12 ms·

Danish Study: No link between vaccines and autism or other health conditions

164 points by healsdata 1y ago

dc396 1y ago
The truly sad part is that regardless of the validity of the study, its methodology, or the results, the impact it will have in the political sphere or with the public will be negligible. It's maddening.
- apothegm 1y ago
  Nah, the truly sad part is that the study had to be done AGAIN when the original paper suggesting a link was withdrawn decades ago and other studies have disproven any link over and over and over again. That funding could have been used for something that actually advanced our knowledge. And instead it got sucked into the bottomless pit of trying to disprove something claimed by people who aren’t interested in proof.
  - kstrauser 1y ago
    While I sympathize with the sentiment, I disagree with the details. I don’t think it’s wasted effort to reproduce results. There was a possibility they found a different outcome than what we expect, and then we’d have something new and interesting to learn about. As a made up example, maybe they’d find that autism turns out to be higher among the population groups more likely to have their kids vaccinated or something unexpected like that, and then we could try to figure out what caused that new observation. It’s shocking how often basic science turns up something wholly unexpected and new and weird and interesting. Edit: To be super clear, I don’t buy the antivax line for a second. Nor did I remotely believe there was a link between vaccines and autism. We know there isn’t. But science means sometimes you investigate what you’re pretty sure you know just to be certain.
    - myvoiceismypass 1y ago
      None of your imaginary hypothetical scenarios would remotely satisfy / be okay with the anti vaxx movement. It’s okay to say “Anti Science”.
    - conception 1y ago
      How many times do they have to be reproduced before we Say “oh maybe we’re done testing that one?” A dozen? A thousand?
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- beej71 1y ago
  We'll be lucky if the impact is negligible. It will probably reinforce the idea that vaccines case autism with those who believe it already.
- rayiner 1y ago
  Most people lack the ability to understand inferences drawn from mathematical analysis. It’s not just vaccines, it’s numeric or logical reasoning of all kinds. If you can’t explain why something is true in non-abstract terms, you can just forget it. And it’s true even for somewhat smarter than average people: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/msnbc-bloomberg-error-brian-williams-mara-gay-a9383741.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/msnbc-bloo.... I’ve become persuaded that for democracy to work successfully, you need to socialize people from birth so their gut feelings are directionally correct. And you need to cultivate trust in certain institutions, in particular public health, by targeting every segment of society on their own terms and jealously guarding the institution’s credibility. My dad worked on maternal health programs in Bangladesh. They’d build hospitals, but women in the villages wouldn’t use them. Turns out they didn’t trust the doctors, they trusted the village midwives and traditional healers. So my dad proposed to network with the midwives to establish reciprocal trust. This worked because it reflected how human trust networks operate. Public health in a developed country shouldn’t work any differently (and certainly shouldn’t work the way it does now in the U.S.).
  - sorcerer-mar 1y ago
    The problem is that a massive orchestrated campaign to sow distrust of institutions can succeed well beyond what's needed to achieve their destruction. The actual truth and institutional trust are both far harder to establish than they are to destroy. I'm not sure how institutions survive in the presence of this asymmetry, alt-media's conscious effort to exploit it, and freedom of speech.
    - keysdev 1y ago
      >The problem is that a massive orchestrated campaign to sow distrust of institutions can succeed well beyond what's needed to achieve their destruction don't think that is needed. The institutions did by themselves. Especially the large ones private and public.
      - sorcerer-mar 1y ago
- clickety_clack 1y ago
  Strong vaccine supporter here, and I think studies like this are still worth doing. Healthy society has vocal skeptics that are occasionally correct. We also have authorities that are occasionally wrong. Scientists maintain trust in our most important systems by properly addressing claims through rigorous research rather than relying simply on authority. We’ve seen smoking and thalidomide (and I’m sure more relevant substances) scientifically ‘proven’ safe before causing massive harm. When anti-vaxx claims evolve (MMR, now aluminum), having solid population data helps counter misinformation with hard evidence. Active research helps us know which side the misinformation is actually on.
- thegrim33 1y ago
  To preface this, I'm not saying anything about vaccines, efficacy, safety, or my positions on them. But how can you expect to convince doubters when a claim like "no link between vaccines and autism" is made, and all you have to do is click your left mouse button twice to pull up the actual research, and see that what was actually studied was "did a certain amount of increase in aluminum content in vaccines create more negative health effects than the vaccines with the previous aluminum content?". That's what was studied here, that is the source for this article. Yes, these things are related, but intentionally removing that context and misrepresenting the actual result does not convince people to believe you, it just drives them further away. It's so easy for a reader to see for themselves that the claim that's being made in this case is not remotely what the source research is actually claiming. How does that increase trust?
  - SubiculumCode 1y ago
    If it were the only study, sure. But it is not. Not by a hot mile.
  - pdxandi 1y ago
    I get where you’re coming from, but I don’t think the article is misrepresenting the study. The research looked at over 1.2 million children and specifically examined whether increased exposure to aluminum containing vaccines was associated with autism or 49 other health conditions, and it found no evidence of a link. Since aluminum adjuvants are one of the most commonly cited concerns in vaccine skepticism, especially in claims about autism, the study directly addresses that idea. So while the article’s headline simplifies the finding by saying “no link between vaccines and autism,” it’s not inaccurate. It reflects the key takeaway, that within the vaccines that include aluminum, which are widely used in childhood immunizations, there is no indication of increased risk. That’s important and relevant. It’s fair to expect transparency, and I agree that people should be encouraged to read the actual research, but in this case it seems to me that the summary is consistent with what the study actually tested and found.
  - lettergram 1y ago
    Agreed here, the description under the headline is important: > A new Danish study finds no association between aluminum in childhood vaccines and 50 different health conditions, including autism, asthma, and autoimmune diseases. The findings reaffirm the safety of Denmark’s childhood vaccination program. Breaking it down -- 1. The study was Denmark specific 2. The study inspected aluminum specifically 3. (Based on reading, it seems to) Reaffirm the findings that the vaccines are safe, conducted / funded by those who set the policy Here's the actual study: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/ANNALS-25-00997 https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/ANNALS-25-00997 Note the main researcher is funded by Novo Nordisk: https://researchleaderprogramme.com/recipients/anders-hviid/ https://researchleaderprogramme.com/recipients/anders-hviid/ And is frequently trying to debunk criticisms of drugs, often with phrasing such as this. https://www.contagionlive.com/view/hpv-vaccination-does-not-increase-risk-of-syndromes-with-autonomic-dysfunction https://www.contagionlive.com/view/hpv-vaccination-does-not-... https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/740704 https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/740704 and the list goes on...
