Intro

I'm a vaccine "believer" with a vaccine "skeptic" mother who sent me this book after the birth of my daughter. I am reading this because of my love of and respect my mother, who I believe came to believe antivaxx nonsense because of, not in spite of, her abundance of compassion and intelligence. Nevertheless, intelligent and compassionate people can be convinced to believe incorrect and harmful things and I believe that is what has happened here.

I suspect this book is consumed almost exclusively by anti-vaxxers, so I think it will be interesting to see if it holds up to a less-friendly read. I'm planning on doing a chapter-by-chapter blog-along as I read this book with my thoughts, and then doing a more in-depth analysis at the end. I don't have a background in virology, epidemiology, medicine, or biology in general. This makes me equally qualified as the book's author to comment.

I will state that my point of view from the outset is that this book is almost certainly tripe. I'm sure that the author knows these arguments with more detail than me (he is a lawyer who specializes in making anti-vaccine arguments for a living), so I don't expect that I will be able to convince anyone to agree with me. I have read anti-vaxx literature in the past and found none of it remotely convincing. However I suspect if any anti-vaxxer were going to be convinced by pointing out that introducing vaccines eliminated smallpox, almost eliminated polio, and dramatically reduced the incidences of measles, mumps, rubella, pertussis, diptheria and tetanus then they wouldn't be anti-vaxxers. So ultimately the point of this is catharsis, and to wrest some entertainment from what will otherwise be a tiring read.

Pre-read

I have not yet begun to read the book so I am registering my thoughts beforehand based only on the description and reviews by sympathetic readers. I am doing this to register my thoughts before I read the book so we can see which, if any, points the book makes that I find convincing. I also think it will be a good exercise in making sure I'm refreshed on the topic before reading a long book with a clear perspective on the topic.

Why vaccines are obviously good

Polio Smallpox

The cover

Judging a book by its cover is stereotypically not a good idea, but I'd be remiss to not mention that the cover of this book contains a somewhat misleading quote.

Vaccine scientists credit Mr. Siri for drilling into the details of vaccine research...

-- The New York Times

Which is taken from this article about Mr. Siri's asking for the F.D.A. to revoke approval of the polio vaccine.

A quote with some context is:

Some vaccine scientists credit Mr. Siri for drilling into the details of vaccine research that he cites to make his arguments. In some cases, he aligns with vaccine scientists, including a team that in 2004 called for an independent body to review vaccine safety outside agencies that fund or approve them.

Dr. Daniel Salmon, director of the Institute for Vaccine Safety at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said Mr. Siri raises “points that are worthy of exploration,” such as his concern about the safety of aluminum in vaccines.

“There are issues that he raises, such as this one, that really deserve to be studied carefully,” Dr. Salmon said. “But it’s got to be done carefully — it’s hard to do.”

Yet Mr. Siri’s ascent is concerning to some doctors, who note that it comes at a time of falling vaccination rates in the United States and a rise in cases of measles and whooping cough. His detractors say he twists snippets of science to make questionable claims that will deepen vaccine hesitancy, threatening the system of childhood vaccines that is credited with saving millions of lives.

I call this misleading for two reasons. First, the presence of a quote on the front of a book usually implies that the quote is related to the book itself, not about the author. Second, the quoted section of the NYT article could be summarized as "Some vaccine scientists think that Mr. Siri raises some good points, but others think that he does not", which gives a less charitable impression of the author than the shortened quote on the cover.

The blurb

I have read the book's blurb on goodreads. It's reproduced below:

Ever hear “I believe in cars” or “I believe in tools”? Probably not. But people routinely say, “I believe in vaccines.” This saying carries a truism because claims about vaccines often require faith. Belief. It is why challenging these claims often results in an emotional, not logical, reaction.

If you want the facts about vaccines—not beliefs and dogma—this book delivers. From the game-changing National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 through today’s post-Covid-19 landscape, Siri lays it all out based on a decade of experience deposing the world’s leading vaccinologists and prosecuting over a hundred lawsuits against health agencies. On that journey, he found that common claims about vaccines are often contrary to the evidence. This book lays bare this evidence, often the result of epic legal battles. There is what medical and health authorities tell the world, and then there is what they admit under oath in a lawsuit.

