Vaccines are an absolutely amazing invention. Anyone who wants to be blown away by what they’ve achieved for humanity can visit this site: https://ourworldindata.org/vaccination
To put the numbers in perspective, more lives have been saved by vaccines than the number of lives lost, military and civilian, in all wars anywhere in the world in the 20th and 21st centuries. The only comparable invention in terms of human lives saved is antibiotics.
We remember the war dead; the lives saved, not so much.
10X more aluminum in a muffin than a vaccine. Just like there is more mercury in a can off of solid tuna than there is in vaccine. Amount of disinformation around vaccines is staggering. Vaccines change your DNA etc. You know what permanently changes your DNA which can increases your cancer risk? Viral infections like HPV.
Disclaimer: I'm not claiming injecting aluminum is dangerous, but I must address this argument that we get way more from food than injections and the claim that what is injected quickly leaves the body. I've seen these arguments often but can't find solid basis for them.
It's a false equivalency to compare an amount of a substance eaten vs injected. Injected substances can get to places in the body and in different quantities than substances eaten.
There are different forms of aluminum, with different absorption rates, and different potential behaviors in the body.
I don't think there are any studies showing that aluminum doesn't accumulate or remain in the body long after injection - while I've found ~5 studies indicating that it does.
Doesn't mean it's dangerous, just that some amount of it does stick around long term and it is not clear to me that it's a drop in the bucket compared to the aluminum we eat. We also eat a lot more aluminum than people used to before the industrial revolution. The amounts of aluminum we eat now could be mildly harmful too - I don't know about that.
Below is the math on amount of aluminum that a normal baby ingests vs gets injected. I got a result that a baby's first year they get between 2x to 65x as much aluminum in their blood from injections vs from feeding.
A baby drinking breast milk (250L in the first year) would get 250 * 40µg = 10mg of aluminum in their first year from breast milk. A baby eats around 300000 calories in their first year, which leaves 120000 not from breast milk. At a rate of 8mg of aluminum per 2300 calories this would be another 416mg of aluminum from food for a total of 426mg.
The absorption rate into the bloodstream of that aluminum would vary between ~0.01% (for aluminum hydroxide) to ~0.3% (for aluminum citrate), so they would get 0.04mg to 1.3mg of aluminum in their blood across the first year from ingestion. Compared to 0.125mg to 0.85mg per dose of vaccine. They get around 10 doses of vaccines containing aluminum in the first year, for around ~2.6mg of aluminum total, but 100% of that is absorbed since it's injected. So the amount that gets into the blood during the first year from vaccination is somewhere from 2 to 65 times the amount a baby would get in their blood from eating/drinking.
I could be wrong on this logic or math somewhere, and welcome being corrected.
Another aspect of this is that the injected aluminum adjuvant comes in big (relative to ingestion) sudden doses with the intent to trigger a significant immune response to the antigen. That could affect the body differently than a gradual very small daily dose.
Again, not claiming that injecting aluminum is dangerous, but it seems to me babies could be getting far more persistent aluminum in their bodies from injections than from food, and as far as I know this has not undergone a long term study showing that it's safe. Almost all vaccine studies have aluminum injected in both arms of the study, and I haven't found a single aluminum vs placebo study - please share if you have one.
Aluminum is excreted by the kidneys naturally. In order for aluminum to bioacculumate, the kidneys would have to be non-functional.
Infant kidneys may not be as efficient as adult kidneys, but any aluminum acquired through vaccines would still be excreted by the time they're able to talk.
It is excreted by the kidneys, but according to the studies I looked at, for aluminum that gets in the blood some of it gets into bone and brain and other places where some portion stays there for years.
Point being that for a given amount of aluminum, many orders of magnitude more of it is still in the body years later if it was injected as compared with ingested.
I'm not saying this is harmful necessarily, but it is not something I would simply dismiss.
OPV is ordinarily given on a sugar cube. I'm an old man so that's how I got mine and while I'm a fussy person I don't remember it tasting significantly different from an ordinary sugar cube.
I mean, I guess the growth medium the virus actually lives in (OPV is an attenuated virus, so it's actually polio, which is why the industrialized North which eradicated polio no longer uses this, too risky) probably tastes nasty but you're not supposed to be drinking growth medium, just get a dab on a sugar cube or something.
That word is the primary reason public trust in health institutions is crumbling. It is something straight out of the 1984 concept of newspeak. It collapses a wide spectrum of positions into a single stigmatizing category.
Do you have proof "public trust in health institutions is crumbling"?
Fairly sure the fact that for example, the US doesn't have universal healthcare, is considered a tragedy by many people, which would point in the exact opposite direction.
They're anti science and I'm also fairly sure that despite Trump hypocritically getting every COVID vaccine ASAP for himself and his family, he's been at best ambiguous about vaccines publicly (pandering to his "freedom" base) and has peddled pseudo medicine a bunch of times.
Aluminium is a major component of most clays = in most water = evolutionarily harmless - unless you have a crooked legal system abetted by RFK Jr - who is probably killing many children via his position!
Aluminum is part of natural materials, but I see no evidence that it naturally gets into a human's blood in similar levels to injected aluminum from vaccines. See my reply to the "10X more aluminum in a muffin than a vaccine" comment on this page.
(disclaimer - not anti-vax, just addressing a simplistic argument that didn't hold up to scrutiny)
These grifters take something that sounds bad but out of context, make way too big a deal about it, then turn around and sell you supplements to fix the problems. I have no idea why anyone trusts them but it seems to work
> Why is it so hard to believe that pharmaceutical companies would behave differently?
It's very easy to believe that pharmaceutical companies employ scientists to disclaim danger. But that fact alone doesn't mean that pharmaceuticals are dangerous. We use research and evidence to make decisions about how dangerous a given product is, and we weight that against its benefits.
