No matter what the chorus of know-nothings, led by people like Jenny McCarthy, may say time and again.
In May, The New England Journal of Medicine laid the blame for clusters of disease outbreaks throughout the US squarely at the feet of declining vaccination rates, while nonprofit health care provider Kaiser Permanente reported that unvaccinated children were 23 times more likely to get pertussis, a highly contagious bacterial disease that causes violent coughing and is potentially lethal to infants. In the June issue of the journal Pediatrics, Jason Glanz, an epidemiologist at Kaiser’s Institute for Health Research, revealed that the number of reported pertussis cases jumped from 1,000 in 1976 to 26,000 in 2004. A disease that vaccines made rare, in other words, is making a comeback. “This study helps dispel one of the commonly held beliefs among vaccine-refusing parents: that their children are not at risk for vaccine-preventable diseases,” Glanz says.
“I used to say that the tide would turn when children started to die. Well, children have started to die,” Offit says, frowning as he ticks off recent fatal cases of meningitis in unvaccinated children in Pennsylvania and Minnesota. “So now I’ve changed it to ‘when enough children start to die.’ Because obviously, we’re not there yet.”
Politicians and notable figures who pander to the non-science behind vaccine fear (Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for instance) are essentially complicit in these deaths and illnesses people are causing by not vaccinating their kids. People who send their children to school without vaccines should be sued, and they should probably be considered some kind of a child abuser.
The alternative medicine/ vaccine truther movement need to take the tinfoil off their heads and realize the only thing they’re helping to do is give more coroners carpal tunnel
Amen, Brother Oliver. I CANNOT AGREE MORE. The anti-vaccine people particularly make me angry because I have 3 kids and this puts them at risk of contracting any of these diseases. There is no reason for a child in America to get a Third World Disease. Right now in the UK, measles is making a comeback because of this vaccine crap–MEASLES! My grandparents had to worry about their kids dying from measles! One of my mother’s classmates did die from measles.
People who send their children to school without vaccines should be sued, and they should probably be considered some kind of a child abuser.
See? See? When Obama takes over the health insurance industry the Health Nazis will force you to inject your own children with Socialist germs! And if you don’t you’ll be rounded up and taken to a “Preventive Care Camp.” You’ve been warned America! Quick, someone call the Oath Keepers!
I feel pity for these parents even moreso than anger. I understand the need for there to be some reason that their children are afflicted, some enemy that can be railed against…and I don’t think that Big Pharma did itself or us any favors by engaging in the occasional ethical lapse, which opened the door for people to start such a movement.
Aside from maybe antibiotics, vaccines are the greatest advancement in human civilization. The rewards outweigh any possible risks by such a great margin that there’s really no room for discussion.
“People who send their children to school without vaccines should be sued, and they should probably be considered some kind of a child abuser.”
I couldn’t disagree with you more. I have a condition, that may be hereditarily related, such that the CDC states straight out that I should not get vaccinated. And all my docs agree. It leaves me unsure of what the appropriate action is wrt my kids.
Oliver, us liberals and pro-choice advocates use to demand, “Keep the government off our bodies”. And not to godwinate the thread, yes, I do worry about governments that cannot respect the bodily integrity of its citizens.
I will back you for calls for more education, for funding of outreach programs, but as a society, we claim we believe in informed consent.
There is no consent if we’re going to mandate vaccinations, or if we’re going to keep kids who are not vaccinated out of school, or if we are going to call CPS on parents who do not vaccinate.
And learn about vaccinations. There have been some wonderful ones, and there have been some real disasters. It is not unreasonable for parents to be concerned, hesitant, and to decide not to vaccinate.
As long as “we” have worked hard on the education and outreach, we must respect the “informed dissent”, at least up until the point that either the state’s highest medical officer, or the federal government’s highest medical officer states that a public health emergency exists.
Even now, putative liberal doctors who claim to practice science based medicine and state how proud they are that the “first do no harm” and believe in informed consent and judge others on their ethical stances work as hard as they can to eliminate philosophical vaccine opt-outs, and religious vaccine opt-outs, and even medical vaccine opt-outs.
They believe they may have science on their side, and perhaps they do, but this is a democracy, not a technocracy, and without being in a public health emergency, the decision to vaccinate should be left with the parents. Educate, not mandate.
