Why Statistical Power Matters When Measuring Vaccine Safety

Many health care professionals and much of the public believe that there is an abundance of vaccine safety studies that has proven that the benefit of vaccines outweigh their cost. However, fewer are aware of the limitations of those safety studies. This editorial discusses the limitations of vaccine safety studies and focuses specifically on their statistical limitations. The authors cite data presented in Physicians for Informed Consent’s “Vaccines and the diseases they target: an analysis of vaccine safety and epidemiology” to summarize the risks of the most serious cases of the diseases targeted by vaccines and how they compare to the statistical limitations of their corresponding vaccine safety studies — with the goal of raising awareness about those limitations. The authors propose the creation of a vaccine safety study database that records the statistical limits of each study for use in future research and in personal decision-making regarding vaccination.

Keywords: Vaccine safety, disease risk, proof of safety, study limitations, statistical power