The Haunted House: A Thought Experiment | D. Wolf

In my previous article I discussed the type of science that led the orthodox medical establishment to dismiss the vaccine-autism link. A TLS reader, who goes by the name Frum Statistician raised several objections to my analysis. In this article, I will address his concerns.

WHAT DO WE REALLY KNOW ABOUT THE SAFETY OF VACCINES?

In my previous article, I cited a well known and highly regarded retrospective cohort study known as the Nurses Health Study (NHS). At the turn of the 21st century, the NHS showed that women taking hormone replacement therapy (H.R.T) were significantly less likely to experience a heart attack. Based on this study (and several other similar studies) America’s leading medical institutions had all recommended that older women take H.R.T as a means to ward off heart disease. Experts estimate that over 15 million women took the drug annually, with 5 million older women taking it solely for the perceived cardiovascular benefit. It was only after 17 years and two double blind placebo controlled trials that the initial recommendations were retracted. In my article, I argued that a healthy dose of skepticism need be applied to the current study that is being used to debunk the vaccine-autism link as it suffers from the same methodological flaws as the NHS.

Frum Statistician argues that I “bring one example where a retrospective cohort study was flawed.. the fact that one such study may have been flawed does not show that all such studies are incorrect.”

The discipline of epidemiology is riddled with enough failures to fill an entire book. I chose the Nurses Health Study to demonstrate my point because it was one of the largest retrospective studies ever conducted. It was also one of the most highly regarded and renowned studies at the time (before it was debunked). Moreover, nearly all of the mainstream medical institutions not only accepted the results as scientific fact, they relied on it to recommend H.R.T to millions of women to reduce the risk of heart attack. Life went on as usual until the results of a real placebo controlled trial came out. In 1998 and then again in 2002, two double blind placebo controlled trials demonstrated an increased risk (rather than a decreased risk) of heart disease in women taking H.R.T. As a bonus, they also showed an increased risk of stroke, cancer and blood clots. This is known as the law of unintended consequences.

A SCIENTIST TAKES ON A STATISTICIAN

Frum Stat, you are correct when you say that the Nurses Health Study was flawed, however you are incorrect to imply that it was just this specific study that was flawed. It is the very nature of a retrospective cohort study that is flawed and unreliable. The researchers back then also believed they had eliminated every possible bias, but they failed. In fact, if we were able to anticipate and quantify every possible bias, there’d be no need to ever conduct a double blind placebo controlled trial. Even scientists are human and it is precisely for this reason that double blind placebo controlled trials are necessary and are known as the “gold standard” in scientific research. Moreover, even after it became clear to scientists that the NHS was flawed, scientists still could not unanimously agree to a specific bias present in the study, demonstrating how difficult it is to detect these biases even after knowing they are present. Imagine what biases could be missed when you don’t even know there’s one to look for.

Additionally, you offer no hard logic to support your position beyond implying that “this time is different”. This reminds me of a thief who is taken into custody after being caught stealing for the 3rd time. Begging to be released, he promises the police officer “trust me, things will be different next time” to which the police officer responds “I’ve heard that one before” as he whisks him away to his prison cell.

The current study being used to refute the vaccine-autism link and the NHS are both retrospective cohort studies. Besides for the NHS proving the inadequacy of such a study, I believe now, more than ever, that it is crucial to conduct a real study to examine the link between vaccines and autism for the following reasons:

  • The medical establishment relied on the Nurses Health Study to recommend that women take H.R.T to reduce heart attack risk. The current medical establishment is relying on the vaccine-autism study to coerce parents into following the vaccine schedule.
  • In the Nurses Health Study, the therapy was administered to older women, way past the prime of their lives. If it harmed them in any way, they still will have lived most of their lives without incident. In contrast, the vaccine-autism study is being used to rationalize injecting one day old babies with vaccines. If indeed our assumption about the safety of vaccines is wrong, it will negatively impact every facet of the child’s life forever.
  • Today we inject tens of millions of children with vaccines every year whereas most of the population will never take H.R.T.
  • In the Nurses Health Study there was no empirical evidence to question the outcome of the trial. Regarding vaccines however, there are thousands of parental reports of regression after bringing their child to be vaccinated.
  • In the ensuing years after women began taking H.R.T to lower their risk of heart disease, there was no visible rise in the overall rate of heart attacks in the country, whereas today, we are witnessing the most dramatic increase in autism (from about 1 in 5,000 to 1 in 50) at a time when vaccine use has exploded.

