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."

Comments

The vaccine-autism debate should now end...

[ak_hepcat]

...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.

But

[Vinegar Joe]

Wasn't it peer reviewed?

Re:But

[Jane Q. Public]

As someone else pointed out to me not long ago, peer review is really not geared toward finding certain kinds of mistakes, or deliberate fraud. There is still an assumption of integrity; an assumption that has caught a number of reputable journals in recent years.

Re:But

[slimjim8094]

That's a good way to think about it. Peer review, like the market, only works with honorable actors. Scientists are presumed to be honorable, so the way peer review is structured doesn't attempt to look for deliberate forgeries or falsehoods. Peer review is more along the lines of "this conclusion isn't backed up by your data" or "you forgot about this possibility" - that is, it catches mistakes or oversights. And it's pretty good for that.

These spates of disreputable science (this, and the ghost writers for example) is a good bit concerning. There historically hasn't been much deception at all, at least in modern science... I hope this isn't the harbinger of politics-as-science.

Re:But

[stumblingblock]

I remember from my course in Medical Literature Evaluation in college, The Lancet has rather more loose standards than, say British Medical Journal, and as a result, everybody loved to read it cuz it always had provocative and often amusing articles.

Re:But

[fusellovirus]

The problem was not the sample size, pilot studies like this are common. The problem was the dubious methodology that Wakefield used in generating the paper, namely not disclosing his a patent application, payment by an attorney specifically to support the claim that the MMR is linked to autism, and his selection of children whose parents were involved in such law suits by the same attorny when he said he randomly selected them. This was brought up first by Brian Deer http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article5683671.ece and led to a two-and-a-half year ethics investigation by the General Medical Council, which found the he acted “dishonestly and irresponsibly" http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8483865.stm

Re:But

[honkycat]

You don't normally retract a paper simply because it's wrong. Even if you do everything correctly, statistics say that you expect to reach the wrong conclusion in some cases. It's apparently taken longer than you might think for the details of the fraudulent nature of the work to be concrete enough to warrant this unusual step.

Re:But

[goose-incarnated]

Yes, by a few peers. Publishing it lets a larger group of peers review it. It passed the first review (maybe 4, 5 peers?) and failed the 2nd (a few hundred, maybe a few thousand peers?)

This is how peer review works - reputable journal doesn't want to publish rubbish, so a few peers get to review the research before journal publishes. Since journal is reputable other peers read it, and then they get to refute the findings, find errors, etc.

Re:But

[MightyMartian]

As my memory serves, almost as soon as the paper was published, it was attacked. By 2003-2004 it was pretty well established that Wakefield's paper was a crock of shit and Wakefield was, at best, a quack, and at worst, an out-and-out profiteering con man (more than likely the latter). The Lancet, whose reputation ain't exactly inviolate as far as "questionable" papers getting published, sat around on its fucking ass for six fucking years, knowing full well that Wakefield was a fraud, that his "study" was worse than useless and that it had already spawned a whole legal industry dedicated towards getting Big Pharma, not to mention a great deal of damage to public health.

This isn't the matter of a paper that drew some weak conclusions, or was based on some bad data, this was a matter of the Lancet giving a fraudster a veneer of respectability and trust, and despite all the evidence, not blowing a hole in Wakefield's boat until long after the damage had been done.

The one up side is hopefully that Lancet has been irretrievably damaged by thus.

Re:But

[CheshireCatCO]

Pretty much bang-on. The only way to catch deliberate, willful fraud is to repeat each step of the experiment. That takes time (of order as much time as the original experiment) and cost, both of which would get pretty expensive quickly. In addition, you face the difficulty of using competitive peers to check each others' work as gatekeepers. (It'd be easy for me to shoot down my nearest rivals in a way that would be difficult to check against me. And I'm the best person to check my rivals.)

In the end, the best way to view a peer-reviewed paper is, "This looks accurate and reasonable enough to share with you all." Not, "This is true," but enough to share around with other academics. Sadly, real-world uses often confuse this with a stamp of approval for accuracy.