There have been plenty of vaccine disasters including polio vaccines active and inactive that led to paralysis, vaccines that introduced cancer causing viruses, vaccines that led to intestinal torsion, and of course, vaccines that seem to be linked to Gullain Barre. If you want to read more about that, you don’t need to go to a nut site, just visit the CDC or google “recalled vaccines”, and ask yourself, if there’s a chance a vaccine might be recalled, should we really be mandating it? Is it really as safe as all those Internet Warriors claim it to be.
And then do some more work and google CPS and vaccines (and read between the lines because there are lots of nut sites in that search). But they do share a common truth. CPS should not be used as a big hammer to threaten good parents. CPS is a big hammer, it should be used sparingly.
If you really believe a parent who doesn’t vaccinate kids is a child abuser, I urge you to work to remove ALL parental rights and responsibility from parents and work to create some other form of social organization that will take kids from birth and raise them in the best way science indicates. Otherwise, work on education, and respect the citizen and the parents.
Oh, THAT’S what reasoned disagreement looks like!
“Aside from maybe antibiotics, vaccines are the greatest advancement in human civilization. The rewards outweigh any possible risks by such a great margin that there’s really no room for discussion.”
This is a statement that is possibly true from society’s 10,000 foot level. But vaccines do get tested for safety, are found to be dangerous, and do get recalled and withdrawn from the market.
From an individuals point of view, the risk and benefit equation is different. Vaccines do, on occasion, kill, paralyze, harm. For those individuals, the benefits did not outweigh the risks.
Example: gardasil. Gardasil is used to prevent a cancer that will occur 20-40 years in the future. But the doctors agree that a certain small number of young kids who get gardasil now, may die now, or get Guillain Barre, or suffer other disease as a result of the vaccine. So you are advocating an injection that will kill some group of people now vs. having some other group of people get cancer in 20-40 years some of whom will die if there are no other medical advances in cervical cancer in the next 20-40 years AND if these people do not get pap smears which can detect and remove pre-cancerous lesions. I think the cost benefit analysis of gardasil is very problematic, and I am very leery of participating in a program that kills people today as a result of our active intervention to stop deaths 20-40 years from now.
“Aside from maybe antibiotics, vaccines are the greatest advancement in human civilization. The rewards outweigh any possible risks by such a great margin that there’s really no room for discussion.”
Rudy’s statement is one suggesting that there is no need to ever test vaccines for safety again. And yet from the very first polio vaccine, to the RotaShield vaccine of less than 10 years ago, vaccines have been shown to be deadly, and damaging.
I am not anti-vaxxer, I had my kids innoculated with most, but not all, of their childhood vaccinations, and that was done in conjunction, agreement, advise, consent of their pediatrician, and was done within 100′ of one of the nation’s greatest and some would say, smartest, and most liberal universities. (Go Bears!)
If anything, because of my condition, I am an anti-anti-vaxxer, because in that group we see a lot of statements like yours Oliver and Rudy’s that often demonstrate a binary, black and white world that doesn’t exist, attribute to dissenters nuttiness that isn’t present, and reveal an ignorance as to the history of vaccines. All at the same time that the same people may otherwise be damning Big Pharma and their lobbyists.
Informed Consent. Live it, love it, nurture it, respect it.
An unvaccinated child in a school is a health risk to many other children. The desires of one family could turn out to be deathly for many more. Unvaccinated children should not be allowed into a school environment because it is a public health risk.
Unvaccinated children should not be allowed into a school environment because it is a public health risk.
Why not just let The Magical Market sort this out?
It is not unreasonable for parents to be concerned, hesitant, and to decide not to vaccinate.
It is not unreasonable for parents to be concerned and perhaps hesitant. However, it is unreasonable to decide not to vaccinate unless there is the possibility of an underlying complication.
I’m not including parents who decide to vaccinate on a slower schedule, or vaccinate MMR separately instead of in one dose. I think the science to support their fears is dubious at best, but at least they recognize the importance of vaccinations to the overall health of children.
The folks I’m talking about are the ones who flat out refuse to give their kids routine childhood vaccinations based on bad science reinforced by celebrity no-nothings who have found a “cause” to be passionate about.
