ASIA, not the continent Asin et al. start out

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ASIA, not the continent

Asin et al. start out their paper by stating that autoimmune syndrome induced by adjuvants (ASIA) is an adverse reaction of vaccines.

ASIA is a belief, pushed by Israeli immunologist Yehuda Shoenfeld, that certain autoimmune conditions are caused by aluminum adjuvants in vaccines.

However, ASIA has been thoroughly dismissed by most scientists and regulatory agencies. Numerous large case-control and cohort studies, both near the top of the hierarchy of biomedical research, have found no evidence of a relationship between vaccines, especially the HPV vaccine, and ASIA.

For example, researchers looked at nearly 300,000 vaccinated and unvaccinated women (reviewed here) and found no link to ASIA. There are many more studies that show a similar lack of causal links.

Thus, before we even start critiquing this paper, the authors start with a bogus hypothesis that is unsupported by real scientific investigations. Unless, of course, you subscribe to anti-vaccine lies, memes, and tropes. Then you probably are a true believer.

Sheep vaccine study critique

https://www.skepticalraptor.com/skepticalrapt...shoenfeld/

Despite the fact that the paper has a couple of discredited claims, about aluminum and ASIA, there are other significant issues with the paper. Let’s review:

1.The researchers only looked at a total of 21 sheep in 3 groups. Important clinical and epidemiological studies have thousands or even millions of data points. It is difficult, if not impossible, to determine a causal link with such a tiny sample size.

2.The animals in the two experimental groups, one vaccinated with the typical vaccines given to sheep and the other with just aluminum adjuvant. The animals received 16 vaccine doses within 12 months for a total of 70.861 mg of aluminum. These are the number of doses that a sheep receive over 6-7 years! Furthermore, if you’re prone to comparing sheep to humans, that’s 20X more aluminum adjuvant than a human receives over a year – of course, human infants are smaller.

Nevertheless, even though I dismiss any link between injected aluminum and neurological issues, giving 6-7 years of vaccines over 12 months biases the results. In addition, I’m skeptical of the behavioral observations, but it is possible that the serum aluminum levels are so high that it exceeds the safe limit for aluminum.

3.The study was not randomized or blinded (or they failed to mention it in the methods section). You might think that randomization on matters with humans, but the researchers could have biased the results by the way they treated the sheep.

4.This study relied upon subjective observations of the sheep’s “behavior” post-vaccination. These are the type of issues that hinder many behavioral and neurological studies – a subjective analysis of change in behavior is almost impossible to quantify. And when there are just 21 animals, it’s almost impossible.

5.Sheep are social animals and the process of vaccination itself, especially so many over a short period of time, may induce behavioral changes irrespective of any contents of the vaccine, although the control group did receive a placebo injection.

6.This sheep vaccine study is a primary research article – that means it lacks any supporting data anywhere else. It’s like the old vaccines cause autism canard – one retracted study supported it.

On the other hand, literally hundreds of clinical and epidemiological studies along with meta-reviews have debunked that claimed link. That’s why most real biomedical researchers ignore primary animal studies – they pique interest, but rarely form the foundations of science-based medicine.

Since we have dozens of studies that show no behavioral changes post vaccination, how much does a very small, very poorly designed sheep study tell us? Next to nothing.

7.In a 2013 study by the same research group, they observed that around 0.5-1.0 % of animals of a flock exhibit the type of behavioral symptoms, irrespective of vaccination, described in the newer paper – yet they conveniently ignore it.

Given the tiny sample size, the lack of randomization or blinding, and other issues, it’s impossible to tell if this is background noise.

I’m done here

The anti-vaccine religion has pounced on this study, which doesn’t surprise me or any other pro-science person out there. Dr. Bob Sears (the California pediatrician on probation for some issues about vaccine exemptions) and the crackpot science denier Robert F Kennedy Jr have tried to abuse this pathetic study to further their pro-disease for children beliefs.

This sheep vaccine study barely rises to the level of bad evidence – it provides us with nothing useful about the discussion regarding aluminum in vaccines.

Moreover, there is overwhelming evidence, as shown in so many powerful peer-reviewed studies, that there simply is no link between aluminum adjuvants and anything.

Why do the anti-vaccine use this terrible sheep vaccine study to support their claims? Because they’ve got nothing else. Nada. Squat. Zilch.

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