(Also note that any peer-review process, short of having a lot of people/group repeat each experiment independently, will be prone to willful fraud. The nature of any security is that once the precautions are known, someone can find a way around them.)

Re:But

[VShael]

I know it's WAY off topic, in that it has nothing to do with vaccines or autism, but I really wanted to focus on this point you made:

"Peer review, like the market, only works with honorable actors. Scientists are presumed to be honorable, so the way peer review is structured doesn't attempt to look for deliberate forgeries or falsehoods."

This is SO important, it bears repeating. It bears framing, and should be put on the inside cover of every peer review journal.

I wasn't the only person who fell into that trap, when Michael Drosnin published "The Bible Code". Having a mathematics background, I read through the paper by Eli Rips and genuinely could not find fault with it. And the results were so conclusive, I gave serious consideration to becoming Jewish based on the results of what appeared to be an air-tight mathematical proof. (I still use this example now, as an atheist, to say that if someone ever shows me convincing evidence of gods existence, i'll accept it. Atheists follow the evidence, we don't "hate" god.)

Anyway, it later transpired that Rabbi / Professor Eli Rips was a lying son of a bitch, who clearly thought that lying was okay if it spread the word of his god. There was nothing wrong with the maths paper. Only the assumptions it relied on were false, and my assumption (that a maths paper wouldn't be submitted based on deliberate false precepts) was wrong.

(For those interested, it had to do with multiplying the probabilities of 50 independent events, thereby getting an extraordinarily low probability. Only the events were not independent at all, so multiplying the probabilities doesn't work.)

Re:But

[Pentagram]

There have been many cases where the scientific orthodoxy of the day has been overturned by opposing views. Continental drift, or the big bang theory for example. "Group think", if you can call it that, was overturned by evidence and better analysis. There is absolutely no reason why we should assume that climate change science should be special, except for wishful thinking by those who don't like its conclusions.

--
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.

In terms of science, this is wrong. Individual scientists or groups often gets things wrong (Wakefield being a case in point). Science as a whole however tends to get things right. Despite occasional setbacks, our knowledge of the universe tends towards correctness.

Oh, the naivete.

[Bieeanda]

The vaccine-autism debate should now end.

Yeah, right. Since when have facts ever got in the way of a 'good' conspiracy theory?

Re:Oh, the naivete.

[Monkeedude1212]

Since when have facts ever got in the way of a 'good' conspiracy theory?

There was one once, but they covered it up, I swear it.

Re:Oh, the naivete.

[JSG]

Hmm 1 (or 13) doctors responsible for the wave of anti-MMR vaccine hysteria that swept the UK for years. Bollocks.

This story ran and ran and ran ad nauseum on all media. It was admittedly perhaps sparked by those doctor's (researchers??) paper but the journalists kept it going way beyond what it was worth. The media went quite literally beserk.

From what I can gather (IANAD) autism is a bit of a common diagnosis nowadays (it's a spectrum, and I'll bet most of /. readers will be on it somewhere. That's the joy of a spectrum - it can be as sensitive as you like). I don't wish to belittle the real difficulties that many autistic people endure - the sense of alienation and confusion etc but it is diagnosed rather more often nowadays than in the past.

As I recall it there were a small number (teens) of kids who were diagnosed as autistic shortly after receiving the MMR jab. So all we need now is a statistician to crank the numbers and find P(Aut/MMR) in a population that is being systemically although voluntarily vaccinated.

So if you allow that autism is a common diagnosis and that the country was pushing to have all children immunized with a one shot MMR vacc then the coincidence of the two in a population sample is likely to be pretty high.

Really its a case of crap statistics and a gullible media playing it way beyond its worth.

Oh and the side effects of all this - increased incidences of M M and R. I don't have the figures to hand (does anyone?) but I would imagine there will be an increase in deaths, disfigurements and other nasty side effects of the diseases that could have been prevented by vaccination.

Conspiracy? Only you can decide.

Re:Oh, the naivete.

