Journey

Abstract: We performed a retrospective analysis spanning ten years of pediatric practice focused on patients with variable vaccination born into a practice, presenting a unique opportunity to study the effects of variable vaccination on outcomes.

The average total incidence of billed office visits per outcome related to the outcomes were compared across groups (Relative Incidence of Office Visit (RIOV)). RIOV is shown to be more powerful than odds ratio of diagnoses. Full cohort, cumulative incidence analyses, matched for days of care, and matched for family history analyses were conducted across quantiles of vaccine uptake. Increased office visits related to many diagnoses were robust to days-ofcare-matched analyses, family history, gender block, age block, and false discovery risk.

Many outcomes had high RIOV odds ratios after matching for days-of-care (e.g., anemia (6.334), asthma (3.496), allergic rhinitis (6.479), and sinusitis (3.529), all significant under the Z-test).

Developmental disorders were determined to be difficult to study due to extremely low prevalence in the practice, potentially attributable to high rates of vaccine cessation upon adverse events and family history of autoimmunity.

Remarkably, zero of the 561 unvaccinated patients in the study had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) compared to 5.3% of the (partially and fully) vaccinated.

The implications of these results for the net public health effects of whole population vaccination and with respect for informed consent on human health are compelling.

Our results give agency to calls for research conducted by individuals who are independent of any funding sources related to the vaccine industry. While the low rates of developmental disorders prevented sufficiently powered hypothesis testing, it is notable that the overall rate of autism spectrum disorder (0.361%) in the cohort is one-fifth that of the US national rate (1.851%). The practice-wide rate of ADHD was roughly half of the national rate.

The data indicate that unvaccinated children in the practice are not unhealthier than the vaccinated and indeed the overall results may indicate that the unvaccinated pediatric patients in this practice are healthier overall than the vaccinated.

1. CDCa. Data and Statistics about ADHD. Available online: https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/adhd/data.html ^{(( CDCa. Data and Statistics about ADHD. Available online: https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/adhd/data.html (accessed on 9 January 2021). ))}
2. CDCb. Data & Statistics on Autism Spectrum Disorder. Available online: https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/data.html (( CDCb. Data & Statistics on Autism Spectrum Disorder. Available online: https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/data.html (accessed on 9 January 2021). ))

Conclusions We could detect no widespread negative health effects in the unvaccinated other than the rare but significant vaccine-targeted diagnosis. We can conclude that the unvaccinated children in this practice are not, overall, less healthy than the vaccinated and that indeed the vaccinated children appear to be significantly less healthy than the unvaccinated.

We concur with Mawson et al., 2017 ((Mawson, A.R.; Ray, B.D.; Bhuiyan, A.R.; Jacob, B. Pilot comparative study on the health of vaccinated and unvaccinated 6- to 12- year old U.S. children. J. Transl. Sci. 2017, 3, 1–12. )) who reported: “Further research involving larger, independent samples is needed to verify and understand these unexpected findings in order to optimize the impact of vaccines on children’s health.”

We also concur with Hooker and Miller 2020 ^{(( Hooker, B.S.; Miller, N.Z. Analysis of health outcomes in vaccinated and unvaccinated children: Developmental delays, asthma, ear infections and gastrointestinal disorders. SAGE Open Med. 2020, 8, 1–11. ))}, who wrote: “Further study is necessary to understand the full spectrum of health effects associated with childhood vaccination”.

Other pediatric practices with variably vaccinating populations should be studied using a methodology similar to ours to attempt to refute or validate our findings and those of Mawson et al., 2017, Hooker and Miller 2020, and the numerous studies that have reported adverse health following vaccination. We are particularly interested in further study of the relationship between specific vaccines and combination of vaccines on specific outcomes as well as the relationship between the uptake of specific types of vaccines—inactivated, live virus, and aluminum-adjuvanted—with specific outcomes. Larger studies using electronic medical records from major medical institutions should be undertaken by research teams with no financial interest in the outcome of the studies (e.g., revenue from vaccination and from treatment of vaccine-related adverse outcomes).

