Claims by public health agencies and in top medical journals that childhood vaccination prevents millions of deaths annually are based on flawed epidemiological models, according to a paper published today by Correlation, a Canadian nonprofit research organization.
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The author, all-cause mortality expert Denis Rancourt, Ph.D., argues these claims are based on “tentative and untethered models of epidemiological forecasting” that produce “unlikely results.”
The models depend entirely on invalid estimates of vaccine efficacy and disease prevalence and virulence, none of which are based on real-world data concerning actual deaths, according to Rancourt.
They also fail to account for other complex factors contributing to child mortality — particularly in low-income countries, where most of these millions of infant lives are purportedly saved. These factors include nutritional deficiency, toxic exposures and poverty.
Rancourt also found that, contrary to public health claims, there are no examples in all-cause mortality data of a drop in infant or child mortality temporally associated with the rollout of a childhood vaccination program.
On the contrary, he wrote, independent observational studies have tied vaccine rollouts to increased infant or child mortality and morbidity.
In the paper, Rancourt develops an alternative model using yearly all-cause infant mortality. He estimates that childhood vaccination campaigns since 1974 may have been associated with approximately 100 million vaccine-related deaths.
However, he emphasizes that any true estimate of mortality would also have to account for other factors, such as the shifting political and economic dynamics that drive poverty and its associated health problems.
Children’s Health Defense Senior Research Scientist Karl Jablonowski said, ”Rancourt points out serious flaws in mainstream debates over childhood vaccination that are premised on errors in generalization and lead to childlike black-and-white thinking when it comes to vaccine safety.”
Jablonowski said the paper clearly demonstrates that claims vaccines have saved millions of lives globally, “hang on a few impossible assumptions.” Those include:
- That no human can die from a vaccine (directly or indirectly).
- That children who die from a “vaccine-preventable” pathogen were otherwise perfectly healthy.
- That we understand how diseases spread in all contexts.
- That all children have the same health, diet, exercise habits, access to clean water, toxin and environmental exposures, genetic disposition, etc., as the clinical trial participants.
- That clinical trials accurately represent the risks and benefits of the vaccine.
- That once a vaccine is developed, all other medical interventions suddenly stop working.
Rancourt said he began writing the paper to demonstrate the “ludicrous theoretical modelling exercises” behind the spectacular claims of reduced infant mortality from mass vaccination programs.
“But what I discovered is that the longstanding industry of administering vaccination programmes to save infants in low-income countries from death is scientifically baseless and a fraudulent enterprise that removes resources and attention away from urgently needed development to correct ongoing mass neocolonial exploitation,” he said.
‘Garbage in, garbage out’
Many top researchers have raised public concerns about epidemic modeling, particularly in research that serves the pharmaceutical industry.
Dr. John Ioannidis has pointed out that “epidemic forecasting has a dubious track record,” which became particularly evident during the COVID-19 period. Models can easily be compromised or skewed if they use poor data, incorrect assumptions, lack epidemiological information or fail to consider all dimensions of a given problem.
This, combined with the fact — highlighted by former editors of both The Lancet and The BMJ — that medical journals have become “an extension of the marketing arm of pharmaceutical companies” has led to the proliferation of forecasting models that don’t meet even the most basic standards for modeling, Rancourt said.
In recent years, epidemiologic modelers have published many papers claiming to estimate mortality averted through childhood vaccination.
Rancourt argued these models share two fatal flaws: They are based on unreliable assumptions of vaccine efficacy and they “guesstimate” deaths avoided using disease models not anchored in real-world data.
The safety and efficacy numbers for these models always come from clinical trials, which he says are “systemically unreliable” in assessing efficacy and fail to evaluate safety.
The trials are, “overwhelmingly controlled by an industry making large profits from the vaccines, and this industry has amply, historically, consistently and repeatedly demonstrated its willingness to act fraudulently at the expense of endangering the public,” Rancourt wrote.
Also, the trials themselves introduce several biases. For example, trials are conducted with healthy children, but vaccines are administered to children with multiple vulnerabilities, particularly in low-income countries.
The trials also don’t test the vaccines against true placebos, don’t monitor children long-term for safety issues, and don’t test against disease prevention or safety in the real world.
