Cancer for Christmas

ACIP’s Santa gift to children

I had the dementia vaccine this year. It was a no-brainer. I’ve decreased my chances of getting dementia by about 20%.¹ No other anti-dementia intervention comes close. Oh, yes, it also slashes my shingles risk, so I don’t end up like Santa above.

Many vaccines have long-term benefits that exceed their boon of just not getting infected, or suppressing the short-term consequences of infection. And as always, this is about the balance of risk.

Mass vaccination clearly protects those around you—and also people who can’t be vaccinated. Vaccines also have ‘heterologous’ effects that likely convey huge overall benefits. For example, measles vaccination lowers mortality from non-measles infections.² But wait! There’s even more.

Measles vaccine slashes your risk of getting the rare-but-monstrous condition subacute sclerosing panencephalitis. And at least two vaccines are anti-cancer. We know that the HPV vaccine can effectively eliminate cancer of the cervix, currently a common killer. Also throat cancer. Hepatitis B vaccine is a powerful long-term preventer of liver cancer, especially if given to vulnerable newborns. And the benefit-to-risk ratio for both is massively in favour of vaccination. These are the facts. It’s about the numbers, not emotive arguments. We’ll look at the arguments and the numbers in a moment.

I’ve already described how the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has been turned into an anti-vax zombie^⌘ by RFK Jr. Now the Advisory Committee on Immunization practices (ACIP) has lurched a further step into zombieland.

Children will Die

That sounds so emotive, doesn’t it? Actually it’s just a clear prediction, based on a solid model of what will happen, and the facts that inform it. That’s the way it will be.

In one sense, ACIP’s recent decision to stop universal hepatitis B vaccination for every child when they are born is just a small thing. Hundreds more children will now get hep B quite unnecessarily every year, and many of these will go on to develop cirrhosis and cancer, and die. But let’s face it, this is small in the face of the dumb decisions already made by the current US government.

Stopping USAID will not only diminish the power of the US over the rest of the world, but will also kill millions over the next 5 years. Current calculations put the number of adult deaths at over 100,000, and the child deaths at over a quarter of a million—so far. Bad decision making by Trump in 2020 arguably dragged the US from its pre-eminent position as the most pandemic-prepared country in the world down to resemble countries like Brazil and Argentina. And, oh yes, a million Americans died unnecessarily.

So who’s really bothered about a few hundred more sick children? Small potatoes, surely?

Just the start

A year ago, I made a number of predictions about where the USA will go. Many of these are already coming to fruition. One concerned the progressive removal of vaccines, and this is now happening.

We can anticipate that many other childhood cripplers and killers will return. Measles already seems to be back, but give it a few years, and we’ll almost certainly see polio returning in force, pertussis killing babies, RSV likewise, and many more. Haemophilus influenza B (HiB) will rise up, injure and kill. Likewise for invasive pneumococcal disease, and invasive meningococcal disease. Rotavirus. It’s likely that tetanus will flourish, and diphtheria will rise zombie-like from the grave. Killing the HBV vaccine is just the start. So let’s look more closely.

What were they thinking?

ACIP has just taken the US back to pre 1991. As Your Local Epidemiologist points out, this is based on (a) no new evidence, and (b) ignoring clear benefits. Actual scientists at the CDC weren’t even allowed into the room to present evidence. ACIP:

1. Reverted to the pre-1991 ‘risk-based’ approach. This is not sensible, or evidence-based.

2. Recommended that parents ask for an antibody test before doses 2 and/or 3. This is not evidence-based, either.

3. Increased the general level of confusion about vaccines.

There’s a detailed Evidence Collective fact-check available if you wish to read more. Remarkably, things could have been worse. Some of these child killers wanted to remove HBV vaccination completely.

What does the evidence support?

HBV vaccination is unequivocally beneficial. It is 90% effective in preventing infection around the time of birth. The vaccine risks are minuscule: less than one in 600,000 risk of a severe allergic reaction. A placebo-controlled, randomized clinical trial supports HBV vaccination. There are no new data that lead us to reverse the 1991 decision for universal HBV vaccination at birth.

You can read the Evidence Collective ‘prebunk’ for more information.

What’s the bottom line?

The people who are running the show in the US have abandoned Science. There is still some hope, because pushback against them is increasing. Sadly, many more deaths will likely be required before sanity resumes, if it ever does.

Science^⌘ is what pulled us and our children out of the mud in the past few centuries, especially the last. Abandon your grip on science, and you slump back into the slough of stupid.

The rest of us have a choice. We can follow the crazy people, or we can strive even harder to understand, promote and do good science. Retain our grip.

Ask not what Science can do for you ...

My 2c, Dr Jo.

Image at start was constructed using Gemini Nano Banana Pro.

^{⌘ This flags one of my other posts, where you can read more.}

1. This is presented well in ScienceDaily. The original study is in Nature. The estimated absolute effect size was 3.5% over 7 years, NNT 29.

2. And likely also BCG vaccination. To be scrupulously honest, there is equivocal evidence from Africa that DTP vaccination given before other vaccines may be harmful. A more recent study suggests this was an artefact.