[UnknowingFool]

Scientists are, by nature, skeptics. They don't believe anything you tell them; they have to see the data themselves and replicate the results. In science, if you make a claim, but can't substantiate it, then your claim is unproven.

The Lancet is retracting the original paper not because the claims were not substantiated by further studies; normally the paper would remain in publication. Subsequent investigations also found that the study was highly flawed and that Wakefield misrepresented or changed data to support his claim.

In the original study, Wakefield reported 8 of 12 children in a hospital clinic experienced symptoms of autism as well as inflammatory bowel disease within days of a vaccination. Later investigation revealed that the autism symptoms described by Wakefield were different from those described to the hospital, and that in only one case did the autism symptoms occur a few days after the vaccination. The majority were reported before the vaccination occurred. Hospital physicians at the time did not find any signs of inflammatory bowel disease but the study reported that they did.

Dr. Wakefield's integrity was questioned when it was revealed that he had been paid by parents of autism children to determine if the MMR vaccine was the culprit. This conflict of interest was not reported to the Lancet before the paper was published.

Re:Oh, the naivete.

[the_womble]

On the other hand Sir Roy Meadows got away with giving evidence in court that lead to hundreds of children being wrongly taken away front heir parents because his stupid and negligently given evidence (basically he gave evidence on odds without understanding probability, and gave evidence that specialists disagreed with) was "honestly held".

Going back to autism, the British government also made things worse by what it told parents, which amounted to "do not worry your little heads about it, we know best and are telling you what to do". Their publications said things like "no evidence has been found" without" describing what effort had been made to look for evidence. On the other hand, the Danish study simple produced strong statistical evidence that there was no link, and that was that.

Re:Oh, the naivete.

[squizzar]

Gullible media? I think you give them too much credit. I recall a lot of stories that said that the Wakefield study had been refuted (to put it kindly), but they still managed to mention that there was a possible link between MMR and autism, presumably just to keep fanning the flames. There was a constant call for single jabs, which sounds great, but it was fairly well proven that people missed single jabs, so they weren't as effective.

Personally I'd like to know if the statistics show that a child was more likely to die (or suffer the permanent effects of serious measles) due to single jabs (assuming the percentage that miss jabs, overall immunity in the population etc.) than to 'catch' autism from the MMR jab. Sadly there has been an increase in deaths due to measles (in areas of the UK that have now dropped below the percentage that provides immunity for the non vaccinated).

It wasn't much of a debate to begin with

[Senes]

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.

Re:It wasn't much of a debate to begin with

[Anonymous Coward]

Your analogy isn't clear.
Are you saying this is like climate change because they cherry picked data and thus both man made global warming and vaccines causing autism are crap?
Or are you saying this is like climate change because the science is in and 92.5% of all climatologists agree man made global warming is real and vaccines are safe?

Re:It wasn't much of a debate to begin with

[Idiomatick]

I believe in global warming and all that. But desertification is mostly NOT caused by global warming. It is caused by over grazing, deforestation, and removal of water from an area (think dams and irrigation). It is also a self perpetuating cycle (dunes spread). Just wanted to clear that up.

Re:It wasn't much of a debate to begin with

[blueg3]

Most current desertification, yes. One of the identified potential "tipping points" of climate change is the transition of a large fertile region of Africa into desert.

For our sake

[Monkeedude1212]

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.

Re:For our sake

[Anonymous Coward]

By the same principle, since you know nothing, why exactly SHOULD you believe the original study?

Re:For our sake

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

From Quackwatch.org:

The only "evidence" linking MMR vaccine and autism was published in the British journal Lancet in 1998. An editorial published in the same issue, however, discussed concerns about the validity of the study. Based on data from 12 patients, Dr. Andrew Wakefield (a British gastroenterologist) and colleagues speculated that MMR vaccine may have been the possible cause of bowel problems which led to a decreased absorption of essential vitamins and nutrients which resulted in developmental disorders like autism. No scientific analyses were reported, however, to substantiate the theory. Whether this series of 12 cases represent an unusual or unique clinical syndrome is difficult to judge without knowing the size of the patient population and time period over which the cases were identified.