I’m not willing to go nearly as far as Oliver and call out parents who refuse to vaccinate their kids “abusers.” Or make vaccinations mandatory. But I will call them superstitious and I will point out that they are putting not just their own kids at risk, but others as well. Perhaps like yours, jerry, who may have a very good reason not to get vaccinated and will rely on the herd effect not to get polio, or pertussis, or the measles. All of which killed many, many more children than vaccines have.
jerry, you’ve made some eloquent points but no one is honestly arguing for forced vaccinations for anyone, let alone someone like yourself who would see complications. But as someone who can not be vaccinated you benefit from universal vaccinations of everyone else. Those who are two sick or cannot tolerate vaccines for one reason or another should be pushing those around them to vaccinate so that they can benefit from herd immunity.
Additionally the cases of vaccinations being recalled because of complications are rare. Whereas the chances of serious complications from measles or meningitis are huge and deadly.
it is unreasonable to decide not to vaccinate unless there is the possibility of an underlying complication.
Problem is, you never know until it’s too late.
And yes, I got my kids vaccinated. But I have dear friends whose children developed autism shortly after being vaccinated. They’re in pain and, as SpiderJ noted above, looking for someone to blame. Calling them “child abusers” is not going to be persuasive.
It’s more than a little ironic that the people who are so violently anti-anti-vaxxer (good word, jerry) are, essentially telling us to trust huge corporations not to give our kids stuff that’ll cripple or kill them. This is, I think, the only topic on which most of these folks would advocate that position.
Jerry, I suspect you are reading anti-vax sites because there’s little or no scientific evidence for what you’re describing. A broad clinical study has found no causal link between vaccinations and Guillain-Barré (Drug Safety, 2009), the one vaccine (1976 swine flu vaccine) which was stopped for fear of causing Guillain-Barré had a peak risk of less than 1 case per 100,000 vaccinations. This was determined to be within the normal ratio, given the age profile of vaccinated individuals.
That said, I’m no fan of Gardasil, simply because the slight risk from the vaccine is countered by the slight risk of serious disease. Plus, the cost is insane..
I’m somewhat confused here, though I agree with Mr. Willis that un-vaccinated children pose a public health risk.
Here’s the source of my confusion: who is at risk from un-vaccinated children?
My first answer to this question is: un-vaccinated children and adults.
However, perhaps vaccinations do not provide 100% immunity to the disease, so the answer becomes: un-vaccinated children/adults and some percentage of vaccinated children and adults.
This leads to the next question: what percentage of vaccinated children/adults?
I don’t have an answer to that, but my guess is that the rate of infection in un-vaccinated children/adults would be many times higher than in the vaccinated.
So, in essence, those who choose to ignore science and not vaccinate their children are only (mostly?) a danger to others who have ignored science and chosen not to vaccinate their children.
Am I missing something here?
It’s more than a little ironic that the people who are so violently anti-anti-vaxxer (good word, jerry) are, essentially telling us to trust huge corporations not to give our kids stuff that’ll cripple or kill them.
No, I’m suggesting that you weigh the preponderance of scientific evidence that indicates vaccinations are effective and safe for well over 99% of the population against the mortality rate of serious childhood illnesses such as polio, pertussis, and measles.
But I have dear friends whose children developed autism shortly after being vaccinated.
Correlation is not causation! Autism usually sets in around the age that children get vaccinated. Study after study after study has shown that vaccinations do not cause autism. There has never been a single non-biased, properly run study that showed vaccinations cause autism and there have been many well run and formulated studies that show that they don’t.
It’s like saying that “I had a friend whose children developed autism shortly after teething.” Well that makes sense because that’s the time when most autism sets in. It doesn’t mean the teething caused the autism, does it?
And children is plural, did they really have more than one child develop autism? If so my hopes and prayers are with them.
The key word here is informed. If you are not part of the fraction of a percent of the population who has obvious risk factors which makes vaccination risky, then the issue of vaccination risk is not even a question. We should not go around pretending that rare conditions which affect tiny portions of the population are issues that everyone has to be concerned about. Vaccination should be routine. Only if the doctor has a specific concern with the patient should the issue ever be even a question.
To advocate more education and making the public more informed is to advocate more routine vaccinations. Anyone other than a doctor familiar with a patient’s health conditions and genetic history who is telling parents to hesitate before vaccinating their children is spreading misinformation.
