In a stunning reversal, Dr. Stanley Plotkin, widely regarded as the godfather of modern vaccinology, has co-authored a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine1 (NEJM) acknowledging significant gaps in vaccine safety research and calling for increased funding to address these shortcomings.
This admission comes after decades of the medical establishment insisting that vaccines are among the most thoroughly studied and safest medical interventions. In the paper, titled “Funding Postauthorization Vaccine-Safety Science,”2 they make a series of revelations that validate concerns long raised by vaccine safety advocates. In a commentary, Aaron Siri, managing partner of New York law firm Siri & Glimstad, writes:3
“Wow. After decades of Dr. Stanley Plotkin and his vaccinologist disciples insisting vaccines are the most well studied products on the planet, they just penned an article admitting precisely the opposite.
They just admitted vaccines are not properly studied — neither prelicensure nor post-licensure. They admitted, for example, ‘prelicensure clinical trials have limited sample sizes [and] follow-up durations’ and that ‘there are not resources earmarked for postauthorization safety studies.'”
Key Admissions Shine Light on Lack of Vaccine Safety Studies
One of the most striking admissions in the paper is the acknowledgment that prelicensure clinical trials for vaccines are inadequate for assessing safety. The authors state:4
“Postauthorization studies are needed to fully characterize the safety profile of a new vaccine, since prelicensure clinical trials have limited sample sizes, follow-up durations, and population heterogeneity. It is critical to examine adverse events following immunization (AEFIs) that have not been detected in clinical trials, to ascertain whether they are causally or coincidentally related to vaccination.”
This contradicts previous claims by vaccine proponents that clinical trials provide robust evidence of safety prior to approval. The admission that these trials have limited follow-up periods is particularly notable, as critics have long argued that potential long-term effects of vaccines are not adequately studied before they are approved and recommended for widespread use.
“Let me translate,” Siri writes, “the clinical trials relied upon to license childhood vaccines are useless with regard to safety since they virtually never have a placebo control, typically review safety for days or weeks after injection, and often have far too few participants to measure anything of value.”5
Hellbound and Down 