CHD says CDC stripped death details from vaccine safety study before publication

Summarised by Centrist

Children’s Health Defense says internal documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit show CDC researchers rewrote a major COVID vaccine safety study in a way that shifted attention away from deaths and toward reassurance about safety.

According to CHD, an earlier draft of the study was framed around “reactogenicity [side effects] and adverse events” after mRNA vaccination.

By the time it appeared in The Lancet Infectious Diseases in June 2022, the title had been recast around the “safety of mRNA vaccines.” CHD says that was not just a cosmetic change. 

CHD argues that the published version removed or buried some of the most sensitive material in the paper.

The main claim is that details about deaths reported to the US Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS, were cut back before publication. CHD says the draft referred to 4,496 deaths during the first six months of the US rollout and included a comment from lead author Hannah Rosenblum saying “death results” had been removed from the abstract.

CHD argues that the abstract is the part of a study most people read first, and often the only part they read at all.

Among other alterations, CHD also says the published version dropped a figure showing heart disease as the top reported cause of death after vaccination and shifted a related table into supplementary materials, where fewer readers are likely to see it. 

CHD says the authors also softened findings that death reports after COVID vaccination were running higher than those seen after other vaccines.

The CDC did not publicly explain why the manuscript was changed. 

Read more over at Popular Rationalism

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