Walking down the street is not typically considered risky. For those with neurodegenerative diseases or bone conditions, walking down the street can be very risky. Do we tell the public that they should all be “informed” about the possibly risks involved with walking down the street? Of course not. Few of us should even consider basic activities to be risky unless we have a rare condition that our doctor warns us against. It is the same with vaccines.
I’m reading the cdc web. Journal of mortality and morbidity, July 09.
People who send their children to school without vaccines should be sued, and they should probably be considered some kind of a child abuser.
I’m loath to insist that parents inject their kids with something that they, even wrongly, oppose. I would, however, make it illegal for them to send their kids to school unvaccinated. (As I believe is the case in many places. Don’t parents have to show vaccination records when enrolling kids in US public schools?)
I won’t tell you that you can’t smoke. But I will tell you that you can’t pollute my air.
And children is plural, did they really have more than one child develop autism? If so my hopes and prayers are with them.
Sorry, I wasn’t clear. More than one friend with an autistic child. And I agree, correlation doesn’t equal causation. But they’ve got nothing else. My heart aches for these people, and it annoys me no end to see them dismissed as “child abusers.”
gumby: Oh, THAT’S what reasoned disagreement looks like!
Standing on chair an applauding and calling for more.
JD Rhoades: It’s more than a little ironic that the people who are so violently anti-anti-vaxxer (good word, jerry) are, essentially telling us to trust huge corporations not to give our kids stuff that’ll cripple or kill them.
“trust corporations”??? I didn’t get that from jerry’s postings.
What this discussion has shown me today is that the HTC Hero is an awesome phone, but just horrible to post blog comments on. That may or may not be a feature.
For more on Gardasil, see other liberals who are against it, like those at evilslutopia. Also google for Charlotte Haug MD PhD and read her op-eds and her papers and similar that came out. The risks/benefits of gardasil should not be compared to doing nothing. It should be compared to getting a pap smear, and we should be spending money to make pap smears more affordable and easier to get.
For more on vaccines see the nih and the CDC. Vaccines can be miracles. But as I said, they can also be dangerous and harmful.
The thing about Guillain Barre is that you can’t point to people and say, “they are at risk for GBS”. You get it. Out of the blue. If you are diagnosed in time, it only steals 2-4 months from your life. If you are not diagnosed in time, it steals 2 years or your life. AFTER you have had it, doctors may say, “it was the vaccine six weeks ago”, or they may say, “it was the flu” from 6 weeks ago, or they may say, “it’s called a syndrome because no one knows what causes it.” (TRUE).
The journal of morbidity and mortality is what I had representatives from the CDC and my State Health Department point me to. It’s surprisingly opaque and still readable if you make the effort. It says GBS is linked, but it’s very weak, but STILL, the CDC advises and all my docs agree: no vaccines for me.
So yes, I do rely on herd immunity.
But having said that, I do not say (except in jest) that you HAVE to be vaccinated. I say use informed consent. Talk to your docs.
If you only think people should have informed consent if they agree with you then you don’t actually believe in informed consent.
If you think some people are too stupid, even with education and outreach, than you may wish to consider not living in a democracy. You may have a lot in common with George W. Bush.
If you think vaccines have always been safe and there is no need to worry about vaccination, you don’t know about vaccines. If you think that there is no need to worry about vaccines, then why do you let your taxpayer dollars pay for safety testing? Why test ‘em?
Unvaccinated kids are a public health danger, only if they have the disease. But by that measure, kids and adults who get FluMist which carries a weakened live virus that can be shed, are probably also a health danger and should not be at schools, or around pregnant women, or around the sick or elderly.
http://www.snopes.com/medical/drugs/flumist.asp
And vaccinated kids can get disease too.
The danger to schools and business is not from the vaccinated or unvaccinated, it’s from people with disease who go to school or work or come back too soon.
So yeah, informed consent, and if someone doesn’t want an injection, teach them, and respect that decision. Don’t work to eliminate opt-outs. That puts you on a par with email spammers.
And I agree, correlation doesn’t equal causation. But they’ve got nothing else. My heart aches for these people, and it annoys me no end to see them dismissed as “child abusers.”
You seem to be justifying their anti-vaccine stance because they need it as an emotional crutch to make sense of a family tragedy. You could use that kind of reasoning for beliefs in any number of things. The problem is that they’ve bound themselves to a made-up belief that has very harmful real-world effects.
And vaccinated kids can get disease too.
