BMJ 1999;318:1487 ( 29 May )

Letters

Vaccines and their real or perceived adverse effects

    Authors' conclusions are at odds with investigators'
    Studies of adverse effects of vaccination have duty to present full picture
    Authors' reply

Authors' conclusions are at odds with investigators'

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR---In responding to Jefferson's editorial about vaccination and its adverse effects Classen and Classen say that present immunisation schedules may exacerbate the development of type 1 diabetes and that early immunisation with a cocktail of vaccines may prevent the development of diabetes. 1 2

The authors cite their unpublished reanalysis of the Finnish trial of Haemophilus influenzae type b vaccine.3 Their conclusions are at odds with the analyses and conclusions of the investigator (JT) presented at a National Institutes of Health workshop and were published recently.4 The Finnish investigators' review of the data could not attribute the risk of type 1 diabetes in Finnish children to differences in the timing of childhood vaccination in the vaccine trial. The incidence of type 1 diabetes in Finland has risen over several decades, and the risk seems to have been almost linear since the early 1950s. Given the disparity of conclusions, it was suggested that Classen . . . [Full text of this article]


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