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“There’s no vaccine that is, you know, safe and effective.” https://www.factcheck.org/2023/11/scicheck-rfk-jr-incorrectly-denies-past-remarks-on-vaccine-safety

“There’s no vaccine that is, you know, safe and effective.” https://www.factcheck.org/2023/11/scicheck-rfk-jr-incorrectly-denies-past-remarks-on-vaccine-safety-and-effectiveness/ https://www.factcheck.org/2023/11/scicheck-rfk-jr-incorrectl...

mike_hearn 1y ago
The full quote: "I think some of the live virus vaccines are probably averting more problems than they’re causing. There’s no vaccine that is, you know, safe and effective." N.B. from a logic perspective there's no conflict between "I would like this tech to work well" and "I don't think it works well [enough]" as positions, they're not mutually exclusive. Additionally, words like "safe" are relative. It's possible for a vaccine to avert more problems than they cause, whilst still creating sufficient damage that a reasonable person would consider them to be unsafe. He then goes on to talk about the history of US vaccine legislation, which states that vaccine manufacturers are given blanket immunity for vaccines when they are "unavoidably unsafe", and that every vaccine is treated as immune under this rule. This is a common point of confusion in discussion of vaccines. Most people make an ambient unstated assumption that vaccines are medical products and must therefore be safe, because otherwise they wouldn't be licensed. In fact US law considers them to products that inevitably by design make some healthy people sick or permanently disabled, and exempts them from the usual product safety rules as a consequence. That RFK believes these things doesn't mean he wants to eliminate vaccines. You could at best argue for this indirectly, by arguing that he wants safety standards raised (put back) to the level that other treatments are held to, which would have the effect in practice of making vaccines unsellable, and thus that by implication he wants this outcome. But that is a tricky argument to make.
- UncleMeat 1y ago
  From a purely logical perspective, sure. But the rhetorical effect of this statement is clear. Especially, when it contains a lie about the medical data. "I support safe vaccines, it just so happens that I don't believe that any vaccine is safe and I am not willing to trust the medical system to evaluate vaccines for safety and will continue to insist that all vaccines are unsafe" has the net effect of not supporting vaccination at all.
  - mike_hearn 1y ago
    It would only have that net effect if "I don't believe any vaccine is safe" is a universalist principle, and not a statement about the state of today's medical infrastructure. But it's clear from what he says that he believes vaccines could be safe in principle and he wouldn't have an issue with that, they just aren't today for various reasons. In practice, this is always what so-called anti-vaxxers believe. None of them actually oppose the concept of vaccines out of some kind of ideological principle. It's always specific concerns about actual, specific vaccines that exist in the real world.
    - stetrain 1y ago
      > In practice, this is always what so-called anti-vaxxers believe. None of them actually oppose the concept of vaccines out of some kind of ideological principle. It's always specific concerns about actual, specific vaccines that exist in the real world. That's being extremely generous, many people with anti-vax beliefs have not arrived there through careful, rational consideration of anything specific.
      - jesterson 1y ago
        > many people with anti-vax beliefs have not arrived there through careful, rational consideration of anything specific. To be fair, same can be said of pro vax people. Blind belief into what science have become is perhaps more dangerous than blind disbelief.
        ChainOfFools 1y ago
        The risk analysis is no better or worse than it is for other loosely/weakly understood technology such as flying. It amounts to noticing that few if any of the people you know or are acquainted with through two or three removals from personal contact, have suffered or died as a result of using said technology, and basing your own confidence solely on this privileged form of hearsay. It sounds like something that should not work, but actually does a pretty good job as a high-pass filter for safety.
- stetrain 1y ago
  Do you think that zero existing vaccines should be considered safe by the Secretary of HHS?
