That must be the worst kept secret in the world

One of my readers was unhappy about my pro-vaccination post and sent me a couple of emails about vaccinations. Included in these emails was a link to a site Think Twice, which has some "information" about vaccinations.

I started to take a look at the site, but I only got as far as the first page on it, called "Secret Government Database of Vaccine-Damaged Children", and the stupidity started to burn so much that I had to write a post about it.

Let's start with the very title, shall we? The title refers to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) database, which runs in the US. Hardly a secret database, as anyone can report to it, and certain people are required to do so (I'll get into this later). What's more, it's hardly just a database about children with adverse effects from vaccination, but again, this is something I'll get more into.

The page begins

The general public is essentially unaware of the true number of people -- mostly children -- who have been permanently damaged or killed by vaccines.

This is something I actually agree with. A number of people think that huge numbers of people, mostly children, have had serious adverse effects to vaccinations, while in truth the numbers have been very small.

In fact, most parents would be surprised to learn that the government has a secret computer database filled with several thousand names of disabled and dead babies, children who were healthy and alive just prior to receiving the vaccines.

VAERS is a database of possible adverse effects, to which anyone can report any possible adverse effects of vaccinations they have observed. On top of that, doctors and other medical people are required to do so by law. This allows the CDC and FDA to see if there are any patterns emerging, which requires attention. If such patterns were to show up, they would result in a scientific study of the possibility that the adverse effect was caused by the vaccination, unless such a connection was already shown to not exist.

Since reporting can be done by anyone, and not just medical trained people, the inclusion of an adverse reaction in the VAERS database, does not mean that the reaction was as a matter of fact caused by the vaccination, something clearly stated in at the VAERS website (yes, the secret database has its own website).

Of course, the medical establishment and federal government don't readily disclose this information because they know it's likely to frighten parents into seeking other ways to protect their children. In other words, parents just might think this issue through on their own and decide to reject the shots.

The data in the VAERS database is not meant for the public, but rather to serve as an warning for the relevant governmental agencies (CDC, FDA) allowing them to take action, if such is required. The reason why the data from VAERS is not meant for the public is very simple, the data is not verified, and a cause and effect relationship between the vaccination and the effect has not be established. For more on the problems on VAERS data, see this page on the VAERS website.

One thing that the VAERS website doesn't say, is that some people might try to stuff the database with data for political or monetary ends.

Federal Admission of Vaccine Risks:

In 1986, Congress officially acknowledged the reality of vaccine-caused injuries and death by creating and passing The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (Public Law 99-660). The safety reform portion of this law requires doctors to provide parents with information about the benefits and risks of childhood vaccines prior to vaccination, and to report vaccine reactions to federal health officials. Doctors are required by law to report suspected cases of vaccine damage. To simplify and centralize this legal requisite, federal health officials established the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) -- operated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Actually, among the things The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act did was to create the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), which "is a no-fault alternative to the tort system designed to compensate individuals injured by childhood vaccines, whether administered in the private or public sector." (source). The reason for that was to protect the manufacturers of vaccinations from being sued out of business, ensuring a reliable source of vaccinations for the US. Vaccination manufactures had been sued by a number of people for possible adverse effects, and while those suits held little merit, the simple fact that they happened might be enough for the vaccination manufacturers to decide to stop making vaccinations, instead sticking to more profitable sorts of medicine.

Note that even if there is no merit to a lawsuit, it still takes resources from the company, and if there is enough such lawsuits, it might cause the company to go bankrupt, from the sheer expenses of defending themselves in court.

Ideally, doctors would abide by this federal law and report adverse events following the administration of a vaccine. However, the FDA recently acknowledged that 90 percent of doctors do not report vaccine reactions.

I've tried to find the source for this claim, and while I have found many anti-science sites report it, none have linked to the source where the FDA actually said it.

It's well known that there are a number of problems with passive reporting systems like the VAERS, such as under-reporting, which actual adverse effects don't get reported, over-reporting, where the same incident is reported several times, and bad reporting, where the effects are obviously non-related or the data is too sparse to be useful in any way.

They are choosing to subvert this law by claiming the adverse event was, in their opinion, not related to the shot.

If they actually believe that it's not related to the shot, it's not subverting the law to not report it. Since we cannot read the mind of the people involved, we have to take their words for it. If the site have any evidence of anyone subverting the law by not reporting any adverse effect they believe is cause by vaccinations, they should report it to the proper authorities.

In fact, every year between 12,000 and 14,000 reports of adverse reactions to vaccines are made to the FDA (data initially accessible only through the Freedom of Information Act). These figures include hospitalizations, irreversible brain damage, and hundreds of deaths. Considering that these numbers may represent just 10 percent, the true figures could be as high as 140,000 adverse events annually.

The more serious types of adverse effects are the more likely to be reported, as more medical people are involved in the process. The less adverse effects, which includes fever, is probably the stuff that will get under-reported the most.

And, as I said, there is no source for the 10% claim.

However, even this figure could be conservative. According to Dr. David Kessler, former head of the Food and Drug Administration, "Only about 1 percent of serious events [adverse drug reactions] are reported to the FDA." Thus, it is entirely possible that millions of people are adversely affected by mandatory vaccines every year.

David Kessler wrote that in 1993 ("Introducing MEDWatch," JAMA, vol. 269, no. 21, 6/2/93, pp. 2765-2768), so his remarks should not be taken as any kind of evidence for the current situation. Also, he was talking about all drugs, and not just vaccinations.

Maybe it doesn't matter that doctors won't report vaccine reactions, because the federal government won't investigate them. Government officials claim VAERS was designed to "document" suspected cases of vaccine damage. No attempt is being made to confirm or deny the reports. Parents are not being interviewed, and the vaccines that preceded the severe reactions are not being recalled. Instead, new waves of unsuspecting parents and innocent children are being subjected to the damaging shots.

Again, this demonstrates a serious misunderstanding of the nature of VAERS. It's supposed to give the CDC and FDA information on which it can base further studies - proper scientific studies. The incidents reported in the VAERS database, cannot be used as a basis to make decisions on, since the miss the fundamental safe-guards required in proper studies (double-blind testing, control groups etc.).

In other words, there is work going on the confirm or deny the reports, but not on an individual level. That would be a waste of everybody's time.

The page continues to talk about who pays compensations for adverse effects, and how vaccinations are made - all as wrong as the stuff I've quoted above. I think, however, that I'll stop now, where the focus has been primarily on the VAERS. As I've tried to show, the database is neither secret, nor reliable, but can be instead be considered a warning system, which can indicate that there are problems with a given vaccination. It's not a tool for research, but rather a tool to indicate where research should be done.