Tag: vaccine myths

Does the flu shot contain a vaginal spermicide?

Many of us are used to hear some far out claims from anti-vaccine folks?

And most of us understand that none of them are true.

There is no antifreeze in vaccines.

And while many vaccines may contain aluminum, formaldehyde, albumin, gelatin, antibiotics, polysorbate 80, and yeast proteins, these are not toxic or dangerous.

Why are those ingredients in a vaccine?

They might be used as an adjuvant, inactivating ingredient, preservative, stabilizer, or as a growth medium.

Does the flu shot contain a vaginal spermicide?

The latest scare story from anti-vaccine folks is that flu shots contain a vaginal spermicide.

Now why would a vaginal spermicide be needed in a vaccine?

To make a long story short - flu vaccines don't contain a vaginal spermicide.
To make a long story short – flu vaccines don’t contain a vaginal spermicide.

It wouldn’t.

Anti-vaccine folks who have exposed are spreading this misinformation have confused octoxynol-9, a vaginal spermicide, with octoxynol-10, an ingredient in vaccines.

Aren’t they the same thing?

While both are a type of Triton X-100 nonionic surfactant, as you likely suspect, they are different. And that’s where the confusion sets in.

“Nonionic surfactant mixtures varying in the number of repeating ethoxy (oxy-1,2-ethanediyl) groups. They are used as detergents, emulsifiers, wetting agents, defoaming agents, etc. Octoxynol-9, the compound with 9 repeating ethoxy groups, is a spermatocide.”

PubChem on Triton X-100

In contrast to octoxynol-9, the compound octoxynol-10 has 10 repeating ethoxy groups.

Octoxynol-10 in Flu Vaccines

Octoxynol-10, which is also known as octylphenol ethoxylate, is a surfactant that is used in some flu vaccines in a 1% concentration to help further inactivate and then “split” the inactivated influenza virus that will ultimately be used in the vaccines.

“The majority of marketed seasonal influenza vaccines are prepared using viruses that are chemically inactivated and treated with a surfactant. Treating with surfactants has important consequences: it produces ‘split viruses’ by solubilizing viral membranes, stabilizes free membrane proteins and ensures a low level of reactogenicity while retaining high vaccine potency.”

Lee et all on Quantitative determination of the surfactant-induced split ratio of influenza virus by fluorescence spectroscopy.

A “low level of reactogenicity” means less side effects. That’s good.

Octoxynol-10 also acts as a stabilizer.

Like many other non-active ingredients, it is mostly filtered out from the final vaccine product.

How much is left?

Only residual amounts.

In Fluzone, it is reported to be at a maximum amount of ≤250 mcg per dose.

Do you know the dose of octoxynol-9 that was used in vaginal spermicides? At least 50mg (one applicator full), inserted vaginally before sex. Keep in mind that since they don’t protect against STD’s, they are typically used in combination with other forms of birth control.

What to Know About Octoxynol-10 in Flu Vaccines

Octoxynol-10 is an important ingredient of flu vaccines and is mostly filtered out of the final vaccine.

More About Octoxynol-10 in Flu Vaccines

How Quickly Can You Debunk Anti-Vaccine Propaganda?

It is well known that much of the stuff on anti-vaccine websites is pure misinformation that is simply put out there to scare parents away from vaccinating and protecting their kids.

At least it is well known by the people who understand that vaccines are safe, vaccines are necessary, and that vaccines work.

If you are on the fence or hesitant to vaccinate your kids, you might not be so sure and might not know who to trust when it comes to getting information about vaccines.

That’s why it is important to get educated, be skeptical, and do your own research.

How Quickly Can You Debunk Anti-Vaccine Propaganda?

What do you think about the following photo description that is making the rounds on anti-vaccine websites and on Facebook?

How quickly could you figure out if the information is true or not?

Is this a photo of kids in iron lungs because of the Cutter Incident?
Is this a photo of kids in iron lungs because of the Cutter Incident?

Of course, the Cutter Incident is actually true and plenty of folks ended up in iron lungs, mostly because of natural polio infections though, not because of the polio vaccine.

“In 1952 alone, nearly 60,000 children were infected with the virus; thousands were paralyzed, and more than 3,000 died.”

