Yehuda Shoenfeld

HPV vaccine autoimmunity – more bad science from Shoenfeld

We just posted an article by Professor Dorit Rubinstein Reiss who criticized many of Dr. Yehuda Shoenfeld‘s anti-vaccine ideas, which include HPV vaccine autoimmunity. We need to examine and critique a new paper from Shoenfeld which tries to establish why the HPV vaccine might cause autoimmunity. Spoiler alert – it’s not very good.

For some reason, Shoenfeld has targeted the HPV cancer-prevention vaccine in much of his “research” lately. He has taken that niche and run with it. And, because the anti-vaxxers love their argument from false authority, Shoenfeld is a hero to them.

So is there any validity to the HPV vaccine autoimmunity claim? Not really, but let’s take a scientific critique of it.Read More »HPV vaccine autoimmunity – more bad science from Shoenfeld

HPV vaccine facts – refuting RFK Jr’s false and unscientific claims – Part 2

by Michael Simpson
2020-10-13
Cancer, HPV vaccine, Robert F Kennedy Jr, Vaccines

Recently, I wrote a post about Robert F Kennedy Jr’s 25 false claims that stood against HPV vaccine facts and science – because that’s what the anti-vaccine crowd does well.

As I mentioned, he has recently become a loudmouth anti-vaccine acolyte, who has been chastised by his own family for helping “to spread dangerous misinformation over social media and is complicit in sowing distrust of the science behind vaccines.”

Because there were 25 lies in RFK Jr’s article, I just covered the first 12 in a previous post. Now I will take on the remaining 13 by reiterating HPV vaccine facts.Read More »HPV vaccine facts – refuting RFK Jr’s false and unscientific claims – Part 2

Sheep vaccine study – aluminum adjuvants alter their behavior – RETRACTED

by Michael Simpson
2019-04-07
Retraction, Robert F Kennedy Jr, Vaccines

Over the past 20 years or so, I’ve read a lot of vaccine research studies. Most, published in top journals by real scientists, are worthy of respect. And they provide powerful evidence that vaccines are safe and effective. Of course, there are a handful of studies that are pseudoscientific garbage. Or retracted. But today, I think I’ve seen it all – a Spanish animal research team published a sheep vaccine study that they claim shows that the aluminum adjuvants in the vaccine altered their behavior. And you just know that the anti-vaccine religion will jump all over it as “proof” that vaccines are dangerous. Yawn.

In case you missed it, yes, this is a sheep vaccine study.

To be fair, I have no idea whether these researchers are part of the anti-vaccine religion – it’s possible that they think they’ve found something, but they do rely upon some discredited anti-vaccine tropes and falsehoods as the premise of their studies. Moreover, this article furthers the false narrative about aluminum in vaccines. And we’ll keep seeing it repeated on anti-vaccine Twitter and Facebook posts because the anti-vaccine zealots have nothing else.

The sheep vaccine study by Javier Asìn et al., published in Pharmacological Research, investigated cognitive and behavioral changes in lambs that had received repeated vaccination with aluminum-containing vaccines.

Let’s take a critical look.Read More »Sheep vaccine study – aluminum adjuvants alter their behavior – RETRACTED

Autoimmune diseases unrelated to HPV vaccine – new Canadian study

There are so many outlandish and unsupported claims about the HPV vaccine, it’s difficult to keep up with them all. One of the most outrageous lies about the HPV vaccine is that it causes autoimmune diseases, despite the robust epidemiological or clinical evidence that firmly establishes the safety of the HPV vaccine, especially with respect to autoimmune diseases.

Autoimmune diseases are conditions where the immune system has an abnormal response to normal cells in the body. Celiac disease, type 1 diabetes mellitus, multiple sclerosis, and many other conditions are as a result of an autoimmune disorder. We don’t know what causes the autoimmunity, but there is almost no biological plausibility that any vaccine could induce the disease.

Despite the lack of a reasonable biological mechanism leading from the HPV vaccine to any of the multitudes of autoimmune diseases, the anti-vaccine forces continue to try to establish a link. For example, Yehuda Shoenfeld has pushed a ridiculed hypothesis that the vaccine causes something he calls autoimmune syndrome induced by adjuvants (ASIA). Not a single respected scientist buys into ASIA, and Shoenfeld has presented no vigorous clinical or epidemiological evidence supporting its existence.

Not to pile onto the anti-vaccine tropes about the vaccine, but a large, and new, Canadian study has once again shown us that there are no links between the HPV vaccine and autoimmune diseases. This adds to the body of evidence that, for real science, reinforces the conclusion that the HPV vaccine is an incredibly safe vaccine.Read More »Autoimmune diseases unrelated to HPV vaccine – new Canadian study

Fake science about Star Trek accepted by predatory journals – anti-vaccine researchers happy

One of my pet peeves, of which there are many, is when a fake science paper is published by a low ranked journal and trumpeted as if it is Nobel Prize-worthy research. You can read about anti-vaccine fake science published in these journals from notorious anti-vaccine “researchers” like Shaw and Tomljenovic, Exley, and Shoenfeld.

One of my pet loves is Star Trek, all versions, all the time. In fact, I occasionally have secret conversations with my fellow Big Pharma shills about Star Trek, in which vaccines are never mentioned. I am a self-confessed Star Trek Nerd, who has watched almost every episode of Star Trek ST: TOS through the current Star Trek: Discovery (see Note 1).

