Related
- Just how inaccurate are vaccine myths?Just how inaccurate are vaccine myths?
- Is it dangerous to have several vaccines at the same time?Is it dangerous to have several vaccines at the same time?
I was passed along an article reporting that a new study found that despite having the highest number of vaccines in its recommended schedule, the United States is ranked 34th in infant mortality rates (IMR) in the world.
Mercola presents this here.
The report abstract is here and the full text is here.
From the conclusion:
A closer inspection of correlations between vaccine doses, biochemical or synergistic toxicity, and IMRs, is essential. All nations—rich and poor, advanced and developing—have an obligation to determine whether their immunization schedules are achieving their desired goals.
Here's their plots of number of vaccines in a country's schedule with infant mortality rate.
In other words, I take this to mean that they are suggesting that vaccine toxicity has a causal relationship to infant deaths, or that the vaccines are innefective, despite a high number in one's scheduled dosage recommendations.
I immediately wondered what contributes to infant mortality rate. Is it just vaccine-preventable illnesses and the paper is suggesting incorrectly that vaccines are ineffective? Do deaths during delivery count... and can those even possibly be related to vaccination schedules?
They mention that there are 130 categories of infant deaths:
Many nations adhere to an agreed upon International Classification of Diseases (ICD) for grouping infant deaths into 130 categories. Among the 34 nations analyzed, those that require the most vaccines tend to have the worst IMRs. Thus, we must ask important questions: is it possible that some nations are requiring too many vaccines for their infants and the additional vaccines are a toxic burden on their health?
They only discuss SIDS as a potential vaccine side effect; I would be curious to know what the other 130 categories are and whether or not they have a possibility of being related to vaccines.
They mention some limitations here...
This analysis did not adjust for vaccine composition, national vaccine coverage rates, variations in the infant mortality rates among minority races, preterm births, differences in how some nations report live births, or the potential for ecological bias. A few comments about each of these factors are included below
This followed by a discussion of why they don't think these categories would sway the results [much].
My Questions:
- Is this paper's methodology/conclusion sound? Is there a valid concern here about a potential causal relationship between vaccines and infant mortality rates?
- Are there studies that have alternative explanations to why the US infant mortality is high compared to similarly developed nations?
