowered the bar for approval, and strongly recommended that every one get it. All this does is expose children, especially young males, to myocarditis of which 1/3 of them ( or 1 in 10,000) to myocarditis that renders them incapable of doing physical activity 90 days after onset. Anyone with a modicum of critical thinking would realize that none of this makes sense to try to force upon children, except to enrich Pfizer. Thank God only a small percentage of parents decided to get their children vaccinated with the bivalent booster. I deeply regret exposed my children to the original vaccine because their fear tactics got to me, but never again.
If you look at this data and still think that in 2023 the bivalent booster should be forced on kids given the ineffectiveness of the COVID vaccine, that it was tested on 8 mice before released, and given the risk of adverse reactions especially in young males, then you aren't using logic, and you aren't qualified to be a medical doctor.
Owned by Pharma much, Christopher Moss?
You're lying. No study has shown that HPV prevents cervical cancer. The studies show it prevents infection, not cancer. You need to learn about vaccines. I recommend Suzanne Humphries "Dissolving Illusions." Another is "Turtles All The Way Down." Also Mary Holland's "HPV Vaccine On Trial."
And it doesn't even prevent all HPV infections. Only a handful of them.
And may I add there should be permissible exceptions, which we do not have in CA. Doctors cannot really write exemptions because of fear of investigation, loss of license. As a result children have to take risks or be denied access to schools. My son had a seizure after the MMR. I had to get him a 2nd if he wanted to go to school. It didn't go well for him. He's had 2 seizure which increased his risk of epilepsy. 2 hospital visits that cost of tens of thousands of dollars, plus in the first episode he stopped breathing and turned blue. We thought he had died. It was traumatic and it happened in front of my toddler. We cannot get an exemption for him. He recently had to get another DTap because he skippes a grade he wasn't yet due, but CA mandates vaccines based on grade not need, no exception for a child who skips grades (he just skipped another). He got very sick and ended up with Rhabdomyolysis. Each time he got a vaccine in his life he would get very sick - unexplained high fevers (up to 105) and virus for months following. The sad thing is many doctors actually agree with us that he is sensitive to vaccines but they feel their hands are tied with vaccine mandate. Pediatricians still recommended bundling them all together even though he had these sensitivities. How would we know which one/ones he struggled with. We had to go to family doctors, neurologist (lots out of pocket costs here) to get rational opinions. The system does not support individualized medicine. It shouldn't be so hard to justify that some people don't do well with vaccines. On the other had he does great with viruses. No vaccine. His covid experience was a fever for about 6 hours and then 100% fine. No other symptoms.
Speaking as a lawyer, the problem is that our tort system for product liability in the United States has become disconnected from any reality about risk taking. We now require consumers to be adequately warned of the dangers of any product. Perhaps a reasonable requirement on its face, but in the details devilishly hard to apply in practice.
First, there are risks that should be intuitively obvious to any reasonable person and for which no warning should be required. We get wheelbarrows with warnings like "Not intended for highway use" (that's right, for highway use you need a special, motorized wheelbarrow that can keep up with traffic on a highway, duh), and baby/child strollers with warnings like, "Remove child before collapsing" (so like if I have a heart attack I need to remove the baby from the stroller before I collapse to the sidewalk? Oh! You meant before I fold up the stoller. Could you be more obtuse?)
So, because of the lack of a reasonably defined bright line between non-hidden, obvious dangers that every reasonable person should know without being told and the hidden or non-obvious dangers about which we need warning, we get product inserts in fine print that run on with so many pages of warnings (most of which are about non-hidden, obvious dangers we already know about) that only one in 50,000 consumers actually reads them. Then, because we could have read the insert, the law deems us all warned, when in fact few of us are actually warned of about the hidden or non-obvious dangers because they are buried amongst so much obvious junk reading that we have all learned not to read the fine-printed warnings inserts.
Second, we as a society no longer believe that when, as individuals, we choose to take a risk, we (and not someone else) should bear the cost when our risk taking harms us. Thus, those of us who choose to live on sea coasts in hurricane territory believe that others should cover their home lose from a hurricane either through disaster relief paid from our tax dollars or by subsidizing their insurance so it costs the same as in non-hurricane areas rather than the astronomically high true actuarial cost of insuring homes in hurricane territory. We believe that the driver who upon seeing a yellow light accelerates to get through on the "pink" should, when they get t-boned by a driver who drove into the intersection when their light turned green, still get some compensation from insurance on the basis of comparative fault.
As to vaccinations, ask yourself why anyone has to be warned that they may suffer some temporary redness, swelling, and/or pain at the sight of the shot. And yet, that's the warning we all get, every time (in the product insert).
Everyone's DNA is slightly different. Everyone's microbiome is slightly different. Everyone's medical and physical condition and medical history is slightly different. It is impossible for any drug company to test against every possible DNA, microbiome, medical, physical, and medical history possibility. It is equally impossible for any health professional to know that this patient has happens to have the anomaly of a nerve running where 99.99999% of people do not, namely right in the spot I have been trained to jab the needle. So, we all need to just accept that every time we choose to take a vaccine, we risk temporary or permanent harm, including death.
So, were I to rewrite the Vaccine Injury Act it would require only that vaccines be supported by a proper randomized, controlled trials conducted by independent (not government) researchers funded by a tax on every dose of vaccine administered (meaning that the companies who sell the most vaccines would contribute the most to the fund--yes I know the cost will ultimately get passed on to the consumer.) To preclude manufacturers from abusing the system by testing junk that should not be tested I would require them to post the estimated cost of the trials and forfeit the cost if the vaccine is not approved. The independent researchers would be highly compensated from the fund for their work, making it an attractive occupation, but precluded from accepting any other compensation (in cash or in kind) directly or indirectly from pharmaceutical industry. They would also be precluded from taking employment in pharmaceutical industry or in government pharmaceutical regulation for five years after their last compensation from the fund (and vice-versa). All revolving doors closed.