- hopelite 1y ago
  That’s an odd thing to say, “regardless of the validity”? Why would or should it have any impact at all if it is not valid?
- fsckboy 1y ago
  >The truly sad part is that regardless of the validity of the study the truly sad part to me is that you could/would have written this before this study. I don't believe that you have evaluated the validity of this study yet, but you feel justified in telling us you've already made up your mind and you don't really believe in the follow through part of the scientific method, instead you're playing the tribe game
- lettergram 1y ago
  The study only covers aluminum: > no association between aluminum in childhood vaccines and 50 different health conditions It's right in the title, which was omitted on submission. The concerns the public have are not aluminum, so of course it wont. Should also point out the argument largely made is that the _quantity_ of vaccines, particularly in the US are part of the problem. Generally speaking, I'd welcome studies on what folks are actually saying. Having friends in both the avid vaccine advocates and the anti-vaccine crowd, I think both are just arguing past each other and not studying stuff rigorously enough to convince the other.
glitchc 1y ago
Well, thank god for that. Can you imagine the uproar if just one showed a link, or proved inconclusive?
kryogen1c 1y ago
I wonder how the Danish vaccine schedule compares to the US, vis a vis total aluminum content.
- roxolotl 1y ago
  Don’t know but I’d highly doubt it’s relevant. > The aluminum contained in vaccines is similar to that found in a liter (about 1 quart or 32 fluid ounces) of infant formula. While infants receive about 4.4 milligrams* of aluminum in the first six months of life from vaccines, they receive more than that in their diet. Breast-fed infants ingest about 7 milligrams, formula-fed infants ingest about 38 milligrams, and infants who are fed soy formula ingest almost 117 milligrams of aluminum during the first six months of life. https://www.chop.edu/vaccine-education-center/vaccine-safety/vaccine-ingredients/aluminum https://www.chop.edu/vaccine-education-center/vaccine-safety...
  - wzdd 1y ago
    Not that I think vaccines are in any way harmful, but your own link goes on to point out that less than 1% of ingested aluminium ends up in the blood so just quoting the numbers like that doesn't add much.
    - roxolotl 1y ago
      Yea immediately after I posted this I thought "ah shit someone is going to say ingesting vs injecting is different". It's still interesting as a comparison I think and the source is a solid one so I left it up.
- defrost 1y ago
  You can check the figures yourself: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/ANNALS-25-00997 https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/ANNALS-25-00997 Thanks to a long term study over a changing schedule they were able to layer the subjects by cumulative aluminum exposure from vaccination with aluminum-adsorbed vaccines. No adverse associations were found, from low to high levels. This was a study on humans, not mice, and to the best of my reading neither Tomljenovic nor Shaw were involved here.
autoexec 1y ago
Just a friendly reminder for any who need to hear it again: it's really okay to have been wrong and okay to admit that you've been being lied to. Changing your views when confronted with new evidence that shows your beliefs/assumptions were incorrect is a sign of intelligence. It can also let you focus more of your attention on new topics/areas that are still important for protecting yourself and your loved ones.
- mettamage 1y ago
  I wonder how many people on HN believe stuff like this though. Not that many? I'm open to being wrong on that guess.
  - ausbah 1y ago
    there is a nonzero amount in the sphere of antivaxxers. if not for the exact reason, but because engineering types are more likely to lean libertarian or believe their position in a dominant field gives them a superiority complex over other fields
  - mousethatroared 1y ago
    Rewind back to the '21 and Id say we were at-least 10% of HN.
    - driggs 1y ago
      Textbook vocal minority. You have personally contributed 5/84 = 6% of the comments on this article.
- hydrox24 1y ago
  For what it's worth, this is still quite loaded, and I think it's far more helpful to drop the stuff about lies and protection of loved ones and simply say: It's good to weaken or strengthen your views based on the evidence given, and intellectual humility often leads to a better grasp of issues. And it's also worth recognising, as another commenter has noted, that this is something that extremely few people are good at. It's an error to think that assenting to mainstream views is a strong sign of intellectual humility.
fooker 1y ago
Makes sense, hopefully it convinces enough parents not to listen to idiots. But I have to wonder if any researcher will be able to publish a study that has a hint of the opposite conclusion? Academia is not kind to anyone going against the flow. (I am a bona fide scientist, not a do-your-own-research conspiracy theorist...)
- nijave 1y ago
  In the context of vaccines, I think there's enough political tension it would immediately gain traction regardless of scientific rigor or correctness
- SubiculumCode 1y ago
  If the hypothesis showed an actual mechanism AND a reason why it wasn't detectable in all of the studies that went before it, sure. Yes. Absolutely.
bradleyy 1y ago
I'm curious: did it ever become typical for these studies to publish the data and code? I haven't kept current, but I remember having read studies in times past and they definitely didn't. Not necessarily referring to this or vaccines, just like "hey we did this analysis" but they don't publish the code and data, when we have an ongoing replication crisis in science.
- sndean 1y ago
  On page 8 of the supplemental material, they pasted some R code, at least. Hopefully that code runs once you load the packages they reference. I wish they made it easier to download and start working with the data, though. It’s from a national registry, so I suppose it’s available to those who look/make a request, but I’d like a 100 MB CSV. But to really answer your question - not really. In fields where Jupyter Notebooks are common, those are generally available via a Github link, but in medical fields code and data are still relatively difficult to find.
another_twist 1y ago
The people who dont believe in vaccines or that they cause autism dont really get science. Wasting hard work trying to convince them is useless. These people truly are idiots, at best a burden on society and at worse a threat to public health. Its one thing to have a skepticism of the pharmaceutical industry, its not ill founded but if their entire personality is based on denying science I dont think we should waste time or resources in convincing these idiots.
- api 1y ago
  There seems to be something special about vaccines that really sets these people off, and it goes way way back. Vaccine paranoia is as old as vaccines and they’ve always drawn a special ire from believers in naturopathy, natural medicine, faith healing, new thought, and similar strands of thinking. I don’t quite get it.
  - tomrod 1y ago
    Fear of the unknown pairs with magical thinking, like a norm-and-culture destroying iconoclastic cheese and wine.
  - doctoboggan 1y ago
