‘Fewer Than 1% of Vaccine Adverse Events Are Reported’

A few decades ago when I was interviewing candidates for an articling job in my law office, I met a young woman who had almost no arms, only small hands at the ends of severely shortened upper limbs. She was a victim of the drug thalidomide. The Thalidomide Victims Association of Canada says there are about a hundred such survivors still alive in Canada today, all about 60 years old now.

Thalidomide was first marketed in 1956 by a German company, Grünenthal, as an anti-flu remedy and a sedative. By 1958, it was being sold in the UK, Norway and Japan. Canada approved it in 1961, and it was even promoted as a drug to prevent morning sickness in pregnant women.

However, Grünenthal had begun receiving complaints from doctors about side effects as early as 1959, and ignoring them. Estimates say that as a result, some 15,000 babies were born alive with malformations, while thousands of miscarriages and stillbirths also occurred. The drug was withdrawn from the Canadian market in 1962.

Since then, the thalidomide tragedy has stood for the proposition that pregnant women should not consume any drug or other substance that has not been thoroughly tested for safety, and tested specifically in pregnant women to ensure that their fetuses aren’t harmed. It’s hard to imagine finding many women willing to risk their unborn children’s health in order to be experimental subjects for such safety tests, which probably explains why very few drugs are approved for use in pregnant women.

I was therefore astonished to read an article published on March 25, 2021 in two of my local newspapers, the Picton Gazette and the County Weekly News. The author, Dr. Helene Baldwin MD, apparently intended to ease women’s fears about getting the COVID-19 vaccination while pregnant.

“So far, we don’t have any evidence to suggest that vaccination poses a risk of harm to you or your pregnancy,” the article states. Later, it reiterates: “…women who want the vaccine should not be excluded based on the absence of evidence and theoretical risks as so far we do not have any data to suggest harm to mother or baby.”

Dr. Baldwin cites a recommendation by the Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Canada (SOGC) that COVID-19 vaccines be offered to pregnant women as soon as the vaccines become available.

The medical profession has done a complete about-face. The previous strict rule was that pregnant women should not consume any substance that hadn’t been thoroughly tested and proven safe, but the bar has now been lowered to: “Hey, go ahead because we don’t have any evidence of harm, yet.”

However, this new lower standard raises important questions, such as: who did the searching for evidence of harm, and how thoroughly did they look?

I have managed to find evidence of harm that Dr. Baldwin and SOGC appear to have overlooked.  The Centers for Disease Control (CDC), a US government agency, maintains the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System database, or VAERS for short. It’s a voluntary or “passive” system in which vaccine recipients who suspect they’ve had an adverse reaction to vaccination can, with the help of their doctors if necessary, file a report to alert others to the incident. Reports can be made by US residents or by people in other countries.

Because it’s not mandatory, most people aren’t aware of it. Even doctors seem to overlook it. Since there is no remuneration for doing so, there is little incentive for doctors to take the time necessary. Consequently, the number of adverse reactions shown in the database is severely under-reported compared to the number of adverse reactions that actually occur.

In fact, this report prepared for the US Department of Health and Human Services in 2010 concluded that “fewer than 1% of vaccine adverse events are reported.”