As to any vaccines that got through that process, patients would only have to be warned about contra-indications that arose during the trial or arose from an adverse event reporting system. I need to think more about the adverse event reporting system that needs to be in place and the control, monitoring, analysis, and reporting from that system. Certainly, it needs to be way better than what we have now. I would like to figure out how to get it out of government's hands. Perhaps an independent entity funded by the tax on each vaccine dose (i.e. vaccine consumers).
With all that, I would only allow recovery for an adverse event if it were the result of a known contra-indication about which warning should have, but was not, given, on the basis that the individual who chooses to take the risk of getting a vaccine (including the children whose parents make that choice for them) bear all other risk of adverse events. Finally, if a government (local, state, or federal) mandates a vaccination or conditions participation in any activity or service (other than new--as opposed to continued--employment) on a vaccination, then the government takes the risk and must compensate for all adverse events (if government limits people's choice to avoid the risk, then government assumes the risk).
This seems pretty well thought out. I think you would also need to ban health insurance companies from bribing pediatric practices with huge cash awards for high rates of compliance to the full CDC vax schedule. That's a pernicious and growing problem in many states: pediatricians "fire" their patients/families if the parents don't agree to the whole schedule "as is" (ie. no picking and choosing or delaying immunizations), because the practice stands to make hundreds of thousands of dollars in "bonus" money from insurance companies if they can show a 95%+ compliance rate among their patients.
Leah, thanks for the reply. As I am at the grandparent stage of life I did not know about this issue. As I will explain, I am confounded about how what you explain is happening works. I assume it is not the medical malpractice carriers who are paying this incentive to their own insured pediatric practices, because the med-mal carriers would seem to have no profit incentive to do so. Thus, I conclude it must be the parent's health insurance carriers who would be providing such awards. I suppose they do have a financial incentive to do that. For example, it presumably costs them less to pay for an MMR vaccination that it does to pay for the treatment of measles, mumps, or rubella. What I do not understand is how any insurer would know what the overall vax compliance rate is across an entire pediatric practice (as opposed to the vax rate among their own insureds), since the patients probably have many dozens of carriers among them. Even if there were some data sharing among insurers or some common vax database they have, I would think some small insurers would elect not to offer such incentives and thus become "free riders" letting the big carriers carry the water. From that I intuit that the incentives you refer to are more likely United Health paying a bonus for a certain level of vax compliance among all their insureds who use that pediatric practice, and Aetna paying a bonus for a certain level of vax compliance among all their insureds who use that pediatric practice, etc. If so, it would seem like different carriers might have different compliance thresholds, and different incentive structures.
If this problem really exists, I think before I would start legislating about it, I would need some pretty strong, non-anecdotal data showing that parents who want to pick, choose, or delay simply cannot find pediatricians for their children. Until that proof surfaces, I would assume there will be a sufficient number of pediatricians that will allow parents to pick, choose,, or delay (indeed who might see a practice growth opportunity in catering to those parents) to handle that small minority of parents. I would also think that with today's social media the information about which pediatricians are and are not willing to do so would be well known among those parents who want to pick, choose, and delay. That said, for parents stuck in medical plans that do not let them choose their own doctors, I could see legislating that those carriers and their doctors will bel treated as I would treat a government vax mandate--you effectively mandate the vax and remove the choice whether to take the risk or not from the patient, then you assume all the risk and the patient can sue you and recover any and all damages (not just medical costs, but pain, suffering, disability, etc. with no cap) for any adverse event. I suspect having to shoulder that liability would be sufficient incentive for those carriers and doctors to allow choice.
You ask "What I do not understand is how any insurer would know what the overall vax compliance rate is across an entire pediatric practice (as opposed to the vax rate among their own insureds), since the patients probably have many dozens of carriers among them. "
Part of healthcare reform under the Obama administration was the initiation of "quality" bonuses. To qualify for these, practices have to submit data on all of their patients, regardless of their insurance. Not all insurance companies give these quality bonuses, but the large ones, do, including Medicare. Vaccines are a part of this, and not just childhood vaccines, but pneumonia vaccines and influenza vaccines for adults are, too. The bonuses can be quite significant, especially if the practice is large. Since most physicians are now employed by large corporate hospital systems, there is significant pressure to meet the benchmark for the bonus. So, yes, there is pressure for physicians to make you get your shots (and your colon cancer screening, and take medicine to make your blood pressure reach a benchmark goal, and many other things.)
Thank you for the additional information. So, what did the government (Obama administration) do to initiate quality bonuses? Did they just allow them and then leave it medical insurers to decide it is in their financial interest to give them out? Or did the government incent the behavior by the insurers somehow, and if so, how?
I completely see how physicians in the large captive practices that have been captured by the large hospital chains could be pressured (either by financial bonuses for achievement or financial penalties for non-achievement) to do as much preventive medicine as possible. I actually see this with every annual physical since I turned 65 when my doctor started giving me a blank sheet of paper and asking me to draw a clock, and then she gives me a time and I have to draw the hour and minute hands correctly. I quickly surmised this is some silly dementia test for which Medicare compensates the doctor. My own experience watching people grow old is that dementia is usually a lack of memory for recent learning, but old learning (like how to tell time) can be quite stable. So, I would think that anyone who shows up on time for their appointment unassisted by anyone else is pretty much guaranteed to pass the test. Unfortunately, I cannot control how the government spends my money. So my feeling is that if it going to spend my tax dollars so frivolously, I certainly want my doctor to eat from the trough. So, I cheerfully take the test every year.