    Honestly, I think a big part of it is fear of needles. Sticking a sharp thing into your body hurts, leaves a bruise, and sometimes makes you feel sick. Those immediate negatives can be hard to weigh against the nebulous benefits of possibly not getting sick months or years from now.
  - tedeh 1y ago
    Fear of needles
    - another_twist 1y ago
      There are other mechanisms of delivery such as oral vaccines. This is a valid reason, phobias need addressing. But plenty of vaccines are available via oral delivery.
carom 1y ago
Ok, hold up. This study came up on Reddit a few weeks ago and my wife linked it to me. A lot of the comments were similar about how vaccine skeptics will never be convinced by it. So, being a vaccine skeptic, I went and read it. >In this primary analysis, except for Asperger syndrome (hazard ratio, 1.13 [CI, 0.89 to 1.44]) and atypical autism (hazard ratio, 0.94 [CI, 0.79 to 1.12]), estimates for the individual outcomes were incompatible with any increased risk, with the upper bounds of the 95% CIs below 1.00. [1] My understanding of this, and I am a software engineer so take it with a grain of salt, is that this study failed to disprove a link between aluminum in vaccines and aspergers! There is another section where it appears they played with the hyperparameters of their study and ended up with a lower hazard ratio for aspergers (I believe by extending the analysis window to 8 years of age, but it wasn't clear to me). >Except for Asperger syndrome (hazard ratio, 1.02 [CI, 0.93 to 1.12]) and atypical autism (hazard ratio, 0.95 [CI, 0.88 to 1.03]), estimates for the individual neurodevelopmental outcomes assessed were incompatible with any increases in risk, with the upper bounds of the 95% CIs equal to or below 1.00. That is to say, after reading the study, I am not convinced at all. I would like to see a longer analysis period (e.g. to 50 years of age) as many things go undiagnosed until later in life. From my reading though, this study failed to disprove a link despite what all the popsci headlines are saying. 1. https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/ANNALS-25-00997 https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/ANNALS-25-00997 Edit: I know I am going to catch downvotes for this, but please go read the study and let me know where I am incorrect!
- sndean 1y ago
  This is more of an issue with there being a low number of cases (both < 300) for of those two Neurodevelopmental Outcomes categories than anything else.
- kmonad 1y ago
  read up on what confidence intervals are.
- SubiculumCode 1y ago
  It's called uncertainty. Do you see the confidence intervals on the log hazard ratios? They did not significantly differ from 1. In part this is because Asbergers and atypical autism were underpowered compared to the main autism group. Also note many were below 1, meaning LESS chance of getting that diagnosis.
SubiculumCode 1y ago
I am an autism researcher. While we cannot say 'vaccines never cause autism' we can say with confidence 'Other potential causes of autism have much better theoretical foundations, empirical evidence, prevalence, and effect sizes. With limited research budgets, we have better research targets to pursue first before further investigating vaccines."
- efavdb 1y ago
  would you mind answering a couple questions? I'm very curiuous: Have autism rates increased recently (last few decades)? If so, what are the best theories for why?
  - rtkwe 1y ago
    One of the largest reasons is probably we're just looking more. It's a relatively new diagnosis, just 50 years ago it'd just be "oh yeah Uncle Joe is a little weird he only eats hotdogs and knows everything ever about trains".
    - efavdb 1y ago
      There are severe cases of non verbal children etc
      - NoGravitas 1y ago
        Yes, and 50 years ago, those high-support-needs children would be the only people diagnosed as autistic, unlike today.
      - rtkwe 1y ago
        I'm not 100% sure what you're saying. Yes there are obvious cases like but those instances also used to just get called other things before we figured out autism as a distinct disease and it became widespread knowledge. There's no field in the data that gives us (for lack of a better term) the level of autism for people getting that diagnosis over time and we're recognizing more and more things as being on the spectrum of autism as time goes on which really just feeds back into the "there's more because we're finding/labelling more people as autistic" hypothesis.
fsckboy 1y ago
>To assess the association between cumulative aluminum exposure from early childhood vaccination and risk for autoimmune, atopic or allergic, and neurodevelopmental disorders. from what I understand about the skepticism toward adjuvants, "cumulative aluminum exposure" was not the hypothesis. It might be a proxy for the hypothesis, which has to do with repeated exposures rolling the dice, but what is the attitude of the researchers (for example, how much these researchers in this industry receive funding from this industry) would play a big role in how they designed their study. Are they really looking? We can take a quick look: "Apart from research into epidemiology and disease prevention, [the State Serum Institute] also develops and produces vaccines ... 20% of sales are used on Research and Development" so their funding/salaries literally comes from profit in producing these vaccines. Their statement about funding? "Primary Funding Source: None." (I spent 5 whole minutes tracking down this info. I wrote the funding sentence before I went and looked up their funding, so it's Popper-proofed) the low effort or low sincerity part of this study is that they are saying "aluminum in greater and greater doses is not a problem." Ok then, why are you putting aluminum in in the first place? Oh, because in small quantities it has an outsized effect, aggravating the immune system, that you think is efficacious. Have you studied that? and from people who've looked into it, no, they haven't. In some studies, they use aluminum without other components of vaccine cocktail as the placebo thereby making sure not to test it. It's interesting how they discovered adjuvants. They were making and dispensing vaccines (I think polio) and they discovered that some of the vaccines were contaminated in the processing. So they cleaned up the contamination and discovered the vaccines didn't work as well any more. The contamination was aggravating the immune system which made the immune response greater. Now, during this process, the whole whole time at each stage they were saying "vaccines are safe and effective". It would be more honest to say what actually was the case, "turns out we didn't know how they worked, but due to the contaminated vaccines we gave you we now understand better." the point is not "vaccines aren't effective", I think they do a lot of good; the point is they were willing to lie before and now thanks to wall street, they are even more willing to lie now.
- ml-student 1y ago
  Just to clarify for others reading: Statens Serum Institut (SSI) is a government agency, founded and primarily funded by the Danish Ministry of Health. It’s not a private company profiting from vaccines. In fact, SSI sold its vaccine production business in 2016 to AJ Vaccines and now focuses on public health, disease surveillance, and research. The claim that their “salaries come from vaccine profits” is simply false. While they conduct vaccine-related research and some of their funding comes from competitive grants, their core operations are state-funded. Saying "Primary funding source: None" in a paper means no external funding for that specific study, not that the authors are secretly paid by pharma. It’s important to hold science accountable — but misrepresenting basic facts about an institution’s funding just spreads confusion, not clarity.
deleted 1y ago
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macinjosh 1y ago
