When evaluating data from VAERS, it is important to note that for any reported event, no cause-and-effect relationship has been established. Reports of all possible associations between vaccines and adverse events (possible side effects) are filed in VAERS. Therefore, VAERS collects data on any adverse event following vaccination, be it coincidental or truly caused by a vaccine. The report of an adverse event to VAERS is not documentation that a vaccine caused the event.
http://vaers.hhs.gov/data/index
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Randall Hoven should resign from the American Thinker, because he clearly wasn't thinking when he wrote that article.
Also the VAERS system is a collection of the claims, not an evaluation of them. The evaluation is done by others.
Summary of HPV Adverse Event Reports Published in JAMA
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/Vaccines/HPV/jama.html
A CDC-FDA report analyzing adverse events following human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine administration from June 2006 through December 2008 is now published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) August 19, 2009 issue.
Of the 12,424 reports of adverse events, 772 (6% of all reports) described serious adverse events, including 32 reports of deaths.
The 32 death reports were reviewed and there was no common pattern to the deaths that would suggest they were caused by the vaccine. In cases where there was an autopsy, death certificate, or medical records, the cause of death could be explained by factors other than the vaccine. Some causes of death determined to date include diabetes, viral illness, illicit drug use, and heart failure.
“Randall Hoven should resign from the American Thinker, because he clearly wasn’t thinking when he wrote that article”
He is most likely, among those of the younger generations who have been “educated” (no matter their own political convictions), in many subjects, with teachers from whom the maxim “correlation is not causation” has been intentionally ignored, so as to promote “the severity of the charge” over the “accuracy and veracity of the evidence”.
The lack of heeding the warning of that maxim is epidemic in every area of American life, even in the “Conservative” media, even here on FreeRep.
To the AmericanThinker author just the association (correlation) of the HPV vaccine with specific entries in a database of POSSIBLE warnings, was conviction enough. I expect that type of thinking from Liberals without question; I always hope for better from Conservatives.
However, that still does NOT mean that Bachman was wrong, only that the author in the AmericanThinker did not lift up good evidence that she was right.
Well, that and the offer of $10,000 was to the actual mother who told the story, not to some randome nobody who thinks he can “prove” it was true by pointing to anecdotal evidence.
So, what to think about a guy who not only doesn’t understand what he is talking about, but is trying to take $10,000 from a mother and her sick, mentally retarded child?