My doc and I have settled into a relationship where she knows that I am going to turn down some of the treatment and medication she suggests. So, she suggests what she is supposed to, but does not pressure me when I decline, because she knows if she does I won't give her top ratings on the follow-up survey her employer emails me. I surmise the ratings on those surveys count more for her income and job security than patient compliance with required suggestions. The surveys always include one or more, "Did your doctor suggest" questions and I always answer yes.
The quality payments were first implemented by Medicare. How commercial payers came on board or why, I am not sure, but they probably saw an opportunity to maximize their profits. My experience was that for the first couple of years the quality payments were truly bonuses, but then the insurers decreased their fee for service payment so that it became necessary to participate in the quality measures in order to maintain income stream. Another possibility as to why the commercial payers adopted them is that so many of them also run Medicare Advantage plans that they had to collect the quality data for those, so they expanded it to their other products as well.
I can assure you this problem exists. I'm also of grandparent age, but I started following the vaccine safety/informed consent issue when I was pregnant with our first child 32 years ago.
The first pediatrician we used, who had her own private practice, disagreed strongly with our decision not to vaccinate but worked with me as a partner in our child(ren)'s health. The idea of forcing parents to vaccinate children by refusing service was not a thing back then (and I don't believe this doctor would have taken that approach, regardless; nor would have most doctors).
When she retired in 1998, I found another pediatric office with multiple doctors, one of whom was very respectful of parental rights and, while also disagreeing with our decision, was willing to partner with us for our kids' health. But I could feel things changing, as the other doctors in that practice weren't similarly respectful. When she left to become a medical school professor, I quit the practice (luckily we were nearing the end of needing a pediatrician by then).
Fast-forward to today, and that same pediatric practice now provides a notice for new patients on their website that links parents of prospective patients to their immunization policy, which states the following:
"Because we are committed to protecting the health of your children through vaccination, we require all of our patients to be vaccinated. Infants will receive all age-appropriate recommended vaccines by three months of age, with additional recommended vaccines as well as booster doses by two years of age. Children will receive additional recommended booster doses by the time they are seven years old, and will be given recommended 11–12-year preteen vaccinations by the time they are 13 years old. We will complete 16-year teen vaccinations before each child’s 17th birthday. And, we will also give your child/teen an annual influenza vaccination unless they receive it at a school clinic or pharmacy.
"Finally, if you should absolutely refuse to vaccinate your child despite all our efforts, we will ask you to find another healthcare provider who shares your views."
To be clear, this means that all children using this practice must receive 16 different vaccines for a total of 69 doses by the time they're 18 years old—actually, it's more than that now that the Covid vax has been added, along with those boosters (if they've been added).
In areas of the country where firing patients has become an issue, parents are foregoing pediatricians and using physicians of family or general medicine to avoid the rigidity and lack of choice. Hopefully they will not be similarly bribed.
And regarding the insurance bribery, you're correct—it is the various patient carriers who are offering doctors "incentives" (as they euphemistically term them) for high compliance rates. I have on my computer at this moment a pdf of a 2016 booklet from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan titled "Provider Incentive Program." I'd share it with you if there was a way to link it here.
Under childhood immunizations, which in this booklet is directed to kids two years old and under, the single exemption their "incentive" program allows is for "Children who are documented with an anaphylactic reaction to the vaccine or its components." Which means pediatricians participating in this "incentive" program are disincentivized to recognize parental reports of any other kind of adverse reaction. The threshold for the program is a 63% compliance rate and the payout is $400 per kid. In this program, which is the "Combo 10," the insurance company defines an "eligible member" as a child who has been enrolled for 12 consecutive months prior to their second birthday and has received the following ten vaccines and doses by age two:
4 DTaP
3 IPV
1 MMR
1 VZV
3 HiB
3 Hep B
4 PCV
1 Hep A
2 or 3 RV
2 Influenza
I could go on, but I imagine you get the point. It's all about the money. That's where this outrageous practice of "one size fits all" medicine comes from.
Wow!!! I am speechless. Perhaps someone should sue that practice for fraud (defined as when someone makes a false statement that they know or should know is false, with intent that another relies on it, and the other person does rely on it and is harmed). Here they say "Because we are committed to protecting the health of your children through vaccination," which appears to be false and should say, "Because we only make lots of money if all our patients are vaccinated, we require all our patients to be vaccinated."
So, their statement is arguably false. If it is, they certainly know it. All we need to complete proof of fraud is one plaintiff who thought they were telling the truth, and got their child vaccinated, with an adverse event.
In terms of proof it only comes down to convincing a jury the statement is false. If successful on that all the other elements essentially become a given.
A good tort lawyer could put on the evidence of the financial incentives the practice receives, and probably come up with some examples of other preventive medicine for which there is little or no financial incentive to force on patients and which the practice does not force on patients. That might be enough for a jury to agree the statement is false and award damages.
Then unless they want to face more successful fraud claims they would have to retract their statement or modify it to tell the truth (probably take the first choice).
Were the subject of such a tort anything other than vaccines, I'm sure your strategy could be a winner. But "vaccines saved humankind" is the sacred cow, the first tenet of modern medicine's orthodoxy, and it's what our population is conditioned to believe is beyond question. The con of the Covid "vax" has woken up a lot more people, but most normies still presume the rest of our vaccines are "safe and effective" and—above all—*necessary* for the health of our communities. So, the logic of the tort claim you present notwithstanding, I'd be shocked if a jury would side with a plaintiff against a pediatric practice who is "just doing everything they can to keep children safe and healthy."
Local school districts would SCREAM if they had to be responsible for harm caused by the vaccinations required to go to school.
And there's an unintended consequence here: parents would likely delay vaccinating until the child was school age, so that the vaccine requirements would put the school district on the hook for any harm caused.