If there happened to be selective referral of patients with autism to the researchers' practice, for example, the reported case series may simply reflect such referral bias. Moreover, the theory that autism may be caused by poor absorption of nutrients due to bowel inflammation is senseless and is not supported by the clinical data. In at least 4 of the 12 cases, behavioral problems appeared before the onset of symptoms of inflammatory bowel disease. Furthermore, since publication of their original report in February of 1998, Wakefield and colleagues have published another study in which highly specific laboratory assays in patients with inflammatory bowel disease, the posited mechanism for autism after MMR vaccination, were negative for measles virus.

Re:For our sake

[expatriot]

second entry on Google:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704022804575041212437364420.html

Ten of the 13 authors of the original paper, all of whom were researchers at the Royal Free Hospital and School of Medicine in London, partially retracted the paper in 2004. However, the first author, Andrew Wakefield, didn't. Dr. Wakefield, who is now at the Thoughtful House Center for Children in Austin, Texas, didn't immediately return phone calls seeking comment.

"Many consumer groups have spent 10 years waging a campaign against vaccines even in the face of scientific evidence," said Dr. Horton of the Lancet. "We didn't have the evidence back in 2004 to fully retract the paper but we did have enough concern to persuade the authors to partly retract the paper."

The Lancet decided to issue a complete retraction after an independent regulator for doctors in the U.K. concluded last week that the study was flawed. The General Medical Council's report on three of the researchers, including Dr. Wakefield, found evidence that some of their actions were conducted for experimental purposes, not clinical care, and without ethics approval. The report also found that Dr. Wakefield drew blood for research purposes from children at his son's birthday party, paying each child £5 (about $8).

The Lancet's Dr. Horton said the journal was particularly concerned about the ethical treatment of the children in the study, and that the children had been "cherry-picked" by the study's authors rather than just showing up in the hospital, as described in the paper.

The authors "did suggest these children arrived one after another and this syndrome was apparent, which does lead you to think this is something serious," said Dr. Horton.

Re:For our sake

[Jane Q. Public]

Why should you not believe Wakefield?

(1) Wakefield performed at least some parts of his study in an unethical manner.

(2) Subsequent to the publication of this study, other researchers have tried to duplicate Wakefield's results but nobody has succeeded in doing so.

(3) Wakefield is not a disinterested party; he has received a great deal of money from those who stand to profit from his conclusions.

(4) Various circumstances [including (2) and (3) above] have caused others in the medical community to suspect Wakefield of fraud related to this "study".

Re:For our sake

[arikol]

Sure.

His methodology was deeply flawed:
his selection of research subjects very biased as he chose subjects he already had experience with and knew their problems so he could skew the control group like he wanted,
Some research subjects were selected/tested at a children's birthday party,some without parents consent (serious violation of research ethics).
No proper double blinding was done,
and even then the results were mismanaged in such a way that they showed a strong correlation (which in fact, even his skewed results did not really show).

Apart from him (Dr.Wakefield) having ties to anti vaccination groups and heading some of them and making a ton of money on his scare tactics (the results of which are little things like an increase in children dying from measles and other such lovely things).

basically, anything which could be done wrong WAS done wrong. I've seen better done research in homeopathy journals, and they're not really known for using science at all.

Re:For our sake

[wolrahnaes]

The guys over at Science-Based Medicine have you covered: http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=3660

If you look back through their post archives, you can find dozens more touching on the subject of Wakefield's paper in particular and vaccines in general, among other things.

Re:For our sake

[postbigbang]

Maybe you want to just understand why, and when you find a common denominator possibility, you jump on it, wanting to be a simple answer.

Like Mencken said, complex problems have easy and understandable answers, and they're wrong.

I wanted to find why a relative of mine has autism. Sure would be nice if we could blame it on the vaccine he got in 1963. But it wasn't. Like the retractions, many many things have been bandied about and none of them appear to be the cause. Was it his mother's smoking? Bad diet? He was a normal toddler, then it all went away. Years later, he can't live on his own. Do I want to know why?? Sure. But the Lancet published bad research that lots of people latched onto as a probable reason without knowing how low the sample size was, and so on. We still don't know. I wish we did.