I don't like vaccines and its hard to say why. I was vaccinated as a child and I am fine. My wife and I fully vaccinate our kids per doctor's recommendation. I guess you could say I trust the doctors advice more than my silly gut feeling. However I can articulate that: I don't like that vaccine makers get special immunity from lawsuits. I don't like that pediatricians get payouts from big pharma based in what percentage of their practice received their vaccine products. I don't like that the definition of a vaccine was changed to accommodate the mRNA COVID shots while other valid treatments that already existed were pushed aside to enable the emergency use authorization. It's just enough to give me the ick, but their benefit is generally obvious so I hold my nose.
- c6401 1y ago
  I mean the pandemic was not too long ago, a lot of us actually remember the accessible treatments back then. First they discovered steroids like prednisolone which were useful only for heavily sick patients, then they started to distribute antibody plasma from other patients, then monoclonal antibodies and some cytokine inhibitors and when everybody who wanted already got vaccinated, we got antivirals such as Paxlovid, and it was scarce. There were a lot of misunderstanding around hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, similarly how we have a lot of misunderstanding around vaccines and autism. And they were tested and tested and tested, similarly how we still check if vaccines cause autism. And all the proper research showed that hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin were absolutely ineffective, times and times again, but people just couldn't let them go, similarly to how people can't let go the fake autism-vaccine connection. In the first part of the pandemic, vaccines were the best we had.
puppycodes 1y ago
autism is caused by vaccines is a mind virus about a mind virus.
chrisg23 1y ago
(Disclaimer: I’m not trying to make an argument that there is a link between vaccines and autism, I’m trying to understand a research paper and its methodology and conclusions) I just glanced through the study itself and not the article https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/ANNALS-25-00997 https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/ANNALS-25-00997 and have questions for anyone that is familiar with this sort of thing: They did not do a non-vaccinated vs vaccinated people comparison. They looked at how many vaccinations each subject had and tabulated the total amount of aluminum they received (they have good records) in their vaccinations prior to age 2, and then looked for a correlation between higher amounts of aluminum adjutants and higher instances of all the conditions they reported on (the study does not focus on autism but many things, see figure 3 of the study) There wasn’t a sizable aluminum free cohort because most children in Denmark got vaccinated for the data set they have to work with (figure 2). Wouldn’t you need a sizable cohort of non vaccinated children? (I don’t know where in the world you would find that cohort except in countries that don’t have good healthcare systems which implies they don’t have solid tracking of health outcomes in general, or maybe the USA in the last 5-10 years.) The researchers discarded from their cohort 34,547 children for receiving too many vaccinations/too much aluminum (figure 1, right column) before age 2. Wouldn’t that data be relevant to look at? So to my laymen’s mind it doesn’t seem like they in any way ruled out a link between vaccines and autism. At the very best, they saw no relationship with the amount of aluminum a child received before 2 and the rate of chronic disease (figure 1). The numbers correspond to “adjusted hazard ratio (95% CI) per 1mg increase in aluminum received……” and in the chart Asperger’s is listed at 1.13 (.89 - 1.44) so they do potentially see an increase for Asperger’s, but with the data they have the confidence interval is not small enough to be sure one way or the other. But it does not seem to me that they proved what the article and submission title states. I would appreciate someone that is familiar with biomedical research that can elaborate on whether my conclusion is sound or faulty. Also, as I understand it aluminum is one of about 5 or so adjuvants used in vaccines at the present time, so what about the other adjuvants?
- in9 1y ago
  I'm not familiar with the medical side of this study, but I am very familiar with the statistics. ### They did not do a non-vaccinated vs vaccinated people comparison These studies are observational, and in that sense no manipulation (such as random treatment assignment) was made. So they need to rely on observational studies techniques. From what I could gather, one of this observational techniques in inverse treatment probability weighting when they say > "we adjusted for all baseline covariates using stabilized inverse probability of treatment weights" The IPW technique basically tries to solve the problem that some groups of children might have a higher prevalence of the treatment by weighting them in a manner as to mimic random assignment. This is as close as we can get to comparing treated and untreated in observational settings. Also, the division of the doses of vaccine is also a better characterization of "was vaccinated". If you think getting vaccinated causes something, then getting more vaccinated should increase the incidence of that something. ### Wouldn’t you need a sizable cohort of non vaccinated children? Yes, but as you pointed out, that might not exist. So by creating comparable groups (via IPW) + treatment intensity/dose we can still arrive at some conclusions. ### The researchers discarded from their cohort 34,547 children for receiving too many vaccinations/too much aluminum (...) Wouldn’t that data be relevant to look at? They probably did. A few things are important here. The data comes from administrative data sources, so mistakes can happen. While you need to trust the sources, there could be imputation typos, or just weird cases. So the researchers probably went after a notion of "clinically relevant vaccine dosage for this study" to know up to which point to consider data points, because from that point onward, it either is not interesting because its a rare treatment incidence, or just seems like a mistake. ### “adjusted hazard ratio (95% CI) per 1mg increase in aluminum received……” and in the chart Asperger’s is listed at 1.13 (.89 - 1.44) so they do potentially see an increase for Asperger’s Important to say that with hazard ratios, a HR of 1 means that there is no change because we are in the multiplicative scale (as opposed to 0 meaning "treatment does nothing" in the additive scale). So in this setting, after adjusting for the treatment probabilities, a HR CI of (.89 - 1.44) just translates to 'no effect'. Nothing out of the ordinary in terms of the interpretation.
amai 1y ago
I suffered from whooping cough/pertussis as a child because vaccines weren't available at that time. Not vaccinating against it nowadays borders on bodily harm in my opinion. Shouldn't we actually study the link between not(!) being vaccinated and any bad health conditions in later life much more?
stefantalpalaru 1y ago
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lubujackson 1y ago
Sadly, this is a pointless study. 0% of people will have their minds changed by this since it is a political/propaganda issue that has nothing to do with science.
ddmf 1y ago
Is this the study that showed that unvaccinated kids who had an autistic older sibling were more likely to be autistic - because parents had an autistic child, decided vaccines were the cause, had more kids and never vaccinated - but autism is mostly genetic with in-utero activation so obvs genetics...
marryAnn44 1y ago
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164 points by healsdata 1y ago

