America P
Vaccine Injuries Underreported
As flu season spikes, flawed system fails to detect potential side eff ects.
BY DAVID A. PATTEN
eak flu season is coming on like a freight train and Americans are rolling up their sleeves to be vaccinated.
Yet there is growing concern the
system we rely on to detect injuries and illnesses caused by vaccines is tragi- cally fl awed. Health offi cials are pinning their
hopes this fl u season from the intro- duction, in May, of the fi rst adult vac- cine for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). It will be added to the already more than 60 vaccines approved for use in the United States. It will be monitored by the Vac-
cine Adverse-Event Reporting System (VAERS) — introduced in 1990 to alert federal authorities to possible vaccine injuries. Yet VAERS’ big shortcoming, uni-
versally acknowledged by friends and foes alike, is that it’s “passive” and depends on voluntary reporting. It relies on doctors and patients to fi le reports.
Passive systems are notorious for
reporting fewer side eff ects than actu- ally occur. Under VAERS, a patient or doctor must correlate an illness or injury with a vaccine and complete a detailed form. Otherwise, no one will ever know about it. Health & Human Services (HHS)
concedes the VAERS system underre- ports vaccine-related incidents.
Feds Won’t Listen Researchers given cold shoulder. T
he Harvard researchers who devised what many
say was a better system for tracking vaccine side eff ects can’t get anyone at the Food and Drug Administration or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to answer their calls. Using automated data tabulation, the researchers tracked 1.4 million
24 NEWSMAX | DECEMBER 2023
vaccinations given from 2006 to 2009 through Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, involving 45 diff erent vaccines given to 376,452 patients in Massachusetts. They found 2.6% of all
vaccinations were associated with negative reactions — a huge number compared to the current voluntary VAERS system, which only receives
adverse reports in about one- third of 1% of all vaccinations. Most negative reports
involved minor symptoms, like localized pain at the injection site, mild headache, or fatigue. Had CDC and FDA of icials
adopted the new system, however, detection of possible negative side eff ects would have jumped more than eightfold. That’s when the
bureaucracy seemed to come down with its own mysterious case of flu. The Harvard
researchers reported “the necessary CDC contacts were no longer available and the CDC consultants responsible for receiving data were no longer responsive to our multiple requests to proceed with testing and evaluation.” So, despite having
spent over $1 million on the study, CDC of icials and its consultants refused to communicate with the researchers who conducted it. VAERS has remained in place ever since. — D.P.
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