Re:For our sake

[dmr001]

Wakefield had a financial conflict of interest with lawyers suing HM Government

His sample size was 12

His study population were not randomly recruited

Some of the study siubjects showed signs of autism prior to their MMR vaccination

Re:For our sake

[Jane Q. Public]

"And this is different from global warming how?"

Personally, I agree with you that there are similar disturbing circumstances surrounding some "global warming" research. However, interesting as the comparison is, it is somewhat off-topic.

Re:For our sake

[geekoid]

because Globbal warming studies have been looked at by many different scientist and many studies have been done that show that all the data we have points to global warming being influenced by C02 emissions.

This was just ONE study, done fraudulently in order to support and non scientific anti vaccine movement.

Also the difference is that global warming has been studied for 40 years, as we get more data and new data the overwhelming mountain of it points to global warming.

Re:For our sake

[zz5555]

Also the difference is that global warming has been studied for 40 years

I don't think global warming was being studied 40 years ago. I think they were seeing a different trend. This link is from the examiner but contains links to Time and Newsweek, both of which comment on what science was predicting. Yes, Al Gore says that it was clear 40 years ago. Al Gore says a lot of things.

Good grief, the old "they used to say it was going to be an ice age" canard! I didn't think anybody tried using that anymore since it's been debunked so often. It's well known that the majority of scientists back then predicted that the increase in CO2 would result in warming - you can check that information by just looking at the published papers. The whole ice age thing was something that the media put together - I guess to sell magazines. People who get their science information from the media really need to be removed from any decision making position.

Re:For our sake

[blueg3]

I don't think global warming was being studied 40 years ago.

It was first studied in the late 19th century, but not seriously until the early 50s. That's almost 60 years ago.

Re:Not much of a debate...

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem: scientists were on both sides of the issue. Guess what? Scientists can be wrong too, not just mortals!

Doesn't dispell the basic fud

[HockeyPuck]

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."

Re:Doesn't dispell the basic fud

[PieSquared]

Perhaps some had an allergy, or their insurance didn't cover it, or their immune system was too compromised for the vaccine to work effectively, or they had an appointment scheduled for next Tuesday. Those people would usually be protected anyway by herd immunity, but when people start deliberately not getting a vaccine on a large scale, that doesn't work anymore.

Re:Doesn't dispell the basic fud

[Chris Burke]

1) Because their parents are also idiots.
2) Because no vaccine is 100% effective, the whole point is to try to prevent the disease from getting a foothold. But once someone has the full-blown disease and is exposing everyone around them to it, the system begins to fail.

In case 2, it's unlikely all the kids would actually get the flu. But some might, even if vaccinated. And then those sick kids might infect some others, even if vaccinated.

That's why these stupid fuckers are so dangerous -- not so much those who don't vaccinate for the flu, but those who avoid the serious ones. Herd immunity is what truly makes vaccines effective, but it requires that nearly everyone participate. And these morons obviously have no freaking clue of the horrible diseases they're allowing to return just because they're scared of an incredibly tiny chance that these things cause a tiny increase in autism rates.

Re:Doesn't dispell the basic fud

[Chris Burke]

as someone who has done research in this problem, there are tons of things in vax's that don't need to be there.. Aluminum? Did you know that was in your vax?

Oh noes! Not the metal that is present in all the food you eat and the water you drink! That's obviously what's causing this problem with vaccines!

There are tons of preservatives that in small doses are fine, but when your kids get 3 - 8 vaccines in one visit, that starts to add up. Where does it stop? When do we let the human body do what it does?

When does it stop? It stops when our children are safe from measels, mumps, and rubella. It stops when we are assured that the diseases that ravaged our ancestors -- who would look on you with HORROR that you think you're better off risking getting these diseases -- will no longer plague us.

