Quote:
Originally Posted by
prosciencemum 
Actually we had a thread discussing one a while back:
Thread: http://www.mothering.com/community/t/1353634/vaxxed-vs-unvaxxed-study/20
Study: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3057555/
The sample size really needs to be larger, but it appears to show there is not be a major difference between vaxxed and unvaxxed kids in terms of the chronic things they looked at (excema, asthma etc), while there is a obviously a detectable difference in the rates of VPDs. So to my mind that one demonstrates that ignoring VPDs unvaxxed kids are not significantly healthier than vaxxed, and including VPDs they are actually less healthy overall.
I hope this will be repeated with a larger sample size. It is very important to keep looking for these effects, at the least to reassure parents they don't exist and there is no reason to avoid vaccines (except in rare cases of allergies to ingredients or other medical reasons to avoid them).
That study was so seriously flawed, it's useless:
"Children and adolescents were defined as unvaccinated if at the time of the KiGGS survey no documentation existed for any vaccination against diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, Haemophilus influenzae type b, hepatitis B, poliomyelitis, measles, mumps, or rubella. By contrast, children who had by then received at least one vaccination according to their vaccination card were categorized as vaccinated."
In other words, an eight-year-old with, say, ONE vaccination in his life, would be in the same category as a 1-year-old who had received vaccines for diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, Hib, Hep B, polio, measles, mumps and rubella. They would both be considered "vaccinated," and their health outcomes (prevalence of thingslike eczema, asthma, and other autoimmune disroders that can be triggered/caused by vaccines) would be lumped together in comparison with unvaccinated children.
That's a great way to get the perceived prevalence of such health problems down--add subjects to your group who would obviously have a lower prevalence.
Then compare 94 unvaccinated children with 13,359 children who have been given "at least one vaccine," with no stipulation as to the age when that (at least one" vaccine was received, nor how many others were given, how many were given at once, etc.
I didn't see any mention of what percentage of the 13,359 received more than one vaccine, nor did I see any mention of those who had been given hep B the day of birth, or those who had been given multiple combo vaccines on the same day. There was also no mention of which vaccines were preserved with thimerosal, or which vaccines contained alumunim.
I think I'd like to compare 94 children who have never been fed peanut butter sandwiches with 13,359 children who may have been fed one chicken breast cooked in peanut oil, may have been fed 1 peanut butter sandwich, may have eaten peanut butter sandwiches every day, or may have had mothers who ate peanuts while pregnant. We don't know how many of the officially peanut-exposed children fit into which subgroup. We also don't know if the 94 children came from mothers who ate peanuts while pregnant, or if they've ever eaten foods cooked in peanut oil. We just know that they didn't eat peanut butter sandwiches.
Think that will give us accurate data on the relationship to peanut allergies and exposure to peanuts?
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