Also, people being what they are, there are parents who would try to milk this cash cow by trying to connect any problem experienced by their child to the required vaccinations.
Yep, and all those local school districts have to do to avoid that problem is not have a vax mandate. I will say that if the local school districts are not the source of the mandate, but it comes from say a county or state health department or education department so the local school has no choice about it, then my legislation would not impose liability on the local school. The liability lands on the government entity that is the source of the mandate. Also, governments can buy insurance against their liabilities just like everyone else can, and if no insurers are willing to insure the risk, that is a sure sign it is a bad government policy.
I believe it is the state health agencies who typically decide which vaccines are mandated for school attendance (maybe county health agencies, in some places? I believe enforcement is typically the purview of county health departments, in any case). And state laws, passed by state legislatures, determine which—if any—exemptions (medical, religious, philosophical) are allowable for those mandates. All of which means that state taxpayers would bear the risks of the mandated vaccines in their own state.
I would not complain at all if state governments were put on the hook for vaccine damage caused by any vaccines given in their state that are mandated for public school students in their state. Let THEM go after BigPharma for reimbursement of their costs.
But I still think it would make more sense for pharmaceutical companies to be on the hook for any damages caused by the medicines they produce, unless those medicines are classified strictly experimental and those taking experimental medicines sign waivers. And of course those experimental medicines should NOT be mandated. Again, any entity that mandates the use of an experimental medicine should be fully on the hook for damages.
Perhaps it is not what you meant, but your wording "any damages caused by the medicines they produce" suggests some type of strict liability. I am sorry, but I cannot support strict liability for pharma or any other private entity, except for harm knowingly and intentionally inflicted.
If a consumer is warned about the non-obvious risks that a business should reasonably know about, and the consumer voluntarily accepts those risks (and I propose the consumer is deemed to have known and accepted all the obvious risks as to which no warning should be required), then the business should not be liable, in my humble opinion.
Let us not forget that businesses cannot stay in business unless they can generate sufficient revenue to cover all their costs (which include the cost of defending against and paying damage claims, whether they insure, self-insure, or both). So, if we require businesses to pay any damages caused by their products, including harm arising from risks known to, and voluntarily accepted by, the consumer, then the cost of all those damages must find its way into the cost of the product which all consumers of that product will then pay, or the business will fail.
Effectively, strict liability forces all consumers to bear the cost of insuring all harm to everyone, even harm arising from risks knowingly taken. People can disagree about such total socialization of risk, but I fall into the group that does not agree with it. I hope you do to after you think about it.
I would add that when it comes to harm resulting from risks that neither the consumer nor the business could reasonably know about, the case for socializing those risks gets stronger (providing the consumer was using the product properly and for intended purposes). But in those cases neither party can be said to be at fault. Those who argue for putting all the cost in those cases on the business argue that it is the business who got all the revenue from selling the product. But most of that revenue usually goes to paying employees, landlords, suppliers, debt, taxes, etc. Usually only a very small part of that revenue goes to owners or shareholders as profit (for example sake let us assume 10% of less. Ordinarily, but not always, when the profit margins are high competition is usually attracted which brings profits back into line). To me that argument devolves to, "OK the product cost the consumer $100, and 10% of that was profit, so the business owes the injured consumer $10." "Oh, no, you might say; that is not enough." OK, then make the business refund the whole $100. "Oh, no, you might say; that is not enough if the consumer had $10,000 in damages." My answer is, "I am sorry about that. But the business was not a fault, because in this case it did not, and could not reasonably know about the risk from which the harm arose. So why should the business bear a $10,000 cost when it only earned $100 in gross (of which only $10 was profit)? Remember, it was a voluntary exchange between the consumer and the business. Yes, the business sought to gain $100 in revenue most of which it used to pay its bills. But in every voluntary exchange both sides seek gain. The consumer sought whatever benefit the consumer saw in the product. So why inflict harm on the business beyond the gain it got (be it $100 or $10 take your choice) from the exchange with that consumer?"
The bottom line is that if we are going to inflict no fault liability in these unfortunate circumstances, I argue it needs to be shared between the parties. Some people would favor just putting some overall cap on damages in these circumstances. But arguably that can be unfair to those consumers who suffer damages greater than cap. Many would think it unfair that less injured consumers get fully compensated for their loss while those with greater injuries do not.
Let's acknowledge that it is likely impossible to devise any system that everyone (including all injured parties) would agree is fair. There will always be disagreement whenever what is fair is up for debate. The best we can achieve is compromising on something that can gain support from as large a majority as possible.
For starters, I would favor another alternative--allowing recovery for all hard damages (out of pocket expenses including things like past and the present value of reasonably expected future medical expenses and lost income and the like). But disallow recovery of soft damages (pain, suffering, disfigurement, impairment [except as it translates to lost income], etc.). If necessary to get large majority support, I could be talked into compromising on recovery of both hard and soft damages, but with a pretty low cap on the soft damages (e.g. $250,000).
My problem with allowing pharmaceutical companies to be shielded from liability is that IF their products are as safe as they claim, the potential loss from damages should be very small. Indeed, it ought to be small enough to be INSURABLE (that is, the company should be able to get insurance that protects them in case of customer injuries).
The biggest problem I see with exempting vaccines, in particular, from liability is that the "choice" is not "informed" in a meaningful way. Parents have a "small print" paper shoved in their faces that says there are risks of harm involved with vaccines, but the parents are simultaneously threatened with various kinds of *other* harm to their child (anywhere from "your kid will die of this disease" to "you will be dismissed from our practice") if they don't comply with allowing their child to be vaccinated.
"Take this risk with your child OR ELSE!" is not a position from which it is legitimate to demand exemption from liability.
Thank you for saying this!
Well said, Cedric!