The same is true for any industry. I would add to your list of examples cars and social media. You will note that we continue to use cars, despite the fact that a world without cars would be safer.
Yeah, there are countless examples. And I wouldn't say we should get rid of cars (just as I'm not saying we need to get rid of vaccines).
I'm amazed at the bristling when the possibility that vaccines are dangerous is brought up. As it relates to your car analogy - can you imagine someone reacting similarly to the claim that cars are dangerous, car manufacturers know this and downplay it, and they could possibly be made safer?
Why are you amazed at the bristling? Vaccines are literally the most lifesaving medical intervention ever created. They’re second only to sewers for most lifesaving invention of any kind. They’re extensively studied and extremely safe overall, with a few outliers quickly detected and resolved.
Despite this, we are faced with this incredible resistance to them. People want to take this stuff away from us. This would kill millions. There is no legitimate reason to bring up the possibility that vaccines are dangerous anymore. Anyone who does so is either ignorant or malicious. Either way, doing your helps the people who would kill millions if they got their way.
Is it really a surprise that people bristle when you take the side of megadeaths?
Because vaccines are a heavily deployed technology that have saved countless lives. Lead, asbestos, DDT, sugars cannot claim to have helped human health.
I don’t say this just to be snarky, but many of us are grateful for this medical miracle, and are more likely to forgive those scientists and not be happy with anyone working on tobacco.
I think we agree that vaccines are a net benefit to humanity and the world.
That doesn't mean there aren't dangers to vaccines, or that they could be made safer, or, that the pharmaceutical industry is complicit in masking the dangers.
If it's so clear, then your implication is strange. Can you not imply the answer you're looking for from this clarity? It's clear that you want an answer to a leading question instead of the truth.
The problem as I see it is that the anti-vax zealots do not appear to want to be scientifically rigorous; their entire energy is directed towards the search for anything that appears to back up their position.
Anything credible that refutes their position inevitably results in them claiming that nothing has been proven and that more research is required. It's clearly bad faith and obvious that there is no amount of evidence that will close the book on the subject for them.
It's all just exhausting, and if it wasn't for the growing outbreaks of preventable diseases I would encourage people to break the cycle and stop arguing with them.
People have a hard time thinking probabilistically.
What is more likely,
(1) the scientists/doctors in the world genuinely believe vaccines are safe AND we see in front of our own eyes routine, safe vaccination. The odd medical issue that happens at the same time is actually mostly coincidence - autism is often diagnosed at the same age that routine childhood vaccination happens.
Or
(2) these scientists are all in cahoots with Big Pharma and a disease happening rarely at the same age as vaccination is NOT coincidental. All the supposed vaccine safety boards that try to find safety issues are corrupt and we can’t trust them.
Add to (2) oh but we can trust this guy over here RFK Jr.
My prior would be (1) and I would need a lot of evidence to move to 2.
I think a lot of people fall for the Cynical Genius illusion where non trusting people look smarter
What makes you think people believe they behave differently?
Pharma companies behaving like tobacco companies does not imply that vaccines are dangerous and should be withdrawn. Those are two separate questions. Thinking vaccines are amazing lifesaving inventions doesn’t imply thinking pharma companies are saints.
Why is it so hard to believe scientific consensus, especially when the papers on are available for free on places like arxiv?
I’d be somewhat more amenable to the idea that the pharma corps were the bad guy here, I think my post history shows I’m solidly anti corporate, but I can’t get past all the logical inconsistencies and errors in the anti vax crowds side.
Like look at RFKs critique here. The study was on weather or not vaccines cause autism in children. RFK critiqued this because they excluded dead children who were the “most likely to be harmed”(paraphrase).
That is a logical error, he’s complaining that the study didn’t study things the study wasn’t studying. Why am I supposed to take people seriously when the bedrock of their arguments are ludicrous?
He (RFK) didn't just critique the exclusion of children that died:
> The exclusion included all children who died before age two, those diagnosed early with respiratory conditions, and an astonishing 34,547 children — 2.8% of the study population — whose vaccination records showed the highest aluminum exposure levels.
> ... The authors, without explanation, deemed these high exposures “implausible,” even though those implausibly high exposures are routine for American children who follow the recommended immunization schedule.
I'm not arguing the study should be retracted, but asking why those high exposure children were excluded seems reasonable. Also, the children who died presumably died at some point after receiving vaccinations. Excluding them entirely seems like it could miss potential harm and seems relevant to the studies purpose of links to chronic disease.
I agree with you that vaccines are beneficial. It still makes sense to understand the tradeoffs and ask reasonable questions about potential harms.
Just to be clear - I'm not anti vax and I'm not commenting here in support of RFK or his specific criticisms. This is something of a sidebar.
I'm just curious about how many intelligent people take pharma company statements, or conclusions they've paid researchers for, as gospel.
(I'm being rate limited, as you noticed in your other comment. Yes I am here in good faith, no I am not ragebaiting. I don't have permanent accounts on HN to avoid doxxing, thanks for your concern, hope you can drop the ad hominems and focus on the discussion at hand)
I’ll respond since this does appear to be good faith. Also yeah, they turned up the rate limiter, I’m getting hit every day, but you’ve got to admit between your user name implying you’re not real science and the content of your comments, how people would not believe you were being in good faith.
Anyway, we’re not taking the pharma company’s word as gospel, that’s why people are looking at scientific studies which can be analyzed and falsified in a reproduction. The alternative in this situation is either doing nothing, in which case what is there to discuss, or taking RFKs word as gospel and he is historically a crank, his argument is logically flawed, and critically, he’s brought no counter evidence or science on his side.
