3 ms·

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.
- stetrain 1y ago
  > I wouldn't want to get into a debate with RFK Jr about it, even with lots of time to prepare. I would also not want to debate someone who vehemently denies saying things he has recently said on tape. And someone's ability to win a podcast debate is not my primary concern for public health policy.
  - e40 1y ago
    I would also not want to debate someone who vehemently denies saying things he has recently said on tape. The fact that he runs from his own statements is severely telling and disqualifies him for reasonable people. Not some in this thread, though.
- aredox 1y ago
  > extremely well informed Like when he said SARS-COV-2 targets some ethnicities or that Lyme is a bioweapon? >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? That doesn't happen because if you get to how that "another vaccine" was tested, it was against a placebo - or another, even more ancient vaccine, etc... Until you get a test against a placebo. And because all along the chain, every new treatment was proven to be better than the previous one, the latest can only be better than a placebo. And no, re-testing against a placebo now isn't going to show anything revolutionary: what you will only manage to do is denying children any standard of care and expose them to death and injury. All because "most people assume vaccines are tested against an inert placebo" instead of educating themselves on statistics and the history of medical testing.
  - mike_hearn 1y ago
    Everyone understands the reasoning behind it. The reason lots of people view it as surprising and stupid is that it implicitly assumes (a) no mistakes are made that would then be propagated, (b) that you also don't accumulate unsafety by doing a chain of relative comparisons and (c) there are no downsides from playing word games with people. None of these assumptions is sound. The assurance people want from the medical system isn't "taking this is only slightly less safe than taking that", it's "taking this is safe relative to doing nothing", because doing nothing is the default state. > All because "most people assume vaccines are tested against an inert placebo" instead of educating themselves on statistics and the history of medical testing. The FDA itself defines a placebo as an inert substance and tells people vaccines are tested against placebos, even though they aren't by their own definitions. They don't get to play games like that and then tell people they should have "done their own research" to catch them in the act.
    - aredox 1y ago
      "Assumptions" a) and b) are completely sound. You are the one playing word games ("accumulate unsafety", is that even English?) to try to create FUD. >"taking this is only slightly less safe than taking that" is absolutely not what the medical system is saying. Like, at all. You write bull. That doesn't work on me. >even though they aren't by their own definitions COVID vaccines were tested against placebos. The polio vaccine was tested against placebo; children died or were left disabled. In fact, all childhood vaccines were tested against placebos.[0] You are either an idiot parroting bullshit, or a liar and an accomplice to medical malpractice. Shame on you. [0]https://www.voicesforvaccines.org/jtf_topics/why-arent-vaccines-tested-against-placebos/ https://www.voicesforvaccines.org/jtf_topics/why-arent-vacci... https://medium.com/@jsteier_29203/all-childhood-vaccines-were-tested-against-placebos-heres-the-evidence-e90487c94624 https://medium.com/@jsteier_29203/all-childhood-vaccines-wer... https://edition.cnn.com/2025/06/05/health/vaccine-placebo-studies-kennedy https://edition.cnn.com/2025/06/05/health/vaccine-placebo-st...
- reverendsteveii 1y ago
  why is this so heavily focused on the supposed merits of rfk as a debater? that kinda sounds tangential at best to the yes or no question that you're responding to
  - mike_hearn 1y ago
    Before HN posters can get to the point of actually debating the issues motivating this kind of decision, they have to accept that there actually are issues and that RFK Jr isn't just deciding things randomly. As an example of what can go wrong, CNN failed to understand the point I was making here and screwed up very publicly. They tried to use "crowdsourcing" to gather counterpoints to an argument RFK Jr made, in fact, the one about trials not using inert placebos. In other words they gish-galloped him. In return they got a 1,330 word rebuttal that goes through their list showing, that none of the studies they claimed used inert placebos actually did (except a few that weren't used by the US anyway): https://x.com/SecKennedy/status/1932580198198964241 https://x.com/SecKennedy/status/1932580198198964241 CNN probably didn't expect this kind of takedown, they seem to model him as some sort of Trump of Health. That was their error.
    - reverendsteveii 1y ago
      No you could just answer the question. You keep acting like you're getting ready to do that and then not doing it. I think you feel compelled to fill the space with something and aren't all that concerned about the substance of what you fill the space with.
