#VaccinesWork #medtwitter One of the most insidious tactics of the antivax world is to weave in kernels of truth with antivax talking points so that the untrained reader has difficulty telling things apart. Lets debunk Aseem Malhotra's lecture in Euston, dated Nov 2022.
1. physicians must be biased because they get big pharma funding-Not all physicians on the planet get pharma dollars. You can actually look up English physicians here abpi.org.uk/reputation/dis… and US physicians here openpaymentsdata.cms.gov . No reason to assume when you can check.
If you still think you don't know your physicians conflicts of interests well enough ask for them during your office visit. You can walk away if you don't like the COIs. Saying most physicians have pharma COI is just factually inaccurate.
2. Stanford's Ioannidis is a far cry from Stephen Hawking. Ioannidis has made so many errors, attacked so many junior trainees, and made so many wrong predictions about the pandemic - they're all detailed here sciencebasedmedicine.org/what-the-heck-… courtesy of @gorskon
Hawking actually gave us many advancements in astrophysics that were later shown to be true, with so much less hubris. Here are Hawkings achievements: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_H…
3. Pharma misconduct - this is a fight that most everybody could fight against. Here's one of those kernels of truth; antivaxxers and pro-vaccine people alike appreciate when pharma executive are held accountable for mistakes.
However, it is an error to then fear every medication you see and think there is pharma misconduct going on in the background.
4. People dying from medication side effects - yes, this is a thing. However, the antivax/ anti medicine community loves to distort and take this out of context. Here's more context: sciencebasedmedicine.org/how-do-we-avoi…
Several fields of medicine dedicate entire parts of their training to decreasing polypharmacy physicians.dukehealth.org/articles/five-… .
5. 800 000 deaths after beta blockers - this is a distortion of the Poldermans incident where an article was retracted that stated patients may have been affected by using beta blockers after noncardiac surgery. A basic explainer: retractionwatch.com/2014/01/20/qui… 
If you then think "all beta blockers are bad", you would be sorely, sorely mistaken. Quite a few conditions including stable heart failure, benefit from beta blockers.
6. Overmedication/ poor lifestyle - I challenge the audience to find me a healthcare worker who is asking their patients to follow a poor lifestyle. In real practice, the actual act of helping someone improving their lifestyle includes figuring out all the barriers.
Theoretically clinical cardiologists like Aseem should be aware of all the socioeconomic barriers to leading a completely stress free and healthy lifestyle/ regular exercise, but in the lecture this is conveniently left out and replaced with physician bashing.
7. ARR vs RRR in regards to vaccines - if you feel the need to dive into research articles during your clinic visit go for it! Just be prepared to do it over more than 1 visit. People insisting on ARR has been a longstanding antivax tactic. Deep dive: absolutelymaybe.plos.org/2022/06/02/ano…
8. Taking someone off statins after a coronary stent - in 1 sentence, the heart attack is caused by a longstanding imbalance in coronary inflammation and its interplay with cholesterol w/ ruptured plaque. Removing statin goes against shelves of research ahajournals.org/doi/pdf/10.116…
9. Obesity - it was really not necessary to delve into fat shaming in the lecture. The causes of obesity are multifactorial and it is seriously ableist to only blame the patient.
10. Hospitals with fast foods - Yes lets take the fast foods out of the hospitals! There is no need for medical facilities to be serving pizza and fried chicken. Hospitals should set a good example.
11. Gundry abstract - this author attempted to use a lab test not validated for the purpose he wanted to use it for. That's not acceptable. sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-puls-test-…
12. Clare Craig - Aseem needing her help for statistical review is immediately suspect. Her online statements are riddled with errors and she wants people to think COVID vaccines cause COVID:
https://twitter.com/Debunk_the_Funk/status/1541850512076701697?s=20&t=2fxrgCtSpB7NWGRjD02PiA
13. Unexpected COVID association with less heart disease - he picked an article, cherrypicked one sentence, and hoped you didn't notice. The core conclusion was: heart.bmj.com/content/early/…
The sentence which he cherrypicked **was explicitly qualified with a warning of selection bias**, but Aseem tried to play statistical slight of hand while preaching for everyone else to read articles carefully.
14. Peter Doshi praise - nope, he actually has a taste for poorly constructed re-analyses (meaning making an analysis that supports his conclusions, which is a research no-no): sciencebasedmedicine.org/peer-review-fa…
15. Israeli heart attack study - the study on Israeli EMS calls and cardiac events has been misinterpreted again: reuters.com/article/factch…
16. Joseph Ladapo's study - the poorly constructed study of @FLSurgeonGen is actually contradicted by the data it is built upon: tampabay.com/opinion/2022/1…
17. Natural immunity vs immunization immunity - some people who get COVID don't even get any immunity! Here's a deep dive by @ENirenberg , someone who actually knows immunology unlike Aseem: deplatformdisease.com/blog/covid-19-…
18. COVID immunization adverse events - has Aseem or any of his associates treated patients with vaccine related adverse events yet? He does a lot of fundraisers but I have yet to hear of a patient healed of myocarditis, neuropathy, or long COVID after vax by him.
19. Bill Gates should focus on non-communicable diseases - Even a very basic fact check would reveal that the foundation is already funding work in this arena: gatesfoundation.org/ideas/media-ce…
20. Merck's fine after the Vioxx debacle - good! I am happy that Merck got to pay for its mistake.
21. Aseems fathers death - let me quote Aseem Malhotra's words back to him: bbc.com/news/uk-englan… . He explicitly said on record that the ambulance delay likely caused the death. I guess Aseem thinks an ambulance delay is a vaccine injury. Since when is this the case?
If you think COVID immunization is causing clots/ hyperviscosity/ autoimmune disease do the experiment! The medical community has never been allowed to just declare that something happens. We need at minimum an animal study followed by some version of a human study.
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