The truly sad part is that regardless of the validity of the study, its methodology, or the results, the impact it will have in the political sphere or with the public will be negligible. It's maddening.

apothegm 1y ago
Nah, the truly sad part is that the study had to be done AGAIN when the original paper suggesting a link was withdrawn decades ago and other studies have disproven any link over and over and over again. That funding could have been used for something that actually advanced our knowledge. And instead it got sucked into the bottomless pit of trying to disprove something claimed by people who aren’t interested in proof.
- kstrauser 1y ago
  While I sympathize with the sentiment, I disagree with the details. I don’t think it’s wasted effort to reproduce results. There was a possibility they found a different outcome than what we expect, and then we’d have something new and interesting to learn about. As a made up example, maybe they’d find that autism turns out to be higher among the population groups more likely to have their kids vaccinated or something unexpected like that, and then we could try to figure out what caused that new observation. It’s shocking how often basic science turns up something wholly unexpected and new and weird and interesting. Edit: To be super clear, I don’t buy the antivax line for a second. Nor did I remotely believe there was a link between vaccines and autism. We know there isn’t. But science means sometimes you investigate what you’re pretty sure you know just to be certain.
  - myvoiceismypass 1y ago
    None of your imaginary hypothetical scenarios would remotely satisfy / be okay with the anti vaxx movement. It’s okay to say “Anti Science”.
  - conception 1y ago
    How many times do they have to be reproduced before we Say “oh maybe we’re done testing that one?” A dozen? A thousand?
deleted 1y ago
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beej71 1y ago
We'll be lucky if the impact is negligible. It will probably reinforce the idea that vaccines case autism with those who believe it already.
rayiner 1y ago
Most people lack the ability to understand inferences drawn from mathematical analysis. It’s not just vaccines, it’s numeric or logical reasoning of all kinds. If you can’t explain why something is true in non-abstract terms, you can just forget it. And it’s true even for somewhat smarter than average people: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/msnbc-bloomberg-error-brian-williams-mara-gay-a9383741.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/msnbc-bloo.... I’ve become persuaded that for democracy to work successfully, you need to socialize people from birth so their gut feelings are directionally correct. And you need to cultivate trust in certain institutions, in particular public health, by targeting every segment of society on their own terms and jealously guarding the institution’s credibility. My dad worked on maternal health programs in Bangladesh. They’d build hospitals, but women in the villages wouldn’t use them. Turns out they didn’t trust the doctors, they trusted the village midwives and traditional healers. So my dad proposed to network with the midwives to establish reciprocal trust. This worked because it reflected how human trust networks operate. Public health in a developed country shouldn’t work any differently (and certainly shouldn’t work the way it does now in the U.S.).
- sorcerer-mar 1y ago
  The problem is that a massive orchestrated campaign to sow distrust of institutions can succeed well beyond what's needed to achieve their destruction. The actual truth and institutional trust are both far harder to establish than they are to destroy. I'm not sure how institutions survive in the presence of this asymmetry, alt-media's conscious effort to exploit it, and freedom of speech.
  - keysdev 1y ago
    >The problem is that a massive orchestrated campaign to sow distrust of institutions can succeed well beyond what's needed to achieve their destruction don't think that is needed. The institutions did by themselves. Especially the large ones private and public.
    - sorcerer-mar 1y ago
clickety_clack 1y ago
Strong vaccine supporter here, and I think studies like this are still worth doing. Healthy society has vocal skeptics that are occasionally correct. We also have authorities that are occasionally wrong. Scientists maintain trust in our most important systems by properly addressing claims through rigorous research rather than relying simply on authority. We’ve seen smoking and thalidomide (and I’m sure more relevant substances) scientifically ‘proven’ safe before causing massive harm. When anti-vaxx claims evolve (MMR, now aluminum), having solid population data helps counter misinformation with hard evidence. Active research helps us know which side the misinformation is actually on.
thegrim33 1y ago
To preface this, I'm not saying anything about vaccines, efficacy, safety, or my positions on them. But how can you expect to convince doubters when a claim like "no link between vaccines and autism" is made, and all you have to do is click your left mouse button twice to pull up the actual research, and see that what was actually studied was "did a certain amount of increase in aluminum content in vaccines create more negative health effects than the vaccines with the previous aluminum content?". That's what was studied here, that is the source for this article. Yes, these things are related, but intentionally removing that context and misrepresenting the actual result does not convince people to believe you, it just drives them further away. It's so easy for a reader to see for themselves that the claim that's being made in this case is not remotely what the source research is actually claiming. How does that increase trust?
- SubiculumCode 1y ago
  If it were the only study, sure. But it is not. Not by a hot mile.
- pdxandi 1y ago
  I get where you’re coming from, but I don’t think the article is misrepresenting the study. The research looked at over 1.2 million children and specifically examined whether increased exposure to aluminum containing vaccines was associated with autism or 49 other health conditions, and it found no evidence of a link. Since aluminum adjuvants are one of the most commonly cited concerns in vaccine skepticism, especially in claims about autism, the study directly addresses that idea. So while the article’s headline simplifies the finding by saying “no link between vaccines and autism,” it’s not inaccurate. It reflects the key takeaway, that within the vaccines that include aluminum, which are widely used in childhood immunizations, there is no indication of increased risk. That’s important and relevant. It’s fair to expect transparency, and I agree that people should be encouraged to read the actual research, but in this case it seems to me that the summary is consistent with what the study actually tested and found.
- lettergram 1y ago
  Agreed here, the description under the headline is important: > A new Danish study finds no association between aluminum in childhood vaccines and 50 different health conditions, including autism, asthma, and autoimmune diseases. The findings reaffirm the safety of Denmark’s childhood vaccination program. Breaking it down -- 1. The study was Denmark specific 2. The study inspected aluminum specifically 3. (Based on reading, it seems to) Reaffirm the findings that the vaccines are safe, conducted / funded by those who set the policy Here's the actual study: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/ANNALS-25-00997 https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/ANNALS-25-00997 Note the main researcher is funded by Novo Nordisk: https://researchleaderprogramme.com/recipients/anders-hviid/ https://researchleaderprogramme.com/recipients/anders-hviid/ And is frequently trying to debunk criticisms of drugs, often with phrasing such as this. https://www.contagionlive.com/view/hpv-vaccination-does-not-increase-risk-of-syndromes-with-autonomic-dysfunction https://www.contagionlive.com/view/hpv-vaccination-does-not-... https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/740704 https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/740704 and the list goes on...
hopelite 1y ago
That’s an odd thing to say, “regardless of the validity”? Why would or should it have any impact at all if it is not valid?
fsckboy 1y ago
>The truly sad part is that regardless of the validity of the study the truly sad part to me is that you could/would have written this before this study. I don't believe that you have evaluated the validity of this study yet, but you feel justified in telling us you've already made up your mind and you don't really believe in the follow through part of the scientific method, instead you're playing the tribe game
lettergram 1y ago
The study only covers aluminum: > no association between aluminum in childhood vaccines and 50 different health conditions It's right in the title, which was omitted on submission. The concerns the public have are not aluminum, so of course it wont. Should also point out the argument largely made is that the _quantity_ of vaccines, particularly in the US are part of the problem. Generally speaking, I'd welcome studies on what folks are actually saying. Having friends in both the avid vaccine advocates and the anti-vaccine crowd, I think both are just arguing past each other and not studying stuff rigorously enough to convince the other.

