Re: Overcoming vaccine hesitancy: five minutes with . . . Heidi Larson
It was interesting that Professor Heidi Larson expresses unease about those who take a questioning view of the vaccine industry and it’s products. Many people, and I am one, have spent a professional lifetime reassuring parents that vaccines for children must be effective and safe, as the experts tell us that is so. Alarmingly, once one examines the evidence, or lack of it, that allows vaccine experts to be so confident, one discovers that the expected confirmatory evidence, for the safety and effectiveness of vaccines, is, very often, just not there.
Who would guess, in the midst of this media driven measles frenzy, (1 ) that analyses of previous US outbreaks have shown that measles is increasingly a disease of vaccinated people, as has been pointed out to your readers in the recent past. (2)
No doubt Professor Larson is aware of this, and those of us who realise that her Vaccine Confidence Project is partly funded by GSK (3) can imagine the difficulties that conflicts of interest may cause in the amount of attention accorded to such information.
To be fair to other readers, surely her conflict of interest should be made clear ?
Rapid Response:
Re: Overcoming vaccine hesitancy: five minutes with . . . Heidi Larson
It was interesting that Professor Heidi Larson expresses unease about those who take a questioning view of the vaccine industry and it’s products. Many people, and I am one, have spent a professional lifetime reassuring parents that vaccines for children must be effective and safe, as the experts tell us that is so. Alarmingly, once one examines the evidence, or lack of it, that allows vaccine experts to be so confident, one discovers that the expected confirmatory evidence, for the safety and effectiveness of vaccines, is, very often, just not there.
Who would guess, in the midst of this media driven measles frenzy, (1 ) that analyses of previous US outbreaks have shown that measles is increasingly a disease of vaccinated people, as has been pointed out to your readers in the recent past. (2)
No doubt Professor Larson is aware of this, and those of us who realise that her Vaccine Confidence Project is partly funded by GSK (3) can imagine the difficulties that conflicts of interest may cause in the amount of attention accorded to such information.
To be fair to other readers, surely her conflict of interest should be made clear ?
1 https://www.bmj.com/content/364/bmj.l1481
2 https://www.bmj.com/content/362/bmj.k3976/rr-4
3 https://www.vaccineconfidence.org/about/#funders
Competing interests: No competing interests