Neil Z. Miller & Gary Goldman Study: Reaffirming a Positive Correlation Between Number of Vaccine Doses and Infant Mortality Rates: A Response to Critics

A Guest Post

I first discovered Neil Z. Miller, a medical research journalist, on “The Truth About Vaccines” docuseries by Ty and Charlene Bollinger in 2017. He has devoted decades to educating parents and health care practitioners about vaccines to encourage informed consent.

I have been in communication with him several times since, mostly before Covid, and recently saw him interviewed by Brian Hooker on Children’s Health Defense, CHD TV show “Doctors and Scientists.” I discovered that I had his early books, written in 1996, as I have been following the literature on vaccine safety since deciding not to vaccinate my children, born at home in the 1980s.

The Thinktwice Global Vaccine Institute was established in 1996 to provide parents and other concerned people with educational resources enabling them to make more informed vaccine decisions. Thinktwice encourages an uncensored exchange of vaccine information, and supports every family's right to accept or reject vaccines.

Check out Neil’s website, http://thinktwice.com

These two guides are an invaluable resource full of critical information required for informed consent or refusal.

You can order books on Think Twice from the New Atlantean Press. If you know parents or expecting parents, these guides provide invaluable, detailed information on each vaccine so that they can have truly, deeply informed consent, or informed refusal, as required by the Nuremberg Code.

Here are two of Neils books that I had in my library, published in 1996

Neil just sent me this critically important study, linked and excerpted below. I am honored to post it on my Substack. Please share it far and wide.  It may save lives.

Reaffirming a Positive Correlation Between Number of Vaccine Doses and Infant Mortality Rates: A Response to Critics

Abstract, Introduction and Conclusion below. Click the link for more details, charts, graphs, methods, etc.

Abstract

Introduction

In 2011, we published a study that found a counterintuitive, positive correlation, r = 0.70 (p < .0001), demonstrating that among the most highly developed nations (n = 30), those that require more vaccines for their infants tend to have higher infant mortality rates (IMRs). Critics of the paper recently claimed that this finding is due to "inappropriate data exclusion," i.e., the failure to analyze the "full dataset" of all 185 nations.

Objective

In the present study, we examine various claims postulated by these critics and the validity of their scientific methods, and we perform several investigations to assess the reliability of our original findings.

Methods

The critics select 185 nations and use linear regression to report a correlation between the number of vaccine doses and IMRs. They also perform multiple linear regression analyses of the Human Development Index (HDI) vs. IMR with additional predictors and investigate IMR vs. percentage vaccination rates for eight different vaccines. We perform odds ratio, sensitivity, and replication analyses.

Results

The critics' reanalysis combines 185 developed and Third World nations that have varying rates of vaccination and socioeconomic disparities. Despite the presence of inherent confounding variables, a small, statistically significant positive correlation of r = 0.16 (p < .03) is reported that corroborates the positive trend in our study. Multiple linear regression analyses report high correlations between IMR and HDI, but the number of vaccine doses as an additional predictor is not statistically significant. This finding is a likely consequence of known misclassification errors in HDI. Linear regression of IMR as a function of percentage vaccination rates reports statistically significant inverse correlations for 7 of 8 vaccines. However, several anomalies in the scatter plots of the data suggest that the chosen linear model is problematic.

Our odds ratio analysis conducted on the original dataset controlled for several variables. None of these variables lowered the correlation below 0.62, thus robustly confirming our findings. Our sensitivity analysis reported statistically significant positive correlations between the number of vaccine doses and IMR when we expanded our original analysis from the top 30 to the 46 nations with the best IMRs. Additionally, a replication of our original study using updated 2019 data corroborated the trend we found in our first paper (r = 0.45, p = .002).

Conclusions

A positive correlation between the number of vaccine doses and IMRs is detectable in the most highly developed nations but attenuated in the background noise of nations with heterogeneous socioeconomic variables that contribute to high rates of infant mortality, such as malnutrition, poverty, and substandard health care.

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Introduction

In 2011, we [1] observed that the United States required more vaccine doses for infants than any other nation, yet several nations had better (lower) infant mortality rates (IMRs). We conducted a study to explore a potential association between the number of vaccine doses that these 30 nations (the US and all nations with better IMRs) routinely give to their infants and their IMRs. Linear regression analysis yielded a coefficient of determination, r² = 0.49 (r = 0.70; p < .0001). This positive correlation was counterintuitive: among the most highly developed nations, those requiring the most vaccine doses for their infants tended to have the highest IMRs.

Dr. E. Bailey, a professor at Brigham Young University (BYU), and several students associated with her Bioinformatics Capstone course recently read our study and found it "troublesome that this manuscript is in the top 5% of all research outputs." They reanalyzed our study to "correct past misinformation" and claimed that its findings were due to "inappropriate data exclusion," i.e., failure to analyze the "full dataset" of all 185 nations. The "Bailey reanalysis" was posted on the medRxiv preprint server [2] on September 10, 2021 (version 1), October 5, 2021 (version 3), and December 2, 2022 (version 4), which we refer to in this paper.

One stated rationale behind Bailey's reanalysis (and additional new investigations) is to reduce the impact of vaccine hesitancy, which "has intensified due to the rapid development and distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine." They also appear to be targeting our study for a potential retraction.

Our present study examines the various claims postulated by Nysetvold et al. and assesses the credibility of their methodology, analyses, reported results, and conclusions. Additionally, we provide odds ratio, sensitivity, and replication analyses, which reinforce and corroborate the methodology and findings presented in our original study.

Conclusions

There is a positive correlation between infant vaccines and infant mortality rates. This relationship is most pronounced in analyses of the most highly developed homogenous nations but is attenuated in background noise in analyses of nations with heterogeneous socioeconomic variables. Health authorities in all nations have an obligation to determine whether their immunization schedules are achieving desired goals. More investigations into the health outcomes of vaccinated vs. unvaccinated populations and the effect of vaccinations on all-cause mortality are imperative.