glitchc 1y ago

Well, thank god for that. Can you imagine the uproar if just one showed a link, or proved inconclusive?

kryogen1c 1y ago

I wonder how the Danish vaccine schedule compares to the US, vis a vis total aluminum content.

roxolotl 1y ago
Don’t know but I’d highly doubt it’s relevant. > The aluminum contained in vaccines is similar to that found in a liter (about 1 quart or 32 fluid ounces) of infant formula. While infants receive about 4.4 milligrams* of aluminum in the first six months of life from vaccines, they receive more than that in their diet. Breast-fed infants ingest about 7 milligrams, formula-fed infants ingest about 38 milligrams, and infants who are fed soy formula ingest almost 117 milligrams of aluminum during the first six months of life. https://www.chop.edu/vaccine-education-center/vaccine-safety/vaccine-ingredients/aluminum https://www.chop.edu/vaccine-education-center/vaccine-safety...
- wzdd 1y ago
  Not that I think vaccines are in any way harmful, but your own link goes on to point out that less than 1% of ingested aluminium ends up in the blood so just quoting the numbers like that doesn't add much.
  - roxolotl 1y ago
    Yea immediately after I posted this I thought "ah shit someone is going to say ingesting vs injecting is different". It's still interesting as a comparison I think and the source is a solid one so I left it up.
defrost 1y ago
You can check the figures yourself: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/ANNALS-25-00997 https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/ANNALS-25-00997 Thanks to a long term study over a changing schedule they were able to layer the subjects by cumulative aluminum exposure from vaccination with aluminum-adsorbed vaccines. No adverse associations were found, from low to high levels. This was a study on humans, not mice, and to the best of my reading neither Tomljenovic nor Shaw were involved here.

autoexec 1y ago

Just a friendly reminder for any who need to hear it again: it's really okay to have been wrong and okay to admit that you've been being lied to. Changing your views when confronted with new evidence that shows your beliefs/assumptions were incorrect is a sign of intelligence. It can also let you focus more of your attention on new topics/areas that are still important for protecting yourself and your loved ones.

mettamage 1y ago
I wonder how many people on HN believe stuff like this though. Not that many? I'm open to being wrong on that guess.
- ausbah 1y ago
  there is a nonzero amount in the sphere of antivaxxers. if not for the exact reason, but because engineering types are more likely to lean libertarian or believe their position in a dominant field gives them a superiority complex over other fields
- mousethatroared 1y ago
  Rewind back to the '21 and Id say we were at-least 10% of HN.
  - driggs 1y ago
    Textbook vocal minority. You have personally contributed 5/84 = 6% of the comments on this article.
hydrox24 1y ago
For what it's worth, this is still quite loaded, and I think it's far more helpful to drop the stuff about lies and protection of loved ones and simply say: It's good to weaken or strengthen your views based on the evidence given, and intellectual humility often leads to a better grasp of issues. And it's also worth recognising, as another commenter has noted, that this is something that extremely few people are good at. It's an error to think that assenting to mainstream views is a strong sign of intellectual humility.

fooker 1y ago

Makes sense, hopefully it convinces enough parents not to listen to idiots. But I have to wonder if any researcher will be able to publish a study that has a hint of the opposite conclusion? Academia is not kind to anyone going against the flow. (I am a bona fide scientist, not a do-your-own-research conspiracy theorist...)

nijave 1y ago
In the context of vaccines, I think there's enough political tension it would immediately gain traction regardless of scientific rigor or correctness
SubiculumCode 1y ago
If the hypothesis showed an actual mechanism AND a reason why it wasn't detectable in all of the studies that went before it, sure. Yes. Absolutely.

bradleyy 1y ago

I'm curious: did it ever become typical for these studies to publish the data and code? I haven't kept current, but I remember having read studies in times past and they definitely didn't. Not necessarily referring to this or vaccines, just like "hey we did this analysis" but they don't publish the code and data, when we have an ongoing replication crisis in science.

sndean 1y ago
On page 8 of the supplemental material, they pasted some R code, at least. Hopefully that code runs once you load the packages they reference. I wish they made it easier to download and start working with the data, though. It’s from a national registry, so I suppose it’s available to those who look/make a request, but I’d like a 100 MB CSV. But to really answer your question - not really. In fields where Jupyter Notebooks are common, those are generally available via a Github link, but in medical fields code and data are still relatively difficult to find.

another_twist 1y ago

The people who dont believe in vaccines or that they cause autism dont really get science. Wasting hard work trying to convince them is useless. These people truly are idiots, at best a burden on society and at worse a threat to public health. Its one thing to have a skepticism of the pharmaceutical industry, its not ill founded but if their entire personality is based on denying science I dont think we should waste time or resources in convincing these idiots.

