Vaccine Studies: Under the Influence of Pharma

[Guest guest]

Love, Gabby. :0)

http://stemcellforautism.blogspot.com/

 

" I know of nobody who is purely Autistic or purely neurotypical. Even God had

some Autistic moments, which is why the planets all spin. " ~ Jerry Newport

 

 

 

 

 

 

NVIC Vaccine E-Newsletter

February 12, 2009

Vaccine Studies: Under the Influence of Pharma

by Barbara Loe Fisher

If you take more than a casual look at the way the mass vaccination system in

the U.S. works, you see that pharmaceutical companies marketing vaccines have a

lot of clout. It was the pharmaceutical industry that told Congress in 1982 that

they were going to leave the nation without vaccines if they didn't get

liability protection but have opposed making it less difficult for vaccine

victims to obtain federal compensation in the U.S. Court of Claims under a 1986

law that gave them liability protection. It is Pharma lobbyists, who bully the

FDA into fast tracking vaccines like Gardasil and who sit at the CDC's

policymaking tables urging that new vaccines be recommended for use by all

children so they can persuade state legislators to mandate vaccines like

influenza vaccine.

Today, a study published in the British Medical Journal reveals the clout that

Big Pharma has in the world of medicine journal publishing, specifically the

publishing of scientific articles about vaccines. In a Cochrane Collaboration

review and analysis of published influenza vaccine studies conducted by Tom

Jefferson, M.D., Ph.D. and his colleagues, they found that influenza vaccine

studies sponsored by industry are treated more favorably by medical journals

even when the studies are of poor quality.

Click here to view the BMJ study:

Jefferson's analysis confirms that drug companies marketing vaccines have a

major influence on what gets published and is said about vaccines in medical

journals. It is no wonder that there are almost no studies published in the

medical literature that call into question vaccine safety. The preferential

treatment of Pharma-funded studies also explains why the risks of an

inappropriately fast-tracked vaccine like Gardasil are underplayed in the

medical literature and why a physician like Wakefield, M.D., who dared to

publish a study in 1998 in a medical journal (The Lancet) calling for more

scientific investigation into the possible link between MMR vaccine and

regressive autism, has been mercilessly persecuted for more than a decade by

both Pharma-funded special interest groups as well as public health officials

maintaining close relationships with vaccine manufacturers.

Jefferson and his colleagues identified and assessed 274 published studies on

influenza vaccines for their methodological quality and found no relationship

between study quality, publication in prestige journals or their subsequent

citation in other articles. They also found that most influenza vaccine studies

are of poor quality but those with conclusions favorable to influenza

vaccinations are of significantly lower methodological quality. The single most

important factor determining where the studies were published or how much they

were cited was sponsorship, with those partially or wholly funded by the

pharmaceutical industry having higher visibility.

Dr. Jefferson commented, " The study shows that one of the levers for accessing

prestige journals is the financial size of your sponsor. Pharma sponsors order

many reprints of studies supporting their products, often with in house

translations into many languages. They also purchase advertising space in the

journal. Many publishers openly advertise these services on their website. It is

time journals made a full disclosure of their sources of funding.

Earlier this week the National Vaccine Information Center (www.NVIC.org) called

on the Obama Administration and Congress to investigate Gardasil vaccine risks.

NVIC has long questioned the inappropriate influence of vaccine manufacturers in

federal vaccine licensing and policymaking and state vaccine mandates. In 2006,

Merck's Gardasil vaccine was fast tracked by the FDA at Merck's request and in

2007 Merck lobbyists mounted an aggressive lobbying campaign to get Gardasil

mandated by state legislators for all sixth grade girls, which would have

assured the big drug company a predictable market.

The Pharma lobbying effort in 2007 to get all states to mandate Gardasil failed

but every other vaccine produced by drug companies and licensed by the FDA in

the past quarter century has been mandated. Those new mandates were added to

state vaccine laws by legislators and public health officials at the urging of

vaccine manufacturer lobbyists and Pharma funded organizations touting vaccine

studies published in the medical literature.

In the past three decades, the numbers of doses of government recommended

vaccines for children and medical organizations like the American Academy of

Pediatrics has tripled to 69 doses of 16 vaccines, with 48 doses of 14 vaccines

targeted to children under age six. Pharma lobbyists have persuaded most states

to pass laws requiring two to three dozen doses of most of the 16 government

recommended vaccines. Last year New Jersey became the first state to mandate

influenza vaccine for children attending daycare and school.

