The Campaign Against Public Health
By RFKJr’s lawyer is bringing suit to revoke FDA approval for the polio vaccine and others. (gift link)
One of Mr. Siri’s arguments against vaccines is that some, including the polio and hepatitis B vaccines, have not been tested against placebos in randomized, double-blind clinical trials — the gold standard for medical research, in which some patients get inert vaccines and doctors don’t know which patients get which.
He has called in his petitions for the shots to be pulled from the market until placebo-controlled trials — which would deny some children polio shots — can be completed. Given the known risks of polio causing paralysis that can seize major organs and kill people, such work is considered unethical.
Randomized, double-blind clinical trials, however, are not the only way to get data. We have decades of data that can be compared to the decades before the vaccines. That data shows that vaccines are the most effective and safest of pharmaceuticals. Here’s the incidence of polio over time. The Salk vaccine was licensed in 1955, the Sabin vaccine in 1960.
OurWorldinData.org/polio | CC BY
The source article for this graph is a very good overview of polio, and the graph is interactive there..
Hilzoy did a thread on the ethics of a double-blind trial this morning. Bottom line: it is unethical to withhold these vaccines to do a trial now, when we have so much other data.
Public health advocates will need to check out the tactics of the creationists and how the scientists beat them in court. This is what the next four years will be like. We will have to beat back ignorant and dangerous ideas again and again. Meanwhile, get your immunizations up to date, and your kids’ too!
PSA: Commenter Sara von O is dealing out antivax disinformation. I screwed up on the blocking, many apologies. I hope that account will be blocked later today.