Please explain and justify why we vaccinate neonates for Hep B which is overwhelmingly spread by IV drug use and sex? The shot wears off in about a decade, so how does injecting one-day old babies make sense if the mother does not test positive for Hep B infection (mothers are tested)? Why do other countries not follow this practice? Why do we have the highest day-one mortality? Day one and our vaccine schedule flunks any rational risk/benefit analysis. Our infants are being served up as a market for drug companies. Thanks for defending them!
the only explanation imo is that even though expectant mothers are routinely tested for Hep B (and other STDs), this policy represents a blanket protocol that will catch some small number of cases (where HepB mothers refuse to test prior to birth, or fathers stray or use IV drugs late term and possibly infect mom late term) and because it's 'harmless' there is no effect on the vast majority of normal neonates. The other possibility would be to prevent liability from mistakes in the hospital, especially if a neonate needs heightened care.
The precautionary principle should obviously preclude the vaccination in any of these cases but public health doesn't care about individual outcomes, only population level outcomes.
At the time the CDC approved it for the schedule they specifically said it was because its target population (prostitutes and IV drug users) are unlikely to seek preventative care and so they would just give it to all babies, on the erroneous presumption that it would confer lifelong immunity. It doesn't.
Any sane healthcare system truly seeking to protect its patients-in this case the most vulnerable—would revisit this policy via open discussion, not seek to demonize and deplatform those who ask questions.
Wouldn't it be more logical to give it only to babies whose mothers did NOT seek prenatal care and/or did not have a negative test shortly before birth? That's a pretty clear and easy thing to determine.
But no, Big Pharma gets paid for every dose given.
My first baby was born just days ago. We were asked by those cleaning up the baby - minutes after birth, before we even held him - if we wanted him to receive the Hep B vaccine. I was taken aback. Surrounded by our OB and nurses, we said yes. If we said no…I wonder what glances we would have received from those making sure our baby was breathing ok. I didn’t appreciate it, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.
I was under the impression that neonates were only vaccinated if their mothers were positive for Hep B or never had prenatal care. Could a HCP with knowledge enlighten me?
I have small children and work in healthcare. I promise you that they try to vaccinate for Hep B within HOURS of birth.
I have two young daughters. With both they tried to vaccinate within hours of life. For the first I accepted out of shock I was being asked, for the second I refused.
I appreciate Dr. Prasad’s point of view. But it’s all unsubstantiated opinions. This whole piece reads “I’m a doctor many of you trust so you should believe me when I tell you RFKjr is wrong on medical issues because I’m a doctor and he’s not.” Yet, he doesn’t cite any actual science, research, or studies in this piece. He uses the same kind of sweeping generalizations that other public health officials did that led to the pandemic in the first place. I would have hoped for a more nuanced discussion of the facts and science. Perhaps Dr. Prasad would debate RFKjr on JRE. I’d love to see that.
I would much rather see Dr. Prasad debate Kennedy, than Hotez. That would be a truly useful match up. But I would hope Vinay would read IN DEPTH the many studies RFK Jr does, in fact, cite to support his arguments, including those of HCQ and IVM. I'd like Vinay to read the Simpsonwood transcript (mentioned on the JRE podcast) and actually investigate the money trail behind the many studies that "thoroughly investigated" and dismissed the link between autism and vaccines.
My problem, when I listen to Vinay and Bari and everyone else who parrots The Narrative™ on vaccine safety is that they so clearly have not delved deeply into the literature on the other side of the argument and thus they fail to address the compelling specifics of RFK Jr.'s claims. Vinay indicates his views of RFK's "low quality causal reasoning" are based on interviews he's seen of RFK Jr.. GO DEEPER, Vinay! Please! Read these books: Turtles All the Way Down, Dissolving Illusions, and How To End the Autism Epidemic. If you want the source material for RFK's stances, you'll find them there. But just stop with the unconvincing and facile (mis)characterizations of RFK Jr.'s reasoning. He isn't arguing off the top of his head or from leaps of logic. He isn't making claims in a vacuum. He has reams of data to support his views. PLEASE READ IT.
I couldn’t agree more. It seems that Dr. Prasad is either a) unaware of the reams of research, or b) unwilling to acknowledge the research. Giving him the benefit of the doubt I’d have to go with A. But then, why would you write an opinion column holding yourself out as an expert in epidemiology if you haven’t actually familiarized yourself with all the research available from which RFKjr makes his alleged “leaps of logic”?
I’d love for someone to offer the counter point (of view?) to The Real Anthony Fauci, which details a long (and seemingly sordid) history of vaccines over the past 40 some years. If RFK Jr is so off base, where are all the scientists that should be able to easily put down these arguments? Seems to me that they’re unwilling to assess they’re own presumptions.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Go to around 47 minutes of the video. Interesting Fauci moments.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKEjftGvrcw
Regarding HCQ and IVM. Two aspects of this issue I found pertinent in real time during the pandemic.
1. My own research into each at the time, when no treatment could have been immediately provable, was to look at research done pre Covid which found themto be overwhelmingly safe for their long use in other contexts. (And anecdotally my use of HCQ for malaria prophylaxis)
2. The reason the best studies are double blind, placebo controlled against the target substance is because, to some degree…..PLACEBOS WORK! So in the face of nothing known to be effective against Covid19 early on I determined that safe for sure (unless the virus would have some strange and unlikely bad effect specifically to these) was the best option to at least lever the placebo effect in favor of strengthening innate immune responses.
Subsequent studies showed them not to work well (ie better than placebo) but no harm was done by my minimal employment of those potentialities in our time of ignorance.
And Yes! I would much rather see Dr. Prasad than Hotez!
