Comment

Katie Couric Puts the Anti-Vaccination Movement Into the Mainstream

22
goddamnedfrank12/05/2013 2:45:39 pm PST

re: #18 LauraNo

I don’t think I expressed ire, either. I am not against vaccines but I dislike the vitriol I see aimed at people who don’t trust Pharma and the CDC, FDA, NIH, whoever and I just thought that if Katie must back up every assertion, so should everyone else.

This is pedantic and stupid. The FDA approval process requires proof of efficacy in double blind studies overseen by independent review boards. Moreover any and all adverse events must be statistically analyzed such that the risks to the population as a whole cannot outweigh the benefits.

The CDC, etc. are in it for the money these days it seems. They go from industry jobs to Congress to lobby firms and retire with millions/ billions after pushing anything they can on consumers that they can patent.

LOL. Your fantasy scenario of the oversight process is a ridiculous caricature, for one thing the CDC plays no role in which vaccines and drugs are approved. The FDA and IRB personnel are often career scientists within those particular orgs, and they get paid whether or not they approve any particular drug. Very few of the scientists ever get involved in lobbying and almost none ever make it to Congress (how were you even able to type this with a straight face?) I’ve worked on drug trials from the big pharma end and there’s really no room to make adverse events disappear from view. There’s multiple layers of redundancy and all data is inputted, reviewed, verified several times before it hits the biostatisticians and clinical research analysts. Even after that the data is subject to random audits that go back to the originating clinic’s records, any kind of systemic fraud would be very, very difficult to pull off in that environment.