vaccine safety
The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) is a national vaccine safety reporting system that collects information about possible side effects that may occur after inoculation. Developed by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and available online, anyone can report possible adverse reactions to vaccines for any reason, making it a rich source of information about possible vaccine harms. Recently, University of Missouri researchers proposed that open communication about VAERS could improve public trust that vaccines are safe, thereby increasing vaccine acceptance. Findings from the study suggest that data and stories may not increase the public's acceptance of vaccines.

"One of the issues in vaccine acceptance is trust," said Laura Scherer, assistant professor of psychological sciences in the MU College of Arts and Science. "Individuals, parents and vaccine opponents lack trust that doctors and the government have done sufficient research to validate the safety of vaccines. By educating participants about the VAERS system, we thought that this might increase trust that the Centers for Disease Control are doing everything that they can to research and document vaccine harms."

Using data on serious adverse events reported for the Human Papillomavirus vaccine in VAERS in 2013, the researchers surveyed more than 1,200 participants' reactions to the VAERS reports. The first group was presented with the standard HPV vaccine statement that all patients receive prior to vaccination. The second group was given the same vaccine statement as well as information about VAERS, which included data showing that out of approximately 10 million vaccinations, 24 individuals were reported to have been disabled and seven were reported to possibly have died as a result of their vaccinations. The third group received this VAERS information and also read the detailed reports of each event.


Comment: The HPV vaccine is the greatest medical scandal of all time! The evidence is adding up and it is horrifying:
"This is a real danger zone, " says Dr. Diane Harper.

Why might you care about what she says? Dr. Harper is one of the world's top experts on the Human Papilloma virus, HPV, which can lead to cervical cancer. In fact, she's one of the leading scientists the pharmaceutical industries turned to for help to conduct clinical trials - including those that led to approval by the US Food and Drug Administration of Gardasil - and the recommendations that followed.

According to Dr. Harper, "the vaccine has not been out long enough for us to have post marketing surveillance to really understand what all the potential side effects are going to be. We feel it is very safe." However, she adds, "We don't know yet what's going to happen when millions of doses of the vaccine have been given and to put in process a place that says you must have this vaccine, it means you must be part of a big public experiment. So we can't do that until we have more data."

"Since anyone can report anything to VAERS for any reason, the VAERS reports contain incidents of serious adverse events that may not have anything to do with the vaccine," Scherer said. "We thought that by having people read the actual reports, they would see that there are very few reported serious events, and that the vaccine may not have even caused the event. Taken together, we felt this might make participants feel more assured that vaccines are safe—but in fact, what we found was the opposite."


Comment: When vaccine safety research is studied with an open mind people will see that the science on 'vaccine safety' is far from settled!
Many other whistleblowers have stuck their necks out in recent years, revealing widespread corruption in medical science - among researchers, drug companies, and government agencies. Many have also revealed that these agencies, organizations, and companies are not above using mafia-like tactics to maintain the status quo. For example, whistleblower Ronald Kavanagh was a drug reviewer for the FDA in the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research from 1998 to 2008...

While many refuse to believe a government agency or a pharmaceutical company or special interest groups connected with government and industry would resort to such extreme measures, history, and the experiences of many whistleblowers tells a different story. Fundamentalists and big pharma shills are now targeting everyone who disagrees with the vaccine agenda. NVIC is one target.12 And, recently, a State Farm insurance company television ad that featured comedian Rob Schneider, who has publicly defended parental rights and informed consent to vaccination, was dropped by State Farm after a group of cyber bullies targeted Schneider for making pro- vaccine choice statements.

Results showed that participants who were educated about the VAERS system and who were given summary data about adverse events had slightly more vaccine acceptance compared to those who received the vaccine statement alone. However, exposure to detailed incident reports significantly reduced vaccine acceptance and trust in the CDC's declaration that vaccines are safe.


Comment: Vaccines' dark inferno: What's not on the insert labels?
The vast majority of scientists, physicians, nurses, and public health educators trust that the ingredients in a vaccine have been individually and synergistically proven safe and ef­fective. The public believes that these vaccines, aside from their specified virus(es), are sterile solutions, free from undesirable contaminants not listed on the manufacturers' package inserts. When the pediatrician injects a vaccine into the muscle of a child, the parents' unquestioning faith is that this is the case. In other words, we want to believe that vaccines have been generated under perfect conditions for the safety of children and ourselves.

Our investigation shows that most people do not know what is actually in a vaccine: the active ingredients listed on product labels, the inert ingredients, and, most important, the hidden ingredients. Even more remote is taking the time to actually study the subject matter, review the scientific literature, and discover the truth for oneself. To our amazement, that truth was easy to find. But it is a truth that will scare the hell out of you.

"When participants read the incident reports, there was a marked reduction in their willingness to vaccinate—even though most participants believed the vaccines caused few or even none of the deaths," Scherer said. "Stories about vaccine harms can influence vaccine acceptance even when people don't completely believe them. This can potentially inform how people react to stories versus data about vaccine harms and provides a test of publicly available data on vaccine acceptance. It also means that the media should be very careful about propagating stories about vaccine harms when it is unclear that the vaccine was the cause."

The study, "Can the vaccine adverse event reporting system be used to increase vaccine acceptance and trust?" recently was published in the journal Vaccine. Scherer co-authored the study with Victoria Shaffer, associate professor of psychological sciences at MU and an assistant professor of health sciences in the MU School of Health Professions.