api 1y ago
There seems to be something special about vaccines that really sets these people off, and it goes way way back. Vaccine paranoia is as old as vaccines and they’ve always drawn a special ire from believers in naturopathy, natural medicine, faith healing, new thought, and similar strands of thinking. I don’t quite get it.
- tomrod 1y ago
  Fear of the unknown pairs with magical thinking, like a norm-and-culture destroying iconoclastic cheese and wine.
- doctoboggan 1y ago
  Honestly, I think a big part of it is fear of needles. Sticking a sharp thing into your body hurts, leaves a bruise, and sometimes makes you feel sick. Those immediate negatives can be hard to weigh against the nebulous benefits of possibly not getting sick months or years from now.
- tedeh 1y ago
  Fear of needles
  - another_twist 1y ago
    There are other mechanisms of delivery such as oral vaccines. This is a valid reason, phobias need addressing. But plenty of vaccines are available via oral delivery.

carom 1y ago

Ok, hold up. This study came up on Reddit a few weeks ago and my wife linked it to me. A lot of the comments were similar about how vaccine skeptics will never be convinced by it. So, being a vaccine skeptic, I went and read it. >In this primary analysis, except for Asperger syndrome (hazard ratio, 1.13 [CI, 0.89 to 1.44]) and atypical autism (hazard ratio, 0.94 [CI, 0.79 to 1.12]), estimates for the individual outcomes were incompatible with any increased risk, with the upper bounds of the 95% CIs below 1.00. [1] My understanding of this, and I am a software engineer so take it with a grain of salt, is that this study failed to disprove a link between aluminum in vaccines and aspergers! There is another section where it appears they played with the hyperparameters of their study and ended up with a lower hazard ratio for aspergers (I believe by extending the analysis window to 8 years of age, but it wasn't clear to me). >Except for Asperger syndrome (hazard ratio, 1.02 [CI, 0.93 to 1.12]) and atypical autism (hazard ratio, 0.95 [CI, 0.88 to 1.03]), estimates for the individual neurodevelopmental outcomes assessed were incompatible with any increases in risk, with the upper bounds of the 95% CIs equal to or below 1.00. That is to say, after reading the study, I am not convinced at all. I would like to see a longer analysis period (e.g. to 50 years of age) as many things go undiagnosed until later in life. From my reading though, this study failed to disprove a link despite what all the popsci headlines are saying. 1. https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/ANNALS-25-00997 https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/ANNALS-25-00997 Edit: I know I am going to catch downvotes for this, but please go read the study and let me know where I am incorrect!

sndean 1y ago
This is more of an issue with there being a low number of cases (both < 300) for of those two Neurodevelopmental Outcomes categories than anything else.
kmonad 1y ago
read up on what confidence intervals are.
SubiculumCode 1y ago
It's called uncertainty. Do you see the confidence intervals on the log hazard ratios? They did not significantly differ from 1. In part this is because Asbergers and atypical autism were underpowered compared to the main autism group. Also note many were below 1, meaning LESS chance of getting that diagnosis.

SubiculumCode 1y ago

I am an autism researcher. While we cannot say 'vaccines never cause autism' we can say with confidence 'Other potential causes of autism have much better theoretical foundations, empirical evidence, prevalence, and effect sizes. With limited research budgets, we have better research targets to pursue first before further investigating vaccines."

efavdb 1y ago
would you mind answering a couple questions? I'm very curiuous: Have autism rates increased recently (last few decades)? If so, what are the best theories for why?
- rtkwe 1y ago
  One of the largest reasons is probably we're just looking more. It's a relatively new diagnosis, just 50 years ago it'd just be "oh yeah Uncle Joe is a little weird he only eats hotdogs and knows everything ever about trains".
  - efavdb 1y ago
    There are severe cases of non verbal children etc
    - NoGravitas 1y ago
      Yes, and 50 years ago, those high-support-needs children would be the only people diagnosed as autistic, unlike today.
    - rtkwe 1y ago
      I'm not 100% sure what you're saying. Yes there are obvious cases like but those instances also used to just get called other things before we figured out autism as a distinct disease and it became widespread knowledge. There's no field in the data that gives us (for lack of a better term) the level of autism for people getting that diagnosis over time and we're recognizing more and more things as being on the spectrum of autism as time goes on which really just feeds back into the "there's more because we're finding/labelling more people as autistic" hypothesis.

fsckboy 1y ago

>To assess the association between cumulative aluminum exposure from early childhood vaccination and risk for autoimmune, atopic or allergic, and neurodevelopmental disorders. from what I understand about the skepticism toward adjuvants, "cumulative aluminum exposure" was not the hypothesis. It might be a proxy for the hypothesis, which has to do with repeated exposures rolling the dice, but what is the attitude of the researchers (for example, how much these researchers in this industry receive funding from this industry) would play a big role in how they designed their study. Are they really looking? We can take a quick look: "Apart from research into epidemiology and disease prevention, [the State Serum Institute] also develops and produces vaccines ... 20% of sales are used on Research and Development" so their funding/salaries literally comes from profit in producing these vaccines. Their statement about funding? "Primary Funding Source: None." (I spent 5 whole minutes tracking down this info. I wrote the funding sentence before I went and looked up their funding, so it's Popper-proofed) the low effort or low sincerity part of this study is that they are saying "aluminum in greater and greater doses is not a problem." Ok then, why are you putting aluminum in in the first place? Oh, because in small quantities it has an outsized effect, aggravating the immune system, that you think is efficacious. Have you studied that? and from people who've looked into it, no, they haven't. In some studies, they use aluminum without other components of vaccine cocktail as the placebo thereby making sure not to test it. It's interesting how they discovered adjuvants. They were making and dispensing vaccines (I think polio) and they discovered that some of the vaccines were contaminated in the processing. So they cleaned up the contamination and discovered the vaccines didn't work as well any more. The contamination was aggravating the immune system which made the immune response greater. Now, during this process, the whole whole time at each stage they were saying "vaccines are safe and effective". It would be more honest to say what actually was the case, "turns out we didn't know how they worked, but due to the contaminated vaccines we gave you we now understand better." the point is not "vaccines aren't effective", I think they do a lot of good; the point is they were willing to lie before and now thanks to wall street, they are even more willing to lie now.

ml-student 1y ago
Just to clarify for others reading: Statens Serum Institut (SSI) is a government agency, founded and primarily funded by the Danish Ministry of Health. It’s not a private company profiting from vaccines. In fact, SSI sold its vaccine production business in 2016 to AJ Vaccines and now focuses on public health, disease surveillance, and research. The claim that their “salaries come from vaccine profits” is simply false. While they conduct vaccine-related research and some of their funding comes from competitive grants, their core operations are state-funded. Saying "Primary funding source: None" in a paper means no external funding for that specific study, not that the authors are secretly paid by pharma. It’s important to hold science accountable — but misrepresenting basic facts about an institution’s funding just spreads confusion, not clarity.