Jason Beaubien on Wiping Out Polio: How The U.S. Snuffed Out A Killer

Let’s start doing some research…

The first clue that this isn’t real is that the cases from the Cutter Incident would have been spread out over the five Western and mid-Western USA states where kids got this particular polio vaccine. With about 200 of them severely affected, they almost certainly would not have had such a large group of people in iron lungs, enough to fill a gymnasium, in just one area.

The next clue is that the iron lungs aren’t plugged in.

That led me to a quick search for ‘iron lung photos’ and an article on Understanding Historical Photos that features the iconic “Iron lungs in gym” photo.

“At first glance, this image shocks and saddens from the enormity of the problem of sick children in need of iron lungs. On closer examination, it is clear that the equipment that usually accompanied people using iron lungs, such as tracheotomy tubes and pumps and tankside tables, is not present (compare the picture to photographs in the section on the iron lung). This scene was staged for a film. It is not historically accurate as a respirator ward, but is an example of an established photographic technique (famously used, for example, by WPA photographers in the 1930s) of directing the viewer’s response by creating a shot that would not naturally occur. ”

Smithsonian National Museum of American History on Understanding Historical Photos

A little more research helped me discover that the photo was taken:

  • for an informational film that was being produced by the March of Dimes
  • in the auditorium of the Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center in Downey, California USA
  • in 1953

So it took less than a few minutes to figure out that the folks who claim to be “exposing the truth” about vaccines are pushing pure propaganda.

Remember, the Cutter Incident happened in 1955, two years after this photo was taken…

So, a staged 1953 photo for an informational movie for the March of Dimes does not show kids in iron lungs from the Cutter Incident!

How long would you have believed this or other polio myths?

How long would it take you to debunk them?

What to Know About Debunking Anti-Vaccine Propaganda

Learn just how quickly most anti-vaccine misinformation can be debunked if you simply practice being a little skeptical and do your own research.

More About Debunking Anti-Vaccine Propaganda

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Which Vaccines Are Gluten Free?

Why does gluten sometimes come up in discussions about vaccines?

Is it because a vaccine to treat people with Celiac disease is being tested?

Probably not.

It is more likely that it is because some people worry that vaccines contain gluten.

Which Vaccines Are Gluten-Free?

So which vaccines are gluten-free?

All vaccines are gluten-free. Do they need to labeled 'gluten-free' to convince some vaccine hesitant folks?
All vaccines are gluten-free. Do they need to labeled ‘gluten-free’ to convince some vaccine hesitant folks?

Fortunately, they all are, so you don’t have to worry about skipping or delaying your child’s vaccines if they have Celiac disease, a gluten sensitivity, or if you are simply following a gluten-free diet.

Vaccines and Food Allergies

Non-active components of vaccines can rarely trigger allergic reactions, including antibiotics and latex.

What about non-active vaccine ingredients that might worry someone with food allergies?

There actually are some, including eggs, milk, gelatin, and yeast.

Talk to your pediatrician or a pediatric allergist if you are concerned about vaccine allergies. They can review the “Algorithm for treatment of patients with hypersensitivity reactions after vaccines,” which “provides a rational and organized approach for the evaluation and treatment of patients with suspected hypersensitivity.”

This is especially important if you think that your child is allergic to all vaccines, something that is almost unheard of, as vaccines have different components and are made in different ways.

You don’t have to worry about gluten though.

What To Know About Vaccines and Gluten

There is no gluten in vaccines and vaccines are actually in development to treat people with gluten sensitivity.

For More Information on Vaccine Allergies

 

Did Utah Ban the HPV Vaccine?

The Gardasil vaccine seems to provoke a lot of controversy and still more misinformation, even as compared to typical anti-vaccine rhetoric.

Maybe since it is a newer vaccine or because it is for an STD, but for whatever reason, some folks can’t get over the fact that study after study has proven that the HPV vaccines are safe and effective.

Did Utah Ban the HPV Vaccine?

So if it is so safe and effective, then why did Utah ban the use of Gardasil?

They didn’t.

There is a very small sliver of truth to the story though.

“Citing low demand, high costs — and questioning the benefits, Utah’s Southwest Public Department of Health does not stock or recommend Gardasil, the vaccine against HPV, the cancer-causing human papilloma virus.”