You also critique the fact that I dismissed the study “without actually showing that any of those biases exist for this study”. If you look at my original article, I actually did show what biases exist in the study. Perhaps you got lost in the statistical jargon that I was using? I apologize, my intention was never to confuse you like that. I’ll try to bring out my point in the simplest possible way in the following paragraph.

Suppose we follow a group of 1,000 children for ten years to see whether vaccines cause autism. At the end of ten years it turns out that 500 children were fully vaccinated and 500 children were partially vaccinated. If vaccines increase one’s risk of developing autism and we assume a 10% autism rate in the general population, we might expect 70 children in the fully vaccinated group to be diagnosed with autism and only 30 children in the partially vaccinated group. But if at the end of the trial each group has exactly 50 autistic kids we would conclude that vaccines must not contribute to autism. Right? Wrong! Since this is a retrospective cohort study in which the parents get to decide when to give and when to withhold vaccinations (“self selection”), any parent can decide at any time to stop vaccinating. But why would a parent who has already given some vaccines stop giving the rest? A primary reason would be because the parent suspects that the child was injured by a vaccine. The more parents that stop giving vaccines because of a suspected vaccine injury (such as autism), the more autistic children end up in the partially vaccinated group. Since data on fully unvaccinated children is conveniently absent, you’d arrive at the erroneous conclusion that vaccines do not contribute to autism when in reality the only reason those extra 20 children are in the partially vaccinated group is due to vaccine inflicted autism. Not only is this bias logically plausible, in my previous letter I demonstrate how the discrepancy in vaccination rates between children with vs. children without a sibling with autism clearly points to this bias (Note: My example above is overly simplified to help illustrate the bias).

Notwithstanding the aforementioned methodological flaws, you insist on supporting the “pro-vaxx” position because “there are a lot of studies from a number of different countries.. and all show no difference in autism between vaccinated and unvaccinated children so pro-vaxx are not relying on that one study”. The other studies you refer to are part of the same class of epidemiology, except that they are far less reliable even than retrospective cohort studies. You remind me of a child who walks into a toy store to purchase a bike. When the owner quotes a price of $100 the child tries to bargain the owner down to $85. The owner insists that he cannot sell the bike for less than $100. The child then goes ahead and asks if he would sell it to him for $50. Using a more inferior type of study to support a badly designed study isn’t scientific, it’s  foolish. It’s like trying to fill the hole of a bagel with another bagel hole. Even worse, you are deceiving the uninformed public with your claim that all studies support the notion that vaccines do not cause autism. Why don’t we take a look at some of the data?

THE DEVIL IS IN THE DATA

It is no secret that there’s a strong anti-vaxx sentiment among many of the Jewish Orthodox communities in the U.S. If you think vaccination rates are low among the Jewish Orthodox communities in the U.S, it’s even lower in the Jewish ultra-orthodox communities in Jerusalem, Israel. In fact, you might recall that In 2003 and 2004, two measles outbreaks occurred almost exclusively in Jewish ultra-orthodox communities in Jerusalem. While the media had a heyday reporting on each new instance of measles, they conveniently ignored another vital piece of information. Haaretz cited a report (by Dr. Mitchell Shertz) that found that “autism among children and youth in the ultra-Orthodox and Arab communities is considerably less common than in the rest of Israeli society”. Specifically, the study found that “autism is two or three times less common among Arab and ultra-Orthodox children compared to those in the secular and national-religious communities.” Researchers ruled out the possibility that under-reporting or under-diagnosis was responsible for this gap. The study was based on the data of more than 450,000 children in the HMO which found an average rate of autism in secular communities of 5.5 – 9 per 1,000 children compared to an average rate of only 2.5 cases per 1,000 in the ultra-Orthodox society.