He just doesn’t like the results of the study and wants it to go away
> Three of the study’s authors are affiliated with Denmark’s Statens Serum Institut (SSI), a government-owned vaccine company that develops a number of aluminum-containing vaccines. SSI also procures and supplies vaccines for the Danish national vaccination program — a clear institutional conflict given its role in supporting vaccine manufacturing and promoting vaccine uptake.
There are several points in there, can you see it?
The article is really full of such subliminal messages, some people are vulnerable to.
If you're studying the association between aluminum-adjuvanted vaccines and chronic childhood disorders, wouldn't you need to exclude children who couldn'
t have chronic disorders due to being dead?
It would skew the numbers down, since you'd have to count dead children as not having any chronic disorders, right?
It's doesn't seem "on-point" to me. It looks illogical, unreasoned, and emotional to me. Seems clear he's rejecting evidence that doesn't affirm his preexisting viewpoint without engaging with the content.
Kennedy is a political hack and is not coming from a place of legitimacy or integrity. If any other FDA admin had the same criticisms maybe we could listen to them but RFK Jr. is a conman who devalues the authority of the FDA
But then why flex and try to pull the study? Don't interrupt your opponent while they're making a mistake and then dunk on them.
Surely the most transparent thing is allowing this scientific discourse to happen out in the open and let the truth fall out, no? If Kennedy is right and these are dangerous then I want him proven right and the vaccines reformulated.
Hold it up for all to see as an example of bad science. Make your case, back it up by data, publish your findings.
Ya know, academic discourse. It's not like the man can't get funding for such a study. Realistically, if you're going to shout from the rooftops wouldn't you rather it be data that unequivocally proves you
right than poking holes in studies that prove you wrong. The former is a victory.
But why is “academic discourse” needed? The issue is that THIS study essentially falsified data. That can be discussed on its own, without some weird battle of studies each manipulating results to demonstrate a conclusion they’ve each decided on.
That's a much stronger claim, stronger than the one made in Kennedy's criticism. If you or anyone can prove that they actually lied or fabricated data then yeah, nuke the paper from orbit. But if the criticism is that they're wrong—and that is the criticism here, then you tear it apart in the open. And if you want people to believe the opposite conclusion rather than simply ignoring the results then you need some data proving your new conclusion.
Science is a structured way of doing exactly that. It's designed to avoid a lot of the manipulation that is present in non-scientific discussions, like, exactly the kind of manipulation we're talking about here. It's not perfect, but at least it's trying.
Because an arguably flawed methodology does not necessarily lead to flawed results. You need another study with correct methodology to show that the results are flawed.
By far the most correct way to contest a scientific study is to provide a new scientific investigation that reaches different conclusions.
If those claims are true then I'm sure it won't be difficult to conduct a proper scientific investigation by collecting and anlyzing data, eventually sharing everything openly to finally "own the libs" for good.
Until that point, lots of words that aren't backed by a proper analysis are just speculations and should be treated as such.
Science isn't built on speculations but on hard data, and this standard is not negotiable. Challenges and skepticism are welcome but they should be properly supported, rethoric is just not enough.
> The only right way to contest a scientific study is to provide a new scientific investigation that reaches different conclusions.
Why is this the “only way”? The issue is this study seems to have manipulated its procedure to arrive at a preset conclusion. There are a lot of seemingly valid problems pointed out with it. Shouldn’t that be enough to contest it without the burden or cost or time of an “opposing” study?
> There are a lot of seemingly valid problems pointed out with it.
As I said, if the problems are indeed valid then a new analysis will show it. Otherwise, it's all speculations, and that is simply not enough.
Science isn't built on speculations but on hard data, and this standard is not negotiable. Saying "sounds about right", shrugging and calling it a day is just not acceptable.
It's easy for criticisms of a scientific study to look valid if you've only read the criticisms and not the study, and if you lack the expertise and context to evaluate them. One of the authors has posted a response briefly explaining why RFK is (as consistent with his track record) talking rubbish:
I'm sure that, as usual, the methodology of this particular study can be debated and people can disagree over exactly which conclusions can be drawn from it. That's not a reason to withdraw it from publication.
> Kennedy also criticized the fact that the authors did not compare vaccinated and unvaccinated children to determine whether any aluminium exposure causes harm, even though they had some data on unvaccinated children.
I'm not a scientist, but if you were to tell me "this trial shows that substance X is not harmful", I would think ideally it would give substance X to one group and a placebo to the other group. If not possible, it would look after the fact to see group A that received substance X compared to group B that didn't, large enough sample so it would be relatively controlled for extraneous variables. Seems like you would def want to compare the two groups, so what did this study actually do?
Another criticism:
> Among Kennedy’s criticisms of the Danish study are that the analysis excluded children who had died before the age of two. According to Kennedy, this means that the children “most likely to reveal injuries” associated with aluminum exposure were excluded.
From the opinion piece:
> The architects of this study meticulously designed it not to find harm. From the outset, Andersson et al. excluded the very children most likely to reveal injuries associated with high exposures to aluminum adjuvants in childhood vaccines. The exclusion included all children who died before age two, those diagnosed early with respiratory conditions, and an astonishing 34,547 children — 2.8% of the study population — whose vaccination records showed the highest aluminum exposure levels.
I remember looking at some Lending Club loan statistics and their stated yields by Lending Club. I thought it was pretty good at the time. But then I noticed in fine print that from the historical yield calculations, they exclude any loans that defaulted within the first X months. That was not something I expected.
I could see why Lending Club excluded these, but what's the rationale, if true, of excluding some populations from the vaccine trial results?
Hopefully nobody told you that "this trial shows that substance X is not harmful" while pointing to this study, which is not a trial, but a cohort study making use of the fact that different birth years in Denmark received different amounts of aluminum in their already-approved-after-trials early-childhood vaccinations to study the effect on 50 different chronic diseases.