The Salt Lake Tribune

In most states, a decision like that by the Department of Health would be a big deal, because it would likely have to come from the state health department.

Not so much in Utah, where their 13 local health departments are independent of the Utah Department of Health. And they are each governed by local boards of health using a decentralized organizational model.

So the decision to ‘ban Gardasil’ wasn’t made by “Utah,” where the Department of Health has actually been recommending the vaccine since 2006.

It wasn’t even made by the Board of Health for the Southwest Public Department of Health.

The decision was made by one person – the agency’s director, Dr. David Blodgett.

Where Else Has Gardasil Not Been Banned

Even then, Gardasil wasn’t actually banned in the Beaver, Iron, Garfield, Kane and Washington counties of southern Utah that are served by the Southwest Public Department of Health where he is the director. The vaccine just wasn’t available at health department clinics in the area.

The Utah Department of Health actively encourages kids to get their HPV vaccine as a way to help prevent them from getting cancer.
With the exception of David Blodgett, the Utah Department of Health actively encourages kids to get their HPV vaccine as a way to help prevent them from getting cancer.

You could still get the vaccine at a doctor’s office or clinic, including free HPV vaccines from clinics that participate in the Vaccines for Children program.

So again, Gardasil wasn’t banned in Utah or even this part of southern Utah.

And do you know where else you can still get an HPV vaccine?

The 2016 routine and voluntary immunization schedule in Japan.
The routine and voluntary immunization schedule in Japan still includes the HPV vaccine.

Gardasil is still available in Japan, India, France, Spain, and all of the countries where anti-vaccine folks say it was also banned.

Even in Japan, where governmental authorities did withdraw support for the vaccine while the Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare in Japan further investigated safety and efficacy claims, an Expert Council on Promotion of Vaccination consisting of 17 Japanese academic societies recommends “renewed proactive support for the widespread use of the HPV vaccine.”

That’s no big surprise, because like other vaccines, the HPV vaccines are safe, effective, and necessary.

What To Know About the Myth of a Gardasil Ban in Utah

Gardasil was never banned in Utah. The director of one local health department has decided to not make it available at local health department clinics in southern Utah since 2013.

More About the Myth of a Gardasil Ban in Utah

What Your Doctor Knows About Vaccines

Are doctors experts on vaccines?

Some clearly are not.

I’m talking about the doctors who push classic anti-vaccine misinformation and who also believe that homeopathic treatments work. This includes the classic holistic pediatricians and so-called “vaccine friendly” pediatricians.

In addition to not learning about vaccines, they seem to have skipped the lectures about germ theory, immunology, and much of the science behind modern medicine.

What Your Doctor Knows About Vaccines

Although everyone’s education is different, doctors have plenty of opportunities to learn about vaccines and vaccine-preventable diseases in medical school and during their residency.

I know I did.

But then I trained at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and Children’s Medical Center in Dallas, where John D. Nelson, MD established the first formal Pediatric Infectious Disease fellowship program. I was fortunate enough to be trained at an institution with Dr. Nelson and George McCracken, MD, who together created the National Pediatric Infectious Disease Seminars and the Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal. Not surprisingly, they created an environment where we learned a lot about vaccines and vaccine-preventable diseases.

Maybe Dr. Bob didn't learn much about vaccines in medical school, but I know I did...
Maybe Dr. Bob didn’t learn much about vaccines in medical school, but I know I did…

And at Parkland Hospital, with the busiest nursery in the United States, and at Children’s, with a very busy ER and Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, I took care of more than a few kids with now vaccine-preventable diseases, especially meningococcemia and pneumococcal meningitis.

I also took Rory Coker’s Pseudoscience class in college, which has helped me avoid believing a lot of the misinformation of the anti-vaccine movement.

While other doctors may not have had the same experiences, they at least took the same classes. Although few take a specific course in vaccinology, unless it is an elective, formal classes in the first two years that would cover vaccines or vaccine-preventable diseases include:

  • Cell Biology
  • Immunology
  • Microbiology
  • Pathology
  • Pharmacology
  • Physiology

Later on, as medical students begin to see patients and they rotate through clerkships in pediatrics, internal medicine, family practice, obstetrics and gynecology, and surgery, they continue to learn about vaccines and vaccine-preventable diseases more informally.