  - mike_hearn 1y ago
    Unclear. I wouldn't want to get into a debate with RFK Jr about it, even with lots of time to prepare. The man is mocked here on HN but is extremely well informed and can easily win debates with any normally read person. It's going to boil down to what you mean by "safe". The way the word is used in vaccine approvals doesn't match how any normal person expects it to be used. If you go into a debate without being extremely well versed in the technical details, a guy like RFJ will crush you. For example: most people assume vaccines are tested against an inert placebo like water, and will only be approved as safe if it doesn't cause more problems than the placebo does. This isn't what happens. The "placebo" in vaccine trials is usually another vaccine. This leads to the question of what happens if both are unsafe? The answer is the safety problem isn't detected and the FDA will approve the new vaccine as safe, because it didn't create a higher rate of problems than the older one did. And how was the older one approved? Well, by comparing it to yet another vaccine and so on. One might assume this chain bottoms out somewhere against a real placebo, but not necessarily! There have been cases where two vaccines were tested against each other, and then both sides were declared safe based on comparisons with the other "placebo" meaning they end up selling the "placebo" as an effective vaccine in its own right. At no point is the vaccine tested against an actually neutral baseline. This is a very basic logic error that makes the evaluations unscientific, but public health officials accept it. Did you know all the above already? If not then you have no chance at winning over a neutral audience against a guy like RFK Jr. He will argue no vaccines are safe, you will protest that such a belief is insane and preposterous, and then he'll do something like cite US law or Supreme Court judgements where the systematic unsafety of vaccines is taken as a legal axiom. Or pick a specific example and he'll cite specific studies off the top of his head showing you were wrong. Watch the interview with Lex Fridman if you don't believe me he can do these things. Don't underestimate the guy!
    - stetrain 1y ago
      > The man is mocked here on HN but is extremely well informed and can easily win debates with any normally read person. The man who rejects germ theory in favor of miasma? > Did you know all the above already? I am aware that we do not do true placebo trials for vaccines, for good reasons.
- thisisit 1y ago
  That some bad faith arguments especially when your starting point is what RFK says about "safety". Vaccines provide acquired immunity. And that happens only with a weakened or killed antigen. With everyone being different that means there is no 100% effective vaccine. It is only people like RFK who spread this disinformation. Then there is the history of US vaccine legislation. He often misinforms people about it too. The legislation was put in place in the 1980s because the DPT vaccine was suggested to cause brain injury. When lawsuits piled up some vaccine makers stopped producing vaccines altogether to avoid being liable. Without insurance prices skyrocketed and no one could get the and hence the law was put in place under Ronald Reagan. Even with this law there are alternatives to getting compensated. So, the whole point is one big disinformation. The common point of confusion between people who spread this disinformation about RFK's position is that they are either arguing in bad faith or misinformed at best. If the standards are "raised", then novel vaccines are going to be impossible in US because we are back at square one. Manufacturers cannot get liability insurance for the new vaccines and hence need to be very wary about producing these vaccines, lest they get sued. It is often said that people should learn from history. But people in RFK's orbit seem to want to test history for themselves. And for the sake of clarity Samoa tried RFK's approach and here's what happened: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)02603-5/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... But then RFK being the politician he is, distanced himself from the situation. I am sure he is going to do the same once things don't work out. So, everyone should put their health in hands of someone who has never taken responsibility for his actions and words but demands higher standards from others.

