RE: FW: [Chirolist-CA] German Vaccination Status and Health in Children.pdf [3 Attachments]

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Thanks Charlie! Congrats on raising such a smarty pants. That was a well written and reasoned critique. I got a kick out of this: “Third, there is likely some selection bias involved regarding the kinds of parents choosing not to get their kids vaccinated (e.g. urban creative types, educated hippies, people like you).” “people like you” That was a compliment…right? And I think most of us resemble that remark on one or all criteria. Don , DC548 SW 3rd StreetCorvallis, OR 97333www.donpetersondc.com From: oregondcs [mailto:oregondcs ] On Behalf Of Charlie CaughlinSent: Thursday, June 28, 2012 8:38 AMTo: oregon_chiropractic_association ; oregondcs Subject: FW: [Chirolist-CA] German Vaccination Status and Health in Children.pdf [3 Attachments] [Attachment(s) from Charlie Caughlin included below] FYI from another list serveDr. A Caughlin DC CAC155 NW 1st Ave Day, Or. 97845 office fax To: chirolist-ca@...Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2012 18:23:36 -0700Subject: [Chirolist-CA] German Vaccination Status and Health in Children.pdfAll communication within this forum is private and is for the benefit of the members of this forumand may NOT be forwarded without express permission from the list administrators.******************************************************************My son (economist and research analyst at Stanford's Hoover Institution for those that don't know) helped me determine how much weight, if any, I should put on the information (misinformation?) from the German study on vaccines. I thought that others might find it interesting. I have attached the study for those who may not have it. Subject: Re: German Vaccination Status and Health in Children.pdf Hi Dad, Sorry to say, but this study is basically worthless with respect to making strong claims about vaccines either way. It bothers me that both sides of the debate keep looking for " silver bullets " to prove their case, and not just because I wasted my lunch break reading and interpreting it! Like everything with mixed effects in medicine, it is extremely difficult to show robust, lasting, reproducible positive or negative effects. Some vaccines provide some level of improved immunity for some individuals and likely for the " herd " and cause negative reactions in some people, occasionally severe ones. Each person's decision to vaccinate should be based on their own take on the literature, the relative risk they are at (rural Iowa vs. Brooklyn) and their family's history of reactions. Why can't people just live with that? The biggest problems with the study: First, the n sizes for each " unvaccinated group " are at the low end necessary for tests of statistical significance (look at the error bands around each histogram bar for unvaccinated kids). Second, disease occurrence is self-reported by parents, increasing the error rate in responses (due to response rate biases, recall biases, etc.). The sum total of these biases becomes hugely significant when the total number of unvaccinated children in each age group reporting each disease is typically in the single digits. Third, there is likely some selection bias involved regarding the kinds of parents choosing not to get their kids vaccinated (e.g. urban creative types, educated hippies, people like you). To the extent that these factors are related to having healthier children, they will bias downward the negative impact of not vaccinating their kids, if one exists. The article's abstract is written very poorly, as it makes it sound like unvaccinated kids were statistically significantly more likely to get diseases for which they were unvaccinated, and then they report median infection rates that make it seem like vaccinated kids get more infections generally. If you believe their results, the study shows that vaccines appeared to have a small, beneficial effect reducing rates of infection for the diseases they are designed to protect against and that, for some related or unrelated reason, vaccinated kids get sick a bit more often. Also, they didn't find evidence that vaccines were causing other commonly reported issues, like ADHD, allergies, etc. However, I can't emphasize enough how little faith you should put in a study with 30 kids in a treatment group, 3 of whom had abnormal parents who self reported sickness rates over a multi-year period from memory, the results of which are compared to general population administrative data. Sent: Tue, Jun 19, 2012 9:59 pm Subject: German Vaccination Status and Health in Children.pdf Hi Eddy, Would you please help me understand what this study does and doesn't say? On one hand, I am unsure as to how a group of less than 1% can be reasonable compared to the other 99%. It seems like vaccines in these groups did not lead to increased atopic (allergic, or immunologic related) disease. It seems like the vaccinations had a minimal effect on disease incidence for what they were trying to protect against. But can any of these conclusions be derived from these numbers? ******************************************************************************** " Build*****************************************************************