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The Lancet Recants Study Linking Autism To Vaccine
JamJam writes "The Lancet, a major British medical journal, has retracted a flawed study linking the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine to autism and bowel disease. British surgeon and medical researcher Andrew Wakefield and his colleagues originally released their study in 1998. Since then 10 of Wakefield's 13 co-authors have renounced the study's conclusions and The Lancet has said it should never have published the research. Wakefield now faces being stripped of his right to practice medicine in Britain. The vaccine-autism debate should now end."
...but it won't. Because the birthers *know* that the face on mars means that aliens ate my buick. ...In other news, Jack Sprat seen eating lean cuisines... details at 11.
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Wasn't it peer reviewed?
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Yeah, right. Since when have facts ever got in the way of a 'good' conspiracy theory?
...when it's scientists debating fat midwestern housewives whose "evidence" is nothing more than sad anecdotal stories. Fucking retards holding back progress.
Even if he loses his medical license, at least he'll be a budding star in any modern media corporation.
Q.E.D.
If you read about it in other places besides here, what you'd more likely see is just endless mockery that would blind people to anything that really *could* go wrong with vaccinations. It is like discussing fertile land turning to desert in rural Africa, then hearing someone chime in that global warming is a hoax because it is snowing outside his window right now.
Can someone outline the flaws in the study? I know we here at /. are experts at things like that. But I also don't want to RTFA.
So why exactly should I not believe the original study? From where I stand (which is little to zero knowledge on the subject) I could conclude that each of the co authors one by one were persuaded by the various pharmaceutical companies which standed to be harmed by this research.
Hey, it's okay, these things happen. At least they caught it before it could cause any major damage or start some anti-vaccine movement or anything. Good job, guys.
i'm sure big pharma had nothing to do with the Lancet changing its view!
Here my neck of the woods, I've heard countless mothers talk about how they would never get their kids vaccinated for seasonal or H1N1 flu, because of "what if..." syndrome. As in "What if.. the vaccine wasn't sufficiently tested, or what if my kid has a reaction, or I'd rather he get the flu than have a side effect.
Of course if their kid gets sick and gives it to the kid's entire 25student classroom. The mother doesn't give a shit, because atleast she didn't get the side effect.
My favorite is, "We have no idea what the side effect is of this vaccine in 10 or 20yrs."
Everyone knows autism is caused by plastic contaminated foods.
Vaccines? Is that guy crazy? Maybe he ate too many of those cheese & cracker snacks you could make tunnels in the cheese with, using that little red cheese spreader knifey thing, all of which was made of plastic.
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
Here's the actual retraction, rather than reporting on reporting on the retraction:
The Lancet, Early Online Publication, 2 February 2010
doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(10)60175-7
Retraction—Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children
The Editors of The Lancet
Following the judgment of the UK General Medical Council's Fitness to Practise Panel on Jan 28, 2010, it has become clear that several elements of the 1998 paper by Wakefield et al(1) are incorrect, contrary to the findings of an earlier investigation.(2) In particular, the claims in the original paper that children were "consecutively referred" and that investigations were "approved" by the local ethics committee have been proven to be false. Therefore we fully retract this paper from the published record.
References
1 Wakefield AJ, Murch SH, Anthony A, et al. Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children. Lancet 1998; 351: 637-641
2 Hodgson H. A statement by The Royal Free and University College Medical School and The Royal Free Hampstead NHS Trust. Lancet 2004; 363: 824.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
Just because one side of the debate has used bad data and judgment doesn't mean there is no merit to the debate. The other side does too. The trick is finding the truth in the whirlwind of lies and deceit.
Anecdotally, my brother works for a hospital. Everyone who works in the Emergency room was offered the H1N1 vaccine as soon as it became available. Each of those who got the vaccine came down with swine flu. Most of those who were unvacinated didn't.
These companies do make mistakes. Like any large organization with money at stake, they want to believe they can handle these problems quietly without large payouts. Is there a link between vaccines and autism? I don't know. I don't believe for a moment that the debate is over. There's way too much anecdotal evidence, even if there is no merit.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
Lets see... by using threats they got 10 out of 13 of the co-authors to renounce a study which had a result they didn't like, and it took them more than a decade to do it. It sounds more like the Inquisition than science. The study itself may have been flawed, but the current result is purely a political thing which doesn't prove anything one way or the other.
They can just advertise that he lost his licence because the powers that be want to supress information and they are doing it by silencing this guy. So spend $29.95 a month to sign up for our web site and learn what the man doesn't want you to know. (You know it'll work out just like that.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Like that matters. It should have ended a long time ago, but facts don't stand a chance against people who would give Lupron to children. Consider Boyd Haley's recent business of selling an industrial chelator (for cleaning up SuperFund sites) which doesn't even have an industrial MSDS for medical administration to children as a "dietary supplement" (wink, wink.)
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Are you referring to what I wrote, to what ak_hepcat wrote, to what JamJam wrote, or to the original article?
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
The American Academy of Pediatrics, the CDC, and the WHO have long since agreed that there is no credible proof for link between autism and vaccine. The 1998 study has been under intense fire for over a decade, with most of the doctors having pulled their names from it long since. We've been at the point of next to zero proof for a long time and yet the "debate" drags on. I would postulate that the cause is tightly linked the timing of childhood vaccinations in relationship to the symptoms of autism first becoming apparent. Unfortunately, I think that means that the debate is far from over.
