Progressive Convergence
Friday, September 17, 2010
A shocking report from the National Coalition of Organized Women (NCOW) presented data from two different sources demonstrating that the 2009/10 H1N1 vaccines contributed to an estimated 1,588 miscarriages and stillbirths. A corrected estimate may be as high as 3,587 cases. NCOW also highlights the disturbing fact that the CDC failed to inform their vaccine providers of the incoming data of the reports of suspected H1N1 vaccine related fetal demise.
NCOW collected the data from pregnant women (age 17-45 years) that occurred after they were administered a 2009 A-H1N1 flu vaccine. The raw data is available on the website.
Using the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), including updates through July 11, 2010 as a second ascertainment source, capture-recapture statistical methods* were used to estimate the true number of miscarriages and stillbirths following A-H1N1 flu vaccination in the U.S. Typically, even so-called “complete” studies conducted by the CDC have been shown to miss from 10% to 90% of the actual cases because of under-reporting.
The statistical method employed is an expeditious and cost effective method of attempting to ascertain a complete count of all cases when two or more ascertainment sources (VAERS and NCOW survey) have failed to collect all the existing cases. Overall, this approach shows that approximately only 15% of the occurrences of a miscarriage or stillbirth were actually reported.
The corrected estimate for the total number of 2009-A-H1N1-flu-shot-associated miscarriages and stillbirths during the 2009/10-flu season is 1,588 (95% goodness-of-fit confidence interval, 946 to 3587). That is, the lower and upper range-probability of miscarriage and stillbirths due to the H1N1 vaccine was as low as 946 and as high as 3,587...