That’s true, which is why the unvaccinated are such a huge danger: they put vaccinated children at risk. Even if a vaccine is 99.9% effective, the unvaccinated kids are going to end up infecting that 0.1% of vaccinated ones.
So yeah, informed consent, and if someone doesn’t want an injection, teach them, and respect that decision.
Someone who refuses a vaccine of a serious disease is invariably misinformed. It’s hard to argue in favor of “informed consent” when almost all anti-vaccine claims are based on misinformation.
I really don’t like your tone here O. Willis. The excerpt mentions the lack of vaccines causing outbreaks but doesn’t mention autism. Penicillin is a great antibiotic but I can’t take it because I”m allergic. Just because something solves an issue for some doesn’t mean it can’t cause problems for others.
I found this because I have “Autism” as a google alert. I am the mother of a high functioning Autistic child. I DO NOT believe vaccines caused his Autism. Looking back I can say things as early as the day we brought him home that are Autistic traits. The bottom line is people are freaking out because of Jenny McCarthy and her “warrior mothers”. Well I tell you what I’m a warrior mother… I accept and love my son for who he is and what he is capable of. I have no desire to “cure” or “recover” him (Sorry folks…if you think you can cure Autism you are insane.) The parents just want to blame something… I’m curious if anyone is looking into the connection between anti-depressants and the increase of Autism. I’d bet money there is some correlation. After all, if a Mother is depressed, the chances of her child having Autism is increased. Likely these depressed Mothers are on anti-depressants…especially in this day. I realize this is isn’t exactly what this blog was about but I thought I’d add my two cents as one of the seemingly few parents who’s not blaming my son’s Autism on vaccines.
This issue is even more complicated than just the anti-vax crowd (of which I am not a member). I am a strict vegan and they use animal parts and proteins in the making of these vaccines. Its an embarassment that I can’t get a flu vaccine because I refuse to contribute a dime to the corporate agriculture system that abuses, rapes, and murders animals for human gain. People with ethical considerations over the contents of their vaccines don’t get any airtime because the anti-vaxers seem to eat up all the oxygen when it comes to discussion about vaccines. The fact that the vast majority of vaccines have within them cells from animals who suffered and died on farms is utterly reprehensible. As well, many include porcine gelatin (and other parts derived from pigs), so strict Muslims and Jews cannot recieve these vaccines either.
The medical community dismisses the concerns of people like me because they don’t view the suffering of animals as a legitimate concern. Its embarssing and unethical and it offends the hell out of me.
landanger: The medical community dismisses the concerns of people like me because they don’t view the suffering of animals as a legitimate concern.
Hadn’t considered the vegan or religious take on vaccines due to their animal content. I can see where that would cause some folks problems.
But I’m always a bit wary of folks who claim their concerns are “dismissed” just because others “don’t view them as legitimate.”
How much would it cost to develop a vegan or kosher version of a vaccine? Is it even possible?
Is it possible it’s actually that there isn’t enough folks with the concern to make developing alternative forms of a vaccine practical?
That is, that it isn’t that they don’t acknowledge your concerns, but that providing an answer suitable for you is just not reasonable? (And I wish I could find a better word because I’m not trying to say you are un-reasonable.)
RFK, Jr. saw the CDC study that the Bush administration tried to hide about Thimerosol.You people do know that thimerosol is a mercury salt, don’t you? And you do know that mercury poisoning stultifies brain development, don’t you? The CDC study was extensive enough to show a link between thimerosol-laced vaccines and autism-related conditions. THe industry was called together with Bush officials and the study was buried. The author of the study went to work for Glaxxo-Smith Klein.
Now, vaccines need not contain thimerosol, it’s purpose is to make a bottle of vaccine that you can stick a needle into repeatedly and not grow bacteria in the bottle. Also, thimerosol was allowed to be voluntarily retired for use in human vaccines but was immediately outlawed for food animals’ vaccines.
Why? Because chemistry like this intensifies as you move up the food chain.
Those of you who conflate anti-thimerosol with anti-vaccine are, unfortunately, ignorant. You need not be any longer.
My son’s behavior became markedly different after he got his big wallop of vaccinations at 2 years of age, I don’t imagine that. And the dose of mercury that you get, if all of those vaccines that they get at 2 are thimerosol-laden is much more mercury than you’re supposed to get in a day, much, much more if you’re a litlle kid.
