A friend of a friend made the following claim:

“You must claim at least one or a couple of things before reaching your conclusion that vaccines are bad, harmful, useless or any other negative connotation you come up with.

1. Vaccines are ineffective…
2. The scientific community is suppressing the truth, faking results, or otherwise lying about the tests they’ve performed in order to falsely verify the validity of vaccines….
3. Vaccines cause Autism

…at least one of them must be assumed in order to actually formulate a rebuttal to vaccines….”

While many non-vaxxers do agree with one or more of these things, either in whole or in part, his assertion is incorrect. One does not have to believe vaccines are ineffective, the data are willfully misrepresented, or that vaccines cause autism in order to conclude that the risk/benefit ratio is unfavorable.

But this is an excellent example of how heavily the pro-vax community’s perception of the non-vaxxing community is based on assumptions rather than actual facts. Rarely do people even bother to ask what non-vaxxers’ reasons or objections are. They just assume they know and attack strawmen.  So let’s take a couple of posts to dig into this a little bit.

(First, let me quickly point out, given the timing of this, that it’s routine vaccination that’s under discussion here; this is not about Covid.)

These Are Not My Reasons

Those who don’t vaccinate are not a single entity; they’re a collection of thousands of individuals, and each individual will have his or her own set of reasons.  Obviously, I can’t speak for all of them.  But I can state for the record that none of the above three points is my primary reason for not vaccinating.  I’m not sure they even make the top three.

I’ll get to what my reasons are in another post, but I’d like to start by addressing the points he did make.  Do I agree with those three statements?  Well…sort of.

Are Vaccines Ineffective?

One of my biggest problems with the vaccine industry and messaging is that “vaccines” are not a homogenous thing.  You wouldn’t say that “clothes” are stylish or “food” is delicious, right?  Because some clothes are stylish and some are not.  Some food is delicious and some you probably don’t care for.  Those are broad categories and there are few statements you can make about them that would be accurate across the board.

The same is true of vaccines.  It isn’t appropriate to say that “vaccines are effective” or “vaccines are ineffective,” because “vaccines” include a variety of products with a range of statistics.

With that said, I believe that most vaccines are not as effective as we’re typically led to believe, that some vaccines may be ineffective (the tetanus shot has literally never been studied for effectiveness, according to the CDC, so we don’t actually know), and most vaccines are probably effective to one degree or another.

Is the Scientific Community Suppressing the Truth, Faking Results, or Otherwise Lying?

Yes…and no.  I think this question is far more complex than we usually acknowledge.  It’s not a matter of “everyone’s lying” or “everything is spot on.”  There’s probably a heavy mix of factors happening here.

There’s ample evidence that the scientific research community in general is affected by a not-insignificant degree of scientific misconduct.  There’s no reason to believe that vaccine researchers are miraculously immune to this phenomenon.

Data can also be skewed by factors like unconscious bias or poor study design, independent of any malicious intent.

Then there’s also editorial/publication bias.

Which is all to say that, while I believe that the majority of the scientific community is both well-intended and representing the truth to the best of their knowledge, not everyone is honest, and not all information made available to the scientific community at large is created equal.

The published research is probably a mix of good research, willfully-manipulated research, and well-intended-but-poor research.  And although a doctor, for instance, may not be lying when he presents a given bit of information as scientifically true, that doesn’t necessarily mean his information is correct.

Do Vaccines Cause Autism?

This is perhaps the biggest hot-button claim.  The public is told that it’s been thoroughly debunked, so only stupid and/or crazy people might still think it.

Problem is, it hasn’t been thoroughly debunked.

First of all, the CDC engages in a sort of verbal sleight-of-hand when it comes to this matter, relying on a part-to-whole fallacy to claim they’ve “proven” something that they, in fact, have not.  They say that they’ve studied the MMR & thimerosal and found that they don’t cause autism; therefore, vaccines don’t cause autism.

When I condense it like that, without the “filler” text, it hopefully becomes clear that these are not the same question.  Even if we presume that the studies regarding MMR & thimerosal are a slam-dunk, that doesn’t demonstrate that “vaccines” don’t cause autism.  (Remember, “vaccines” is a broad category.)

Unfortunately, there’s reason to consider some of the research that underlies even those claims as questionable, given that researchers working on those studies are among those who personally admitted to falsifying research.

From a scientific perspective, I believe the best we can conclude is that “we don’t know if vaccines cause autism.”  It’s my educated suspicion that some vaccines cause (or, more properly, “trigger”) some autism, but that no one trigger causes all autism.

(As an aside here, Dr. Wakefield’s research is frequently misrepresented and vilified.  He did not make the sweeping claims people attribute to him.  His paper makes observations about the patients under his care, suggests a plausible potential mechanism, and calls for further research — very calmly rational and exactly what this type of research is supposed to do.  It was retracted on the basis of a technicality, against the journal’s guidelines, apparently for political reasons rather than reasons of quality.)

There is, in fact, a large body of evidence that would seem to support the hypothesis that vaccines contribute to autism in some individuals.  Dr. James Lyons-Weiler has compiled a small selection of them here.  I find this one particularly interesting:

“CDC, Unpublished. DeStefano et al. (2000)” (This was apparently an internal CDC report, obtained via the Freedom of Information Act, which the CDC never published.)

“…As for the exposure evaluated at 3 months of age, we found increasing risks of neurological developmental disorders with increasing cumulative exposure to Thimerosal…”

Dr. Lyons-Weiler’s story is an instructive one, and well worth reading.  It’s an excellent illustration of how even an industry insider can be unaware of corruption until he isn’t, and how relatively few people may ever be in a position to recognize corruption even when they see it.  (If he didn’t happen to be in possession of the genetic data on ebola when that meeting took place, he likely would never have known that Freiden’s testimony was false.)  This demonstrates the veracity of my claim that widespread misinformation can plausibly occur without widespread fraud.

With all that said, concerns about autism or other developmental disorders are not among my top objections to vaccines.

Find out what my objections are in part two.

(As always, respectful disagreement is welcome.  Rude comments or personal attacks will be deleted.)