The theme of their publications continues with falsification by omission of key information. While this page consists of four separate data sheets, their talking points are quite repetitive and so main points will only be illustrated once here.

A more serious potential side effect is seizure, which may occur in about 1 in 683 children vaccinated with DTaP.^6-9

The PIC group loves to process any statistic that shows a large side effect risk of vaccines, but refuses to thoughtfully think about any statistic that is better researched than VAERS (their logic is simple, vaccine bad = something I want to promote). There are quite a few studies from quite a few different countries that show the seizure risk of the DTaP/ DTaP combination vaccine is much lower than 1 in 683. VAERS is nice to have to help researchers figure out the presence of safety signals, but the data must be verified. VAERS is a database where anyone can report anything, but medical records reported to the website must be corrected, verified, and cleaned up if necessary (and removed of intentional VAERS falsification encouraged by some antivaxxers). When that is done, as was the case in this study, the actual risk of febrile seizures is very very small and occurs in only limited time periods after the vaccine. These vaccines also definitely do not cause the seizure syndrome known as epilepsy (repeated seizures). Even the PIC authors acknowledge “As a result, VAERS does not provide an accurate count of DTaP vaccine side effects”.

The DTaP vaccine contains 330 mcg to 625 mcg of aluminum,^5,11 an amount 60 to 120 times greater than the maximum safe level of aluminum in the bloodstream per day for an 11.7-pound (5.3-kilogram) infant, derived from the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) (Fig. 1)

This is falsification by failure to thoughtfully think through basic biology. The presentation shown in figure 1 is an irrelevant comparison because the DTaP and Tdap vaccines are not directly injected into the bloodstream. The aluminium sits at the injection site and is slowly removed by the body (albeit at slightly different speeds in slightly different people). The people who most need to worry about aluminium in the bloodstream are those dependent on IV nutrition who also have chronic kidney problems.

Additionally, the manufacturer’s package insert states that the DTaP vaccine has “not been evaluated for carcinogenic or mutagenic potential or impairment of fertility.

The pharmaceutical companies, while quite well off financially, cannot create 1 massive trial that studies every known side effect under the sun as their licensing trial, to receive FDA approval. Their primary objective for the licensing trial is to figure out common side effects, their severity, and the effectiveness of their vaccine. Later scientists can specifically look at a link with cancer, and fertility. As I have stated before, the impairment of fertility is a perennial trick that antivaxxers use to scare people because of the emotional content of the phrase. This specific question has directly been answered, in time for the publication of the PIC document, which indicates that the PIC team is withholding information from their readers, by this study – they find no link between common childhood vaccinations and actually find a small protective effect against some leukemias. The Tdap vaccine is going to be the one relevant to pregnant women – and it has been given for a very long time (primarily for its pertussis protection) to them without any evidence of impaired fertility. As for their complaint that clinical trials are not accurate – PIC fails to reveal to the author that there are multiple organizations that can study a childhood vaccine after its FDA approval, to either corroborate the company’s clinical trial or steer the research in a different direction. It really doesn’t matter that a pharmaceutical company can’t detect every side effect in existence.

Methods to measure vaccine risks include surveillance systems, clinical trials, and epidemiological studies

The PIC group seems to acknowledge the existence of more than one type of vaccine side effect study, but they definitely have a strong bias towards the VAERS database, which is meant to be a starting point, not the “end-all-be-all” of epidemiological research.

There are multiple problems with this graph – the most simple and straightforward problem is that dying is not the only bad side effect of diphtheria, pertussis, or tetanus. The next problem is, the absolute numbers of deaths are going to be small precisely because of vaccines. Caring only about death is a common antivaxxer logical fallacy. Here’s only a few things that DTaP and Tdap vaccines helped with (citation Plotkin’s Vaccines):

• 57% decline in the incidence of pertussis among U.S. children younger than 6 months of age from 2014 to 2018, compared to only a 26% decline among children 6 months to 1 year of age
• Multiple clinical trials encompassing both the older DTP (whole cell) and new DTaP (acellular) pertussis vaccine decreasing severe disease and hospitalization (as well as demonstrating vaccine efficacy)

Here, the PIC authors try to misuse statistics to make a comparison that distracts from the core issues – another classic antivax tactics. The most relevant evidence in 2024, shows that pertussis outbreaks are still occurring, and that vaccination is the easiest way to bring them back under control.