He will never get another thimerosol-laden vaccine as long as he’s under-age, and I have anything to say about it. Period.
Sorry, Oliver, I liek a lot of what you have to say, but you’re being a jerk.
like, not liek.
Sorry, I like science and I don’t like kids dying because some celeb and a few idiot pols like to get their rocks off spewing nonsense.
You are misinformed if you think that the concerns about a possible vaccine autism connection are being expressed solely by a celebrity. Dr. Bernadine Healy, a former head of the NIH and American Red Cross, has pointed out several times that the “studies”, the epidemiological studies are not specific enough to determine what impact vaccines have on subsets of vulnerable children. She has called for more research on the issue including an observational study comparing autism rates amongst vaccinated and unvaccinated populations which has never been done.
Dr. Jon Poling is a practicing neurologist and professor, and father of an autistic child. His child received compensation from the US government which acknowledged that the vaccine had aggravated her existing mitochondrial disorder resulting in “autism like symptoms”. (Autism is defined entirely by symptoms, there is no bio marker_. Dr. Poling has called for more research on vaccine autism connections and other autism environmental research.
Dr Julie Gerberding a recent CDC head has also called for an observational study to be done comparing autism rates amongst existing vaccinated and unvaccinated populations. The IACC was in the process of recommending exactly such a study when Dr. Thomas Insel pulled it off the agenda without prior notice to those members who had been scheduled to vote on the matter.
You like science. That’s great. Maybe someday we will see some science used to investigate possible autism vaccine and other envrironmental triggers of autism.
Have a good day.
You’re blind as a BAT. I suppose you think that you can trust the Government that shot blacks up with syphillis in the Tuskegee experiment.
I suppose you’d parrot the government if they told you that the sun rises in the west – and you’d jump on anyone who told you that the sun rises in the east. You’d call them some kinda name.
The science supports the fact that MERCURY is POISON… and you cannot trust “your government” rather than persons who come against the abuse of power – even in the name (falsely so-called) science.
Keep in mind – the “science czar” Eric Holdren of the Obama administration believes the government has a right and power to poison your food, water (and shots therefore) without your knowledge – in order to sterilize you, or render you dead.
You think he is an anomaly??
People like this believe Government agencies have the right to LIE to you to kill you and depopulate you. Moreover, this isn’t some flake-o being rebuffed as a despicable creature… no this is a man who made it to the top levels of government.
So, you think they wouldn’t LIE TO YOU – counting on you to “trust the government”??
People who do their own research and aren’t so easily brainwashed by power know that mercury is poison, etc., etc.,etc.
The fact is, if you REALLY do your research, you will learn that the Government has active programs to brainwash you – AND… they want to willfully injure your reasoning capacity in order to control you.
What do you think “sustained development” is??
Of course there are people like Holdren who would willfully brain injure the population.
YOu better believe they have a motive – and if you want to give them opportunity – and pretend that the whistleblowers and the activists who hold government accountable are the “danger” -
go get your shot.
And your brain damage.
Since everyone keeps referring to the CDC web site, it says that this past year REPORTED (which we know do not account for all) adverse vaccine reactions OUTWEIGHTED vaccine preventable illnesses. Now, if less people are vaccinating (and putting the whole population at risk), shouldn’t the opposite be true? That’s something to consider when weighing the risks and benefits of vaccination, which really needs to be decided by the individual.
Laura -
Your screech is grossly misplaced. Who here said “you should always trust your government”?
If there has been advocacy for trusting anything it has been trusting science. And rants like yours do nothing to suggest those opposed to vaccination have any legitimate science on their side. You’re actually more likely to drive people away from your view.
Take a lesson from Harold L Doherty.
Check out the CDC study before you blow smoke, Oliver. The width of that study was enough to show that as thimerosol use increased so did the incidence of autism related conditions. Autism is 5 times more prevalent than when I was a kid. That’s epidemic. Now, it may be several things in conjunction, but the study indicates that thimerosol is one. Now, ask yourself, why did they take it out of feed-animals vaccines (and it wasn’t voluntary, it was mandated by legislation) if it was so harmless? You don’t answer that, do you? And RFK has lead the charge in stopping industrial polluters, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt over people who buried the study, showed it only to industry insiders, and then went to work for a vaccine maker for big bucks.