How I Came To My Opinion of Vaccines

In my post on New Immunization Guidelines—Who Makes Them, I wrote:

“So far as I can tell, all the "evidence" in favor of vaccinations is epidemiological, that is, correlative, in this vein: "We gave this population the vaccine for X disease and the disease incidence declined, therefore the vaccine eliminated the disease." This is classic mistaking of correlation with causation, along with the fallacy post hoc ergo propter hoc, i.e. y happened after x, therefore x caused y. Lindlahr pointed it out more than 75 years ago.”

Some people may wonder how I could come to this opinion. I added this to that post:

“I formed my opinion after examination of evidence such as this graph posted at Child Health Safety :





This shows that vaccines for measles, pertussis, and diphtheria all got introduced during the natural waning of the epidemics, making it impossible for me to conclude that the vaccine had any dramatic benefit. Child Health Safety has similar graphs referring to other vaccines.

Further, if you look deeply into this, you will find that changes and fashions in diagnosis also influenced the "decline" of epidemics "observed" after vaccines. Before the vaccine for measles, physicians were on the lookout for measles, and so diagnosed it frequently (and often erroneously). After the introduction of the vaccine for measles, for example, physicians believed that the vaccine eliminated measles so they simply were less likely to diagnose an infection as measles (or test for measles). But doctors are notoriously bad at diagnosis. They overdiagnose or underdiagnose based on fashions, such as when the incidence of arteriosclerotic heart disease "increased" in 1948 after this diagnosis was added to the ICD.

And, I notice that if the incidence of infection goes down even in unvaccinated folks, rather than questioning whether the vaccination did the job, vaccine proponents attribute this to herd immunity conferred by vaccination. Its like giving treatment A to one group and a placebo to the other; both groups get better equally, so you conclude that treatment A works so well, it even helps people who didn't receive it by having a “herd” effect. In any other investigation, people would conclude that the treatment works no better than a placebo or no treatment. I understand the rationale given for this explanation in respect to vaccinations, but for vaccine proponents, it conveniently excludes the possibility of concluding that no treatment worked as well as treatment--a possibility necessary for scientific evaluation.”