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
And I'm still waiting for Dr. Prasad to address the merits of why Kennedy says certain HCQ and ivermectin studies should be excluded from the meta analyses - namely because they were designed to fail. Dr. Prasad either needs to defend the methods used in those studies or concede the point to RFK Jr.
We can agree though that autism rates have went up, even though mercury has been eliminated from virtually all vaccines, except for flu vaccines. RFKs discussion on Joe Rogan was almost exclusively about mercury in vaccines.
Of course, that seems self-evident that rates have gone up. While the JRE conversation covered the mercury in vaccines in more detail, The Real Anthony Fauci covers the broader vaccine history and context across four decades. Detailing what appears to be collusion across pharma and govt agencies that I’ll admit before the pandemic I would have been incredulous. But understanding the history, the COVID vaccine rollout from the pandemic seems to have been pulled right out of a well-worn playbook. And those in power assume we don’t care enough or are too dumb to ask better questions.
The key clue was that the Covid "vaccines" were labeled "safe and effective" before they had even existed for a year, much less been deployed that long. IOWs, without a shred of longterm data. Reveals that it's a marketing slogan, not a determination of science.
This link is to a Megyn Kelly interview of RFK jr. At around 47 minutes, a couple of Fauci clips concerning vaccines. The 2nd one is pretty old, Fauci looks young, but he says about the HIV vaccines they were working on, that after 12 years all hell broke loose. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKEjftGvrcw
Aluminum has replaced mercury as the adjuvant in many of the vaccines, and is also a potent neurotoxin. I believe he talked about this on the Joe Rogan podcast
For those who may not know, Dr. Prasad was a stalwart on Twitter providing a reasonable voice in opposition to the captured CDC and the credentialist tyrants like Hotez, Yamey, etc during the darkest days of the Covid response. He fought the fight against closed schools, forced masking, and vaccine mandates, and he fought it well. I am eternally grateful to him for that.
That’s exactly why I was surprised to see this opinion piece so lacking in real content or information. I have appreciated Dr. Prasad’s seemingly balanced approach and pushback on the mainstream narrative. So, I was surprised to find his critique of RFKjr so lacking in substance.
💯 agree. I think most of us probably like Vinay from Twitter, but this article is still giving “trust me I’m a dr” vibes. I do think rfk addressed that Denmark study Prasad links re vaccines not causing autism (and I’m not saying they do).
Good to know, thank you.
The fact RFK Jr is willing to debate, and no one is willing to debate him speaks volumes. Instead we get article after article, mostly from news outlets funded by the pharmaceutical industry, that dismiss his claims without a shred of evidence showing how he’s got it wrong. I expected more from The Free Press, but not surprised to find more of the same.
In an open format like Rogan’s, RFK was allowed to speak at great length, authoritatively, on the topics of vaccines and the environment, without notes, because he’s been living and working in these fields for decades, as an activist and as an attorney. I’ve also heard him speak with great humility and openness when he’s confronted with ideas or opinions he hadn’t considered.
Anyone who thinks he’s unschooled, foolish or corrupt should be more than willing to debate him; it would be like shooting fish in a barrel, right?
Pathogenic priming is something that I just heard of, and, as I understand, prior attempts to develop a coronavirus vaccine (before the pandemic) often resulted in pathogenic priming, leading to an auto-immune response, which can be deadly. The link will take you to a Megyn Kelly interview with RFK jr. and if you go to around 47- 48 minutes into the video, you will see two Fauci clips that are of significance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKEjftGvrcw
I totally disagree with you that trials proved IVM and HCQ ineffective. There are ways to skew trial results and much has been written about the late stage infection status of patients, the very high dosages, and the compilation of data weeks out from initial dosage that watered down the results. Further, clinical data from frontline doctors Pierre Kory, Paul Marek and Zev Zelenko proved without doubt that these medications worked--very few of their patients were hospitalized, let alone died, and we’re talking about the elderly, many with co-morbidity. Tens of thousands of saved lives.
IVQ was effective in all stages of the illness, but especially when treatment began early. Time for randomized control trials amounted to a death sentence, and the State propaganda calling IVQ a horse paste was not relying on any government study--they smeared it despite the clinical results from front line Covid critical doctors--none of who had a political ax to grind, all of whom were highly experienced, credentialed and qualified.
IVM has been administered billions of times, is proven safe at correct dosages, and is inexpensive. Your assertion that after unremarkable RCT results the case for IVM should have been closed is outrageous and suggests to me that you yourself are captured and what they call controlled opposition.
The experimental Covid gene therapy has injured or killed millions of people, and it serves the public to dig deeper into the harms that other vaccines have caused. Ed Dowd, Robert Malone, Peter McCullough, and Michael Yeadon, among others, have documented the harms and questioned the pseudoscience promoted during the lockdowns.
This was a totalitarian play, well rehearsed - and RFK has it right. We have to question EVERYTHING we are being told about EVERYTHING!
I wonder how many patients you lost during the pandemic. I’d wager those prescribing IVM off label did much better.
Dr. Prasad's take on Ivermectin: He got it wrong.
Please take some time to peruse this website: https://c19ivm.org/meta.html
I keep referring back to this page (https://c19ivm.org/), which appears to show quite a bit of pretty good data in support of IVM for COVID. Am I reading it wrong?
I just read a new, excellent book called The War in Ivermectin by ICU doctor Pierre Kory who treated thousands of patients during Covid. He makes a very compelling, credible case for Ivermectin being effective and provides much data. Worth reading as he has been in the trenches treating Covid and has excellent qualifications, unlike most pontificating health bureaucrats we have heard from in the last few years.
Dr. Prasad's take on Ivermectin: He got it wrong.
Please take some time to peruse this website: https://c19ivm.org/meta.html
Yes I've been following that site all along.
This is why I subscribe to The Free Press. Thank you!