Epidemiological studies are hindered by the effects of chance. The largest epidemiological studies of vaccines targeting diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis observed DTP, the predecessor of the DTaP vaccine.

This sentence is an effort to conflate the old diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis vaccine with the new one. However, PIC is hiding the fact that the old vaccine has been withdrawn for many decades now. The side effects of the old vaccine don’t matter if they aren’t given out anymore. Furthermore, they try to conflate the Tdap vaccine with the DTaP vaccine, while the Tdap vaccine contains smaller quantities of the diphtheria and pertussis components, causing fewer side effects. While it is true that epidemiological studies can be hindered by chance, they carry many different tools to mitigate the problems associated with chance, such as basic hypothesis testing. Again, the theme here is “study bad when it doesn’t say what I want to hear”. That is the furthest possible thing from normal scientific inquiry.

Diphtheria can be treated with diphtheria antitoxin and antibiotics (erythromycin or procaine penicillin G). Respiratory support and airway maintenance can also be used if needed.¹

This particular sentence is profoundly out of touch. It is in essence, saying, if your child gets severe diphtheria disease, hospitalization and breathing support can be done, but avoids mentioning that vaccination can strongly decrease that risk. This is similar to saying, the police will be available after a serious car accident, but fails to mention all the things that a driver can do to avoid a car crash. Not getting a serious infectious disease is preferable to infection.

In the early 1940s, before widespread use of the tetanus vaccine began, tetanus was a disease of low incidence — the annual risk of contracting tetanus was about 1 in 180,000.² Therefore, every year, 99.999% of the population did not contract tetanus. In the modern era, it is rare to contract a fatal case of tetanus in the United States. Between 1900 and 1945, before widespread use of the tetanus vaccine began, the mortality rate of tetanus dropped from 2.4 per 100,000 to 0.5 per 100,000 in the population, due to advancements in living conditions, treatment, and health care — a 79% decline (Fig. 1)

From a certain perspective, tetanus ranks as the most nasty vaccine preventable disease you can get. The disease is not common due to vaccination, and the citation they cite uses estimated data when there are actual publications using actual population data that can be discussed. Again, this citation I provide was available by the time of publication of the PIC documents, meaning PIC is willfully hiding citations they don’t want you to see. PIC makes the same mistake as they always make – we don’t care less about tetanus because the actual disease is rare, we care because the actual disease is so nasty. What did this publication find?

• Percent reduction of disease in the vaccine era: ~98%
• Prevaccine incidence per 100,000: <1
• 2019 cases without immunization: 1,000
• 2019 cases with immunization: <100
• Cases prevented: 1,000

Infected adolescents and adults typically have milder symptoms than infants and young children.² …In rare situations, pertussis can be fatal. Most fatal cases of pertussis occur during infancy, before age 1.⁵

The PIC group fail to connect the dots here – vaccination is primarily intended to reduce severe disease and secondarily, protect our smaller members of society from hospitalization and death. They again try to conflate the DTP vaccine, DTaP vaccine, and Tdap vaccines. Again, the DTP vaccine was withdrawn primarily due to side effects many years ago, which means it doesn’t matter anymore to people trying to cut down on side effects! For people who theoretically understand medicine, the little “a” makes a big difference. The DTaP carries way fewer side effects than the old DTP vaccine. In addition, the Tdap vaccine carries even less side effects because it carries a smaller quantity of the pertussis and diphtheria components. The PIC group fail at basic fact checking here.