It isn’t very hard to figure out who Tetyana Obukhanych really is.
Who Is Tetyana Obukhanych?
Every anti-vaccine article you read that is either about her, or by her, goes out of their way to make sure that you know that she:
- has a Ph.D. in Immunology: working in the lab of Dr. Michel Nussenzweig, she presented her thesis on Immunologic Memory to Polysaccharide Antigens to the faculty of The Rockefeller University in 2006, in which she proved that vaccines work
- trained at Harvard: started her postdoctoral training at Harvard Medical School, which can lead to a tenure-track faculty position (it didn’t)
- trained at Stanford: did some of her postdoctoral training in the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Science at the Stanford University School of Medicine, which again, can lead to a tenure-track faculty position (it didn’t)
- has 8 published peer-reviewed research articles: that she co-authored with many others and only one has her as the primary author, in which she concluded that “As the generation and regulation of immunologic memory is central to vaccination, our findings help explain the mode of action of the few existing polysaccharide vaccines and provide a rationale for a wider application of polysaccharide-based strategies in vaccination.”
- wrote a book about vaccines: that she self-published for the Kindle
- frequently lectures about vaccines: which are basically interviews and talks that push classic anti-vaccine misinformation, despite her having “studied immunology in some of the world’s most prestigious medical institutions”
Not surprisingly, the modern anti-vaccine movement loves her.
“All throughout my PhD training I was a faithful believer in vaccination. I believed for almost two decades that the reason I had contracted measles and whooping cough during my teenage years was because I wasn’t vaccinated against these diseases. Then, when I had to check my childhood vaccination records, I discovered that I was in fact fully vaccinated for both measles and whooping cough, and the resulting contradiction necessitated me to reexamine all my previous beliefs about the immunologic theory behind vaccination.”
Tetyana Obukhanych, Ph.D.
While getting a vaccine-preventable disease after being vaccinated might make some folks question the whole “immunologic theory behind vaccination,” for most others, they would simply question other factors that might have led to this possible vaccine failure.
Was she fully vaccinated according to the US immunization schedule (two doses of a measles containing vaccine and four doses of a pertussis containing vaccine, with a booster as a teenager)? Were the vaccines equivalent? Were there outbreaks going on?
Outbreaks?
Although it is not clear when she came to the United States to pursue her education, Tetyana Obukhanych was born in Ukraine and likely lived through the “massive epidemic” of diphtheria and other vaccine-preventable diseases in the Newly Independent States of the former Soviet Union in the early 1990s.
“This epidemic, primarily affecting adults in most Newly Independent States of the former Soviet Union, demonstrates that in a modern society diphtheria can still spread explosively and cause extensive illness and death.”
Diphtheria in the Former Soviet Union: Reemergence of a Pandemic Disease
In Ukraine alone, there were 17,387 cases of diphtheria and 646 deaths from 1992 to 1997. Also high, were cases of measles (over 23,000 cases in 1993) and pertussis (almost 7,000 cases in 1993).
Even if she had already left Ukraine, those outbreaks are great evidence that vaccines work and that vaccines are necessary.
Tetyana Obukhanych on Vaccines
Instead of discussing them, Tetyana Obukhanych operates using an appeal to authority to scare parents away from vaccinating and protecting their kids.
As an immunologist, isn’t she really an authority though?
Consider that even though she might be a Harvard trained immunologist with a PhD, there are:
- over 7,600 members of the American Association of Immunologists
- just over 8,000 residents and postdoctoral fellows at Harvard
- 1,279 postdocs at Standford School of Medicine
and few, if any, agree with anything she says about vaccines.
“Research has repeatedly confirmed that vaccinations are safe and highly effective for all healthy children and adults, and any suggestions to the contrary have been discredited. Ongoing vaccine research continually reaffirms its safety and efficacy, including the number of vaccines administered at any one time and the recommended vaccination schedule.”
The American Association of Immunologists Statement on Vaccines
Now if “more than 7,600 basic and clinical immunologists, strongly support the use of vaccines to prevent disease,” then why would you even think about listening to just one who doesn’t?
We actually know why.
It’s called confirmation bias.
“Many questions in science and medicine are confusing and frustrating, but fortunately, the question of vaccination need not be one of them. Because for vaccines, the verdict is already in: guilty of being safe, effective, powerful, and highly recommended.”
Vivian Chou is a Ph.D. student in the Biological and Biomedical Sciences Program at Harvard Medical School.
So what does Tetyana Obukhanych think about vaccines?
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A pic of a cherry on the cover would have been more appropriate, as a lot of cherry picking of studies and references goes on in her e-book. that experts overlooked that the smallpox vaccine didn’t provide life-long immunity, even though it was known by the end of the 19th century that boosters could be needed and that was well before any other vaccine was developed
- that Immunology has no theoretical or evidence-based explanation for immunity – she should read the book Immunity by William E. Paul, MD – an internationally renowned immunologist
- that instead of simply helping vaccines work better, adjuvants are necessary to help vaccines work at all, because “purified protein antigens do not have an ability to induce antibody production in humans or animals (the recipients) on their own.”
- that adjuvants are necessary to develop allergies, including food allergies – because “without an adjuvant, there will be no immune response to a food protein or peptide, and it will not become an allergen.”
- that vaccines are only monitored for two or three weeks to make sure they are safe
- that titer tests or “a positive serological test is a proof of immunity only in the absence of vaccination. In vaccinated individuals, a serological test of immunity is biologically meaningless.”
- that we have created a so-called vaccine paradox, in which “vaccines reduce the overall incidence of childhood diseases, yet make them infinitely more dangerous for the next generation of babies.”