When I used to counsel a vaccine-reluctant mother, I would take this line. All vaccines can have side-effects. Some, very rarely, can have very serious side-effects. The diseases they prevent can also be dangerous, sometimes frequently, sometimes rarely. The only question to ask yourself is this: is it safer to have the vaccine, or not have it and risk the disease? Many mothers (it always seemed to be the mothers) would reply that childhood diseases are now rare, and as long as other kids had the vaccine then their child would be safe. The only arguments to counter that is that for herd immunity to work, some highly infectious diseases (measles for example) require a very high vaccination rate, and if two in every ten parents think that way your unvaccinated child will get measles. Also, just because you've never heard of anyone getting diphtheria, doesn't mean the disease has gone—look at what happened after the collapse of the USSR: 4,000 deaths from diphtheria withing two years of the vaccination schedule being disrupted.
I'm old enough to have seen children die of chickenpox encephalitis and whooping cough, be born disabled from rubella, seen measles kill babies, and watched meningitis kill children. All preventable. Even the earaches that destroyed most of my hearing are prevented with pneumococcal, meningococcal and H.influenzae vaccinations. The pancreatitis I had after mumps doesn't happen now, if you have your MMR. Even the old pertussis vaccine that really did cause encephalitis in 1:10,000 doses was safer than the death rate from whooping cough (the new acellular vaccine doesn't have that issue).
I'm afraid RFK Jr. is totally wrong, dangerous even, to be against vaccination. Certainly there is a question of individual liberty, but remember you are making a decision on behalf of your child, not for yourself, and that public health considerations—herd immunity— are important. I have had to put my money where my mouth is, having recently had a bone marrow transplant for leukemia, which leaves me with a brand new immune system and no immunity to anything, so I have had to have the full childhood immunization schedule in my sixties! Same consideration for me as for infants: is it safer to have them, or not to have them? Easy decision.
I think that this argument misses the point and forces mothers to make a false choice between two harms. RFK's point is quite clear: make vaccines safe. When any corporation loses the potential for any legal or financial liability, then we are blindly hoping in the better angels of their inherently profit driven motive. It never works in any industry to rely on such an inclination. We should collective agree that companies that wish to push a vaccine on children should be held liable for the risks since they receive the profits without limitation. Also, you should respond to the first post: explain why a child must take a Hep B vaccine nearly immediately after they are born? We do not need to defend corporations and actually fight against tighter regulation and greater transparency because they hang the sword of death and sickness over our necks.
Do you think it possible to make a totally safe vaccine, or medication? Even if it were, one day, possible, why not follow the safer course, the lesser risk, right now, and use a vaccine rather than have the disease and its risks? You're saying we must not use vaccines because they are not perfect, which is an excellent example of "cutting off your nose to spite your face."
Why must I respond to a comment about Hepatitis B vaccines? Where I practiced, in the UK and in Canada we do not give Hepatitis B vaccine until grade 7
The 1986 Childhood Vaccine Act that gives pharma indemnity from vaccine safety risks literally says in the act that vacinnes are “unavoidably unsafe.” That doesn’t mean they don’t do good. But to J. Yeats point, the incentive to make them safer (such as removing mercury, etc) doesn’t exist. There is only upside. And I don’t know all the history, but based on RFKjr’s book the original Dtap vaccine was not approved by the FDA (although that original one was approved for use in Africa where pharma makes big money off something that was too unsafe even for the US).
Not true, my kids and niece were given hep A and B and I live in western Canada. I was asking the same question why does my kid need Hep B
And they were 3&4 and my niece was under a year
You see, it isn't all heaven living in the West! I'm in the Maritimes.
Here's the problem I see. When a child contracts measles that is followed by encephalitis and ends up disabled or deceased, the medical community makes a causal link and says the injury/death was due to measles, because it caused the encephalitis, ergo measles is dangerous. When a child is given the MMR vaccine and spikes a high fever with high pitch shrieking and/or has a seizure and/or contracts encephalitis and either dies, or recovers but with the parents witnessing a permanent regression in the child's abilities and behaviors, the medical community does not make a causal link and say the injury/death was due to the vaccine. They say it was just a sad coincidence because vaccines are "safe and effective."
Precisely! I personally know a number of people with vaccine-damaged children, so I am not comfortable with the cavalier attitude of the medical community.
You fail to address a third option: delayed vaccination. Rather than injecting infants with a cocktail of multiple vaccines at 2, 4, and 6 months of age, vaccinations are spread out over the the first year, with pertussis prioritized. Considering that breastfed infants maintain some immunity from their mothers, and that most infants are highly unlikely to be exposed to these diseases until after they have been vaccinated, it seems better to allow their immune systems to mature a bit more before subjecting them to the challenges of vaccination.
The "my way or else" attitude of the medical establishment is a big part of why people are no longer willing to trust doctors as if they were gods.
RFK doesn't say to NOT vaccinate. He says to do your research on the vaccines and make the best choice for yourself and family. He himself has been vaccinated against a variety of diseases.
I believe before a vaccine is to be mandated, it should undergo long-term animal and then long-term human trials. Also, I have heard that past efforts to create a coronavirus vaccine (before Covid-19) that there were issues with pathogenic priming, which could lead to an auto-immune response, sometimes deadly. How can we know if there is no long-term study? Go to 47-48 minutes in the Megyn Kelly interview of RFK jr. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKEjftGvrcw
Question - if through vaccination we have minimized the opportunity for diseases such as chickenpox and measles is it that rather than the spreading out of vaccinations as I had they are applying them all within months/days of birth? How does that seem rational?
There is no need for immediate vaccination after birth, as there is some temporary passive immunity from the mother with antibodies crossing the placenta and in breast milk. When this passive immunity wears off, the diseases of childhood can strike. For this reason we start immunizing babies at three months here.