Isaac Newton stated: “We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.” The idea that Ultra Orthodox Jews are less likely to vaccinate would be simple and sufficient to explain the discrepancy in ASD diagnoses among the Ultra Orthodox population vs. the secular Israeli population, yet this possibility has been completely ignored by the media and the mainstream medical establishment.

Ignoring, distorting or cherry picking the data that does not hew to our previous conception is not science, it’s pseudoscience. Unlike many others, I do not shy away from presenting my audience with all facts on the ground. I believe everybody has the right to be informed and base their decision on real knowledge. While I don’t believe vaccines are the only factor in the recent rise in autism, I do believe it is difficult to ignore its contribution.

You mentioned that I “quote one study and then simply dismiss it because one author may have some second degree connections to pharmacy companies..”. No, I didn’t dismiss it because of the author’s affiliation with vaccine-distributing pharmaceutical companies. In fact, I explicitly stated that I’m only dismissing it due to the flawed nature of this type of study. In my original article, I wrote “The fact that Anjali Jain, MD.. is affiliated with.. an organization with deep ties to pharmaceutical firms.. is almost irrelevant here because the rest of the science is so flawed, as I will explain shortly”. Now, in case that wasn’t clear enough I’ll repeat myself; I’m dismissing the study only because it was flawed, not because of the author’s affiliation with pharmaceutical firms.

Regarding the study I cited that encompassed 666 school children which found a nearly 500% increase in autism in the partially/fully vaccinated compared to the completely unvaccinated group, you present a number of reasons why the study was flawed and cannot be relied on “as evidence for anything at all, let alone a claim as strong as an autism-vaccine link”. I agree with you that it can’t be used as evidence to link vaccines to autism, however I never attempted to do that. In fact, I explicitly stated that “Whether you choose to accept the conclusion of this study.. is irrelevant..”. I only mentioned this study because it was after reading it that the bias of self selection became clear to me (as it was the only way to reconcile the self-contradictory outcome of the study). As I indicated in my article, you are free to ignore the study, but you can’t ignore the bias I describe. Since the rest of your critique is related to that study, which is largely irrelevant to my thesis, I won’t bother addressing it. I did find it amusing that the substance of your critique focused on the two parts of my article that I clearly mentioned were not relevant.

THE HAUNTED HOUSE: A THOUGHT EXPERIMENT

A good way to illustrate the current thinking on vaccine safety is as follows:

Imagine you observe person A walking into an empty house at 4 PM. At 4:30 person B walks in and exits through the back door 20 minutes later. After observing the above you walk into the house and encounter person A no longer alive. No shots had been fired and there are no visible wounds on the victim’s body. DNA tests turn out negative. You wonder who was responsible for A’s death. Was it person B or did he die on his own? At first you might give person B the benefit of the doubt. If you were a scientist you might take a more scientific approach that correlation does not imply causation. Now imagine that on the following day person C walks into the building at 4 PM. At 4:30 person B enters the house and exits 20 minutes later. When you walk into the building next, you encounter person C no longer alive. Once again, no shots have been fired and there are no visible wounds on the victim’s body. DNA tests turn out negative. Again, you wonder who killed person C. The following day, this episode repeats itself. Even a diehard statistician will not walk into that building alone.

Until the medical establishment agrees to conduct the necessary research, we won’t know for certain whether vaccines cause autism, SIDS or any one of the other neurological diseases so prevalent today. In the absence of any real scientific research, it should be understandable why many in our community (and in other communities around the world) choose not to vaccinate because they are skeptical of an inadequately tested vaccine (or because of a previous vaccine injury). It is my sincere hope that this article will help foster a better understanding between both schools of thought and put an end to the inequitable treatment of those who choose a different path than us to keep their children healthy.

