Adverse Effects of Vaccines: Evidence and Causality

[MamaMunchkin]

Just found this ... published this year (2012) ... sorry if a repeat post/thread (ran a search but didn't see it ...)

Adverse Effects of Vaccines: Evidence and Causality

http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=13164

Scroll down for Table of Contents and click to read.

Authors:
Kathleen Stratton, Andrew Ford, Erin Rusch, and Ellen Wright Clayton, Editors;

Committee to Review Adverse Effects of Vaccines; Institute of Medicine

Check out Chapter 13 (Concluding Comments) and Appendix D (Causality Conclusion Tables).

... Have yet to peruse it ... but mostly "Inadequate" under the Causality Conclusion column in App. D

From Chapter 13 - Concluding Comments (from pages 632-633)

For the majority of adverse events the committee was asked to examine, the committee concludes that the evidence is inadequate to accept or reject a causal relationship.  Some might interpret that to mean either of the following statements:
- Because the committee did not find convincing evidence that the vaccine does cause the adverse event, the vaccine is safe.
- Because the committee did not find convincing evidence that the vaccine does not cause the adverse event, the vaccine is unsafe.

Neither of these interpretations is correct.  "Inadequate to accept or reject" means just that - inadequate.

Edited by MamaMunchkin - 9/21/12 at 6:48pm

[prosciencemum]

Thanks for sharing that reference and the quote from it. :)

[prosciencemum]

Good to see the mainstream are studying the adverse affects of vaccines. People might be interested in the description of the motivation for the review and the main conclusions. 

Added: I had to edit it to meet the less than 100 word rules of the forum. [..] indicated text removed. Visit the link for the full text. 

Quote:

In 1900, for every 1,000 babies born in the United States, 100 would die before their first birthday, often due to infectious diseases. Today, vaccines exist for many viral and bacterial diseases. [..] A key component of the legislation required the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to collaborate with the Institute of Medicine to assess concerns about the safety of vaccines and potential adverse events, especially in children.

 

Adverse Effects of Vaccines reviews the [..] evidence regarding adverse health events associated with specific vaccines [..] For each possible adverse event, the report reviews peer-reviewed primary studies, summarizes their findings, and evaluates the epidemiological, clinical, and biological evidence. [..]

 I really wanted to hi-light this last bit: 

Quote:

It finds that while no vaccine is 100 percent safe, very few adverse events are shown to be caused by vaccines. In addition, the evidence shows that vaccines do not cause several conditions. For example, the MMR vaccine is not associated with autism or childhood diabetes. Also, the DTaP vaccine is not associated with diabetes and the influenza vaccine given as a shot does not exacerbate asthma.

Edited by prosciencemum - 9/21/12 at 11:25am

[MamaMunchkin]

Yes, I'm glad they're studying the adverse effects as well.  However, I  don't think the quote above does justice to what this report offers.

I find it helpful that the report offers various degrees of possible causality for a given adverse effect:

"Inadequate", "Favors Rejection", "Favors Acceptance", "Convincingly Supports" - etc

As opposed to the binary - yes/no - whether some adverse effect is caused by some vax.

[Cynthia Mosher]

prosciencemum - please edit your quote down to 100 words or less and provide a link to the rest for those who wish to read it.

[prosciencemum]

Done. Sorry - forgot about that rule. :) 

[MamaMunchkin]

About the rates of adverse events … from p. 629 ...

Determining the rate of specific adverse events following immunization … is challenging.
…
This could be done using a summary relative risk or absolute risk difference … if there were large population-based studies of the occurrence of the adverse event in unvaccinated individuals … who do not substantially differ from vaccinated on any known, important confounders …
…
None of these preconditions is fully met for the adverse events reviewed in this report.

Still waiting/looking for those studies myself ...

Edited by MamaMunchkin - 9/21/12 at 6:58pm