It is estimated that only 1-10% of all [vaccine] adverse reactions are ever reported to VAERS

VAERS is an acronym for Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System which is a national safety surveillance program co-sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which was started in 1990. VAERS was created to track adverse events after the administration of routine vaccines.

In response to The National Childhood Vaccine Act (NCVIA) of 1986, health officials and vaccine manufacturers are supposed to report to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) adverse events that arise from routine vaccinations. An adverse event can range from a small side effect to more serious injury and death.

According to their website, VAERS receives around 30,000 adverse event reports annually with 13% classified as serious (e.g., associated with disability, hospitalization, life threatening illness or death). That works out to around 4,000 cases per year. What is not usually discussed, but is openly admitted by VAERS, is that because this is a self-reporting system and diagnosing adverse events can be very subjective, it is estimated that only 1-10% of all adverse reactions are ever reported to VAERS. Doctors have been conditioned to not connect a child’s subsequent maladies with vaccine visits, therefore the bulk of the cases go unreported.

When we look at the trend in reported incidents, VAERS cases are rising steadily every year. So far, 2014 had the most reported cases of adverse events following vaccines, with a record 38,519 reports.

In her November 2005 article, Lynn Borne describes the multiple problems with VAERS: “When a vaccine is released onto the market, post-marketing surveillance is supposed to track any negative reactions from the millions of people taking the newly released vaccine. However, not only is the adverse reporting system entirely voluntary, 90 to 99 percent of all adverse reactions are never reported…”.  Borne points out that “….no oversight of any kind ensures that reports made directly to the pharmaceutical companies are then forwarded to the FDA–the process is run entirely by the “honor system.”

Borne goes on to discuss President Bush’s Smallpox Vaccination Program of 2003.  “Before the program, the public was repeatedly told to expect death rates from the vaccine of one to two per million.” In fact, she states, 3 deaths occurred out of about 36,000 civilians who received the vaccine. “This makes the actual death rate 80 times higher than that which the CDC told the public to expect. Serious adverse reactions such as brain swelling, heart inflammation, heart attacks, uncontrolled ulceration of the skin, among others, were one in 583, seven times higher than the CDC’s original guesstimate of one in four thousand. And yet medical authorities and mainstream news continue to use the old, inaccurate numbers rather than update the risk estimate as they should.”

(excerpted from Part V: Are Vaccines Safe and Effective? in the 12-part series titled “A Comprehensive Review of Vaccines”)