Respectfully,

D. Wolf

For questions or feedback please contact D. Wolf at: [email protected]

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25 COMMENTS

  1. Not taking sides in the vaccine argument, with the utmost respect, I don’t understand the haunted house illustration at all.

    You are bringing an example which has a 100 percent result of death (or 50 if you count Mr. B). That is why ” Even a diehard statistician will not walk into that building alone.”

    If 500 million people walked into that house and 10,000 died, I would guess a diehard statistician would walk into that house if there was some very good reason or benefit of doing so.

  2. It is not that there hasn’e been reseacrch done, it is just that you refuse to accept any research that doesn’t reach your forgone conclusion.

  3. Thank you for taking the time to explain this issue to well. It’s so important for people to have the proper awareness about the dangers of not vaccinating.

  4. I think that the author’s point of the haunted house is: if you were a scientist, you might take a more scientific approach: that correlation does not imply causation.

    What that means is the murder will remain unsolved even though you might believe that somehow the man was murdered, with no poison or anything else in his system and no visible attacks.

    So we perceive an event that implies a correlation of facts, albeit with some perhaps apparently unknown, caused his death.

    The conclusion for me is: The science is a double-edged sword. It can work or not work for either side of the vaccine controversy. Perhaps at a later date, we will find out that the vaccine is more harmful than previously shown or vice-versa. At the end of the day, it is the person’s perception that drives his conclusion whether to “walk in the house or not”. Even science cannot provide a definitive conclusion at this time.

    Having said that I will end with this: Essentially nobody can truthfully take either side.

    BTW: Did anyone notice anybody entering and leaving through a window, did we prove that nobody entered and exited through a window?

  5. Sorry didn’t have a chance yet to read his very long and interesting looking article. If the idea is that studies can be manipulated and are never conclusive simply because its not possible for humans to be all knowing and even accidentally flaws can slip into data easily, then I agree wholeheartedly.

  6. I’m not taking sides in this debate since I don’t have enough information.
    D. Wolf debunks the conventional doctor’s claim that anti-vaxxers are uninformed hysterical people who simply don’t care about the health of others. This is a cogent, intelligent, & well-written piece which once again proves to me that some anti-vaxxers are actually highly intelligent & responsible people. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. (there actually may be more hysteria on the pro vaxxer side)

    • I think that some people think that the term “anti-vaxxer” means anti the people who vax!! “anti-vaxxer” actually means a person who does not want to vaccinate himself or his children. Nothing to do with the ones who do vaccinate.

  7. R wolf
    Thank you for coming out and starting this very important conversation. We need to have conversations to bring the truth to light this is not something that should be swept under the carpet I was vaccine injured at 2 years old and after a long road of learning the hard way I’ve recovered and since my family has not vaccinated in over 30 years we’ve had no history of any disease or infection

  8. Interesting that you try to bring in Schertz’s study as a “proof” of your view when in fact it does the opposite. Before I get to why it in fact is a disproof of the autism-vaccine link, I will briefly discuss that research and some similar research.

    I was not able to find Schertz’s original research as it seems to have been a unpublished conference presentation from 2014, but the Haaretz article describing the findings note that Schertz himself attributed it to maternal age -Charedim and Arabs start having children at younger ages than secular Jews in Israel which leads to a smaller percentage of children being born to 35+ year old mothers and maternal age of 35+ is linked to higher autism rates- and not to vaccines. I am pretty sure that the reason the paper was never published is that at the same time another group of researchers was working on a similar paper in Israel, only this second group was given access to Israel’s full national healthcare database and a full population survey beats any sampling method since sampling methods are only used because we usually do not have access to full population data. Therefore Schertz’s study which was a sample based study became redundant.

