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An independent analysis by the internationally renowned Cochrane Collaboration of worldwide influenza vaccine studies, published within the British Medical Journal on Oct. 28, concluded there is little scientific proof that inactivated influenza vaccine is safe and successful for kids and adults. Citing the Cochrane Collaboration obtaining as well as methodological flaws in a child influenza vaccine study published Oct. 25 inside the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), the National Vaccine Data Center is calling on the Centers for Illness Control (CDC) to cease recommending annual flu shots for all infants and kids until methodologically sound studies are conducted.

“There is really a massive gap in between policies promoting annual influenza vaccinations for most children and adults and supporting scientific evidence,” said epidemiologist Tom Jefferson, Cochrane Vaccines Field, Rome, Italy, who coordinated the comprehensive analysis for the prestigious Cochrane Collaboration. “Given the significant resources involved in annual mass influenza campaigns, there is urgent require for re-evaluation of these methods.”

The Cochrane Collaboration analysis located that the majority of published influenza vaccine studies had been methodologically flawed with selection biases, confounders and heavy reliance on non-randomized studies. The report points out that possible confusion among respiratory infections brought on by influenza viruses and those brought on by non-influenza viruses can result in misdiagnosis and gross overestimation of the correct impact of influenza on death and illness in a given influenza season. The report concluded that too few clinical trials have already been conducted to prove vaccine safety and current evidence indicates that use of inactivated influenza vaccine has only a modest or no impact on preventing influenza within the youngsters and the elderly.

“The CDC has pushed mass use of influenza vaccine in all young children without scientific evidence the policy is either necessary or safe,” stated NVIC President Barbara Loe Fisher. “Where will be the good science to back up the policy? If the recently published CDC-funded influenza vaccine study in JAMA is the kind of flawed science public well being officials are using to convince the public the vaccine is safe, it’s no wonder that a lot of parents don’t trust what public wellness officials say about vaccination. The CDC really should quit recommending annual influenza vaccination of all young young children when there is insufficient scientific justification for it.”

The JAMA study, which was conducted by Kaiser Permanente doctors with CDC funding, was a non-randomized retrospective analysis of the medical records of youngsters 6 to 23 months old who were given influenza vaccine along with other vaccines between 1991 and 2003. Vaccines had been not randomly administered and unvaccinated controls had been not employed. Children’s case histories were included in the study only if an HMO doctor had seen them inside 14 days of influenza vaccination. Dozens of convulsions and other adverse events, including brain injury experienced by young children right after vaccination, had been excluded from the study if the youngsters had not been seen by a doctor within 14 days of the adverse event or were sick inside the weeks before and following vaccination.

Because of arbitrarily chosen cut-off periods, adverse events which occurred ahead of and following various observation occasions cancelled every other out and had been not classified as vaccine-related. In some cases, convulsions and situations of Guillain Barre Syndrome had been dismissed as “coincidental” or brought on by other vaccines the young children received by the 19 Kaiser Permanente and CDC authors — nine of whom reported financial ties to flu vaccine manufacturers and all of whom received CDC funding.

“Vaccine studies are employing increasingly complicated statistical techniques rather than time-tested study designs,” stated NVIC Wellness Policy Analyst Vicky Debold, R.N., Ph.D. “The JAMA study is exactly the type of study criticized by the Cochrane Collaboration. There had been so many limitations and exclusions inside the study design that it truly is nearly impossible to interpret or replicate the findings. The correct effect of the influenza vaccine on health outcomes cannot be identified in this single, flawed study, which ought to not be utilised as evidence that influenza vaccine is safe for infants and toddlers or to justify national vaccine policies.”

The Cochrane Collaboration (http://www.cochrane.org), which maintains the Cochrane Library and is the world’s leading producer of systematic reviews of scientific data about wellness care, can be a UK registered international charity. Cochrane reviews are considered the gold standard for determining the effectiveness of wellness care interventions.

The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) is actually a non-profit, educational organization (http://www.nvic.org) founded in 1982 and is dedicated to preventing vaccine injuries and deaths by means of public education and defending the informed consent ethic.

National Vaccine Information Center
http://www.nvic.org