mike_hearn 1y ago

The full quote: "I think some of the live virus vaccines are probably averting more problems than they’re causing. There’s no vaccine that is, you know, safe and effective." N.B. from a logic perspective there's no conflict between "I would like this tech to work well" and "I don't think it works well [enough]" as positions, they're not mutually exclusive. Additionally, words like "safe" are relative. It's possible for a vaccine to avert more problems than they cause, whilst still creating sufficient damage that a reasonable person would consider them to be unsafe. He then goes on to talk about the history of US vaccine legislation, which states that vaccine manufacturers are given blanket immunity for vaccines when they are "unavoidably unsafe", and that every vaccine is treated as immune under this rule. This is a common point of confusion in discussion of vaccines. Most people make an ambient unstated assumption that vaccines are medical products and must therefore be safe, because otherwise they wouldn't be licensed. In fact US law considers them to products that inevitably by design make some healthy people sick or permanently disabled, and exempts them from the usual product safety rules as a consequence. That RFK believes these things doesn't mean he wants to eliminate vaccines. You could at best argue for this indirectly, by arguing that he wants safety standards raised (put back) to the level that other treatments are held to, which would have the effect in practice of making vaccines unsellable, and thus that by implication he wants this outcome. But that is a tricky argument to make.

UncleMeat 1y ago
From a purely logical perspective, sure. But the rhetorical effect of this statement is clear. Especially, when it contains a lie about the medical data. "I support safe vaccines, it just so happens that I don't believe that any vaccine is safe and I am not willing to trust the medical system to evaluate vaccines for safety and will continue to insist that all vaccines are unsafe" has the net effect of not supporting vaccination at all.
- mike_hearn 1y ago
  It would only have that net effect if "I don't believe any vaccine is safe" is a universalist principle, and not a statement about the state of today's medical infrastructure. But it's clear from what he says that he believes vaccines could be safe in principle and he wouldn't have an issue with that, they just aren't today for various reasons. In practice, this is always what so-called anti-vaxxers believe. None of them actually oppose the concept of vaccines out of some kind of ideological principle. It's always specific concerns about actual, specific vaccines that exist in the real world.
  - stetrain 1y ago
    > In practice, this is always what so-called anti-vaxxers believe. None of them actually oppose the concept of vaccines out of some kind of ideological principle. It's always specific concerns about actual, specific vaccines that exist in the real world. That's being extremely generous, many people with anti-vax beliefs have not arrived there through careful, rational consideration of anything specific.
    - jesterson 1y ago
      > many people with anti-vax beliefs have not arrived there through careful, rational consideration of anything specific. To be fair, same can be said of pro vax people. Blind belief into what science have become is perhaps more dangerous than blind disbelief.
      - ChainOfFools 1y ago
        The risk analysis is no better or worse than it is for other loosely/weakly understood technology such as flying. It amounts to noticing that few if any of the people you know or are acquainted with through two or three removals from personal contact, have suffered or died as a result of using said technology, and basing your own confidence solely on this privileged form of hearsay. It sounds like something that should not work, but actually does a pretty good job as a high-pass filter for safety.
stetrain 1y ago
Do you think that zero existing vaccines should be considered safe by the Secretary of HHS?
- mike_hearn 1y ago
  Unclear. I wouldn't want to get into a debate with RFK Jr about it, even with lots of time to prepare. The man is mocked here on HN but is extremely well informed and can easily win debates with any normally read person. It's going to boil down to what you mean by "safe". The way the word is used in vaccine approvals doesn't match how any normal person expects it to be used. If you go into a debate without being extremely well versed in the technical details, a guy like RFJ will crush you. For example: most people assume vaccines are tested against an inert placebo like water, and will only be approved as safe if it doesn't cause more problems than the placebo does. This isn't what happens. The "placebo" in vaccine trials is usually another vaccine. This leads to the question of what happens if both are unsafe? The answer is the safety problem isn't detected and the FDA will approve the new vaccine as safe, because it didn't create a higher rate of problems than the older one did. And how was the older one approved? Well, by comparing it to yet another vaccine and so on. One might assume this chain bottoms out somewhere against a real placebo, but not necessarily! There have been cases where two vaccines were tested against each other, and then both sides were declared safe based on comparisons with the other "placebo" meaning they end up selling the "placebo" as an effective vaccine in its own right. At no point is the vaccine tested against an actually neutral baseline. This is a very basic logic error that makes the evaluations unscientific, but public health officials accept it. Did you know all the above already? If not then you have no chance at winning over a neutral audience against a guy like RFK Jr. He will argue no vaccines are safe, you will protest that such a belief is insane and preposterous, and then he'll do something like cite US law or Supreme Court judgements where the systematic unsafety of vaccines is taken as a legal axiom. Or pick a specific example and he'll cite specific studies off the top of his head showing you were wrong. Watch the interview with Lex Fridman if you don't believe me he can do these things. Don't underestimate the guy!
  - stetrain 1y ago
    > The man is mocked here on HN but is extremely well informed and can easily win debates with any normally read person. The man who rejects germ theory in favor of miasma? > Did you know all the above already? I am aware that we do not do true placebo trials for vaccines, for good reasons.
thisisit 1y ago
That some bad faith arguments especially when your starting point is what RFK says about "safety". Vaccines provide acquired immunity. And that happens only with a weakened or killed antigen. With everyone being different that means there is no 100% effective vaccine. It is only people like RFK who spread this disinformation. Then there is the history of US vaccine legislation. He often misinforms people about it too. The legislation was put in place in the 1980s because the DPT vaccine was suggested to cause brain injury. When lawsuits piled up some vaccine makers stopped producing vaccines altogether to avoid being liable. Without insurance prices skyrocketed and no one could get the and hence the law was put in place under Ronald Reagan. Even with this law there are alternatives to getting compensated. So, the whole point is one big disinformation. The common point of confusion between people who spread this disinformation about RFK's position is that they are either arguing in bad faith or misinformed at best. If the standards are "raised", then novel vaccines are going to be impossible in US because we are back at square one. Manufacturers cannot get liability insurance for the new vaccines and hence need to be very wary about producing these vaccines, lest they get sued. It is often said that people should learn from history. But people in RFK's orbit seem to want to test history for themselves. And for the sake of clarity Samoa tried RFK's approach and here's what happened: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)02603-5/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... But then RFK being the politician he is, distanced himself from the situation. I am sure he is going to do the same once things don't work out. So, everyone should put their health in hands of someone who has never taken responsibility for his actions and words but demands higher standards from others.