deleted 1y ago

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macinjosh 1y ago

I don't like vaccines and its hard to say why. I was vaccinated as a child and I am fine. My wife and I fully vaccinate our kids per doctor's recommendation. I guess you could say I trust the doctors advice more than my silly gut feeling. However I can articulate that: I don't like that vaccine makers get special immunity from lawsuits. I don't like that pediatricians get payouts from big pharma based in what percentage of their practice received their vaccine products. I don't like that the definition of a vaccine was changed to accommodate the mRNA COVID shots while other valid treatments that already existed were pushed aside to enable the emergency use authorization. It's just enough to give me the ick, but their benefit is generally obvious so I hold my nose.

c6401 1y ago
I mean the pandemic was not too long ago, a lot of us actually remember the accessible treatments back then. First they discovered steroids like prednisolone which were useful only for heavily sick patients, then they started to distribute antibody plasma from other patients, then monoclonal antibodies and some cytokine inhibitors and when everybody who wanted already got vaccinated, we got antivirals such as Paxlovid, and it was scarce. There were a lot of misunderstanding around hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, similarly how we have a lot of misunderstanding around vaccines and autism. And they were tested and tested and tested, similarly how we still check if vaccines cause autism. And all the proper research showed that hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin were absolutely ineffective, times and times again, but people just couldn't let them go, similarly to how people can't let go the fake autism-vaccine connection. In the first part of the pandemic, vaccines were the best we had.

puppycodes 1y ago

autism is caused by vaccines is a mind virus about a mind virus.

chrisg23 1y ago

(Disclaimer: I’m not trying to make an argument that there is a link between vaccines and autism, I’m trying to understand a research paper and its methodology and conclusions) I just glanced through the study itself and not the article https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/ANNALS-25-00997 https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/ANNALS-25-00997 and have questions for anyone that is familiar with this sort of thing: They did not do a non-vaccinated vs vaccinated people comparison. They looked at how many vaccinations each subject had and tabulated the total amount of aluminum they received (they have good records) in their vaccinations prior to age 2, and then looked for a correlation between higher amounts of aluminum adjutants and higher instances of all the conditions they reported on (the study does not focus on autism but many things, see figure 3 of the study) There wasn’t a sizable aluminum free cohort because most children in Denmark got vaccinated for the data set they have to work with (figure 2). Wouldn’t you need a sizable cohort of non vaccinated children? (I don’t know where in the world you would find that cohort except in countries that don’t have good healthcare systems which implies they don’t have solid tracking of health outcomes in general, or maybe the USA in the last 5-10 years.) The researchers discarded from their cohort 34,547 children for receiving too many vaccinations/too much aluminum (figure 1, right column) before age 2. Wouldn’t that data be relevant to look at? So to my laymen’s mind it doesn’t seem like they in any way ruled out a link between vaccines and autism. At the very best, they saw no relationship with the amount of aluminum a child received before 2 and the rate of chronic disease (figure 1). The numbers correspond to “adjusted hazard ratio (95% CI) per 1mg increase in aluminum received……” and in the chart Asperger’s is listed at 1.13 (.89 - 1.44) so they do potentially see an increase for Asperger’s, but with the data they have the confidence interval is not small enough to be sure one way or the other. But it does not seem to me that they proved what the article and submission title states. I would appreciate someone that is familiar with biomedical research that can elaborate on whether my conclusion is sound or faulty. Also, as I understand it aluminum is one of about 5 or so adjuvants used in vaccines at the present time, so what about the other adjuvants?

in9 1y ago
I'm not familiar with the medical side of this study, but I am very familiar with the statistics. ### They did not do a non-vaccinated vs vaccinated people comparison These studies are observational, and in that sense no manipulation (such as random treatment assignment) was made. So they need to rely on observational studies techniques. From what I could gather, one of this observational techniques in inverse treatment probability weighting when they say > "we adjusted for all baseline covariates using stabilized inverse probability of treatment weights" The IPW technique basically tries to solve the problem that some groups of children might have a higher prevalence of the treatment by weighting them in a manner as to mimic random assignment. This is as close as we can get to comparing treated and untreated in observational settings. Also, the division of the doses of vaccine is also a better characterization of "was vaccinated". If you think getting vaccinated causes something, then getting more vaccinated should increase the incidence of that something. ### Wouldn’t you need a sizable cohort of non vaccinated children? Yes, but as you pointed out, that might not exist. So by creating comparable groups (via IPW) + treatment intensity/dose we can still arrive at some conclusions. ### The researchers discarded from their cohort 34,547 children for receiving too many vaccinations/too much aluminum (...) Wouldn’t that data be relevant to look at? They probably did. A few things are important here. The data comes from administrative data sources, so mistakes can happen. While you need to trust the sources, there could be imputation typos, or just weird cases. So the researchers probably went after a notion of "clinically relevant vaccine dosage for this study" to know up to which point to consider data points, because from that point onward, it either is not interesting because its a rare treatment incidence, or just seems like a mistake. ### “adjusted hazard ratio (95% CI) per 1mg increase in aluminum received……” and in the chart Asperger’s is listed at 1.13 (.89 - 1.44) so they do potentially see an increase for Asperger’s Important to say that with hazard ratios, a HR of 1 means that there is no change because we are in the multiplicative scale (as opposed to 0 meaning "treatment does nothing" in the additive scale). So in this setting, after adjusting for the treatment probabilities, a HR CI of (.89 - 1.44) just translates to 'no effect'. Nothing out of the ordinary in terms of the interpretation.

amai 1y ago

I suffered from whooping cough/pertussis as a child because vaccines weren't available at that time. Not vaccinating against it nowadays borders on bodily harm in my opinion. Shouldn't we actually study the link between not(!) being vaccinated and any bad health conditions in later life much more?

stefantalpalaru 1y ago

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lubujackson 1y ago

Sadly, this is a pointless study. 0% of people will have their minds changed by this since it is a political/propaganda issue that has nothing to do with science.

ddmf 1y ago

Is this the study that showed that unvaccinated kids who had an autistic older sibling were more likely to be autistic - because parents had an autistic child, decided vaccines were the cause, had more kids and never vaccinated - but autism is mostly genetic with in-utero activation so obvs genetics...

marryAnn44 1y ago

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