Unintended and nonspecific consequences of vaccination, such as increased risk of chronic health conditions from vaccine exposures, must also be examined to determine if for any vaccine-targeted infection alternative methods of infection-avoidance or effective treatments that reduce disease sequela are available and preferable to vaccination in various circumstances, as has been reported by Cowling et al., 2012 ^{(( Wolff, G.G. Influenza vaccination and respiratory virus interference among Department of Defense personnel during the 2017–2018 influenza season. Vaccine 2020, 38, 350–354 ))} and by Wolff (Wolff, 2020). Our findings are consistent with the concern that vaccination may increase respiratory virus infection risk, clearly a grave concern in the age of COVID-19.

Our finding of a robust signal of anemia deserves follow up: aluminum is known to bind to transferrin ^{(( Papageorgiou, V.; Vargiami, E.; Kontopoulos, E.; Kardaras, P.; Economou, M.; Athanassiou-Mataxa, M.; Kirkham, F.J.; Zafeiriou, D.I. Association between iron deficiency and febrile seizures. Eur. J. Paediatr. Neurol. 2015, 19, 591–596. ))} and, in so doing, may interfere with the proper deposition of iron in the bones of children. Iron deficiency can also contribute to febrile seizures, a known side effect of some vaccines.

Our society should work to identify safer vaccine schedules and safer adjuvants ^{(( Crépeaux, G.; Gherardi, R.K.; Authier, F.-J. ASIA, chronic fatigue syndrome, and selective low dose neurotoxicity of aluminum adjuvants. J. Allergy Clin. Immunol. Pract. 2018, 6, 707 )) (( Exley, C. An aluminium adjuvant in a vaccine is an acute exposure to aluminium. J. Trace Elements Med. Biol. 2020, 57, 57–59 )) (( Crépeaux, G.; Eidi, H.; David, M.-O.; Baba-Amer, Y.; Tzavara, E.; Giros, B.; Authier, F.-J.; Exley, C.; Shaw, C.A.; Cadusseau, J.; et al. Non-linear dose-response of aluminium hydroxide adjuvant particles: Selective low dose neurotoxicity. Toxicology 2017, 375, 48–57 )) (( Gherardi, R.K.; Crépeaux, G.; Authier, F.-J. Myalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome following immunization: Macrophagic myofasciitis and animal studies support linkage to aluminum adjuvant persistency and diffusion in the immune system. Autoimmun. Rev. 2019, 18, 691–705 )) (( Masson, J.-D.; Crépeaux, G.; Authier, F.-J.; Exley, C.; Gherardi, R.K. Critical analysis of reference studies on the toxicokinetics of aluminum-based adjuvants. J. Inorg. Biochem. 2018, 181, 87–95 )) (( Mold, M.; Umar, D.; King, A.; Exley, C. Aluminium in brain tissue in autism. J. Trace Elem. Med. Biol. 2018, 46, 76–82 )) (( Morris, G.; Puri, B.K.; Frye, R.E. The putative role of environmental aluminium in the development of chronic neuropathology in adults and children. How strong is the evidence and what could be the mechanisms involved? Metab. Brain Dis. 2017, 32, 1335–1355. )) (( Petrik, M.S.; Wong, M.C.; Tabata, R.C.; Garry, R.F.; Shaw, C.A. Aluminum Adjuvant Linked to Gulf War Illness Induces Motor Neuron Death in Mice. NeuroMolecular Med. 2007, 9, 83–100. )) (( Erigolet, M.; Eaouizerate, J.; Ecouette, M.; Ragunathan-Thangarajah, N.; Eaoun-Sebaiti, M.; Gherardi, R.K.; Ecadusseau, J.; Authier, F.-J. Clinical Features in Patients with Long-Lasting Macrophagic Myofasciitis. Front. Neurol. 2014, 5, 230. ))} and to reduce autoimmunity risk by removing unsafe epitopes—peptide sequences from pathogens or human cell line remnants in vaccines that match human proteins in sequence or structure from any tissue ^{(( Lyons-Weiler, J. Pathogenic priming likely contributes to serious and critical illness and mortality in COVID-19 via autoimmunity. J. Transl. Autoimmun. 2020, 3, 1–5. ))} —would seem expeditious, kind, and wise.

Future studies should now focus on the relative incidence of billed office visits, now that it has been shown to be a more sensitive and powerful measure of outcomes with a larger dynamic range than binary yes/no incidence of diagnoses.