They excluded children from the study that didn't fit the demographic they were trying to study (didn't get their early-childhood vaccinations, e.g. because they died too young) or that had other diseases known to cause the chronic diseases they were trying to study (if you have a respiratory tract infection and develop asthma, is that because of vaccines or because of the infection?) so that they could deal with slightly less messy data.
Kennedy might've preferred it if they'd done a double-blind trial revealing injuries associated with high exposures to aluminum adjuvants in childhood vaccines, but that's not the question they were trying to answer.
I know it’s not inherently what you were trying to day but frankly, who gives a fuck what Kennedy’s preference is? He has zero medical training, and has no hesitation latching on to garbage conspiracy theories like chem trails, showing his lack of critical thinking skillsthinking skills.
Unfortunately he has power over medical decisions now so a good number of people have to care about his opinions, whether or not they came from the brain worm
> Seems like you would def want to compare the two groups, so what did this study actually do?
You are right. Indeed, all vaccines and drugs undergo clinical trials testing for safety first, efficacy then, before being approved for sale and distribution.
The study in question analyzes data that was routinely collected after the vaccine was approved, that is why they didn't do the randomization themselves.
You dont need a placebo group, when you have alot of samples with varying exposures. Focusing on the unvaccinated is a strawman.
> Exclusion of N children.
Cleaning of data is really common practice in statistical analysis, you should declare it though. If you where tasked to summarize performance metrics in a company to find a base line, would you include days where eg. earth quakes hit?
You don't ever have placebo groups where we are confident that not intervening is unethical.
Because he had the same cancer I think Hank Green might have a video about this, but years ago when I got diagnosed with Hodgkins I read the data and there's no placebo trials because scientific medicine (and thus placebo trials) was invented after they had some initial working cures for Hodgkins. So any fool can see a "placebo" trial is just arbitrarily killing a bunch of people to check a box which is awful and they never performed one.
We still have excellent reason to believe Hodgkins would kill you because some people, despite being told what's wrong and that we can cure it, will say "No". Crazy, religious, I guess maybe in the US too poor (?) doesn't matter, they decline the cure and those people die, because cancer is bad for you.
But they're self-selecting and so do not constitute a placebo trial. It seems ludicrous, but in theory maybe they only die because they're crazy or poor or they believe God will cure them or something. We can't prove it ain't so.
We do still run trials, but they're not A vs Placebo, they take the existing "gold standard" treatment you would get if there wasn't a trial and they compare something they think could be better against that.
>I'm not a scientist, but if you were to tell me "this trial shows that substance X is not harmful", I would think ideally it would give substance X to one group and a placebo to the other group. If not possible, it would look after the fact to see group A that received substance X compared to group B that didn't, large enough sample so it would be relatively controlled for extraneous variables. Seems like you would def want to compare the two groups, so what did this study actually do?
You cannot give a placebo vaccine once is it standard of care. No IRB is going to approve a placebo control group for a study (nor should they) on a vaccine that is already SoC. This is why we let actual scientists and doctors design the experiments, and not random HN readers. It would be incredibly unethical to give a placebo vaccine for tetanus. Think about what you are suggesting here. You are suggesting that children potentially die of entirely avoidable tetanus, for the sake of running an experiment. At the bare minimum, that is medical malpractice. I won't get into what it is at the other end of the spectrum, beyond this:
Vaccines are an absolutely amazing invention. Anyone who wants to be blown away by what they’ve achieved for humanity can visit this site: https://ourworldindata.org/vaccination
To put the numbers in perspective, more lives have been saved by vaccines than the number of lives lost, military and civilian, in all wars anywhere in the world in the 20th and 21st centuries. The only comparable invention in terms of human lives saved is antibiotics.
We remember the war dead; the lives saved, not so much.
10X more aluminum in a muffin than a vaccine. Just like there is more mercury in a can off of solid tuna than there is in vaccine. Amount of disinformation around vaccines is staggering. Vaccines change your DNA etc. You know what permanently changes your DNA which can increases your cancer risk? Viral infections like HPV.
Disclaimer: I'm not claiming injecting aluminum is dangerous, but I must address this argument that we get way more from food than injections and the claim that what is injected quickly leaves the body. I've seen these arguments often but can't find solid basis for them.
It's a false equivalency to compare an amount of a substance eaten vs injected. Injected substances can get to places in the body and in different quantities than substances eaten.
There are different forms of aluminum, with different absorption rates, and different potential behaviors in the body.
Here's a study of aluminum accumulation in rodents after injection: https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1741-...
I don't think there are any studies showing that aluminum doesn't accumulate or remain in the body long after injection - while I've found ~5 studies indicating that it does.
Doesn't mean it's dangerous, just that some amount of it does stick around long term and it is not clear to me that it's a drop in the bucket compared to the aluminum we eat. We also eat a lot more aluminum than people used to before the industrial revolution. The amounts of aluminum we eat now could be mildly harmful too - I don't know about that.
Below is the math on amount of aluminum that a normal baby ingests vs gets injected. I got a result that a baby's first year they get between 2x to 65x as much aluminum in their blood from injections vs from feeding.
A baby drinking breast milk (250L in the first year) would get 250 * 40µg = 10mg of aluminum in their first year from breast milk. A baby eats around 300000 calories in their first year, which leaves 120000 not from breast milk. At a rate of 8mg of aluminum per 2300 calories this would be another 416mg of aluminum from food for a total of 426mg.