In the past few years, Dr. Jefferson has authored several independent reviews of

influenza studies published in the medical literature for the Cochrane

Collaboration, which have been published in the British Medical Journal,

questioning the quality of published scientific evidence for influenza vaccine

effectiveness and safety for the elderly as well as children.

Clearly, if the makers and marketers of vaccines can influence the quality and

quantity of the scientific evidence published in the medical literature proving

that vaccines are safe and effective - evidence that is used by states to

mandate vaccines and by the U.S. Court of Claims to deny compensation to vaccine

injured children - then Congress was wrong in 1986 to protect the makers and

marketers of vaccines from liability for injuries and deaths caused by those

vaccines.

Government vaccine recommendations, U.S. Court of Claims vaccine injury

compensation awards and state vaccine mandates are justified on the strength of

scientific published in medical journals. It is time for medical journals to

disclose all financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry. It is time for

studies questioning the safety and effectiveness of vaccines to receive a fair

hearing in scientific journals rather than editors confining themselves to

primarily publishing studies funded by the pharmaceutical industry maintaining

that every vaccine is totally safe, effective and necessary.

Kudos to the British Medical Journal for having the integrity to publish

Jefferson's comprehensive analysis of pharmaceutical money influence on vaccine

studies published in the medical literature. Hopefully, this will be a wake-up

call for the scientific community, Congress and the public to put an end to the

undue influence the pharmaceutical industry has on the science and policy of

mass vaccination in the U.S..

BMJ

Relation of study quality, concordance, take home message, funding, and impact

in studies of influenza vaccines: systematic review

T Jefferson, coordinator, C Di Pietrantonj, statistician, M G Debalini,

researcher, A Rivetti, researcher , V Demicheli, director of health, Piemonte

region

Cochrane Vaccines Field, ASL

(Azienda Sanitaria Locale) AL 20,

15100 Alessandria, Italy

Correspondence to: T Jefferson jefferson.tom@...

Cite this as: BMJ 2009;338:b354 doi:10.1136/bmj.b354

ABSTRACT

Objective To explore the relation between study concordance, take home message,

funding, and dissemination of comparative studies assessing the effects of

influenza vaccines.

Design Systematic review without meta-analysis.

Data extraction Search of the Cochrane Library, PubMed, Embase, and the web,

without language restriction, for any studies comparing the effects of influenza

vaccines against placebo or no intervention. Abstraction and assessment of

quality of methods were carried out.

Data synthesis We identified 259 primary studies (274 datasets). Higher quality

studies were significantly more likely to show concordance between data

presented and conclusions (odds ratio 16.35, 95% confidence interval 4.24 to

63.04) and less likely to favour effectiveness of vaccines (0.04, 0.02 to 0.09).

Government funded studies were less likely to have conclusions favouring the

vaccines (0.45, 0.26 to 0.90). A higher mean journal impact factor was

associated with complete or partial industry funding compared with government or

private funding and no funding (differences betweenmeans5.04). Study sizewas not

associated with concordance, content of take home message, funding, and study

quality. Higher citation index factor was associated with partial or complete

industry funding. This was sensitive to the exclusion from the analysis of

studies with undeclared funding.

Conclusion Publication in prestigious journals is associated with partial or

total industry funding, and this association is not explained by study quality

or size.

....

National Vaccine Information Center

NVIC E-News is a free service of the non-profit National Vaccine Information

Center and is supported through donations.

NVIC is funded through the financial support of its members and does not receive

any government subsidies. Barbara Loe Fisher, President and Co- founder.

Learn more about vaccines, diseases and how to protect your informed consent

rights www.nvic.org

Make a difference SUPPORT NVIC

Quick Links...

VACCINE AWAKENING BLOG

ARE WE OVERVACCINATING OUR CHILDREN? Vaccine Safety Bulletin

STATE LAWS AND EXEMPTIONS

International Memorial For Vaccine Victims

Military Biodefence Vaccine Project

HPV VACCINE FACTS

The Doctor's Corner

Stand Up and Be Counted Campaign

Age Of Autism

Join our mailing list!

email: newsnvic@...

phone: 703-938-dpt3

web: http://www.nvic.org

Forward email

This email was sent to gabrieladevelbiss@... by newsnvic@....

Update Profile/Email Address | Instant removal with SafeUnsubscribe™ | Privacy

Policy.

Email Marketing by

National Vaccine Information Center | 407 Church Street | Suite H | Vienna | VA

| 22180