After reading TFA, as far as my medically ignorant mind makes out, the study was withdrawn due to ethical issues obtaining the samples for the study, not due to issues with the conclusions drawn. I can see how this would lead Wakefield to be deregistered due to ethical considerations however how does this disprove his conclusions? The logic seems to go "your study shows there may be a link between autism and vaccines, you obtained samples unethically, therefore this proves once and for all and hereby ends the discussion that there is conclusively no link between autism and vaccines". I always pay extra close attention when a scientific discussion starts descending into claims of absolutes, a statement like "the possibility is laughably remote that there is a link between x and y" makes sense, "there is no link between x and y and nobody is to suggest there is" smacks of dark ages medicine rather than science.
I would love someone more medically inclined to provide more background as I sense a lot of info was missing from the story / article.
Click on Dr. Wilson's link to see his copy of a graph showing the slight drop in MMR vaccinations resulting in a sharp increase in measles cases. Fortunately, a mere thousand or so more per year will only mean a couple of deaths, blindings, sterilizations, and so forth. Words fail me.
It's amazing what results you can get if you keep repeating the experiment until you get the results you want.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
The debate over the autism link is being stirred by personal injury lawyers, it has nothing to do with science:
Among the dozens of charges the GMC deemed proven against Wakefield are that he provided a research proposal to a lawyer seeking to sue vaccine manufacturers for causing autism.
suck it, Jenny McCarthy & Oprah!
You're asking for a detailed fisking in a /. comment? Those details are out there, have been for years. Just read -- my favorite is scienceblogs.com/insolence -- partly because Orac is a damned sharp cookie, and partly because he dials up the snark to 11.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
With the gov't, media, and pharma all so interconnected, it is incredibly obvious that there is never any pressure on any party in that group to do things (e.g. threats to revoke license to practice medicine, legally protecting pharma from lawsuits, etc.) that might benefit the other. I mean, when has corruption in any of those parties ever existed?
What does that mean? And because the local ethics committee didn't approve it does that mean the results are invalid? (Granted assuming the tactics didn't skew the results, they could still be valid)
Sounds like mudslinging to defame them.
It did pass a previous investigation after all.
I can't imagine being that naive.
There are legal fortunes to be made. Government regulators to ensconce. The issue is far too lucrative to be allowed to vanish because some trumped up nonsense published last century has been discredited.
Politically protected 'science' doesn't submit to mere evidence. See climate-gate.
This study has already been thoroughly discredited. If evidence didn't sway the anti-vaccine movement, having a paper pulled from a "big-pharma shill" journal probably won't help either.
or else!
...I for one am waiting to see what Jenny McCarthy has to say about this.
or else!
The problem is that most people don't understand statistics, numerical significance or even the scientific method. This leads the unwashed masses to jump to conclusions that are based on anecdotal evidence, un-normalised data comparisons and non-causal correlations which sound quite reasonable on the surface.
When a study is properly performed and analysed to remove various biases and incorrect assumptions, it usually involves counter-intuitive statistical analyses.
Unfortunately, due to a lack of understanding of the scientific method, and despite the fact that a denouncement has been widely reported, many people will still be given media time to promote their ignorant contrarian claims.
When discussing high profile scientific studies like this one, I keep hearing people argue with reasoning like 'well that is just another point of view'. I intentionally used the word 'claims' and not 'view point' in the above paragraph. A view point implies that a contradictory, but valid alternative explanation exists. In the case of scientific study, a falsifiable hypothesis can be shown to be true or false. If it is deemed false it may still be correct in some of it's underlying elements. In that case it would be revised and a more accurate hypothesis developed.
Some people seem to think that if they personally don't understand the complex reasoning process behind a peer reviewed scientific conclusion, then they should feel free to jump to their own. Because of this, many kids have not been immunised over the last ten years, and now we are seeing the fall out of what happens when too many people decide against the recommendations of the medical establishment.
(1) I admitted anecdote.
(2) I don't believe the vaccine in general is bad. I do believe the hospital got a bad batch.
(3) I don't have hard numbers, but I can tell you that my brother lives in Redding CA. I'm not sure which hospital he works for, or even if it's in Redding. If you really care, I'm sure you can find it.
(As a side note, the vaccine that first came out was a nasal variety that was supposed to be weakened, live flu. It was still supposed to be safe for those without a compromised immune system. The shot in the arm is a different beast altogether.)
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
I don't know if autism is correlated with vaccines. I am not familiar with modern medicine. But my instinct tells me that if someone on the internet tells me how I should feel about the science, I would like to see his qualifications.
Sadly, while this should end debate, it's unlikely to do so.
A lot of times the media, or hysterical people trying to find a "cause" for something, extrapolate from a few anecdotal things they've heard.
For example, today I saw a scientific article misinterpreted by the news as saying Vitamin E will get rid of ADHD. The sample size was too small (81 total subject, of which I think 44 were not controls) to really "say" anything like that.
Does it justify further study? YES. Can we say that Vitamin E (fish oil) will cure ADHD in young kids? NO.
There just isn't enough data.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
More thoroughly than AGW.
No brain, no pain.
Related, Wakefield was recently found to have acted unethically by the General Medical Council. The full report is up on Scribd. Some analysis and summarizing, as well as some of the crazy response from the anti-vaccine community can be found at Orac's blog.
Those who argue against vaccination based on the risk of autism may well be on shaky ground, but there are PLENTY of studies linking vaccines to other ill effects, here are a (very) few:
MMR VACCINE
Pancreatis Caused by Measles, Mumps, and Rubella Vaccine Pancreas vol. 6 no 4 1991 [2] :86 [4 pgs.]