The absorption rate into the bloodstream of that aluminum would vary between ~0.01% (for aluminum hydroxide) to ~0.3% (for aluminum citrate), so they would get 0.04mg to 1.3mg of aluminum in their blood across the first year from ingestion. Compared to 0.125mg to 0.85mg per dose of vaccine. They get around 10 doses of vaccines containing aluminum in the first year, for around ~2.6mg of aluminum total, but 100% of that is absorbed since it's injected. So the amount that gets into the blood during the first year from vaccination is somewhere from 2 to 65 times the amount a baby would get in their blood from eating/drinking.
I could be wrong on this logic or math somewhere, and welcome being corrected.
Another aspect of this is that the injected aluminum adjuvant comes in big (relative to ingestion) sudden doses with the intent to trigger a significant immune response to the antigen. That could affect the body differently than a gradual very small daily dose.
Again, not claiming that injecting aluminum is dangerous, but it seems to me babies could be getting far more persistent aluminum in their bodies from injections than from food, and as far as I know this has not undergone a long term study showing that it's safe. Almost all vaccine studies have aluminum injected in both arms of the study, and I haven't found a single aluminum vs placebo study - please share if you have one.
Aluminum is excreted by the kidneys naturally. In order for aluminum to bioacculumate, the kidneys would have to be non-functional.
Infant kidneys may not be as efficient as adult kidneys, but any aluminum acquired through vaccines would still be excreted by the time they're able to talk.
It is excreted by the kidneys, but according to the studies I looked at, for aluminum that gets in the blood some of it gets into bone and brain and other places where some portion stays there for years.
Point being that for a given amount of aluminum, many orders of magnitude more of it is still in the body years later if it was injected as compared with ingested.
I'm not saying this is harmful necessarily, but it is not something I would simply dismiss.
no one is injecting muffins, or tuna fish
Hey, don't knock it til you try it.
And nobody is eating vaccines.
You might be wondering what kind of nonsense I am spouting off. I’m wondering the same thing about these anti-vax arguments.
>>And nobody is eating vaccines.
Wrong. There are oral vaccines, like polio. However the taste of it is disgusting.
OPV is ordinarily given on a sugar cube. I'm an old man so that's how I got mine and while I'm a fussy person I don't remember it tasting significantly different from an ordinary sugar cube.
I mean, I guess the growth medium the virus actually lives in (OPV is an attenuated virus, so it's actually polio, which is why the industrialized North which eradicated polio no longer uses this, too risky) probably tastes nasty but you're not supposed to be drinking growth medium, just get a dab on a sugar cube or something.
"anti-vax"
That word is the primary reason public trust in health institutions is crumbling. It is something straight out of the 1984 concept of newspeak. It collapses a wide spectrum of positions into a single stigmatizing category.
Do you have proof "public trust in health institutions is crumbling"?
Fairly sure the fact that for example, the US doesn't have universal healthcare, is considered a tragedy by many people, which would point in the exact opposite direction.
Trump appointing RFK due to popular demand from his base even though Trump previously never expressed any of those views.
> Trump appointing RFK due to popular demand from his base even though Trump previously never expressed any of those views.
Trump? Ivermectin Trump? Bleach Trump?
Are either of those two things anti-vax?
They're anti science and I'm also fairly sure that despite Trump hypocritically getting every COVID vaccine ASAP for himself and his family, he's been at best ambiguous about vaccines publicly (pandering to his "freedom" base) and has peddled pseudo medicine a bunch of times.
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You're forgetting about the 5G chips used to make you a gay liberal. Yes, people believe this.
I need to get more vaccines, my reception is still terrible in many situations.
Aren't there more gay liberals than ever?
/s
Well…there is more 5G in my area, but it’s still voting consistently red. Although, there is a lovely gay couple new to my neighborhood.
Aluminium is a major component of most clays = in most water = evolutionarily harmless - unless you have a crooked legal system abetted by RFK Jr - who is probably killing many children via his position!
Aluminum is part of natural materials, but I see no evidence that it naturally gets into a human's blood in similar levels to injected aluminum from vaccines. See my reply to the "10X more aluminum in a muffin than a vaccine" comment on this page.
(disclaimer - not anti-vax, just addressing a simplistic argument that didn't hold up to scrutiny)
You may not be a card-carrying anti-vaxxer, but you muddy the waters in such a way that you advance their position.
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These grifters take something that sounds bad but out of context, make way too big a deal about it, then turn around and sell you supplements to fix the problems. I have no idea why anyone trusts them but it seems to work
Supplements, which by the way do not need any FDA approval or need to verify their claims to be sold.
Isn’t it a coincidence that the loudest voices against vaccines also earned their wealth peddling supplements on their shows?
https://roganrecs.com/supplements (Joe Rogan founded Onnit)
https://thealexjonesstore.com/collections/supplements
Chlorine is a major component in table salts = in most food = evolutionarily harmless!
See how that doesn't make sense?
I try and avoid salt water.
Elements and Compounds.
Precisely, which is what the OP fails to understand
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> Why is it so hard to believe that pharmaceutical companies would behave differently?
It's very easy to believe that pharmaceutical companies employ scientists to disclaim danger. But that fact alone doesn't mean that pharmaceuticals are dangerous. We use research and evidence to make decisions about how dangerous a given product is, and we weight that against its benefits.
The same is true for any industry. I would add to your list of examples cars and social media. You will note that we continue to use cars, despite the fact that a world without cars would be safer.
Yeah, there are countless examples. And I wouldn't say we should get rid of cars (just as I'm not saying we need to get rid of vaccines).
I'm amazed at the bristling when the possibility that vaccines are dangerous is brought up. As it relates to your car analogy - can you imagine someone reacting similarly to the claim that cars are dangerous, car manufacturers know this and downplay it, and they could possibly be made safer?
Why are you amazed at the bristling? Vaccines are literally the most lifesaving medical intervention ever created. They’re second only to sewers for most lifesaving invention of any kind. They’re extensively studied and extremely safe overall, with a few outliers quickly detected and resolved.
