In the past week the Government Funded scientific review organisation Cochrane has released an updated review on the safety and efficacy studies for the MMR/V Vaccines.
The review looks at 138 different studies, 51 of which look at the effectiveness of the vaccine and 87 which study the safety of the vaccines.
They concluded that:
‘Overall we think that existing evidence on the safety and effectiveness of MMR/MMRV/MMR+V vaccines supports their use for mass immunisation [1]
So shall we take a look at the actual review and see how they came to this conclusion. I assure you its well worth reading on.
The Review Summary
The reviews purpose was to ‘assess the effectiveness, safety, and long‐ and short‐term adverse effects associated with the trivalent vaccine, containing measles, rubella, mumps strains (MMR), or concurrent administration of MMR vaccine and varicella vaccine (MMR+V), or tetravalent vaccine containing measles, rubella, mumps, and varicella strains (MMRV), given to children aged up to 15 years.'[2]
Below is a fancy little infographic from their website[1] summarizing the conclusion:
So all seems pretty promising, no evidence found to support a link between the MMR vaccine and Autism disorders and the overall effectiveness of the vaccine as good. They also found no evidence to support a link between the MMR/V Vaccines and a number of conditions including asthma, cognitive delay, encephalitis, type 1 diabetes, crohn’s disease and eczema, just to name a few.
So, what am I talking about then, please read on.
The Review
The first thing we have to point out is while we were expecting some new bombshell of a study that used double-blind placebo trials between entirely unvaccinated children and vaccinated children to be included in their ‘new evidence’, there isn’t. This is a using the same old studies we have all seen already, comparing vaccinated children against vaccinated children + MMR/V Vaccine.
But nevertheless, lets look at the ‘actual’ review, not the front page summary with its fancy info-graphics and its deceptive conclusions, but the review itself.
The first which really is concerning is the ‘certainty of evidence’ on both the effectiveness and even more so the safety studies. While the fancy little infographic stated that accuracy of evidence for effectiveness of the MMR/V was moderate, this mainly comes from the varicella element which was rated as high accuracy evidence. But what the infographic didn’t tell you is that the majority of the accuracy for evidence on the effectiveness of the other three elements was pretty poor as you can see below:
So effectiveness of the Measles, Mumps & Rubella vaccine was determined effective based on an evidence base which they overwhelmingly rated as Low accuracy.
If your like me, i’ll assume your thinking that the accuracy of the safety studies will of course be of much higher accuracy – after all safety is paramount, right?
Lets take a look:
Low Accuracy Evidence is Not Evidence
Whether or not you vaccinate is not the topic here, this should concern both sides off the vaccine debate. If the vast majority the studies in review are deemed Moderate accuracy at best, and more often than not Low accuracy evidence, its not evidence.
To then conclude that:
‘Overall we think that existing evidence on the safety and effectiveness of MMR/MMRV/MMR+V vaccines supports their use for mass immunisation [1]
is either intentionally misleading or unbelievable incompetence, in either case it’s worrying to say the least.
The studies contained within the review have been individually picked apart over the years and that isn’t really the issue here. Cochrane are used by Governments and Health Organisations to sift through all the scientific studies and summarize the entirety of the scientific knowledge available. These reviews are significant and do direct policy and decision making within our Government and Health authorities.
Ask yourself this, if a car had gone through hundreds of safety checks and although the manufacturer said it was safe, the studies were publically stated as being low accuracy – would you buy it?
When it comes to a product which is going to be used on entire populations, a product reaching the bloodstreams of billions of people you expect ‘High’ to ‘Very High’ evidence accuracy.
If such high standard of evidence doesn’t exist, don’t make claims based on them and start funding some real high quality studies!