- that homeopathy works
- that “for most communicable viral diseases there is no herd immunity in the post – elimination era.”
Being Harvard trained can certainly be a big deal. After all, John Enders, “The Father of Modern Vaccines,” who won the Nobel Prize for his work on the cultivation of the poliomyelitis viruses and who developed the first live measles vaccine, trained at Harvard.
“The apparent absence of major viral epidemics in the U.S. is now due to the absence of endemic viral exposure, not herd immunity.”
Tetyana Obukhanych, PhD on Vaccine Illusion
Some would wonder if Tetyana Obukhanych even knows who John Enders was…
Tragically, as Dr. Tetyana Obukhanych, the Harvard trained immunologist from Ukraine goes on and on about how vaccines don’t work, Ukraine is facing outbreaks of measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases due to parents not vaccinating their kids and limited supplies of vaccines.
Unfortunately, they aren’t lucky enough to have an “absence of endemic viral exposure,” or in other words, herd immunity.
What To Know About Tetyana Obukhanych
While she is a Harvard trained immunologist with a PhD, Tetyana Obukhanych pushes classic misinformation about vaccines that you would be hard pressed to get any other immunologist or Harvard grad to agree.
More on Tetyana Obukhanych
- The sad inevitability of Ukraine’s measles outbreak
- Why Does This Immunologist Reject Vaccinations?
- More Anti-Vaccine Pseudoscience
- Appeal to false authority – Who is Tetyana Obukhanych
- How did immunologist Tetyana Obukhanych become antivax?
- American Association of Immunologists Statement on Vaccines
- Community Letter to President Trump on Vaccines
- Harvard Health Blog – Why we need to make it harder for parents to refuse vaccines
- Harvard Health Blog – The inconvenient truth of vaccine refusal
- Stanford Medicine – Small drop in measles vaccinations would have outsized effect
- Stanford Medicine – California vaccination exemptions tend to cluster in white, affluent communities
- Rockefeller University – Sequential immunizations could be the key to HIV vaccine
- Study – T-independent type II immune responses generate memory B cells.
- Report – Diphtheria in the Former Soviet Union: Reemergence of a Pandemic Disease
- Report – Diphtheria in the Russian Federation in the 1990s
- Report – Epidemic Diphtheria in Ukraine, 1991–1997
I simply think you are a piece of shit
It is hard to have our beliefs shown to be nonsense. I understand your anger
or you’re just a dumb cunt
Glad she exposed the poison not needed.
its proven many time that vaccines can cause many injuries and even death so why would i take and put my family at risk….easy as that. Bashing people personally is a know way that weak people take when they dont know what else to do..Instead of accusing her, try to prove that there is zero risk and also no foetal tissues from abortions. Because that is very gross
Maybe you should look at the number of injuries and death due to vaccine preventable disease. There is not zero risk to anything that you do. People take calculated risks. I’m sure that you drive or ride in automobiles, which are far more risky than vaccines. Vaccines save lives.
Who is vaxopedia?
Pharma cartel austroturf site?
It seems that the author has not read the the works of the scientist and prefers to “comment” on the scientist herself with some speculations aiming at discrediting her personality, rather than to provide any scientific proof that the positions held by the scientist are wrong. Just gossiping is all this text looks like.
You can’t prove a null hypothesis, but the American Association of Immunologists believes there is a preponderance of evidence that vaccines are safe and effective. Which is stated in this article.
It is NOT a null hypothesis but rather scientific dogma. So Tim, instead of just mindlessly repeating the “vaccines are safe and effective” dogma you should look at the immense amount of peer-reviewed scientific data out there that contradicts that very postulate! Simply attacking the researchers and the people who oppose the dogma does not qualify as valid argumentation!
BAD ARGUMENT, AS SCIENCE IS NOT DETERMINED BY CONSENSUS. ARE YOU REALLY A DOCTOR…?
Um, dude… publication, replication (verification of results through experimentation), and peer review are all integral parts of modern science. You cannot yield the benefits of science and technology at any sort of scale without multiple forms of consensus.
Yes. It. Is. ^^^^^
To me, Vaxopedia is a typical astroturf website, funded by you know.
The growing and impressive volume of revealed facts about the multiple disorders provoked by the vaccinations are just the beginning. The author here has never heard of the massive fraud perpetrated by the CDC destroying the evidence of the direct correlation between vaccination and the autistic spectrum. In fact, the mere priciple of vaccination has never been scientifically proven. Each injection of toxic materials (human, embryonic, simian tissues, calf blood, formaldehyde, ethylmercury, aluminum derivatives, etc.) causes harm, be it visible or not, immediately present or later on. We are not yet finished with medical scandals, and it is indecent to despise the terrible sufferings of children and parents affected by the dogmatism and the cupidity of the medico-pharmaceutical lobby.
Oh, are you a toxicologist? Immunologist? oh right, just a conspiracy theorist. The science is clear. Vaccines work and don’t cause autism. 1.5 million children were studied by thousands of researchers. It doesn’t cause autism for the 1.5 millionth time.
This article is pitiful. First you accuse her of using the argument from authority then proceed to do the same yourself. Then you repeatedly mention she went to Harvard. You don’t refute anything you just state her ideas (in a very pretentious manner) like it proves something. It’s evident from your article you belong to the finger wagging, brow beaters club.
You are trying to enforce your doctrine by ridiculing someone probably much more accomplished than yourself. She’s published several peer-reviewed research articles for prestigious journals, such as Nature, Cell, and the Journal of Experimental Medicine, among others. Do you have similar credentials? Do you have ideas of your own or do you just toe the line? Quit grasping her coattails and maybe do some original work of your own and quit acting like the arbiter of truth!