    This other study – Raz, Weisskopf et al (can be found in Journal of Autism and Devepment Disorders, April 2015) found the same results as Schertz, that both Charedim and Israeli Arabs have much lower rates of autism than secular Jews in Israel. So both Schertz’s study (to the extent that I could find any information on it) and the Raz, Weisskopf et al study agree that Charedim and Israel Arabs have lower autism rates than secular Israeli Jews.

    But this very result is evidence against any autism-vaccine link. You know why? Because Israeli Arabs vaccinate at higher rates than secular Israeli Jews. Yes, you saw correctly, Israeli Arabs vaccinate at higher rates than Israeli Jews overall, and in those studies that separate Charedim and secular Jews, Arab vaccination rates are even higher than secular Israeli Jews. If there was a vaccine autism link then Israeli Arabs should have the highest autism rates, not the lowest (their rates are even lower than Charedim).

    If you want the data that Israeli Arabs vaccinate at higher rates, there are articles from Haaretz and Forward in September 2011 referencing a Ministry of Health report. As to published studies (in reverse order of publication) there is Stein-Zamir and Israeli (Euro Surveillance, Feb 2019), Stein-Zamir and Israeli (Human Vaccines and Immunotherapeutics, August 2017), Rubin, Belmaker et al (The Lancet, June 2017) and Yitshak-Sade, Davidovitch et al (Ethnicity and Health, October 2016).

  9. Has anyone noticed that the MMR vaccine insert says: “has not been evaluated for carcinogenic or mutogenic potential, or potential to impair fertility.”

    Spooky.

  10. For some odd reason the vaccers all have jobs and busy schedules and we don’t have time to respond to all these unemployed people who have all the time in the world to read all this poison online.

  11. And as far your issues with retrospective studies, yes a Randomized Controlled Trial or RCT is the “Gold Standard” but sometimes that is not feasible or will not get an Insitutional Review Board approval. Sometimes observational and retrospective studies are the only option. Then we do the best we can to adjust for all of the issues you mention. Is it perfect? No, but sometimes we have to do the best we can. “Gold Standard” does not mean it is the only option, just that it is the best option when it is available.

    For example, there has never been an RCT which has found that smoking causes cancer. It would take too long (i.e. too difficult and costly), and at the current time it is unlikely to get IRB approval if someone did want to do one. It is all based on variety observational studies, some retrospective some prospective, some cross-sectional some longitudinal/panel, but all observational. (Recently there have been a few RCT’s on smoking cessation methods and reduction in cancer incidence, but these are more about seeing if it is worth it to spend a lot of money on trying to get people to quit after they have been smoking for years) But you know what, we have had numerous observational studies using data from different countries, using different samples and sampling methodologies, using different statistical methodologies and different adjustments, from different groups of researchers, etc and the consistent result is that smoking is causes lung, throat and mouth cancer.

    Similarly when it comes to vaccines, there have been numerous studies from different countries, different samples, methodologies, research groups, etc, and in this case the consistent result is no link to autism. One study one one topic – such as the menopause HRT study- can be flawed even if it used a large sample size and tried to adjust for “everything”, but when we have numerous studies using different samples, methodologies, etc consistently show a similar result, then I feel confident in saying that this result is correct.

  12. We all don’t know for sure if these vaccines cause Autism or not. But I say even if true…the facts are that the vaccine eradicated all these horrible deceases, for example Polio…When I was growing up as a child I saw so many adults on crutches limping horribly. What do these anti Vaccers want. The percentage of the damage of people getting these horrible deceases are 100 fold or even a million fold percentage of kids getting autism.What are these guys saying??
    Can someone explain?