Despite this, we are faced with this incredible resistance to them. People want to take this stuff away from us. This would kill millions. There is no legitimate reason to bring up the possibility that vaccines are dangerous anymore. Anyone who does so is either ignorant or malicious. Either way, doing your helps the people who would kill millions if they got their way.
Is it really a surprise that people bristle when you take the side of megadeaths?
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Because vaccines are a heavily deployed technology that have saved countless lives. Lead, asbestos, DDT, sugars cannot claim to have helped human health.
I don’t say this just to be snarky, but many of us are grateful for this medical miracle, and are more likely to forgive those scientists and not be happy with anyone working on tobacco.
Yes, it's clear scientists developing vaccines have done more positive in the world than those developing tobacco products.
That's not the question I asked though.
My answer is the prior for “is this science harmful” is strongly “no” in vaccine case and needs a lot of evidence to move away from that prior.
The opposite is true of tobacco etc.
I think we agree that vaccines are a net benefit to humanity and the world.
That doesn't mean there aren't dangers to vaccines, or that they could be made safer, or, that the pharmaceutical industry is complicit in masking the dangers.
Oh sure
I just don’t trust RFK Jr to be the person to tell us about vaccine safety. I’d personally need some pretty convincing evidence to change my mind.
For example he holds on to long debunked claims about vaccines and autism that have been repeatedly studied and refuted.
Share some references, friendo. Claims require evidence.
Have you been following the mRNA Covid vaccine happenings?
https://www.fda.gov/vaccines-blood-biologics/safety-availabi...
There are many examples if you're willing to look.
I’m not sure anything the FDA is doing past Jan 2025 can be trusted as a reliable form of evidence.
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“RFK Jr. requires warning labels” is not evidence of danger.
If it's so clear, then your implication is strange. Can you not imply the answer you're looking for from this clarity? It's clear that you want an answer to a leading question instead of the truth.
The problem as I see it is that the anti-vax zealots do not appear to want to be scientifically rigorous; their entire energy is directed towards the search for anything that appears to back up their position.
Anything credible that refutes their position inevitably results in them claiming that nothing has been proven and that more research is required. It's clearly bad faith and obvious that there is no amount of evidence that will close the book on the subject for them.
It's all just exhausting, and if it wasn't for the growing outbreaks of preventable diseases I would encourage people to break the cycle and stop arguing with them.
People have a hard time thinking probabilistically.
What is more likely,
(1) the scientists/doctors in the world genuinely believe vaccines are safe AND we see in front of our own eyes routine, safe vaccination. The odd medical issue that happens at the same time is actually mostly coincidence - autism is often diagnosed at the same age that routine childhood vaccination happens.
Or
(2) these scientists are all in cahoots with Big Pharma and a disease happening rarely at the same age as vaccination is NOT coincidental. All the supposed vaccine safety boards that try to find safety issues are corrupt and we can’t trust them.
Add to (2) oh but we can trust this guy over here RFK Jr.
My prior would be (1) and I would need a lot of evidence to move to 2.
I think a lot of people fall for the Cynical Genius illusion where non trusting people look smarter
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/trust-games/202111/t...
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What makes you think people believe they behave differently?
Pharma companies behaving like tobacco companies does not imply that vaccines are dangerous and should be withdrawn. Those are two separate questions. Thinking vaccines are amazing lifesaving inventions doesn’t imply thinking pharma companies are saints.
> Pharma companies behaving like tobacco companies does not imply that vaccines are dangerous and should be withdrawn.
I don't think I said that anywhere, did I?
You didn’t say it, but it’s the only reason I can see to write this reply here in the first place.
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Because millions and millions of healthcare professionals around the world can see the obvious results.
Even if so, there’s also the unvested interests who have corroborated much of this.
Also, describing anyone supportive of modern medicine as “pharmacist sympathizers” is reflective of quite a bit of bias of your own, no?
Why is it so hard to believe scientific consensus, especially when the papers on are available for free on places like arxiv?
I’d be somewhat more amenable to the idea that the pharma corps were the bad guy here, I think my post history shows I’m solidly anti corporate, but I can’t get past all the logical inconsistencies and errors in the anti vax crowds side.
Like look at RFKs critique here. The study was on weather or not vaccines cause autism in children. RFK critiqued this because they excluded dead children who were the “most likely to be harmed”(paraphrase).
That is a logical error, he’s complaining that the study didn’t study things the study wasn’t studying. Why am I supposed to take people seriously when the bedrock of their arguments are ludicrous?
He (RFK) didn't just critique the exclusion of children that died:
> The exclusion included all children who died before age two, those diagnosed early with respiratory conditions, and an astonishing 34,547 children — 2.8% of the study population — whose vaccination records showed the highest aluminum exposure levels.
> ... The authors, without explanation, deemed these high exposures “implausible,” even though those implausibly high exposures are routine for American children who follow the recommended immunization schedule.
I'm not arguing the study should be retracted, but asking why those high exposure children were excluded seems reasonable. Also, the children who died presumably died at some point after receiving vaccinations. Excluding them entirely seems like it could miss potential harm and seems relevant to the studies purpose of links to chronic disease.
I agree with you that vaccines are beneficial. It still makes sense to understand the tradeoffs and ask reasonable questions about potential harms.
https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/flawed-science-bought-conclu...
Just to be clear - I'm not anti vax and I'm not commenting here in support of RFK or his specific criticisms. This is something of a sidebar.
I'm just curious about how many intelligent people take pharma company statements, or conclusions they've paid researchers for, as gospel.