Mumps Meningitis Following Measles, Mumps and Rubella Immunization Lancet July 1989 [1 pg]
Optic Neuritis Complicating Measles, Mumps, and Rubella Vaccination American Journal of Opthalmology 1978
A Prefecture-wide Survey of Mumps Meningitis Associated with Measles, Mumps and Rubella Vaccine (Infec Dis J 1991 Vol 10 pg 204-209)
Risk of Aseptic Meningitis after Measles Mumps and Rubella Vaccine In UK Children (Lancet April 93 Pgs. 979)
A Prefecture -Wide Survey of Mumps Meningitis Associated With Measles, Mumps and Rubella Vaccine Pediatri Infect Dis J 1991; 10 [6pgs]
Guillain-Barre syndrome after measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine Lancet jan 1 1994 Vol 343 [1 pg]
RUBELLA VACCINE
Two Syndromes Following Rubella Immunization (Suggests a polyneuropathy in both syndromes) (JAMA 1970 Vol 214 no 13) [5pgs.]
Chronic Arthritis After Rubella Vaccination Clinical Infec Dis. 1992 15;307-12 [6pgs]
Acute Arthritis Complicating Rubella Vaccination (ARTHRITIS AND RHEUMATISM 1971 41) [4pgs]
Joint Symptoms Following an Area Wide Rubella Immunization Campaign Report of a Survey Am J of Public Health Vol 62 no 5 [4pgs]
Polyneuropathy Following Rubella Immunization Am J Dis Child 1974 Vol 127 [5pgs]
Postpartum Rubella Immunization: Association with Development of Prolonged Arthritis, Neurological Sequelae, and Chronic Rubella Viremia (THE JOURNAL OF INFECTIOUS DISEASES 1985 vol 152 no 3) [7pgs]
MEASLES VACCINE
Thrombocytopenic Purpura Following Vaccination With Attenuated Measles Virus Amer J Dis Child Jan 1968 Vol 115 [3pgs]
Investigation of a measles outbreak in a fully vaccinated school population including serum studies before and after revaccination (Pediatr Infec Dis J 1993 12) [8pgs.]
Risk of Aseptic Meningitis after Measles, Mumps , and Rubella Vaccine in UK Children Lancet 1993 Vol 341 [4pgs]
An Explosive point-source measles outbreak in a highly vaccinated population (American Journal of Epidemiology 1989 Vol 129 no 1) [10]
A Persistent Outbreak of Measles Despite Appropriate Prevention And Control Measures ( American Journal of Epidemiology Vol 126 No3) [13pgs.]
Measles Vaccine and Crohn’s Disease Gastroenterology vol. 108 no 3 1995 [3pgs]
Aseptic Meningitis after Vaccination Against Measles and Mumps (Pediatr Infec Dis J 1989 8 pg 302-308) [7pgs]
Measles Vaccine Associated Encephalitis in Canada Lancet Sept. 1983 [2pgs]
Guillain -Barre Syndrome Following Administration of Live Measles Vaccine Amer J of Med 1976 Vol 60 [3pgs]
Pancreatitis Caused by Measles, Mumps, and Rubella Vaccine Pancreas vol 6 no 4 [2pgs]
Measles Vaccine and Neurological Events Lancet May 1997 [2pgs]
MUMPS VACCINE /evidence for large scale vaccination failure Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med 1995 Vol 149 [5pgs] Summary: 54 students developed mumps --of those 54, 53 had been fully immunized.
Mumps Outbreak in a Highly Vaccinated School Population
Aseptic Meningitis as a Complication of Mumps Vaccination (Ped Infec Dis J 1991 Vol 10 No 3) [5pgs]
Guillain -Barre Syndrome occurrence following combined mumps- rubella vaccine Am J Dis Child Vol 125 1973 [2pgs]
Mumps Vaccines and Meningitis/ Heterogeneous Mumps Vaccine (more on Urabe strain vaccine) Lancet Vol 340 1992 [2pgs.]
Flu Vaccine
Neuropathy After Influenza Vaccination (this deals with Swine flu vaccine) Lancet Jan 29, 1977 [ 2 pgs.]
Isolated Hypoglossal Nerve Paralysis Following Influenza Vaccination Am J Dis Child 1976 vol 130 [2pgs]
Guillain -Barre Syndrome Lancet Sept. 1978 [1pg]
Relapsing Encephalomyelitis Following the use of Influenza Vaccine Arch Neurol Vol 27 1972 [2pgs]
Optic Atrophy Following Swine Flu Vaccination Annals of Opthalmol
... and the disclaimer was longer than the ad itself. A long list of possible side-effects, including the fatal one; death.
Ok, autism was not included.
Insightful comment that (wo)man. This retraction is a bit weasly.
It does not say "the statistical methods used were bollocks".
However, on reflection it says a lot without saying it specifically - "...consecutively referred..." I think means:
"The authors of this paper encountered a slack handfull of similar diagnoses in a vanishingly small sample of patients during a vaccination epidemic"
Also "...ethics committee...proven..." might mean:
"The authors jotted down their My Little Pony Diary entries verbatim into a letter to the Independent and this ended up in the Lancet due to an unfortunate addressing error".
>> tactics skew the results
Are you having a laugh? 12 children specifically chosen because of their having a specific diagnosis in a population of >60 million people in the middle of a mass innoculation are diagnosed with a similar syndrome.
They are like any other group of rabid fanatics, they will always refuse to acknowledge any information that does not already conform to their preconceived delusions.
It is sad sight indeed, when rational though is in short supply.
Also your analogy between drunk driving and vaccines causing autism is not really parallel...
Sigh. Have I really got to hold your hand?
