Are vaccinated children so much more unhealthy?

Anti-vaxxers at Peter McCullough’s organization claim that vaccinated children had more health problems than unvaccinated children in all 22 disease categories studied. They say these problems include autism, asthma, cancer, allergies, seizures, and learning or behavior disorders.

Nick Hulscher appears to be referring to an unpublished paper from the Henry Ford Health System. The paper did not complete the health system’s internal review and was not submitted to a medical journal. Henry Ford Health said the paper had serious problems with how the research was designed and analyzed.

One concern was that the vaccinated and unvaccinated children were not followed for the same amount of time. Many unvaccinated children were observed only during early childhood. One-fourth were followed only until six months of age, and 75% were followed only until age three. Some long-term health conditions are not diagnosed until children are older. Because the vaccinated children were followed longer, doctors had more time to find and record health problems in that group.

Hulscher describes a later article as a “peer-reviewed reanalysis.” However, the authors did not have the original patient data. Instead, they used summary tables from the unfinished paper. This limits how carefully the results can be checked. It is also different from a full review of the original study and its data.