  13. If anyone wants to know how “studies “are done , read Ben Goldacre book “Bad Medicine” . Most studies are done to get the results the ones in charge would like .
    If you don’t see any vaccine injured kids Look how many Lakewood girls are damaged by the Gardasil vaccine ( coma, seizures, paralysis , neurological issues .. ) kids who have a hard time in school, socially , emotionally , cognitively. do we need more injured children that we will need to care for? And the family falls apart , too. We are looking at the sickest generation , where MOST children, about 90% are vaccine injured . ( yes, that is the number I see )
    Modern medicine became the Idol people swear by, and this is the saddest part of our generation. Every SIDS death is coincidental, even When the baby got vaccinated within days of the vaccine. Don’t we see how we are destroying our own children? Modern medicine hasn’t gotten better , they became more evil cloaked as our savior . Forrest Marradys book “crooked- Man made disease explained “ gives us the history of the sick ideas that became mainstream medicine . When we see people fearful of everything the government wants you to be fearful of … they succeeded in programming you. A sad time for Jews . It’s time to get out of that slumber . We are hurting our own children
    As a mother who was a provaxxer , My wake up call was harsh and painful. To see your kids struggle because of the blind eye you had to the vaccine injury staring you in the face is very painful.
    I hope more people start asking questions, do the research and see the fraud and lies that create modern medicine .

  14. The some odd reason is your warped judgement of people you have no clue about. If you actually do have a job, either it’s due to a miracle or cronyism. I would’nt hire you. If, in fact, I found out that you worked for me, you would be fired immediately. After that let us know if your disingenous conclusion is valid or not. You’ll also have
    plenty of time to brush up on your spelling, grammar and punctuation. Maybe look into some therapy as well. I wish you luck. You need it.

    • I think the author’s original contention is that we should be able to get along with people we disagree with. Just because David K is a little insulting doesn’t mean others should stoop to that level. Our goal is for everyone agree that intelligent people can be on either side of the argument and should not attempt to injure, excommunicate, or insult one another.

  15. We all don’t know for sure if these vaccines cause Autism or not. But I say even if true…the facts are that the vaccine eradicated all these horrible deceases, for example Polio…When I was growing up as a child I saw so many adults on crutches limping horribly. What do these anti Vaccers want. The percentage of the damage of people getting these horrible deceases are 100 fold or even a million fold percentage of kids getting autism.What are these guys saying??
    Can someone explain?
    People were dying like flies in the old days!

    • They haven’t seen the side effects of polio. This is a new generation, one that can afford to fret over the tiny chances of vaccine injuries. If lowered vaccine rates lead to loss of herd immunity, they may r”l rediscover the necessity for themselves.

  16. I’m amazed at how respectful (almost) all the comments are! A big improvement from other times this highly-charged topic has come up. Maybe it’s a COVID-19 side effect. Kudos and keep it up! This will help bring Mashiach bimheira.

  17. When it comes to vaccines anyone notice how the pro-vaccine people bow down to the doctors and pharmaceutical companies . What happen to” you shall have no problem other Gods before me”

    Not anti-vax

    When there is risk there needs to be consent

    • exactly. The people who don’t want to vaccinate are mainly saying that to vaccinate or not should be a decision made between patient and doctor, not something the government mandates.

  18. As an also once provaxxer and the mother of a vaccine injured child,
    I am deeply grateful to D Wolf for his courage in speaking up.

    To all those who want to understand and know and struggle with the diseases vaccines “eradicated” , there is much you can educate yourself with so youll get to the truth.

    You will know the truth when it hits you in the face like it did for me once I started searching…

  19. Here’s a better example than the haunted house:

    Peanuts don’t cause allergies. If your child never eats a nut item, he will never experience anaphylaxis. Give him a PB&J sandwich, he will stop breathing. So can you say that nuts are dangerous and cause allergies? No. Vaccines work the same way. On a side note, I don’t remember autism or peanut allergies in my generation.

    Vaccines don’t cause autism. The huge jump is that autism is a huge umbrella of neuro issues, and it’s easy to call any issue autism now because there’s so much overlap.

    I know autistic kids that never had a shot. I know neurotypical kids that have all their shots. And I know that there’s a bigger genetic issue than blaming a vaccine that has saved millions of lives.

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