(I'm being rate limited, as you noticed in your other comment. Yes I am here in good faith, no I am not ragebaiting. I don't have permanent accounts on HN to avoid doxxing, thanks for your concern, hope you can drop the ad hominems and focus on the discussion at hand)
I’ll respond since this does appear to be good faith. Also yeah, they turned up the rate limiter, I’m getting hit every day, but you’ve got to admit between your user name implying you’re not real science and the content of your comments, how people would not believe you were being in good faith.
Anyway, we’re not taking the pharma company’s word as gospel, that’s why people are looking at scientific studies which can be analyzed and falsified in a reproduction. The alternative in this situation is either doing nothing, in which case what is there to discuss, or taking RFKs word as gospel and he is historically a crank, his argument is logically flawed, and critically, he’s brought no counter evidence or science on his side.
He just doesn’t like the results of the study and wants it to go away
Why don't you go and watch your children die of Polio and Tetanus.
[flagged]
-New account
-Asks a question that seems innocuous but could be rage bait
-you ignore thought out responses to your question and respond to the comment taking the rage bait
Ah, you’re just here to cause problems, not discuss in good faith. Have a good day
[flagged]
The article is very manipulative.
Take this example:
> Three of the study’s authors are affiliated with Denmark’s Statens Serum Institut (SSI), a government-owned vaccine company that develops a number of aluminum-containing vaccines. SSI also procures and supplies vaccines for the Danish national vaccination program — a clear institutional conflict given its role in supporting vaccine manufacturing and promoting vaccine uptake.
There are several points in there, can you see it?
The article is really full of such subliminal messages, some people are vulnerable to.
If you're studying the association between aluminum-adjuvanted vaccines and chronic childhood disorders, wouldn't you need to exclude children who couldn' t have chronic disorders due to being dead?
It would skew the numbers down, since you'd have to count dead children as not having any chronic disorders, right?
It's doesn't seem "on-point" to me. It looks illogical, unreasoned, and emotional to me. Seems clear he's rejecting evidence that doesn't affirm his preexisting viewpoint without engaging with the content.
Kennedy is a political hack and is not coming from a place of legitimacy or integrity. If any other FDA admin had the same criticisms maybe we could listen to them but RFK Jr. is a conman who devalues the authority of the FDA
But then why flex and try to pull the study? Don't interrupt your opponent while they're making a mistake and then dunk on them.
Surely the most transparent thing is allowing this scientific discourse to happen out in the open and let the truth fall out, no? If Kennedy is right and these are dangerous then I want him proven right and the vaccines reformulated.
Isn’t the mistake already made? What would the ideal way be to address this?
Hold it up for all to see as an example of bad science. Make your case, back it up by data, publish your findings.
Ya know, academic discourse. It's not like the man can't get funding for such a study. Realistically, if you're going to shout from the rooftops wouldn't you rather it be data that unequivocally proves you right than poking holes in studies that prove you wrong. The former is a victory.
But why is “academic discourse” needed? The issue is that THIS study essentially falsified data. That can be discussed on its own, without some weird battle of studies each manipulating results to demonstrate a conclusion they’ve each decided on.
Where or how did you come across the belief that this study used falsified data?
That's a much stronger claim, stronger than the one made in Kennedy's criticism. If you or anyone can prove that they actually lied or fabricated data then yeah, nuke the paper from orbit. But if the criticism is that they're wrong—and that is the criticism here, then you tear it apart in the open. And if you want people to believe the opposite conclusion rather than simply ignoring the results then you need some data proving your new conclusion.
> The only right way to contest a scientific study is to provide a new scientific investigation that reaches different conclusions.
That seems arbitrary. Why can’t you simply point out problems with the current study? That seems valid enough to invalidate the study.
Science is a structured way of doing exactly that. It's designed to avoid a lot of the manipulation that is present in non-scientific discussions, like, exactly the kind of manipulation we're talking about here. It's not perfect, but at least it's trying.
Because an arguably flawed methodology does not necessarily lead to flawed results. You need another study with correct methodology to show that the results are flawed.
Not sure I'd take that source seriously.
https://leadstories.com/hoax-alert/2021/06/fact-check-blog-p...
https://healthfeedback.org/claimreview/covid-19-vaccines-don...
https://fullfact.org/health/CDC-PCR-Tests-trial-news/
By far the most correct way to contest a scientific study is to provide a new scientific investigation that reaches different conclusions.
If those claims are true then I'm sure it won't be difficult to conduct a proper scientific investigation by collecting and anlyzing data, eventually sharing everything openly to finally "own the libs" for good.
Until that point, lots of words that aren't backed by a proper analysis are just speculations and should be treated as such.
Science isn't built on speculations but on hard data, and this standard is not negotiable. Challenges and skepticism are welcome but they should be properly supported, rethoric is just not enough.
> The only right way to contest a scientific study is to provide a new scientific investigation that reaches different conclusions.
Why is this the “only way”? The issue is this study seems to have manipulated its procedure to arrive at a preset conclusion. There are a lot of seemingly valid problems pointed out with it. Shouldn’t that be enough to contest it without the burden or cost or time of an “opposing” study?
> There are a lot of seemingly valid problems pointed out with it.
As I said, if the problems are indeed valid then a new analysis will show it. Otherwise, it's all speculations, and that is simply not enough.
Science isn't built on speculations but on hard data, and this standard is not negotiable. Saying "sounds about right", shrugging and calling it a day is just not acceptable.
It's easy for criticisms of a scientific study to look valid if you've only read the criticisms and not the study, and if you lack the expertise and context to evaluate them. One of the authors has posted a response briefly explaining why RFK is (as consistent with his track record) talking rubbish:
https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/data-vs.-doubt-danish-scient...
https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/landmark-danish-study-on-alu...
I'm sure that, as usual, the methodology of this particular study can be debated and people can disagree over exactly which conclusions can be drawn from it. That's not a reason to withdraw it from publication.