      - mike_hearn 1y ago
        I already answered it, in the first word of my reply to the question.
- jghn 1y ago
  Safety and efficacy are not tested in the same manner
- bettercaust 1y ago
  > 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. First, please consider from where and whom you received this information. It was probably RFK Jr. or someone on social media or maybe a news article, right? Did you bother to scrutinize that information? Because it's not true. All vaccines (like other medications) are tested against the standard of care. For a first-in-class vaccine, that's going to be a saline placebo because there is no standard of care yet; for subsequent vaccines, it will whatever is the current vaccine. This is completely sensible. The idea that the vaccines on the market now were never tested against saline placebo is mis/disinformation promulgated by a lawyer whose name escapes me; some of those saline placebo-controlled trials for vaccines are listed [here](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pUMNBewb0kgTU7g3augmOtPGKLaz-0TljXmGfS68J1Q/edit?tab=t.0 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pUMNBewb0kgTU7g3augmOtPG...). If you have a passing understanding of common anti-vaxx talking points, RFK Jr.'s arguments are easy to debunk.
  - mike_hearn 1y ago
    > it's not true ... [the placebo] will be whatever is the current vaccine. This is completely sensible ... [it] is mis/disinformation Or rephrased, "that's not happening and it's good that it is". This kind of thing is called the Law Of Salutary Contradiction [1] and originates in confused, ideological thinking. If you want to argue with RFK Jr about something you need to decide if what he's saying isn't true, or if it is true but you disagree it's a problem. You can't pick both. The "first in class" approach isn't illogical but it's an ultra-high risk strategy. If just one unsafe vaccine gets through the systerm that will lead to a chain of erroneous approvals that result in dangerous substances being labelled as safe. In other words it only seems completely sensible if you have absolute and total faith in the entire testing and regulatory infrastructure. Anyone who lacks your iron-clad faith will view this practice as obviously crazy. Given that the medical profession have routinely lied as a group about many things in the past, it is unreasonable to use practices that demand quasi-religious faith in them. They refused to accept this and are now paying the price. [1] https://americanmind.org/salvo/thats-not-happening-and-its-good-that-it-is/ https://americanmind.org/salvo/thats-not-happening-and-its-g...

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.
stetrain 1y ago
> I wouldn't want to get into a debate with RFK Jr about it, even with lots of time to prepare. I would also not want to debate someone who vehemently denies saying things he has recently said on tape. And someone's ability to win a podcast debate is not my primary concern for public health policy.
- e40 1y ago
  I would also not want to debate someone who vehemently denies saying things he has recently said on tape. The fact that he runs from his own statements is severely telling and disqualifies him for reasonable people. Not some in this thread, though.
aredox 1y ago
> extremely well informed Like when he said SARS-COV-2 targets some ethnicities or that Lyme is a bioweapon? >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? That doesn't happen because if you get to how that "another vaccine" was tested, it was against a placebo - or another, even more ancient vaccine, etc... Until you get a test against a placebo. And because all along the chain, every new treatment was proven to be better than the previous one, the latest can only be better than a placebo. And no, re-testing against a placebo now isn't going to show anything revolutionary: what you will only manage to do is denying children any standard of care and expose them to death and injury. All because "most people assume vaccines are tested against an inert placebo" instead of educating themselves on statistics and the history of medical testing.
- mike_hearn 1y ago
  Everyone understands the reasoning behind it. The reason lots of people view it as surprising and stupid is that it implicitly assumes (a) no mistakes are made that would then be propagated, (b) that you also don't accumulate unsafety by doing a chain of relative comparisons and (c) there are no downsides from playing word games with people. None of these assumptions is sound. The assurance people want from the medical system isn't "taking this is only slightly less safe than taking that", it's "taking this is safe relative to doing nothing", because doing nothing is the default state. > All because "most people assume vaccines are tested against an inert placebo" instead of educating themselves on statistics and the history of medical testing. The FDA itself defines a placebo as an inert substance and tells people vaccines are tested against placebos, even though they aren't by their own definitions. They don't get to play games like that and then tell people they should have "done their own research" to catch them in the act.
