VAERS
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1. Introduction
VAERS is the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System set up and maintained by the FDA in the USA. It is used - as the name suggests - to maintain a database of suspected adverse reactions to vaccines.
2. VAERS Use In Studies
- Early Downward Trends in Neurodevelopmental Disorders Following Removal of Thimerosal-Containing Vaccines [1]
- A two-phased population epidemiological study of the safety of thimerosal-containing vaccines: a follow-up analysis [2]
3. VAERS Drawbacks
VAERS is a 'free for all' database. Anyone can enter a report at any time. Doctor James Laidler demonstrated this.
- "The chief problem with the VAERS data is that reports can be entered by anyone and are not routinely verified. To demonstrate this, a few years ago I entered a report that an influenza vaccine had turned me into The Hulk. The report was accepted and entered into the database. Because the reported adverse event was so… unusual, a representative of VAERS contacted me. After a discussion of the VAERS database and its limitations, they asked for my permission to delete the record, which I granted. If I had not agreed, the record would be there still, showing that any claim can become part of the database, no matter how outrageous or improbable""Since at least 1998 (and possibly earlier), a number of autism advocacy groups have, with all the best intentions, encouraged people to report their autistic children—or autistic children of relatives and friends—to VAERS as injuries from thimerosal-containing vaccines. This has irrevocably tainted the VAERS database with duplicate and spurious reports."
Blogger Kevin Leitch went one further and actually recorded a movie of himself entering a rubbish report:
- "VAERS has a helpful popup which tells you exactly what it needs to know - which are the most important pieces of data it needs. However, the fact that I live in the UK was not deemed of importance. Neither was the fact that I told VAERS that my daughter had been turned into Wonder Woman. The only piece of contact data I submitted was my email address and I wasn't even asked for that. I submitted it voluntarily.""(VAERS)...caught the fact that I tried to submit an adverse event before the fictional date of my daughters birth but it failed to catch that I stated the vaccine was administered at 18months and that the date for vaccination I provided was only 6 months after the 'birth' date."
In fact, the VAERS system carries this warning on its front page:
- "The report of an adverse event to VAERS is not proof that a vaccine caused the event. More than ten million vaccinations per year are given to children less than one year old, usually between 2 months and 6 months of age. At this stage of development infants are at risk for a variety of medical events and serious childhood illnesses. These naturally occurring events include fevers, seizures, sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), cancer, congenital heart disease, asthma, and other conditions. Some infants coincidentally experience an adverse event shortly after a vaccination. In such situations an infection, congenital abnormality, injury, or some other provocation may cause the event. Because of such coincidences, it is usually not possible from VAERS data alone to determine whether a particular adverse event resulted from a concurrent condition or from a vaccination - even when the event occurs soon after vaccination"
This is further confounded by the phenomenon of attractive reporting. What this means in simple terms is that as the thimerosal theory becomes more popular, more parents report cases of autism that they have been led to believe is caused by vaccines. The movement take on critical mass, thimerosal is removed, and now less parents report to the system simply because they can’t claim thimerosal harmed their children any more.
4. Blog Resources
4.1 Kevin Leitch
5. Also See