Is the MMR vaccine lethal to children?

Donald Trump said the combined MMR vaccine could be “quite lethal,” and now anti-vaxxers are out saying that the MMR are killing children. One video from Peter McCullough’s group claims that hundreds of children died after vaccination, often within two weeks, and the vaccines have caused far more deaths than measles.

• The tweet added words that Dr. Soon-Shiong did not say.
• He was discussing viruses and cancer, not vaccines causing cancer.
• He has also supported research on COVID and cancer vaccines.

The study is posted on Zenodo, an open research website where researchers can upload their work. Zenodo warns that papers posted there may not have been peer reviewed and should be treated as early research, not as proven findings. In other words, the study may still need to be reviewed by other experts before its claims can be trusted.

The study also uses data from VAERS, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. Doctors, patients, and family members can report health problems that happen after a vaccine. These reports can help experts spot possible safety concerns.

However, a VAERS report does not prove that a vaccine caused a health problem. It only shows that the problem happened sometime after vaccination. Reports may be incomplete, incorrect, caused by something else, or difficult to confirm. Researchers need stronger studies to find out whether a vaccine actually caused an event.

For example, this VAERS report describes a child who died five days after vaccination. The report says the doctor and autopsy technician did not believe the vaccine caused the death. However, a study that counts deaths only because they happened after vaccination could still include a case like this as being linked with the MMR vaccine.

For these reasons, readers should be careful when interpreting the study. The website says the paper is not yet established science, and the VAERS data it uses cannot by itself show that vaccines caused the reported health problems.