In large-scale medical tragedies like the handling of tobacco-caused death and disease or thalidomide-caused birth defects, most of the damage is caused not because the science is elusive but because the social dynamics are recalcitrant. In Vaccines, Amen: The Religion of Vaccines, trial lawyer Aaron Siri blazes an optimal path to liberty, good science, and a reckoning, by establishing multiple facts about the vaccines to date and people’s supporting actions.

Siri places the social dynamics front and center by introducing key groups of people and some of their key actions and beliefs. In part I, “The Clergy,” Siri begins with the high priest—foremost vaccinologist Stanley Plotkin. Plotkin helped develop at least four vaccines, was listed as an author of over 900 peer-reviewed articles, and was listed as an editor for each of eight editions of vaccinology’s standard medical textbook, Plotkin’s Vaccines. Deposed by Siri, Plotkin showed that he didn’t know that the two Hep B vaccines that were then FDA-licensed for newborns were approved based on, at most, five days of safety trials—inadequate time to detect any neurological disorders, for example, that arose later. Plotkin also claimed that the Hep B vaccine doesn’t cause encephalitis, but he had no proof. He claimed that other commonly suspected harms including autism weren’t caused by vaccines, but he had no proof. Even so, he said, for the health of a child he absolutely would have to tell the child’s parent that DTaP/Tdap vaccines do not cause autism.

Siri next introduces “the disciples,” Plotkin’s trainees. Like Plotkin, disciples like Paul Offit and Tina Tan are selected by vaccine producers as paid researchers and paid speakers, and are selected by FDA and CDC to advise on vaccines. The CDC, in turn, is selected by state-government people to advise on vaccines.

Siri then introduces “the priests”—the federal, state, and local government-agency managers, the foremost being Anthony Fauci. During covid, government managers turned to Plotkin’s trainees for advice on whether natural immunity—which is the gold standard that vaccine developers strive to meet—might not be as good as vaccine-derived immunity from the warp-speed-developed covid vaccines. When legally required to answer why no childhood vaccine clinical trials were run against a placebo (like saline solution), the responsible managers didn’t refer to the trial data they keep on record, but here too turned to Plotkin’s trainees, who falsely claimed that the vaccines had been trialed against........

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