There is more anecdotal evidence to prove vaccines don't cause autism, so wouldn't that push the debate into being over, if anecdotal evidence is the measuring bar?
There are lots of people who drink and drive who have never been in an accident. Does that push that debate to being over? Of course not.
"Wyatt Earp (1029)" made a bad argument. I was attacking the form of his argument. I was NOT drawing a parallel between drunk driving and autism.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
At some point, Psychology has dug itself into a hole. Or, perhaps the conspiracy theorist would love to jump on my belief below when it comes to their ideas of world domination. But, the facts are present to some degree the following:
1) It seems that with every pill from the pharmaceutical companies comes a new mental disorder
Now, granted if we all were to believe that most people are stupid, then by nature being smart would not be the norm and thus disorderly. But, when combined with the word 'mental', is such connotation really necessary without an assumed agenda?
Now, I prefer to cling onto the classics in regards to mental health, and yes I'm willing to disregard whatever numerical claim psychologists would like tag on to their years of clinical studies. First off, the only clinic like structures in mental health I might easily recognize is the traditional asylum, which brings me to my second point. Unless you are incapacitated, drooling and banging your head against the wall, you aren't "crazy". Just because some people might resist social etiquette doesn't mean they have a disorder beyond that of not being sheep.
Autism is no different, and it too has such classical definitions. So here it is. If you aren't a human calculator, you don't have autism. If you need a visual, Rain Main, rent it, watch it, observe it, cherish it as very few children are ever that gifted in such narrow subjects.
Psychology is still an art, not a science, and psychiatrist are nothing but licensed professional front-men to pawn off drugs to half-wits while charging the insurance companies that cover mental health. With all these categorical labels mental health, has more tools for lawyers to get the murderer off the hook from a capital punishment trial, but more disturbing can be used as a case to take away the rights of someone, who isn't banging their head against the wall, drooling and incapable of much anything else; never mind even aware of rights or able to competently voice an opinion regarding their own rights.
The most disturbing to me, is all the new autisms that are propounded about the psych industry and media. What ticks me off, than all the shades of insanity that might exist. Is now, people who are rather gifted and not Rain Man gifted, are claimed to have some sort of autism, a mental disorder. Perhaps if they weren't so smart they'd cease to be autistic? Maybe the autism wouldn't be detected? Seriously, I've seen the pretty dumb blond so stupid that her inability to do anything is shadowed by some of those I've seen who were officially committed. But productivity or capability may not be indicative to insanity or mental disorders some would suggest. So even if I accept this obvious contradiction, it can only be that damn near everyone has a mental disorder, and everyone who is dumb and docile must be the only sane and desirable people! And who decides this qualification of "disorder"? They never give examples of people who have no disorders. So what system are they using as a comparison?
It sure does seem to be an agenda. Make people want to be dumb, docile and conformant out of fear they'll be considered to have mental issues. Ultimately, make them feel they are in constant bombardment of this threat so they purchase more Zanax or Paxil, Prozac or any number of quality name brand seritonin re-uptake inhibitors on the market to boost their mood and keep a smile on their face even in the most dire circumstances.
I'm sorry, but astrology is more scientific than psychology. Makes me wanna go burn their books they put so much faith into.
I have no intention of reading through all THAT.
However it is quite well known that just about ALL medicine have side effects, however more often than not the side effects are uncommon enough, or less problematic than the ailment they are supposed to cure. No one can argue that any side effects there may have been on the smallpox vaccine weren't acceptable, seeing that it prevented a disease with a near 90% fatality rate.
This should be old news. Wakefield's hypothesis has long since been jumped on, ground into the dirt, ignored, badmouthed and laughed at by a lot of autism caregivers (unfortunately, not all... and the new big thing in autism care is "alternative" treatments, which is a whole other can of worms). The argument's not going to end, though. As another poster said: people need something to blame, and this is one thing that everyone's "heard" from someone, reputable or not.
As someone who works with autism on a daily basis (I am a behavioral therapist in early intervention wraparound services), it frustrates me endlessly that we're focusing on something so trivial as finding a single cause for autism when it's beginning to look more and more like there are a constellation of causes, each one probably dependent on the presence of several others and a genetic predisposition toward autistic behaviors. I'd rather see funding go toward long-term care; more and more of these kids are growing up without the right care and intervention, and those kids when they reach adulthood will be the ones you'll see on the news: vagrants because the state won't provide care any more, filling our jails because of misunderstandings caused by a lack of socially appropriate behavior, or worse - violent and hospitalized because their caregivers can't or won't take care of them any more. What happens when that cute kid with autism grows up to be that 6' tall, 250lb adult with autism? I know one of those kids. He's in and out of the hospital because he can't take care of himself and abuses his spineless mother. When she dies, he'll be a constant drain on the system. And here we are debating the vaccine link.
Waiting for the news that more states are approving funding for Autism care and proven wraparound services under mental health/disability guidelines...
Do you have any links instead of a copied list? I did some search on a few of them and the only hits where lawyers and anti-vaxxers.
Just to be clear, no one is saying there is NO risk, only comparing the very low risk of insident( about .0001% ) vs, the very high likely hood of getting some serious diseases.
There is always risk, it's about mediating it. I mean, just sticking a needle into carries a risk. One the is reduced by using sterile needle, swabbing the injection point, and using gloves.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Are you having a laugh? 12 children specifically chosen because of their having a specific diagnosis in a population of >60 million people in the middle of a mass innoculation aren't diagnosed with a similar syndrome.
yes of course, and I think you meant "aren't"? A lack of ethics approval is different to a specific ethics committee disapproval (which appears what they got, for valid reasons).
