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In the hearing of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., starting Wednesday, the Senators are expected to question him closely about his controversial views on vaccines.
For years, Mr Kennedy has questioned the safety of vaccines, including those for polio and measles, two diseases that continue to harm children. More recently, he said he is not planning to remove the Americans’ vaccines, but wants to release security data to the public – although almost all data is already available to the public.
Mr Kennedy’s opposing views extend far beyond the vaccines. And as Minister of Health and Human Services, he would have a huge influence on health policy, even on issues that usually under state control, reducing funding for certain programs or lifting others.
Following is a testing of events for some of his claims.
This is false. Mr Kennedy’s number is disabled by size orders.
The national report of statistical diabetes estimates that in 2021, about 35 per 10,000 children and adolescents under 20 years of age – ie 0.35 % – were diagnosed with diabetes. Another study found that 0.1 % of young people 10 to 19 had diabetes in 2017.
Mr Kennedy also seems to conceal the youth or type 1 diabetes, an autoimmune disease, with type 2 diabetes, which may result from an unhealthy lifestyle. It is right that new cases of diabetes – both types – grow. But adolescent prevalence is still much lower than adults and increases with age. The highest prevalence, 29.2 %, is among adults 65 years or older.
In a later comment that included Prediabetes, Mr Kennedy said: “These children are now dependent on insulin and diabetes treatments, in chronic diseases for the rest of their lives, and this is bankrupt.
While prediabetes is a warning sign for diabetes, most cases do not require insulin treatment and can be reversed with lifestyle changes, including moderate weight loss. Prediabetes is also increasing. About 28 percent of adolescents are prediabetic.
This is false. Each year, scientists monitor the effectiveness of the annual flu vaccine. And every year, dozens of studies substantiate the effectiveness of the vaccine against hospitalizations and deaths. Accurate numbers vary, but the results always show that vaccination is beneficial.
Infusion vaccines do not contain live virus and the nasal spray vaccines contain a weakened virus. Nor can the guy transmit the flu.
The composition of the influenza vaccine is typically determined in the spring, based on the dominant variants in the southern hemisphere at that time. In a few years the vaccine produced is an excellent race for the viruses that appear in the autumn and in other years the best conjecture of scientists is a little far away.
As a result, efficiency can range from 30 to 90 %, depending on the age group and the influenza. But even when efficacy is low, the vaccine can reduce the duration and severity of the disease.
Because the flu tends to be more severe in children under 5 years of age and in older adults, the vaccine is particularly recommended – not a command – for these age groups. And since the flu vaccine was introduced in 1945, life expectancy, including elderly adults, increased steadily.
This needs a frame. Mr Kennedy is partially right. One in 36 American children is diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, according to Disease Control and Prevention Centers (the estimation of one in 34 is specifically for boys). And in California, one in 22 children has autism.
But autism is a spectrum and the majority of those diagnosed can participate in sport, write poetry (if they are so willing), pay taxes, date and marry. Many are parents. The list of people with autism includes successful athletes, writers, actors, activists, artists, politicians-and even Elon Musk, the richest man in the world and the head of the government’s government’s cost of Trump.
Studies indicate that most of the increased autism diagnoses are at the milder end of the spectrum, in part because the diagnostic criteria have been expanded.
What Mr Kennedy describes is a subset of autistic people, about one in four with the diagnosis, who are deeply affected. But even more likely to hurt themselves than others. (The prevalence of deep autism is increasing but late.)
Mr Kennedy may not have seen such people when he was a child, because then most of them were isolated at home or institutionalized, incorrectly diagnosed with mental illnesses and intense pharmaceuticals.
This needs a frame. First, most states force children to receive about 20 shots to enter the school, but these shots include doses of eight vaccines (depending on the combination of vaccines) used together protect against a dozen diseases.
Even including vaccines recommended that are not required, such as an annual influenza, children can receive 35 shots at the age of 5 years. Mr Kennedy’s mathematics would only be correct if the number including vaccines given during pregnancy and if each ingredient and each dose of a combination product was considered a separate vaccine.
All vaccines must meet strict requirements for security before approval. Even after their approval, federal officials are monitoring the reports of side effects on multiple systems analyzing medical records and reports from patients and doctors.
Mr Kennedy’s claim that none of the shots have been tested on placebo -controlled tests that also need a framework. Some of the vaccines used at present have been actually tested against a placebo. Others are newer alternatives to vaccines that have undergone placebo -controlled tests before approval.
A newer vaccine is often examined against an approved – and not against a placebo – to show that it is just as good in preventing the disease. The newest treatments for certain diseases such as cancer are similarly tested in such tests, called non -inferiority tests.
This is due to the fact that it would be unethical to deny some children to test protection against a dangerous pathogen, as it would be to refuse treatment in patients with illness, giving them a placebo.
This is false. Many studies have examined this claim and found that they were not unfounded. On the contrary, the pertussis itself, instead of the vaccine, can be dangerous or even deadly for young children.
In both statements, Mr Kennedy refers to a vaccine for the pertussis or cough interrupted in the 1990s. The vaccine was made of inactivated bacteria and, compared to the newer vaccines, associated with more side effects, including fever, drowsiness and irritability.
But research has not found serious short -term or long -term consequences. According to a large study, for every 100,000 doses of the vaccine, less than nine produced a febrile crisis on the day of vaccination.
Feed seizures are epileptic seizures caused by high fever and can occur during any childhood disease, including ear infection. Do not cause constant damage. Long -term surveillance by several groups showed no indication of brain damage to children who received the vaccine.
Mr Kennedy is right that a group reported increased mortality after Pertussis vaccination in West Africa. But a series of independent groups convened to examine the studies unanimously concluded that the team’s data did not support this conclusion.
“Indeed, the papers provide essential evidence against such a conclusion,” experts wrote.
