Vaccination News Home Page

Letter from Sandy Mintz to the New York Times re: Dr. Miller letter, "Protect the Children"

To the editor:

Dr. Henry Miller, formerly of the FDA, writes that failure to vaccinate significant numbers of children is “America’s dirty little secret”. In fact, America’s dirty little secret is its failure to acknowledge and appropriately study the many vaccine-associated adverse reactions reported to VAERS (The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System). If Dr. Miller really cared about protecting the children, he would direct his ire at those who push the vaccination of healthy children with vaccines of unknown safety, rather than the loving parents who question their use.

David Kessler, former commissioner of the FDA, reported to JAMA that one study showed that only 1% of serious adverse drug reactions are reported to the FDA. A vaccine manufacturer testified to the IOM that it was their experience that passive reporting, which is what VAERS is, results in 50-fold under-reporting (a 2% reporting rate).¹ Others have noted that at best 10% are reported.

Even taking the more conservative 10% rate, according to my research, that would mean at least 880 infants may have died from a vaccine-associated reaction in 1998 alone, including 340 BY THE DAY FOLLOWING VACCINATION².

Coincidence, as the “experts” so blithely claim? Only properly designed research, starting with longitudinal, prospective studies using “never vaccinated” children as controls, will ever determine the truth.

Sandy Mintz, M.A.

Anchorage, Alaska