So when I get the opportunity, falling into my lap, to combine Star Trek and the anti-vaccine nonsense, I am happier than a pregnant tribble. And when a fake science paper about the Star Trek universe gets accepted by low ranked predatory journals, ones that are beloved by pseudoscience adherents across the world, it’s what I live for.Read More »Fake science about Star Trek accepted by predatory journals – anti-vaccine researchers happy

Jessica Ericzon death is not linked to the HPV vaccine based on evidence

by Dorit Rubinstein Reiss
2021-09-01
Christopher Shaw, HPV vaccine, Law, Vaccines

This article about Jessica Ericzon was written by Dorit Rubinstein Reiss, Professor of Law at the University of California Hastings College of the Law (San Francisco, CA), who is a frequent contributor to this and many other blogs, providing in-depth, and intellectually stimulating, articles about vaccines, medical issues, social policy, and the law.

Professor Reiss writes extensively in law journals about the social and legal policies of vaccination. Additionally, Reiss is also a member of the Parent Advisory Board of Voices for Vaccines, a parent-led organization that supports and advocates for on-time vaccination and the reduction of vaccine-preventable disease. She is also a member of the Vaccines Working Group on Ethics and Policy.

This post revisits another sad, sad tragedy, the death of Jessica Ericzon, which was blamed on vaccines – this time, Gardasil, the vaccine that prevents infection with high-risk strains of HPV. Once again, the claim has no real evidence behind it. The concern, of course, is that these stories will lead to parents who are not already anti-vaccine refusing to protect their children against an infection that causes cancer.

Not protecting children against HPV infections that kill thousands and cause tens of thousands of cancer each year is putting them at unnecessary risk and setting the stage up for preventable tragedies. Doing it because of a painful death that no good evidence links to the vaccine, is doubly tragic. However painful, we owe it to future victims of preventable HPV cancers to set the facts straight.

Aluminum toxicity in vaccines – here we go again with bad science

This year I got a special birthday gift; someone sent me a piece about vaccine aluminum toxicity written by the noted anti-vaccine activist, J B Handley. In part, it reads:

While you were (hopefully) enjoying the winter holidays, a study was published in the Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry (it went online on December 27th) that could change the autism debate permanently.

I’d actually already been alerted to the paper, which is linked here. Some blogs of which I am a fan do a tl;dr (too long; didn’t read) summary at the end. I’m going to break with this and do it at the start.

This paper by several authors, including the anti-vaccine Christopher Exley and Romain K Gherardi, published in the Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry (which has been a subject of this blog before) has one of the worst introductions I have ever read. The first paragraph is basically copy/pasted from others and then twisted to fulfill the anti-vaccine tone of the paper. From there on in it doesn’t get any better.

Many of the references don’t say what the authors want you to think they do. Genuinely, the authors introduce papers which conclude that there is a lack of evidence for causality, but the authors act as if they conclude the opposite.

Many other references are items by the authors – the self reference is rampant. They, apparently and willfully, misrepresent the current state of play regarding the EMA and certain members of the Nordic Cochrane group –it is almost unbelievably poor.

Time to take a look at this paper in detail.Read More »Aluminum toxicity in vaccines – here we go again with bad science

HPV vaccine and autoimmune diseases – no link in new 2 million patient study

The link between HPV vaccine and autoimmune diseases is one of the enduring myths about Gardasil. It is regularly debunked by scientists in large scale case control studies, but that never appears to be enough to silence the critics.

For example, the so-called autoimmune syndrome induced by adjuvants (ASIA) pushed by an Israeli physician, Yehuda Shoenfeld remains a trope that pervades the anti-Gardasil community. Shoenfeld claims that the HPV vaccine is causally linked to various autoimmune syndromes. However, ASIA is not accepted by the scientific and medical community (and see this published article), and was rejected by the United States vaccine court. It should not be used by parents as a reason to reject the HPV vaccine..

Large studies (and this large study) continue to reject links between the HPV vaccine and autoimmune diseases. Now, we’re going to take a look at a recently published article that continues to reject any link.

HPV vaccine and autoimmune diseases – more evidence that they are unrelated

The HPV vaccine and autoimmune diseases link is one of the enduring myths about the vaccine, which is regularly debunked by scientists everywhere. The so-called autoimmune syndrome induced by adjuvants (ASIA) pushed by an Israeli physician, Yehuda Shoenfeld. He claims that the HPV vaccine are causally linked to various autoimmune syndromes. However, ASIA is not accepted by the scientific and medical community (and see this published article), was rejected by the United States vaccine court, and should not be accepted by parents deciding whether they should vaccinate their children.

And, according to a recent study published in the Journal of Autoimmunity, human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines do not increase the risk of developing autoimmune diseases (ADs). More evidence that there is no link between the HPV vaccine and autoimmune diseases.

Another anti-vaccine article – bad journal, bad data

Here we go again. An anti-vaccine article was published in a journal, and now every vaccine denier will use it as absolute “proof” that vaccines are evil, bad, and useless. And that means one of the pro-science community has to provide a critical analysis so that those on the fence know what is supported and not supported by real science.

The article, “New Quality-Control Investigations on Vaccines: Micro- and Nanocontamination,” published in the International Journal of Vaccines and Vaccination on 23 January 2017. I want to examine this from the meta level, discussing the quality of the journal, down to the actual data. Spoiler alert – it’s bad.Read More »Another anti-vaccine article – bad journal, bad data