Why I Won't Vax
Risk-Benefit Ratio
Nothing in this world comes without some sort of risk. One example is sunlight. It is hugely beneficial for us. It has been shown to lower blood pressure, improve mood and sleep, and it is also enables the body to make Vitamin D. However, too much sunlight along with possible other risk factors can lead to skin cancer.
Every thing, regardless of the potential for good, also has the potential for bad. We decide each day which risks we are willing to take in order to receive the benefits that come with it. But when it comes to vaccines, we are only told that they are "Safe and Effective". Even if that is true, there still has to be SOME risks associated with using them. They can't possibly be the ONLY thing in the world without risks.
So what are the risks? How severe are they? How common are they? Are some people more prone to risks than others?
Do the benefits outweigh the risks????
From
The Children's Health Defense
Vaccine Injuries Ratio: One for Every 39 Vaccines Administered
This article from The Children's Health Defense looks at a 2010 U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) pilot study by the Federal Agency for Health Care Research (AHCR) to test the efficiency of a state-of-the-art machine counting (AI) system on data records from the Harvard Pilgrim HMO and finds vaccine injury occur at a rate of 1 in 39.
What
is
VAERS?
The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS, is a post-licensure vaccine safety monitoring system used in the United States. VAERS is a passive monitoring system, meaning it relies on on individuals to report adverse events following vaccination. Anyone can make a report to VAERS which can lead to over- or under-reporting. VAERS cannot assess causality between adverse events and receipt of a vaccine and it cannot calculate the incidence or prevalence of an event or determine an increased risk for an event. VAERS can be useful for detecting unusual or unexpected patterns of adverse event reporting that might indicate a possible safety problem with a vaccine. It is the only national surveillance system in place to monitor post marketing safety of vaccines. HOW RELIABLE IS VAERS DATA? In a project funded by HHS, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care collected data from 715,000 patients over a 3 year period. The goal of the project was to "improve the quality of vaccination programs by improving the quality of physician adverse vaccine event detection and reporting to the national Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS)". They developed a system that would automate reporting of adverse events based through electronic monitoring of medical records. During this project they also evaluated the performance of the VAERS system. They state in the report that "Adverse events from drugs and vaccines are common, but underreported. Although 25% of ambulatory patients experience an adverse drug event, less than 0.3% of all adverse drug events and 1-13% of serious events are reported to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Likewise, fewer than 1% of vaccine adverse events are reported". Although they were able to develop a way to automate reporting the CDC did not move forward with the program. From the report, "Unfortunately, there was never an opportunity to perform system performance assessments because the necessary CDC contacts were no longer available and the CDC consultants responsible for receiving data were no longer responsive to our multiple requests to proceed with testing and evaluation. "