  - aredox 1y ago
    "Assumptions" a) and b) are completely sound. You are the one playing word games ("accumulate unsafety", is that even English?) to try to create FUD. >"taking this is only slightly less safe than taking that" is absolutely not what the medical system is saying. Like, at all. You write bull. That doesn't work on me. >even though they aren't by their own definitions COVID vaccines were tested against placebos. The polio vaccine was tested against placebo; children died or were left disabled. In fact, all childhood vaccines were tested against placebos.[0] You are either an idiot parroting bullshit, or a liar and an accomplice to medical malpractice. Shame on you. [0]https://www.voicesforvaccines.org/jtf_topics/why-arent-vaccines-tested-against-placebos/ https://www.voicesforvaccines.org/jtf_topics/why-arent-vacci... https://medium.com/@jsteier_29203/all-childhood-vaccines-were-tested-against-placebos-heres-the-evidence-e90487c94624 https://medium.com/@jsteier_29203/all-childhood-vaccines-wer... https://edition.cnn.com/2025/06/05/health/vaccine-placebo-studies-kennedy https://edition.cnn.com/2025/06/05/health/vaccine-placebo-st...
reverendsteveii 1y ago
why is this so heavily focused on the supposed merits of rfk as a debater? that kinda sounds tangential at best to the yes or no question that you're responding to
- mike_hearn 1y ago
  Before HN posters can get to the point of actually debating the issues motivating this kind of decision, they have to accept that there actually are issues and that RFK Jr isn't just deciding things randomly. As an example of what can go wrong, CNN failed to understand the point I was making here and screwed up very publicly. They tried to use "crowdsourcing" to gather counterpoints to an argument RFK Jr made, in fact, the one about trials not using inert placebos. In other words they gish-galloped him. In return they got a 1,330 word rebuttal that goes through their list showing, that none of the studies they claimed used inert placebos actually did (except a few that weren't used by the US anyway): https://x.com/SecKennedy/status/1932580198198964241 https://x.com/SecKennedy/status/1932580198198964241 CNN probably didn't expect this kind of takedown, they seem to model him as some sort of Trump of Health. That was their error.
  - reverendsteveii 1y ago
    No you could just answer the question. You keep acting like you're getting ready to do that and then not doing it. I think you feel compelled to fill the space with something and aren't all that concerned about the substance of what you fill the space with.
    - mike_hearn 1y ago
      I already answered it, in the first word of my reply to the question.
jghn 1y ago
Safety and efficacy are not tested in the same manner
bettercaust 1y ago
> 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. First, please consider from where and whom you received this information. It was probably RFK Jr. or someone on social media or maybe a news article, right? Did you bother to scrutinize that information? Because it's not true. All vaccines (like other medications) are tested against the standard of care. For a first-in-class vaccine, that's going to be a saline placebo because there is no standard of care yet; for subsequent vaccines, it will whatever is the current vaccine. This is completely sensible. The idea that the vaccines on the market now were never tested against saline placebo is mis/disinformation promulgated by a lawyer whose name escapes me; some of those saline placebo-controlled trials for vaccines are listed [here](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pUMNBewb0kgTU7g3augmOtPGKLaz-0TljXmGfS68J1Q/edit?tab=t.0 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pUMNBewb0kgTU7g3augmOtPG...). If you have a passing understanding of common anti-vaxx talking points, RFK Jr.'s arguments are easy to debunk.
- mike_hearn 1y ago
  > it's not true ... [the placebo] will be whatever is the current vaccine. This is completely sensible ... [it] is mis/disinformation Or rephrased, "that's not happening and it's good that it is". This kind of thing is called the Law Of Salutary Contradiction [1] and originates in confused, ideological thinking. If you want to argue with RFK Jr about something you need to decide if what he's saying isn't true, or if it is true but you disagree it's a problem. You can't pick both. The "first in class" approach isn't illogical but it's an ultra-high risk strategy. If just one unsafe vaccine gets through the systerm that will lead to a chain of erroneous approvals that result in dangerous substances being labelled as safe. In other words it only seems completely sensible if you have absolute and total faith in the entire testing and regulatory infrastructure. Anyone who lacks your iron-clad faith will view this practice as obviously crazy. Given that the medical profession have routinely lied as a group about many things in the past, it is unreasonable to use practices that demand quasi-religious faith in them. They refused to accept this and are now paying the price. [1] https://americanmind.org/salvo/thats-not-happening-and-its-good-that-it-is/ https://americanmind.org/salvo/thats-not-happening-and-its-g...