Vinay - This has never been asked, so it will never be answered. #BigPharma will not allow it:
https://outsidein51.substack.com/p/pro-vaccine-safety-in-2023-where
"The BIG question that has never been asked of nor answered by Big Pharma: Why has there been no research on the cumulative effect of all the childhood vaccines introduced since the 1986 Vaccine Act? None. Not only that, there have been no studies conducted on the combination of vaccines given at the same time in the same ‘well child’ visit. As mentioned, up to 9 different antigens can be introduced into a developing child’s immune system in one visit (and more now, see footnote ‘1’ below). No studies. Nada. None. Except the uncontrolled one that has been going on real-time in our children for going on 3 decades now."
A great read 👏👏
I really wanted to hear something substantial in this article - I did not. Correlation is not causation - sure we get this. However, the national disregard for the drastic increase in autism in this country is shocking. Something is causing it. Perhaps it is not vaccines but there is something - and older parents seems like an unlikely answer. I think your article points to RFK's bravery to challenge a system that has obviously run amuck. As an oncologist you know this all too well Dr. Prasad. Oncologists live and die off of the chemo rebates.
RFK Jr. also states that the vaccine/autism stats are correlation, not causation. But he's the only one willing to investigate this (or other causes) as he's not in the back pocket of big Pharma and big Agro.
He also states that there are probably additional contributing factors, like the pesticides and herbicides sprayed liberally on our food crops. On Rogan, he discusses the rise in celiac disease and gluten sensitivities didn't occur until BigAg started using them as a desiccant on wheat crops to harvest them sooner.
Agreed! I really need more!!
RFK Jr questions what is in the vaccines. You never address his points that mercury in vaccines could be behind the rise in autism. He cites a study that the mercury disappears in the blood rapidly but crosses the blood brain barrier and thus could be at root to brain damage and autism. He is not against vaccines but wants to have Big Pharma make SAFE vaccines. Who opposes that desire?
100% ... for some reason all of these ‘experts’ don’t like to talk about, or seemingly think about, what’s IN the vaccines.
An excellent analysis, Dr. Prasad. However, as someone who knew Dr. Zelenko and whose “Zelenko Protocol” results from Rockland County were validated by a study, as well as hundreds of studies around the world showing that early treatment of COVID with hydroxychloroquine, zinc and Azythromycin showed efficacy, I remain skeptical about the dismissal of all of these studies. Have you looked at them? I would trust you more if you said you had looked at them and determined all were flawed compared to the negative studies. Remember that highly touted Lancet study about hydroxychloroquine that was withdrawn after results were found to be fraudulent. This, along with the censorship, diminishes public trust.
Hey there, the argument is not an absolute one: no vaccines or produce vaccines with zero harm. Rather, we should treat vaccines as we treat every other medication provided to the general population, namely that they should be properly tested via double blind studies and that corporations face legal and financial liability for negligence. Also, there should be a strictly enforcement mechanism to track any harms. It is the lack of transparency that is making folks refuse to take any vaccines which may cause more harm in the end. Again, pharmas have so captured the debate that they make us believe in an all or nothing approach: either free us from all risk or there are no vaccines. A false choice that we and corporations do not accept for other medical treatments. agree re your response on hep b... point was to point that corporations are pushing vaccines onto children for no apparent health reason.
This is the elephant in the room: why are vaccinations exempt from all of the liability that other drugs and procedures are subject to?
When the medical establishment says "You must allow us to inject this substance, but if you experience any harm as a result, you cannot sue the manufacturer, and no one will be held responsible for the damage you experience," it's no wonder that people are hesitant, despite the risks of not getting vaccinated.
What continues to be missing in the vaccine conversation is the understanding that how they are made is different from vaccine to vaccine. They are not all the same. Just because they have the same name does not mean they are all made the same. Different mechanisms of actions, live virus, dead virus, different adjuvents, MRNA, etc. How about this for a change - what if it is not the theory of vaccination that is the issue, but how they are made and how and when they are administered. The devil is in the details. Why can't we all get behind the idea that some of the practices that are now conventional wisdom are showing to be problematic and adjust accordingly? It also feels very appropriate to me that in a new born infant there is all sorts of "permeability" happening, their skin is so fragile, their immune system just beginning to be formed, their skull isn't even fully formed, their digestive system still fragile and growing, doesn't it seem also reasonable that the blood brain barrier is also still forming? Gosh even adults have leaky gut and leaky brain. To me, that all seems so obvious and it's a shame that we make the conversation so polarized and there is no understanding of nuance. As well, we all understand that too much of a good thing can also become a bad thing. Why can't we understand that overloading a newborn's system, or heck even an adult's system with massive doses of a vaccine's mechanism of action could be problematic? Finally, why can't we also agree that as our understanding of health and immunity and the human body evolves, so too does our understanding of science. We used to get behind so many things that now make us laugh, we also didn't get behind things that now would be seen as inconceivable, why can't we also allow the conversation about vaccines to evolve as well without triggering people and ostracizing, cancelling or just plain disregarding those who are offering a different viewpoint?
I cannot wait to cast my vote for RFK, he is much much more than an opinion on vaccines. Wake up people.
All very important and insightful questions, Christine!
I get incredibly frustrated when i see anybody—doctors, politicians, anybody—reinvent the wheel. When Sweden kept lower and middle schools open and Finland didn’t and they compared stats, no difference in teacher covid rates was reported. But no, we Americans knew better and handicapped a generation of low income kids for life.
Then when docs Fareed and Tyson in southern CA treat thousands of Covid patients with no deaths, we ignore their successful protocol and in fact, try to outlaw it. Overcoming the COVID-19 Darkness: How Two Doctors Successfully Treated 7000 Patients https://a.co/d/2Z5fPJo