You can't learn about vaccines until you understand the basics of immunology.
Part of a good education about vaccines is an understanding of the basics of immunology, including how B-Cells and T-Cells work.

Other things about vaccines you learn as you study independently for the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE), which includes questions about vaccines and vaccine-preventable diseases.

What Your Doctor Doesn’t Know About Vaccines

What’s has been missing in much of this education about vaccines?

Medical students don’t usually learn about anti-vaccine conspiracy theories and all of the methods the anti-vaccine movement uses to scare parents away from vaccinating and protecting their kids.

So, just because they aren’t familiar with Leicester, what you think an MTHFR mutation means, or the latest misinformation from Kennedy or Wakefield, that doesn’t mean they aren’t well educated about vaccines.

It does put them at a disadvantage when talking to vaccine-hesitant parents though, which is why they likely do need to learn all of these things.

Vaccine Experts

But even if your pediatrician didn’t learn as much about vaccines as you think they should have in medical school or during their residency, you know who did?

“…a new field of microbiology and immunology has evolved, called “vaccinology,” that comprises not only vaccine development but also the use of vaccines and their effects on public health.”

Stanley A Plotkin on Vaccines, Vaccination, and Vaccinology

This may come as a surprise to those who get excited every time the Geiers “publish” another study critical of vaccines, but there are actually experts in vaccinology, infectious disease, and public health.

It is these vaccine experts that research new vaccines and vaccine safety and who make recommendations about the immunization schedule.

About What Your Doctor Knows About Vaccines

Doctors are well trained about vaccines, vaccine safety, and vaccine-preventable diseases, although they might not be up-to-date on the latest anti-vaccine conspiracy theory that has you scared about vaccinating your kids.

More on What Your Doctor Knows About Vaccines

That $3 Million Vaccine Bonus for Pediatricians

The BCBS Michigan PGIP vaccine incentive.
BCBS Michigan offers a Physician Group Incentive Program to improve care to their members.

Have you heard about the bonuses that some pediatricians get for making sure their patients are fully vaccinated?

Depending on who you want to believe, this bonus, kickback, or so-called bribe, could be as high as:

  • $40,000
  • $80,000
  • $600,000
  • $3,000,000

Why the differences?

These anti-vaccine folks are simply reading an insurance company’s provider incentive program and trying to make it fit their narrative that pediatricians push vaccines on kids for profit.

While Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan’s Physician Group Incentive Program does use Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS) criteria on completed vaccinations to give members a $400 payout, it isn’t what some people think.

The money used to make the payout or incentive reward comes from “a percentage of the applicable fee schedule on most professional paid claims.” So it is, in effect, money that the pediatrician has earned and should have already been paid. And if they don’t meet HEDIS performance measurements, they don’t get that money.

“All network physicians agree by contract to allocate funds from their fee schedule reimbursement to the PGIP Reward Pool. The current amount of the allocation is 5 percent. This 5 percent allocation goes into a pool to be paid out to physician organizations that meet performance metrics established by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan.”

2016 Physician Group Incentive Program Clinical Quality Initiative: FAQ

Now, if you are creating a pool of money that is going to distributed to all or most of the doctors in the group and it comes from just 5% of reimbursements, how can they be getting bonuses of $40,000 or $80,000 or more?

Also keep in mind that in 2006, the pool of money totaled just $4,000,000 to be divided among all of the physicians in the program. Again, you are not going to get very large bonuses from those kinds of numbers.

Although the reward pool is much larger now, it is for dozens of PGIP initiatives and is divided up among over 19,000 doctors in almost 50 physician groups.

Most importantly though, does the simple fact that they do get bonus mean that they are pushing or forcing vaccines on kids just to make their childhood immunization target and get their bonus? If you consider that only 63% of their patients need to be fully vaccinated, which is much lower than vaccine coverage levels in the United States overall and in Michigan, it isn’t very hard to get the “bonus.”

A pediatrician who intentionally doesn’t vaccinate their patients might suffer under this type of program, but most of them don’t seem to take insurance anyway. Their patients usually have to pay cash for the “benefit” of seeing a vaccine-friendly doctor.

