- Re: Dr John Campbell: Viral Vaccine paper - we need a more measured review Archived Message
Posted by John Monro
on July 17, 2023, 10:13 pm, in reply to "Dr John Campbell: Viral Vaccine paper"
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Dr Campbell provided quite a valuable service to a concerned population early in the pandemic. He does seem to have become sidelined to more extreme views over time and has fairly regularly come up with some very dubious "science" of his own, regularly criticised in scientific review You have to recall that he is not a vaccine or infectious diseases expert, but is, like me, an informed observer. If he wants to continue as such, he'd be better to take a calmer approach too and not "jump to conclusions" which I think he is guilty of here. Perhaps he needs some "peer review" of his own? He also skirts conspiracy theory when he states four other prestigious medical journals declined to publish this study / letter when the other obvious conclusion might be that they didn't find it reached a significantly robust enough standard. There is a review of this "letter", it wasn't a full study apparently, and Dr Campbell's take here https://healthfeedback.org/claimreview/analysis-adverse-event-variation-pfizer-covid-19-vaccine-batches-doesnt-indicate-safety-problems-contrary-john-campbell/ In this review it is stated, slightly unfairly, that Dr Campbell implied Pfizer's Covid vaccine was unsafe, I think more fairly he certainly claimed two major things, that these early batches were unsafe and he seemed particularly upset that no-one had properly studied this matter up to now. He also implied that the one in a thousand "adverse reaction" in the better batches was also unsafe. This is a bit harder to accept, we need to know, in these batches, the nature of these reactions, I mean a painful arm for a couple of days is trivial in any immunisation, a case of myocarditis much less so. Also the headline "Danish researchers show high rates of side effects from Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, indicating problems with safety" isn't strictly accurate, the paper seems to show a high variability in safety of the vaccine due to assumed batch variability - subtly different. . This review I've referred you to though is useful. For example in on instance, the "batches" used in the study represent shipped vaccines, and the "yellow" vaccines, with hardly any reported side effects, were for the most part never used, so it's not surprising there weren't any reported side effects. This review goes on to make a number of very relevant points that confound the conclusions that Dr Campbell makes. This review unfortunately also muddies the water in claiming that Dr Campbell has regularly made false claims in regard to Covid and immunisations, and Dr Manniche has in the past also made false claims. That may be true, but it doesn't then follow that the claims made here are also false. Many other highly qualified scientists and physicians have also made mistaken claims at times, you would n't expect anything else with a new disease, and new immunisation modality and a continuously evolving and puzzling situation, A statement advising caution in regard to the two mentioned is fair, but it should be accompanied by this disclaimer. So, what is going on here? I'm not entirely sure. Dr Campbell's claim and assumption that the authorities have not examined batch variance in reported adverse effects I think almost certainly isn't true. What it much more likely indicates that no-one else has found this as a problem. In NZ we have one of the world's most effective post event reporting systems and if this were the case, I am pretty confident it would have been picked up, though of course we are a small population, and a few "rogue" batches might not have made their way here. However, I think it would help if the medical authorities in Denmark could urgently review the letter/paper thoroughly and not just rely on opinion such as I've referred you to, and see whether there is some scientific basis for these findings, or whether the findings are more likely to be related to other extrinsic factors, which would be my assumption, and then publish the results. , |