Vaccines for public good or private profit?
Those of us used to trawling medical literature have long since come to the view that disease prevalence rates used to justify a vaccine’s introduction, have about as much credibility as a self-combusted crystal ball. The numbers quoted are usually imaginatively inflated, or a result of appallingly badly designed studies. This has been a provable pattern since statistical sculpturing tactics, which were used to inflate polio infection data during the 1950’s, were first revealed in 1960 (PMID 13857182). With previous jury-rigging in mind, the recent announcement that the number of AIDS cases in India, is only half of the earlier estimates, came as no surprise. Neither were we surprised to find that when the formula which the CDC used to over-inflate the numbers of hepatitis B cases in India was asked for, the CDC had to admit that it had gone “missing”. (PMID 15547938) Also, while the WHO used to advise mass vaccination for hepatitis B if the prevalence was more than 2 per 100, that advice has been dropped in favour of mass vaccination everywhere, regardless of disease incidence.