> Kennedy also criticized the fact that the authors did not compare vaccinated and unvaccinated children to determine whether any aluminium exposure causes harm, even though they had some data on unvaccinated children.
I'm not a scientist, but if you were to tell me "this trial shows that substance X is not harmful", I would think ideally it would give substance X to one group and a placebo to the other group. If not possible, it would look after the fact to see group A that received substance X compared to group B that didn't, large enough sample so it would be relatively controlled for extraneous variables. Seems like you would def want to compare the two groups, so what did this study actually do?
Another criticism:
> Among Kennedy’s criticisms of the Danish study are that the analysis excluded children who had died before the age of two. According to Kennedy, this means that the children “most likely to reveal injuries” associated with aluminum exposure were excluded.
From the opinion piece:
> The architects of this study meticulously designed it not to find harm. From the outset, Andersson et al. excluded the very children most likely to reveal injuries associated with high exposures to aluminum adjuvants in childhood vaccines. The exclusion included all children who died before age two, those diagnosed early with respiratory conditions, and an astonishing 34,547 children — 2.8% of the study population — whose vaccination records showed the highest aluminum exposure levels.
I remember looking at some Lending Club loan statistics and their stated yields by Lending Club. I thought it was pretty good at the time. But then I noticed in fine print that from the historical yield calculations, they exclude any loans that defaulted within the first X months. That was not something I expected.
I could see why Lending Club excluded these, but what's the rationale, if true, of excluding some populations from the vaccine trial results?
Hopefully nobody told you that "this trial shows that substance X is not harmful" while pointing to this study, which is not a trial, but a cohort study making use of the fact that different birth years in Denmark received different amounts of aluminum in their already-approved-after-trials early-childhood vaccinations to study the effect on 50 different chronic diseases.
They excluded children from the study that didn't fit the demographic they were trying to study (didn't get their early-childhood vaccinations, e.g. because they died too young) or that had other diseases known to cause the chronic diseases they were trying to study (if you have a respiratory tract infection and develop asthma, is that because of vaccines or because of the infection?) so that they could deal with slightly less messy data.
Kennedy might've preferred it if they'd done a double-blind trial revealing injuries associated with high exposures to aluminum adjuvants in childhood vaccines, but that's not the question they were trying to answer.
> Kennedy might've preferred it
I know it’s not inherently what you were trying to day but frankly, who gives a fuck what Kennedy’s preference is? He has zero medical training, and has no hesitation latching on to garbage conspiracy theories like chem trails, showing his lack of critical thinking skillsthinking skills.
> but frankly, who gives a fuck what Kennedy’s preference is?
About 350 million people have a good reason to care …
Unfortunately he has power over medical decisions now so a good number of people have to care about his opinions, whether or not they came from the brain worm
> Seems like you would def want to compare the two groups, so what did this study actually do?
You are right. Indeed, all vaccines and drugs undergo clinical trials testing for safety first, efficacy then, before being approved for sale and distribution.
The study in question analyzes data that was routinely collected after the vaccine was approved, that is why they didn't do the randomization themselves.
One of these vaccines is DTaP-IPV/Hib aka Pentacel, and the clinical results for it are reported here: https://www.fda.gov/files/vaccines,%20blood%20&%20biologics/...
> The two controlled pivotal safety studies, overall rates of serious adverse events were similar in Pentacel and Control subjects.
(Tested on about 5,000 children younger than two years old and getting two or three doses of the vaccine).
Another trial for that vaccine was recently performed in Japan, also not finding significant rates of adverse events: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32307307/
> no vaccinated vs unvaccinated comparison
You dont need a placebo group, when you have alot of samples with varying exposures. Focusing on the unvaccinated is a strawman.
> Exclusion of N children.
Cleaning of data is really common practice in statistical analysis, you should declare it though. If you where tasked to summarize performance metrics in a company to find a base line, would you include days where eg. earth quakes hit?
You don't ever have placebo groups where we are confident that not intervening is unethical.
Because he had the same cancer I think Hank Green might have a video about this, but years ago when I got diagnosed with Hodgkins I read the data and there's no placebo trials because scientific medicine (and thus placebo trials) was invented after they had some initial working cures for Hodgkins. So any fool can see a "placebo" trial is just arbitrarily killing a bunch of people to check a box which is awful and they never performed one.
We still have excellent reason to believe Hodgkins would kill you because some people, despite being told what's wrong and that we can cure it, will say "No". Crazy, religious, I guess maybe in the US too poor (?) doesn't matter, they decline the cure and those people die, because cancer is bad for you.
But they're self-selecting and so do not constitute a placebo trial. It seems ludicrous, but in theory maybe they only die because they're crazy or poor or they believe God will cure them or something. We can't prove it ain't so.
We do still run trials, but they're not A vs Placebo, they take the existing "gold standard" treatment you would get if there wasn't a trial and they compare something they think could be better against that.
>I'm not a scientist, but if you were to tell me "this trial shows that substance X is not harmful", I would think ideally it would give substance X to one group and a placebo to the other group. If not possible, it would look after the fact to see group A that received substance X compared to group B that didn't, large enough sample so it would be relatively controlled for extraneous variables. Seems like you would def want to compare the two groups, so what did this study actually do?
You cannot give a placebo vaccine once is it standard of care. No IRB is going to approve a placebo control group for a study (nor should they) on a vaccine that is already SoC. This is why we let actual scientists and doctors design the experiments, and not random HN readers. It would be incredibly unethical to give a placebo vaccine for tetanus. Think about what you are suggesting here. You are suggesting that children potentially die of entirely avoidable tetanus, for the sake of running an experiment. At the bare minimum, that is medical malpractice. I won't get into what it is at the other end of the spectrum, beyond this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study