MB Comment: Dr. Lawrence Palevsky (a fantastic pediatrician in the New York region who was Sebastian Belkin’s doctor at birth – Sebastian is now the drummer for the Refusers) recently commented here in the Refusers Newsroom about how epidemiologists twist the statistics to understate the occurrence of Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) after vaccination. Another doctor I know in NYC got GBS immediately after a receiving a flu shot. GBS is a form of paralysis. First a definition of GBS from the NIH, then Dr. Palevsky’s comments below that. Please take a minute to read this analysis of how authorities understate the rate of a serious vaccine adverse reaction, which shows up repeatedly in FDA Vaccine Adverse Event reporting System (VAERS) reports.

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NIH Definition of Guillain-Barré Syndrome

Guillain-Barré syndrome is a disorder in which the body’s immune system attacks part of the peripheral nervous system. The first symptoms of this disorder include varying degrees of weakness or tingling sensations in the legs. In many instances, the weakness and abnormal sensations spread to the arms and upper body. These symptoms can increase in intensity until the muscles cannot be used at all and the patient is almost totally paralyzed.

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Dr. Lawrence B Palevsky’s Comments on Guillain-Barré Syndrome After Vaccination

In response to Sandy L, “It is often stated that there is normally no higher number of GBS after vaccination than is found in the population as a whole,” this statement is more than dubious. We are told that vaccine safety studies are designed to evaluate whether or not vaccines contribute to the development of adverse events. When authorities accumulate data in a cohort of people who are given a vaccine or a group of vaccines, they closely monitor them for a period of time to observe any symptoms of illness, usually 2-4 weeks. They then compare the incidence of any reported symptoms in the vaccine study group to the incidence of the reporting of these symptoms in the general population. The incidence of symptoms in the general population is normally referred to as the background rate.

In every vaccine study performed in this way by the vaccine manufacturers, they have come to conclude through their statistical analyses, that the symptoms reported in the study group after vaccination are no higher in incidence than the rate at which these symptoms would occur in the general population. Therefore, they conclude, the onset of these symptoms in the vaccinated study group is not necessarily due to an adverse reaction to the vaccination(s) being studied. In other words, the symptoms in the vaccinated group were most likely to have occurred by chance, unrelated to the effects of the vaccines. The next step in the process is to then conclude that the vaccine(s) being studied is(are) safe.

Here’s the problem. The vaccine manufacturers are using background data from the general population; a population that is also vaccinated. In this type of study design, the investigators are studying a group of vaccinated people and comparing the data to a background population of people just like them, who are also vaccinated. We can’t conclude anything about the vaccinated population in this type of study design because the data are being compared to themselves, and not to a set of data from a proper unvaccinated control group. Yet, this is the main type of study design that is used to evaluate vaccine safety.

In order to do a proper study, investigators would need to accumulate data in a cohort of people who are given a vaccine or a group of vaccines, by monitoring them for a period of time to observe any symptoms of illness, and comparing the incidence of the reported symptoms in the study group to the incidence of these symptoms that are reported in a cohort of people who are demographically similar, and who are unvaccinated. This is the type of study that would help us to understand the frequency and severity of adverse reactions that could possibly occur in a vaccinated population.

This type of study, however, has never been done by the vaccine manufacturers. Many attempts to set up this type of scientific study have been thwarted by the courts, the vaccine manufacturers, medical organizations, and the ideology that vaccines are nothing other than safe and effective, and appropriately studied with the highest of scientific standards.