Do you mods have any idea what reading that could do to a grammer nazi? It could kill a man.
That is important because simply being paid to do research by people who have an interest in the results is not so much of a problem.
It's where someone will gain personally from their own unexpected and potentially paradigm changing results -- results which are unable to be reproduced by others -- that you have problems.
First, the problem with statistics is that they deal in huge quantities to be accurate, and, the human body is sufficiently complex that lurking behind any "outlier" might exist a causal relationship for just that person.
Second, the medical establishment has made some spectacular mistakes through the years and people simply do not trust them.
By anyone's admission, the number of medical mistakes and fatalities from them are so enormous that literally every family has a story where the doctor screwed up. Advice given out by the medical community has changed, as well.
At one point in time, the medical establishment advocated a diet of four food groups, one of which would turn out to be loaded in cholesterol. At one point in time, antibiotics were hailed as the end of bacterial infections, and now medicine is essentially backpedalling against a resurgance in diseases once thought "cured".
Most damningly though, is, the whole question of whether or not medical science is actually worth the expense. Some studies have shown that once you factor out hygeine and nutrition, the lifespan of humans has not actually changed in 100 years. Essentially, if you get a virus, you will either recover or not, and bacterial infections are actually not common enough to really effect the larger course of affairs.
Finally, the politicization of science has happened even in medicine. The whole concept of the university, and by extension, the doctor was of someone who earned a decent living but was removed from the field of genuine wealth in order to be free from not only its temptations, but its distractions. Now, we have very real cases where doctors are rigging double blind studies in order to try and sell stock in their biotech company, manipulating the lives of real patients solely to cash in.
Who do you trust in medicine these days? Who do you trust in science? As soon as universities started amassing huge patent warchests and enormous funds, as soon as science got -expensive-, it became political, and because it is political, it cannot be trusted, as much as nothing else political can be trusted.
This is my sig.
You cannot compare it to drink driving
I didn't. Explaination here.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
Once the celebrities start spouting the nonsense, it's too late.
The female 18-50 market segment won't let go of it for another five years.
Thanks Lancet! Thanks Hollywood!
What?
just a bunch of links that said they had viruses, so I didn't click
Schizophrenic?
I mostly hate how all /.'s assume they know better than those "crazy dumb shits out there" when they themselves admit knowing little information..
If you think life was better before vaccination, or would be better without them, then there's no if's and's or but's -- you're a crazy dumbshit who admits to knowing little information. Who is endangering everyone else. This is not tolerable.
So get your damn kids vaccinated. Once you do that, if you want to talk about maybe finding a way to take the aluminum out of vaccines so that the benefits of vaccines can be even better, then we can talk!
The enemies of Democracy are
Rain Man is Hollywood fantasy. The family in the apartment next to mine has an autistic 10-year old son. He has no special abilities. He's not a math whiz, musical prodigy, nor is he at all artistic. He does however have profound disabilities. He can't talk. He probably won't, ever. His interactions with the environment is limited to hitting things, vaguely staring at them, and if he likes it, clapping. If he doesn't like what's going on, he'll scream. Loudly. For the next half hour. His usual state is to wobble along and make farting noises, occasionally banging on something, favorites being the windows or my wall. I don't think he recognizes people as being people. Basically, his parents are grateful they managed to potty-train him.
I do not want to join a fight about all this. I am convinced, that the drug industry is doing a lot of evil things, and that most bodies like the FDA are actually ment to protect the interest of drug companies (e.g. drugs with same ingredients cannot be sold if they are from India, Canada, etc..) and not the end users'.
So I recommend making a search on your favourite torrent site or even youtube for "Are Vaccines safe" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhndCkEfJQg) and make up your mind.
This video offers an alternative view with some traceable medical facts, and educates you that you have a choice in most states and some countries to chose not to vaccinate.
Here is the CNN Larry King special on vaccines : http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=larry+king+vaccines&search_type=&aq=f - this one is about the MMR cocktail as well.
By the way they want to make H1N1 shots obligatory in Costa Rica - where I live - and there will be a huge resistance to it as everyone is scared of the shots' side effects, and the fact that it had very little - if any - testing.
You can also make a search for flu shots and alcheimers, shots and tumors and find a scary amount of hype and facts....
It's the Sun of medical journals. http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/
Exactly!
To give an example that's been around for years is the GM (genetically modified) corn that has it's own pesticide being claimed it kills monarch butterflys.
The 'test' done to show that it would kill the caterpillars had a problem, the caterpillars wouldn't eat the corn pollen and thus never ingested the insecticide it harbored.
To prove their point that the GM corn pollen was a threat to the caterpillars that wouldn't eat it, they force fed it the pollen. It died. Duh....
Of course, the caterpillars on the milkweed plants around the GM corn fields aren't threatened by that at all since they NEVER eat it.
You'd be amazed how many people still try to pull that piece of b.s. out to 'criticize' any GM crop.
Personally I have no issues with GM foods in general, although the ones with pesticides worry me some, but the ones I've looked into have had less residual pesticides after washing in them than the normal ones do. (No, I haven't been able to find stats on all of them, nor would I be anal enough to try.)
Vaccines can cause harm, so one denies that. Vaccines aren't about magically making the chance you get hurt go away, they are about reducing the risk. People got hurt, and some probably died, during the smallpox vaccination period, but guess what, the end result saved way more than it hurt. Also, there are studies out there 'proving' homeopathy or 'disproving' evolution. A study in and of itself means nothing. On that's been put through the ringer or peer review, and duplicated, those are what you want. How many of your studies have been thoroughly reviewed and came up saying that the risks of vaccines outweigh the benefits? I'm betting none.
irrelevant because that's not considered the ONLY source of autism. Please don't repeat for a third time.