In the end, folks try to use these PGIP payments to mislead parents into thinking that something fishy is going on.

This means that a 5-doctor pediatric practice, if they reach 100% compliance on vaccinations, will receive a bonus of just over $3,000,000 (that’s not a typo, my math is right, that’s $3 million bucks!!)*.

JB Handley

Is his math really right?

Think about it. How often do kids have a two year birthday, which triggers the incentive?  Handley mentions that his calculation isn’t annualized, to cover that, but still, no pediatrician is getting a $3 million vaccine bonus.

Or a $40,000 bonus for that matter. You just have to look at the salaries for pediatricians in Michigan to understand why these claims are ridiculous.

The $400 childhood immunization payout.
Pediatricians aren’t making multi-million dollar bonuses to get kids vaccinated on time.

The most obvious error all of these folks make is that is almost unheard of for a doctor to only accept one single type of insurance plan. What percentage of patients does the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan’s Physician Group Incentive Program make up among all of the insurance plans these doctors take?

If it was even 5 or 10%, which would be high, then there would be at most a handful of patients turning two each year to trigger the bonus. The yearly payments, which cover more than just vaccines, are no where close to being as big as anti-vaccine folks make them out to be.

Examples of payouts in the BCN 2017 Medical Services Agreement.
Examples of a yearly payout in the Blue Care Network 2017 Medical Services Agreement.

Again, this is a voluntary program the doctors join and in which the payout or incentive reward comes from “a percentage of the applicable fee schedule on most professional paid claims.”

And remember, this isn’t really extra money they get anyway. They are not bribes or kickbacks. It is money they likely would have gotten if they had not joined the incentive program.

What about the idea that Blue Cross Blue Shield has removed the incentive program pamphlet detailing the $400 payout? No conspiracy. The 2016 program expired. It was replaced with a new one.

Benefits of Pay for Performance Programs

So why do they join? Research from the programs shows that they help provide higher quality care at a lower cost.

That makes sense.

Consider how much it costs to contain a measles outbreak, for example, it is easy to understand why and insurance company would rather encourage doctors to get kids immunized rather than pay a lot more to take care of sick kids with vaccine-preventable diseases in doctor’s offices, ERs, and hospitals.

A recent study in Pediatrics, “Economic evaluation of the routine childhood immunization program in the United States, 2009,” actually used similar HEDIS immunization data as the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan’s Physician Group Incentive Program and found that “routine childhood immunization among members of the 2009 US birth cohort will prevent ∼42,000 early deaths and 20 million cases of disease, with net savings of $13.5 billion in direct costs and $68.8 billion in total societal costs, respectively.”

So why aren’t they used even more often?

They can be expensive to implement, especially if a doctor doesn’t already have electronic medical records. And some experts believe that improvements aren’t necessarily from changing doctors behavior, but rather from better documentation of things that they were already doing.

What To Know About Vaccine Bonuses for Pediatricians

Pediatricians are not getting big bonuses, bribes, or kickbacks to vaccinate kids.

For More Information on Vaccine Bonuses:

 

Who is Dr. Yehuda Shoenfeld

Dr. Yehuda Shoenfeld is an immunologist who heads the Zabludowicz Center for Autoimmune Diseases, which was created by Poju Zabludowicz. He is also on the scientific advisory board for the Children’s Medical Safety Research Institute.

He claims to have discovered a novel vaccine-associated autoimmune disease – Autoimmune Syndrome Induced by Adjuvants (ASIA).

The History of Adjuvant Diseases

Shoenfeld’s Autoimmune Syndrome Induced by Adjuvants is not the first time that adjuvants have been blamed for causing diseases in people.

As far back as 1964, Kan Miyoshi had written about “human adjuvant disease” following augmentation with silicone breast implants. Silicone gel-filled breast implants were eventually removed from the market, following case reports describing an association and years of lawsuits against manufacturers, but more studies were done that found that “there was no evidence that silicone breast implants caused systemic health effects such as cancer or autoimmune disease.”

So gel-filled breast implants came back, but unfortunately, the idea of “human adjuvant disease” never really went away.

