Is There Any Historical Evidence Connecting Vaccination to SIDS?

A Midwestern Doctor sure does think so, but forgets to provide any evidence to back up their claim!

Of course, it’s not just autism. Anti-vaccine influencers also think vaccines are associated with SIDS. Well, and everything else, from allergies and asthma to ADHD and seizures. Everything is a vaccine injury to them.

Not surprisingly though, when you actually look at their so-called evidence, it comes up quite short.

Is There Any Historical Evidence Connecting Vaccination to SIDS?

A Midwestern Doctor is especially good at this.

“One of my fundamental objections to evidence-based medicine is that our current religion of science believes that humans are irrational and incapable of accurately interpreting events in their environment. Because of this, whenever someone observes a correlation that questions a medical dogma, it is reflexively argued no causation (and often no correlation) exists, and that the perception one did was simply the product of a variety of erroneous cognitive biases.”

The Century of Evidence That Vaccines Cause Sudden Infant Deaths

AMD goes into everything thinking that vaccines are to blame, instead of checking their own biases.

Or checking any of the research that has shown that vaccines are not associated with SIDS!

AMD instead brings up the DPT, A Shot in the Dark book and:

• case reports of kids injured by DPT vaccines

• hot lots

• Sir Graham Wilson — who thought vaccines had immense benefit

• Robert Mendelsohn — the first anti-vaccine pediatrician

• stories of mass graves belonging to Irish orphans, which he wants you to believe were from early DPT vaccine experiments, even though no vaccine trials were done where the graves were found and none of the trials at the time used the DPT vaccine!

• the Bernstein memo — an internal memo from Wyeth that anti-vaccine influencers believe is evidence for hot lots

• Archie Kalokerinos — an anti-vaccine advocate who pushed the idea of giving IV vitamin C to kids before they got vaccines as a way to prevent SIDS because he believed they were dying of unrecognized scurvy.

• Raymond Obomsawin — an anti-vaccine advocate who was also an HIV denialist

Ultimately, the evidence we get is A Midwestern Doctor’s belief that:

“I thus suspect Back To Sleep (viewed as one of the most successful health initiatives in history) ultimately served to distract the public from the damage caused by the TDwP vaccine. This is somewhat analogous to the polio vaccine being introduced at the same time DDT was pulled from the market (DDT caused an illness indistinguishable from polio and produced nearly identical lesions to the spinal cord), and the polio vaccine then becoming a mythology the success of modern medicine was based upon.”

The Century of Evidence That Vaccines Cause Sudden Infant Deaths

Or maybe it was because they took lead out of gasoline or a change in diagnostic classification and diagnostic shunting.

And yes, like many other anti-vaccine influencers, A Midwestern Doctor doesn’t believe that the polio vaccine helped control polio — it was, instead, pulling DDT from the market!

To further distract you from the fact that you haven’t been given any real evidence, AMD even brings in Peter Aaby and his claims that kids did better if they didn’t get the DPT vaccine. Of course, they neglect to tell you about the diphtheria outbreaks and deaths in many of the areas where they stopped using the vaccine! What would Aaby’s studies show now? Are these unvaccinated kids still benefiting?

Next, AMD misrepresents data to make you think SIDS declined during COVID.

They actually increased!

And yes, fewer kids were vaccinated during the pandemic.

“Lastly, to assess the evidence concerning this hypothesis, I consulted VAERS…”

The Century of Evidence That Vaccines Cause Sudden Infant Deaths

And of course, AMD spent some time talking about VAERS.

What was missing?

That’s right, the century of evidence we were promised!

And again, AMD also never mentions all the studies that have shown that vaccines are not associated with SIDS.

Between 1979 and 1996, Sweden suspended vaccination against pertussis because of concerns about the DPT vaccine. They didn’t see less SIDS, but did see a lot more pertussis.

AMD also fails to explain why the incidence of SIDS increased after Sweden stopped using the DPT vaccine in 1979, dropped when they advised against prone sleeping in 1992, and continued to drop when they started using the newer DTaP vaccine in 1996!

If the Back to Sleep campaign was a distraction from DPT vaccine damage, then how do you explain its success in Sweden when they weren’t even using the DPT vaccine anymore?

If the DPT vaccine causes SIDS, how do you explain rising SIDS rates when they weren’t using the DPT vaccine?

You can’t, of course, because vaccines are not associated with SIDS.

And continuing to blame vaccines puts babies at risk, as it distracts from the real dangers of unsafe sleep environments, and it scares parents away from vaccinating and protecting their kids.

Reference

Wennergren G, Nordstrand K, Alm B, Möllborg P, Öhman A, Berlin A, Katz-Salamon M, Lagercrantz H. Updated Swedish advice on reducing the risk of sudden infant death syndrome. Acta Paediatr. 2015 May;104(5):444-8. doi: 10.1111/apa.12966. Epub 2015 Mar 13. PMID: 25656219; PMCID: PMC6680202.