Second, they rely on “guesstimates” of deaths averted — estimating how many children didn’t die because they got the vaccine — based on isolated models for disease contagion that aren’t validated by real-world research.
Most importantly, they fail to account for the fact that childhood mortality rates are affected by a wide range of factors — including underlying health conditions, poor nutrition and access to care — beyond simply whether a child is vaccinated or not.
“I argue that the proverbial computing term ‘garbage in, garbage out’ pre-eminently applies in these circumstances,” Rancourt said.
Breaking down claims that vaccination has saved 154 million lives since 1974
To illustrate his points, Rancourt analyzed a recent study funded by the World Health Organization (WHO) and published in The Lancet by Andrew J. Shattock, Ph.D., and colleagues.
The study concluded that “Since 1974, vaccination has averted 154 million deaths, including 146 million among children younger than 5 years of whom 101 million were infants younger than 1 year.”
Rancourt calculated this would be the equivalent of 5.7% of global deaths annually, or a 20% reduction in global infant mortality.
Rancourt said it would be a “fantastic” medical achievement. “Some might reasonably call it unbelievable.”
In addition to the WHO funding, the Vaccine Impact Modelling Consortium — funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Gates-backed Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance — provided the models. Members of the research team also receive funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Wellcome Trust and other organizations with financial and political interests in promoting mass vaccination.
For The Lancet study, Shattock estimated deaths avoided by vaccination using only theoretical models for how disease spreads — with no attention to context. And then used efficacy rates from vaccine clinical trials to estimate how many children who would have gotten sick and died don’t because vaccines are present.
The study repeats that model for each of the nine vaccines it considered to arrive at the number of lives saved.
The study also estimated the numbers based on the assumption that, otherwise, infant mortality would have remained constant between 1974 and 2024. However, in reality, infant mortality had been dropping before that, which the model should have accounted for.
The study “collapses on examination of its premises,” Rancourt wrote.
The problem of poverty
Perhaps the most glaring issue, Rancourt said, is that models touting high numbers of lives saved by vaccines fail to account for the reality that child mortality is influenced by many complex factors, particularly in low-income countries.
For example, the WHO states that the measles vaccine has the greatest impact on infant mortality, accounting for most lives saved from all vaccines. However, deaths from measles are typically related to malnutrition. Mortality and morbidity rates from infectious diseases like measles decline with improved living standards.
Malnutrition also makes children more vulnerable to environmental toxins — including vaccines, Rancourt noted.
In other words, malnutrition, including of the mother, makes a child highly vulnerable to death from a wide range of infections that don’t occur or aren’t fatal in well-nourished children living in healthy environments.
Low-income countries not only lack funding for public health, Rancourt said, but vaccination campaigns divert resources away from other health priorities like clean water and basic health services.
Vaccination programs increase infant and child mortality
Contrary to repeated claims that vaccines save millions of lives, Rancourt’s analysis of the relationship between vaccine rollouts and infant mortality rates suggests the opposite — that these programs have contributed to increased infant and child mortality.
Rancourt correlated changes in the global infant mortality rate with major vaccine rollouts between 1980-1999 and 1999-2015. During those periods, global infant mortality rates were declining, but the rate of decline slowed after the vaccine rollouts.
The deceleration became more marked in about 1992, when the hepatitis B and pneumococcal conjugate vaccines were introduced, even in low-income countries.
Had the decline in infant mortality continued at the same rate from the period before vaccine rollouts, there would have been 100 million fewer infant deaths. Instead, the rate of decline in mortality slowed precisely when the rollouts happened.
All researchers modeling the benefits of vaccination missed or disregarded this evident temporal correlation, Rancourt said.
Rancourt’s findings corroborate observational studies, including those showing the introduction of the diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis vaccine in low-income countries led to a spike in infant mortality among vaccinated babies.
However, Rancourt cautioned that he was presenting the simplest possible model. A true estimate would have to adjust for the benefits of improving living conditions. It would also have to account for the impacts of “aggressive so-called globalization” in the 80s and 90s that facilitated the global expansion of industry, global vaccination campaigns and industrial agriculture, which all had varied and significant impacts on low- and middle-income countries.
Rancourt concluded the overwhelming cause of high infant mortality is extreme poverty associated with severe malnutrition and exposure to toxic living environments.