The Immunization Safety Review Committee (ISR) was a project within the Institute of Medicine that addressed current and emerging vaccine-safety concerns. The committee provided independent, non-biased advice to vaccine policy-makers, as well as practitioners and the public.

Meetings
The committee met three times a year from 2001 - 2004. The topic of each meeting was a specific vaccine-safety question. For each vaccine-safety question, the committee read and discussed the relevant epidemiologic evidence for or against a causal relationship, as well as any case reports, and clinical evidence. The committee also heard presentations from the authors of key papers, as well as ongoing, unpublished research.  Presentations for each meeting are available by clicking on the meetings listed at the bottom of this page.

Reports
Committee reports, as well as their summaries and press releases, are available (scroll to bottom of the page) online in full-text format. Following each meeting, the committee wrote a report with three types of conclusions about:

• the causal relationship between the vaccine and adverse effect,
• the biologic mechanisms that could account for the adverse effect, and
• the significance of the safety concern in the context of society at large (e.g., the seriousness, treatment, complications of the wild-type disease and hypothesized adverse effects of the vaccine).

Based on their conclusions, the committee made recommendations for future activities (i.e. surveillance, research, policy, communication) regarding the safety concern. The committee's reports are addressed to federal vaccine research policymakers, state and local vaccine program implementers, health care professionals, the public, and the media.
 

Free Executive Summaries
Executive summaries of each of the committee's eight report are available for free in PDF format.

• Immunization Safety Review: Measles-Mumps-Rubella Vaccine and Autism (April 2001)
• Immunization Safety Review: Thimerosal - Containing Vaccines and Neurodevelopmental Disorders (October 2001)
• Immunization Safety Review: Multiple Immunizations and Immune Dysfunction (February 2002)
• Immunization Safety Review: Hepatitis B Vaccine and Demyelinating Neurological Disorders (May 2002)
• Immunization Safety Review: SV40 Contamination of Polio Vaccine and Cancer (October 2002)
• Immunization Safety Review: Vaccinations and Sudden Unexpected Death in Infancy (March 2003)
• Immunization Safety Review: Influenza Vaccines and Neurological Complications (October 2003)
• Immunization Safety Review: Vaccines and Autism (May 2004)

Who We Are
The ISR committee was composed of 14 people with expertise in:

• Medicine (pediatrics, nursing, infectious disease, internal medicine)
• Public Health (epidemiology, biostatistics, health communication)
• Medical and Scientific Research (immunology, genetics, neurology)
• Risk Perception, Decision Analysis, Ethics

The committee was sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health.