Claim: Retracted Paper “Cited Extensive Literature” Corroborating Link Between Vaccines and SIDS

Verdict: False and misleading

“The Miller paper cites an extensive literature on an association between sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) and recent vaccinations, from 1933 to 2014.”

RFK Jr., via Twitter: I sent this letter to the Editor-in-Chief of Toxicology Reports demanding a full explanation for…

RFK Jr. wrote to the editor of Toxicology Reports about a now-retracted paper, as revealed by a social media post this week. He raised several points in his letter asking for “full transparency” regarding the journal’s decision to remove the paper.

Specifically, RFK Jr. claimed that the paper cited “extensive literature” corroborating the supposed link between vaccines and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). But did it?

The Paper and Why It Was Flawed

Author Neil Miller looked at reports from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) on infants who died within 60 days of vaccination (doses between 1990 and 2019). He identified 2,605 such cases, and 1,048 specifically mentioned SIDS.

In this time, based on approximately 3,500 cases in the US per year, there would have been 105,000 SIDS cases in total. The paper thus covers about 1% of SIDS deaths.

He looked at the distribution of deaths relative to the day they were vaccinated, and compared it statistically to an equal distribution (i.e. pure chance). He found a difference.

The key problem is that VAERS is a passive database, which only captures cases which are reported to it. Appearing on the database doesn’t prove a link to vaccines, just that someone thought there was one. Is it surprising, then, that the 1% of SIDS cases believed to be vaccine-related should cluster around the vaccine date? Of course not. This is why the paper is deeply flawed.  

Does it Cite “Extensive Literature” Proving the Link?

RFK’s claim that it cites “extensive literature” corroborating the link is also incorrect. In fact, the author cites numerous case reports and some other analyses which do the same as the author: look at cases that occurred near vaccination, not that are caused by them. This issue has been identified by other authors . The cited studies cannot and do not prove the link exists in general.

The broader picture is captured by studies which look at large numbers of kids who receive a vaccine and their outcomes. One study did this for around 130k children in the 80s and found no link. Another paper from Britain used a case-control design [5] and actually found a protective effect of vaccines.