Of course - did anybody expected something else? In a society where the standard child is desired, pushed trough the system to develop an ultra-selfish, short-minded personality so that for his whole existence will be enslaved for the benefit of the holy *Corporate* trough his insatiable, primitive void - this is the desired future citizen not the type which has the courage to think and stand up. Holy crap brainwashed nation what future I foresee for you ...
Maybe people will stop letting their kids go vaccinated because of !science. Nah, that won't happen....
They let the findings stand only his methods were thrown out. Why is this such a big story? MMR still links to autism.
This is way the flanders don't use them.
also for the mind control in the flu shots.
For an apology from Jenny Mcarthy. After all, it has been the primary study she has been touting for years as her "evidence".
http://wwww.zerospeaks.com
But correlation causality.
The classical example being number of refrigerators ^v number of sons (they both correlate to income, in fact).
Maybe autism and vaccination correlate both to a 3rd variable, say, level of education -- or e.g. parents absence from home.
(3) Wakefield is not a disinterested party; he has received a great deal of money from those who stand to profit from his conclusions.
Yes, this has never happened before.
It's a different group of people who are against vaccines. Please keep your labels for conspiracy nuts straight in the future.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Speciation by natural selection, the moon landing, the spherical earth and the holocaust have today been conclusively proved authentic. The debate should now end. Film at eleven.
When the editor sends your paper to "peers" for review, that's not scientific peer review in the big sense. That's editorial review and as the poster comments, is to catch glaring errors, missing things, etc.
Peer review is a longer process, that over years, other scientists either confirm what's in your paper or refute it, perhaps proposing new theories to explain the observed data, or identifying previously not-understood or not-known confounding factors in your measurements.
Peer review is, for example, why people believe Einstein or Newton was right. It wasn't part of the process by which someone publishes a paper or book. One can always find a patron or independent means to get published. It's whether someone says, 20 years later, "hey, that guy was right, because of A, B, and C". Publication status is more a matter of money or friends.
Peer review is the arbiter of "success in the market place of theories and ideas"
The famous vaccine / autism link was based on the fact that vaccine preservatives were mercury-based. And there is much validity in this link. Consider: Mercury is known to be bad, especially for the brain, and, it can be assumed, especially for developing brains. Mercury is known to have been a component of vaccines. To expect no side effects would be criminally negligent. And to deny a possible link between mercury-laden vaccinations and brain deficiencies, similarly so. It's like trying to deny a link between a known mass extinction 65mil years ago, and a known impact of extinction-assured magnitude, also 65mil years ago.
"...but there are PLENTY of studies linking vaccines to other ill effects, here are a (very) few:"
As others have noted, there can be side effects of vaccines. But titles of articles do not provide EVIDENCE. You actually have to read the articles to see if they link vaccines to any ill effects. Many of those articles you provide likely do the opposite. And even if they do, many of those papers contain anecdotal data (case reports) which is fairly weak evidence.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6890106663412840646&ei=XRZpS7qHBIbL-Aazy6DzCw
Just lurk around, folks.
.
I rest my case.
- Ecsad Essemal
The Hexadecimal TV-REMOTE!
I remember hearing a bit of research a few weeks (months?) ago. It showed that Autism is related to the time it takes the brain to analyse signals. Someone with Autism hears differently than other people. They found that someone without autism can hear the entire word "Acceptance". Someone with autism only hears "Ac". The brain truncates the rest. Its one of the first clinical tests to determine another symptom of autism, apart from the classical. If signals are being lost, it could be related to a structural difference in the brain, leading to a genetic difference, possibly caused by disease or virus. I'm reminded about research into artificial hearing done by berger-liaw: see http://www.fas.org/irp/program/process/36013.htm where they found that computers that have clock cycles (like yours and mine) make crappy neural networks even if there are 10,000 nodes, when it comes to speech recognition, but when you can maintain an analogue time base, you only need a neural net of 6-10 nodes to achieve superhuman speech recognition, even in extremely noisy environments, and even pick out 3-4 different speakers simultaneously. The noisy environment was so noisy that human listeners could not understand (jack hammer in the background, aircraft overhead, busy freeway nearby, etc.) yet the speech recognition software could understand perfectly, and unlike crappy software where you have to say each word separately, with theirs, you would ramble your words together (normal speech), and it would understand no problem. If timing is such a vital factor, the autistic problem is a real big problem.
I developed an Autism/Aspergers Spectrum Scale Score generating formula as a part of http://www.hiddencorrelations.com/
Anyone who answers the associated/included questions gets a score online instantly. No valid email required.
The site is also geared towards answering this exact type of question, (Vaccine vs Autism) and I've even added some new vaccination questions to eventually look for correlations to answers from existing Autism/Aspergers questions and the Autism/Aspergers Spectrum Scale Score that is a composite value for each profile.
Always looking for more participants or any ideas!
Well it's certainly not the group of nuts who thinks President Obama is a foreign national.
I don't see how that got set as troll, He was clearing responding to the argument with a valid point and with some info to back it up. It is a flawed argument to assume that one is false just because someone developed autism by a means provably not of vaccines, the flaw is assuming a condition we do not know the cause of , has in fact only one cause when it could have many.