Dr. Yehuda Shoenfeld and Vaccines

Dr. Shoenfeld is the latest to blame adjuvants for causing disease.

“At present, there is no evidence to suggest that ASIA syndrome is a viable explanation for unusual autoimmune diseases.”

David Hawkes on Revisiting adverse reactions to vaccines: A critical appraisal of Autoimmune Syndrome Induced by Adjuvants (ASIA)

It has helped him to become very well known among the modern anti-vaccine movement, a hero to some, who use his new vaccine-associated autoimmune diseases as a reason to scare parents away from vaccinating and protecting their kids.

That’s despite the fact that ASIA has been rejected by the NVICP as a basis for vaccine injury and is dismissed by most medical experts.

Dr. Yehuda Shoenfeld Studies

Among the studies published by Dr. Yehuda Shoenfeld include:

  • Human papilloma virus and lupus: the virus, the vaccine and the disease.
  • Journal of Autoimmunity. Seasonality and autoimmune diseases: The contribution of the four seasons to the mosaic of autoimmunity.
  • Current Opinions in Rheumatology. Autoimmune/Inflammatory Syndrome Induced by Adjuvants and Thyroid Autoimmunity.
  • Lupus.Autoimmune/inflammatory syndrome induced by adjuvants (Shoenfeld’s syndrome) – An update.
  • Immunologic Research. Phospholipid supplementation can attenuate vaccine-induced depressive-like behavior in mice.
  • Behavioral abnormalities in female mice following administration of aluminum adjuvants and the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine Gardasil.
  • Immunologic Research. Pancreatitis after human papillomavirus vaccination: a matter of molecular mimicry.
  • Israel Medical Association Journal. Autoimmune/Inflammatory Syndrome Induced by Adjuvants and Sjögren’s Syndrome.
  • Immunologic Research. Adjuvants and lymphoma risk as part of the ASIA spectrum.
  • Journal of Autoimmunity. Immunization with hepatitis B vaccine accelerates SLE-like disease in a murine model.
  • Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia With Chronic Fatigue After HPV Vaccination as Part of the “Autoimmune/Auto-inflammatory Syndrome Induced by Adjuvants”: Case Report and Literature Review.
  • Immunity, autoimmunity and inflammatory bowel disease.
  • Lupus. When APS (Hughes syndrome) met the autoimmune/inflammatory syndrome induced by adjuvants (ASIA).
  • Brief report: immune factors in autism: a critical review.

So, among the things that Shoenfeld seems to link to vaccine adjuvants include the development of primary ovarian insufficiency, depression, autism, pancreatitis, rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, Sjögren syndrome, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, subacute thyroiditis, antiphospholipid syndrome, transverse myelitis, lymphoma, POTS, and antiphospholipid antibody syndrome.

How does he do it? Mostly through experiments on mice and small case reports.

Also it seems, sometimes by a little misdirection.

“A cohort study was performed to assess the risk of new onset autoimmune disease in young women exposed to human papillomavirus-16/18 AS04-adjuvanted vaccine in the United Kingdom (55). The study reported an incidence rate ratio (95% CI) of 3.75 (1.25–11.31) for autoimmune thyroiditis among females.”

Yehuda Shoenfeld on Autoimmune/Inflammatory Syndrome Induced by Adjuvants and Thyroid Autoimmunity

Shoenfeld’s article on “Autoimmune/Inflammatory Syndrome Induced by Adjuvants and Thyroid Autoimmunity,” actually cites a study which concluded that “There was no evidence of an increased risk of AD in women aged 9 to 25 years after AS04-HPV-16/18 vaccination.”

Dr. Yehuda Shoenfeld Controversies

The CMSRI funded the research and sponsored the conference that showcased Shoenfeld's work.
The CMSRI funded the research and sponsored the conference that showcased Shoenfeld’s work.