If you want to learn the truth about vaccines and the secret world of vaccinology, this book injects a heavy dose of reality and reveals the power structure and facts regarding vaccines as they have never before been laid out. Once you see the evidence, you cannot unlearn the truth.

The first paragraph is moronic. The reason no one says "I believe in cars" is because there isn't a large, organized anti-car movement that denies the existence of cars. It's true that most lay-people don't have a deep understanding of the scientific evidence for and against vaccinations because most people don't spend their free time reading scientific journals. Among people who do have a deep understanding of the evidence (doctors) the consensus is that the vaccination schedule until recently recommended by the CDC is a good idea to follow.

The next paragraphs are also obvious nonsense. It's fine to present an alternative viewpoint, but this book is clearly not a "just the facts, ma'am" breakdown of the evidence for and against vaccinations. Having experience deposing and suing health agencies and doctors in court is not the same thing as having any expertise in academic research. Siri may know more about the evidence than the average person, but he's also got an obvious conflict of interest in that without a large antivaxx movement there would be much less appetite for suing health agencies about vaccine communication and harm, which is what his law firm specializes in.

Predictions

Here are a few predictions about the book's content

• The book will successfully disprove the idea that vaccines are 100% safe and 100% effective
  • It will point to non-experts making claims to that effect to make it seem like the public is being misled
  • It may have some examples of people who should know better making claims like this, or at least oversimplifying to these claims
  • It will pretend that these are claims that anyone with two spare braincells believes
• The book will gesture towards antivaxx boogeymen like the "vaccine mandate" and the NCVIA
  • it will fail to engage with the pros and cons of either of these, instead it will be assumed that they are bad
• The book will treat the existence of vaccine side-effects as something that the medical industry is attempting to cover up.
  • It will not provide evidence of this cover-up and will ignore that side effects are listed on the CDC's own website
• The book will not engage with the real costs of the anti-vaxx movement, including things like measles being on track to becoming endemic in the US
• The book will ignore or downplay the obvious successes of vaccination campaigns to eradicate smallpox and polio
  • It will especially ignore or downplay the successes in reducing instances of less serious illnesses like measles and pertussis down to near zero, even though these viruses certainly caused more injuries to children than vaccination does
• This book will not engage with the fact that most anti-vaxx people do not simply have concerns about the specific vaccine schedule, but are opposed to all vaccines no matter what
• This book will identify legitimately bad researchers, science communicators, and studies
  • It will attempt to use that evidence to indict the vaccine schedule as a whole
• The book will include an abundance of charts, tables, and statistics to attempt to make its claims
  • It will expect those numbers to be trusted in spite of the fact that the main thesis of the antivaxx movement is that the entire medical profession is using charts, tables, and statistics to obscure the truth and lie to the public
• The book will treat VAERS data as dispositive to whether vaccines are safe, despite that not being an appropriate use of that data
• The book will over-focus on the specific arguments that sound the nicest to people who don't know what they're talking about, I'll register my answers to a few of them here:
  • Why do we control vaccine trials against other vaccines instead of a placebo?
    • The same reason we don't do placebo controlled trials of skydiving equipment.
  • Why do we give Hepatitis B vaccines to newborns when it's an illness that's primarily contracted through sexual contact and IV drugs?
    • It's also transmitted through birth and it's bad public health policy to trust all new mothers will answer "have you done IV drugs while pregnant?" or "have you or your partner had unprotected sex with a stranger during your pregnancy?" honestly.
    • As horrible as it is to think about, the number of infants who have sexual contact with others or get pricked with a used IV needle is nonzero.
    • Infants tend to grow into adults who sometimes engage in unsafe sex or IV drug use, so the vaccination belongs somewhere on the schedule, it may as well be right after the first common transmission event (birth)

Housekeeping

I'm not very familiar with Aaron Siri beyond knowing that he's worked with the Trump administration and RFK in particular. I have no reason to doubt that he believes the things he says. I will likely say unkind things about him in the process of writing this blog, but will not make unsubstantiated statements of fact about him. I have the book in front of me now and we will see what I think of it once I actually start reading.

I am also currently caring for a 12 week old. The combination of limited free time and more limited sleep that affords me means that I'm sure that I will make mistakes both big and small while writing this. Feel free to email me with any corrections, questions, comments, or concerns.