The 20-30 year horizon might give various subtle changes that are hard to register as result of vaccination. Effects like toxoplasmosis has may well be there and change significantly life quality later in life. Subtle gene expression changes rise autoimmune decease probability, chronic inflammation from adjuvant boosted autoimmune reaction throws balance bit more off and there you have slow cascade to diabetes. Mechanisms involved are complicated and variables are numerous enough not to give conclusive statistics using current data gathering methods. Even acute reactions to vaccine are not always connected to vaccine and dont make it to VAERS and similar databases so data gathering for longer time horizons is serious problem. Main point - actual risk evaluation for individual is different from risk evaluation for population, especially considering genetic deviations.
Few interesting links:
http://www.physorg.com/news127915025.html
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090331183755.htm
http://www.fasebj.org/cgi/content/abstract/23/9/3121
"The vaccine-autism debate should now end".
Wasn't SCIENCE supposed to make any debate possible (as opposed to RELIGIONS where the facts can't be discussed)?
Why more and more in our lives (Politics, Finance, Economy, Science, Markets, etc.) is now locked as debating about those issues becomes illegal?
When regulators are mere employees of the industry, even the most elementary principles of logic are betrayed.
You know, your little paranoid rant would be a lot more convincing if there actually were any meds to "cure" or "treat" autism. And no, I don't know of anyone diagnosed with autism that has been prescribed Zanax or Paxil unless they had really serious anxiety problems, and those exist regardless of whatever the diagnosis may be.
Like it or not, for a lot of people a proper diagnosis can help a lot, not as a crutch to explain one's failings, but as a way to glean insight into what the fuck is wrong in your head and how to go about dealing with it. Especially the milder forms of autism can be compensated for to some extent(the negative effects anyway, being a human calculator is fun).
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
The 'fall in vaccination uptake' issue was never about medicine, it was about government credibility - New Labour insisted that MMR was safe in just the same way that they insisted beef was safe, or that CIA torture flights weren't using British airports, or that Saddam could attack Britain with biological weapons at 45 minutes' notice. 'False in one thing, false in all,' thought British parents.
Those who argue against vaccination based on the risk of autism may well be on shaky ground, but there are PLENTY of studies linking vaccines to other ill effects, here are a (very) few:
Next time you get a prescription for anything, stop and take the time to read that sheet of paper that comes with it. Even the most commonly used drugs have long lists of possible side effects.
The question isn't "could something bad happen?", but rather "what are the risks of taking this vs. not taking it?". Unfortunately we sometimes underestimate the risks and people die horribly.
Still, from where I'm sitting it looks like modern medicine does far better than causing random effects. Unless you're in an at-risk group, or are taking other medicines known to have a harmful interaction, or your physician is incompetent, you're probably better off taking the medicine despite the long list of possible side effects. People suffer or die from *not* taking medicine sometimes too, you know.
It's all about weighing the risks.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Rain Man is Hollywood fantasy.
Amusingly, reality deniers of all stripes are quite fond of citing movies as evidence for their beliefs.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
(1) Wakefield performed at least some parts of his study in an unethical manner.
Wait, so let's say I have the following theory:
"If you punch people in the face, they get angry."
Then I go around, punching people in the street in the face, and have some trained observers look for signs of anger (wanting to retaliate, displaying particular facial expressions, waving their fists at me, etc.).
As it turns out, everybody gets angry at me when I punch them in the face.
Clearly, punching people in the face is a bad thing to do. But that doesn't make the theory wrong.
Wakefield acting unethically in his medical experiments is a good reason for not letting him perform further medical experiments. Possibly also for not letting him be a doctor. But is it really a reason for not trusting his conclusion?
If you want to attack factual claims, attack the reasons for believing in them: poor experimental design, too few data points (back this up with statistical arguments!), lack of controls for confounding factors, selection biases, reporting biases, wild off-the-wall interpretation of observations (to name a few). Don't attack the moral character of the experimenter to argue against the factual claims. Attacking the moral character of the experimenter serves a different purpose.
What does that mean?
The original paper claimed that the subjects were selected because they had all been referred to Wakefield within a certain time period, and all the patients referred in that time period were used as subjects, i.e. a close-to-random process that Wakefield could not have influenced.
On investigation, it turns out that Wakefield hand-picked the test subjects on the basis (IIRC) that their parents suspected the links with the MMR vaccine, i.e. a non-random process that would heavily skew the results.
This is enough to invalidate any results reported. The ethical considerations are secondary, but definitely worth reporting.
Advice given out by the medical community has changed
Do you think the advice has change from more to less accurate, to equally accurate, or from less to more accurate?
I trust the scientific process when it is allowed to work properly. I don't know "fershure" that it has, though.
At one point in time, the medical establishment advocated a diet of four food groups, one of which would turn out to be loaded in cholesterol.
But they don't any longer, right? Doesn't that mean they learned from the mistake and chose to not repeat it?
The medical establishment has made some spectacular mistakes through the years and people simply do not trust them.
Who is this "medical establishment"? Practising doctors? If so, what does that have to do with medical researchers?
If your point is that most people don't make that distinction, fair enough. So they distrust medical science for irrelevant reasons. Good on them o_ô
Still when your child starts acting weird, and stops talking within days after getting a shot it is easy to draw a conclusion.
When your child goes to church for the confirmatio* (age ~13) and soon afterwards starts drinking beer and/or having sex, it's easy to draw conclusions about what effect your priest has on the local youth.
But that would be wrong; it's just normal to (want to) do those things at that age, and two things happen to coincide, timing-wise.
(* confirming what your parents said on your behalf when you were baptised: "I believe in God [...]". We have that in Denmark, in the protestant church. I don't know about the rest of the world.)