Among the biggest problems with the work of Dr. Shoenfeld are claims that:

  • he receives funding for his research from the Children’s Medical Safety Research Institute, who’s founder once said that “Vaccines are a holocaust of poison on our children’s brains and immune systems.” Even his book, Vaccines and Autoimmunity, was funded by the CMSRI. His conferences are also sponsored by the CMSRI, including the International Congress on Autoimmunity and the International Symposium on Vaccines.
  • he seems to get many of his studies published in what experts describe as predatory open access journals
  • he seems to get many of his studies published in journals on which he sits on the journal’s editorial board, a potential conflict of interest, including Autoimmunity Reviews (founder and editor), the Journal of Autoimmunity (co-editor), and the Israel Medical Association Journal (founder and editor), Immunologic Research (topic editor for Immunoregulation and Autoimmunity), Lupus (Editorial Board). It is usually considered a better practice to get an outside editor in these situations, instead of editing your own articles.
  • at least one of the journals he edits, Autoimmunity Reviews, is said to be very sympathetic to anti-vaccine studies
  • he serves as an expert witness in vaccine injury lawsuits, another potential conflict of interest
  • at least one Shoenfeld study was retracted after it was published
  • none of his ASIA studies are in more high impact journals, such as The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases, or Annual Review of Immunology, etc.
  • many of his collaborators are also funded by CMSRI

The biggest issue is that adjuvants in vaccines are being made to be seen as a problem by anti-vaccine folks, even as Shoenfeld claims that “vaccines are beneficial for the vast majority of subjects including those who suffer from autoimmune-rheumatic diseases,” and even he finds problems in only “a small minority of individuals.”

“It reminds us that due to the ubiquitous nature of the innate and adaptive response, that there are a large number of diseases that have either an inflammatory and/or specific autoimmune response, we have to keep an open eye because everything is potentially autoimmune until proven otherwise.”

Yehuda Shoenfeld on Everything is Autoimmune Until Proven Otherwise

It was another Shoenfeld study that suggested that the HPV vaccine could cause primary ovarian insufficiency. Shoenfeld’s “link” between the HPV vaccine and primary ovarian insufficiency was based on a review of only three case studies, for which he was the expert witness in lawsuits for two of the cases!

Shoenfeld's article in Vaccine about behavioral problems after HPV vaccination was withdrawn because of serious concerns regarding the scientific soundness of the article.
Shoenfeld’s article in Vaccine about behavioral problems after HPV vaccination was withdrawn because of “serious concerns regarding the scientific soundness of the article.”

Most importantly, many studies have failed to confirm Shoenfeld’s link between the HPV vaccine and primary ovarian insufficiency and much of his other work:

Like his idea of novel vaccine-associated autoimmune disease (ASIA), which he still pushes, it was proven otherwise.

Dr. Shoenfeld Is on the Wrong Side of the Vaccine Debate

Dr. Shoenfeld’s characterization of the vaccine debate will likely surprise many of his followers.

“On the one hand, we find anti-vaccination movements, which divulge and disseminate misleading information, myths, prejudices, and even frauds, with the main aim of denying that vaccination practices represent a major public health measure, being effective in controlling infectious diseases and safeguarding the wellbeing of entire communities.”

Shoenfeld et al. on Debate on vaccines and autoimmunity: Do not attack the author, yet discuss it methodologically

His characterization that most vaccine safety research is potentially biased because it is “mainly financed and sponsored by pharmaceutical industries” is also surprising, or maybe just ironic, considering of where he gets his funding.

“Instead of focusing on methodological issues and content, the ‘‘prevailing wisdom” has put to rest any view that would contradict the sacred ‘‘doctrine” of vaccinology.”

Shoenfeld et al. on Debate on vaccines and autoimmunity: Do not attack the author, yet discuss it methodologically

His conclusions of why his studies are criticized are also very wrong.

“…we feel that the continued presentation of a theory without evidence in both medico-legal and scientific forums is detrimental to the exploration of further understanding of the causational factors of a patient’s condition.”

D. Hawkes et al. on Response to: HPV vaccine and autoimmunity

It is the “actual science” of his studies that is “being methodologically assessed and critiqued.” And it has been found to be lacking.

What To Know About Dr. Yehuda Shoenfeld

With funding from the CMSRI and the Zabludowicz Center for Autoimmune Diseases, Dr. Yehuda Shoenfeld has folks falsely believing that adjuvants in vaccines are causing autoimmune diseases – his Autoimmune Syndrome Induced by Adjuvants (ASIA).

More About Dr. Yehuda Shoenfeld