By: Gary Null (PhD) and Richard Gale, 12/17/2013
Population cohort and ecologic studies have become today's norm for determining vaccine efficacy and support the belief that vaccination has safely reduced the spread of infectious diseases and saved millions of lives. Never a gold standard for scientific inquiry, population studies now make up the bulk of vaccine advocates' clinical arsenal to discredit more factual biological research favoring the arguments of vaccine opponents. A recent paper published in the November 2013 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, "Contagious Diseases in the United States from 1988 to the Present," is the first of what will inevitably turn into a flurry of future studies to persuade legislators and the public that vaccination should be mandatory for assuring the health of the nation. The study was spawned from a new project launched at the University of Pittsburgh, Project Tycho, named after the renowned 16th century astronomer and mathematician Tycho Brahe and mentor of Johannes Kepler. Funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, the Project is an enormous multi-tiered undertaking to store mortality data for 56 infectious diseases between 1888 and the present for future data-mining and analysis, and to strategize future policies to increase vaccination rates.