Similarly for autism: the age of onset coincides with the age of vaccination. Combine that with people not telling stories about how their kid got the vaccine and didn't stop talking, and people not counting the stories not told, and you get people believing there's a causal connection.
Yes, let's start by graphing the diagnosed cases of autism in the USA, where the MMR was introduced in 1971. See that rise in incidence ... oh, wait, it's rising 10 years after the vaccine's introduction. What's happening? What changed just before the rise started?
What happened was the 1980 publication of new diagnostic criteria (the DSM-III) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagnostic_and_Statistical_Manual_of_Mental_Disorders which caused diagnostic substitution. Many children who would previously have been called "mentally retarded" are now diagnosed as having autism.
It is common for a new diagnostic system, or a new discovery, to create a "new" disorder or radically change the reported incidence of an old one by changing the labels. Legionella's discovery, for example, moved a whole bunch of pneumonia cases from the bucket labeled "pneumonia of unknown origin" to the one labeled "Legionella pneumonia" and the total number of pneumonia cases stayed about the same. Way back in the early 1900s one southern USA state (I forget the name) was reporting thousands of cases of malaria a year. They changed the diagnostic criteria to require that a malaria parasite be seen in a blood smear of the patient .... the next year, there were no cases of malaria reported.
(from Wikipedia) Japan provided a natural experiment on the subject: combined MMR vaccine was introduced in 1989, but they stopped using it in 1993 and only single vaccines were used thereafter. In March 2005 a study of over 30,000 children (278 cases) born in one district of Yokohama concluded "The incidence of all autistic spectrum disorders (ASD), and of autism, continued to rise after MMR vaccine was discontinued. The incidence of autism was higher in children born after 1992 who were not vaccinated with MMR than in children born before 1992 who were vaccinated. The incidence of autism associated with regression was the same during the use of MMR and after it was discontinued." The authors concluded: "The significance of this finding is that MMR vaccination is most unlikely to be a main cause of ASD, that it cannot explain the rise over time in the incidence of ASD, and that withdrawal of MMR in countries where it is still being used cannot be expected to lead to a reduction in the incidence of ASD."
Developmental disorders become apparent when a child fails to reach expected milestones, or regresses ... and in the first 3 years of life there are many milestones. Teething was previously blamed for causing "fits" and "idiocy". Vaccines have taken over the role of scapegoat, but the evidence is slowly mounting that the causes are genetic, probably combined with some external factor, because the brain structures that are different in autistic children are developed early in gestation (at 6-8 weeks AFAIR).
Got any online links to any of this ?
I haven't seen anyone mention that the growth in Autism spectrum disorders may be partially due to geek lovin'.
Because it's wrong:
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2008/03/the_hannah_poling_case_and_the_rebrandin.php
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Yes, it is a very good reason for not trusting his conclusion, when you examine the nature of his "unethical" actions.
He lied in his paper, stating that the children involved had been referred to him for stomach problems. In fact, he knew that approximately half the children he used in his "study" were already involved in a lawsuit involving a vaccine, he approached them himself, and he paid them to participate.
All by itself, lying in your paper about how your samples were obtained is grounds for dismissing the conclusions. In this case, considering that his choice of samples would certainly -- not maybe, not possibly, but almost certainly -- skew his results does call the paper into question.
There are some theories that there are immune-related problems that occur in people with autism spectrum disorder, which make the symptoms worse. This is supported by the fact that some people with ASD have symtoms reduced or even eliminated by removing things like wheat and dairy from their diets. Both are common food allergens, and of course, gluten plays a major role in an auto-immune disease, celiac. People with mild food alergies sometimes have what appear to be mild symptoms, but it keeps their immune system tied up, making it difficult to fight off other infections.
So the theory goes that vaccines are fine. The problem is that if you give too many at once, the immune system and the liver (processing toxins) are overwhemled and it takes a long time to get over it. If you were to spread out the vaccines, then they'd have less trouble.
This theory seems to be held by a lot of alternative medical practioners... DO's, nutritionists, etc. I know one nutritionist who refuses to have her kids vaccinated. I'm definitely going to have mine vaccinated, but I may see about having them spread out, even if costs more. Why not be cautious?
I'm not saying "Don't distrust Wakefield". Nor am I saying "Ignore all unethical acts when deciding whether to trust Wakefield or not". I'm saying "Evaluate all his actions and distrust him for the right reasons".
He lied in his paper
Then you should distrust him because what he's saying isn't true, not because his lying is unethical.
In this case, considering that his choice of samples would certainly [...] skew his results
Again, his science isn't wrong because he punched people in the face. His science is wrong because of his choice of people to punch in the face. That is, selection bias.
Fraud is unethical, but one should not distrust him because the fraud is unethical, one should distrust him because fraud is fraudulent.
(unless there's some meaning to the word "unethical" I don't know...)
wrong != troll.
If you encounter a post that is factually wrong, the correct thing to do is to reply, quoting the relevant parts and presenting a well thought out refutation, preferably with links or citations. More often than not, you will be modded up since the system (mostly) works.
Downmodding has the effect of hiding the post from some of the viewers. In effect, you are saying that the post you modded down has no place in the conversation because it only serves to derail it.
Moderation-as-censorship is an old /. tradition but it is still wrong.
I agree... but apparently a fair number of people felt that the original post was so egregiously wrong that no individual capable of writing coherent English could have honestly held that position... and hence the poster was being deliberately wrong.
In a way, it's a backhanded compliment. :->
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Also consider this: nobody has absolute proof that vaccines DON'T cause autism.
There you have it - why Popper is so, so, so wrong.