And hello? Letting the human body do what it does is what vaccines are all about. Let the immune system train itself to fight off the disease naturally. Oh, but you meant "let the body do what it does" without the influence of modern medicine. Well, in that case "what the body does" is maybe go blind, become sterile, or catch pneumonia and die.

And I'd say "you go on ahead and do that", but the problem is that your stupid choice affects me and my children. It affects everyone. You've done the research, eh? Ever come across the term "herd immunity"?

What about the kids who GET the vaccine and the infect other children (because the vaccine itself is contagious)????

Thankfully not much of a problem when everyone is getting vaccinated. Since rises in increases in incidents of measles and other disease can be directly associated with falling vaccination rates, I'm thinking maybe getting vaccinated is the better idea!

The Retraction

[pz]

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.

Re:Well

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe he can get a job at the Climatic Research Unit.......I hear they're looking for a new director. http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/

Politics, not science

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Politics, not science

[Ruke]

You're absolutely correct: the retraction doesn't prove anything. However, decades of attempts to reproduce the study, none of them reaching the same conclusion, does prove an error in the initial study. It turn out that the act of publishing doesn't actually have an effect on the underlying science, while the repeatability does.

Hell, that's a bonus

[NotSoHeavyD3]

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.)

Re:The debate is long from over.

[Cassius Corodes]

The problem is exactly what is written above, although not in the way the author thinks.

Re:The debate is long from over.

[Jane Q. Public]

I think the fact that no other researchers have managed to get anything like the results Wakefield did should be influential in forming opinions about this.

Re:The debate is long from over.

[Wyatt Earp]

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?

Re:Not much of a debate...

[PotatoFarmer]

Fucking retards holding back progress.

Herd immunity issues aside, I'm all for the stupid reducing their evolutionary fitness. Natural selection and all that.

End the debate?

[Canberra Bob]

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.

Re:End the debate?

[maxume]

There were 12 patients used in the study. They were not randomly selected. That's pretty much enough to ignore that study entirely, and there isn't really any other research showing any sort of link.

Re:End the debate?

[compro01]

The unethical conduct is just the last nail in the coffin.

1. The original supposition, based on 12 patients, was that MMR vaccine may have been the possible cause of bowel problems which led to a decreased absorption of essential vitamins and nutrients which resulted in developmental disorders like autism. No analysis was provided to substantiate this, it was pure unfounded supposition.

2. Subsequent laboratory assays on the patients in question found no evidence of measles virus DNA, indicating that the vaccine was not responsible for the cases of inflammatory bowel disease.

3. Clinical evidence doesn't support a link between IBD and autism.

4. Twelve subsequent studies have failed to find any evidence of a link between MMR and autism.

Calling the possibility of a link "laughably remote" is an understatement.

Re:End the debate?

[robotkid]

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.

One of the central issues with these sorts of studies, scientifically, is that there is no actual mechanism proposed by which having a vaccine can lead to autism, hence no specific hypothesis to prove or disprove other than the vaguely described "correlation" between the two. It turns out that Autism is typically diagnosed at the same stage in child development that one is supposed to be immunized, thus leading to an inevitable number of cases where one proceeds the other by a short time span and might appear to have been "causative" at an anectodal level, especially to devastated parents desperate for some sort of autism cure. This is precisely the sort of link that, in absence of a proposed disease mechanism to explain the connection, one can only deduce from rigorous, systematic studies that carefully test the hypothesis that there is some sort of non-random correlation in a large, statistically significant sample of patients.

12 children does not constitute a statistical sample, especially if you already secretly knew most of them already had autism, doubly so in fact you were being paid to represent the kids parents in anti-vaccine litigation (since we have to take the author's word that he didn't cherry pick to produce the observed correlation).

It doesn't help at all that autism is one of the least understood mental disorders, we know comparatively much more about the underlying causes of Huntingtons and Alzheimers, to the point at which I would not be surprised if there are effective treatments within 10 or 15 years. With autism your guess is as good as mine, the community is grasping at straws for a good explanation of what is going on. And we do know that the incidence seems to rising dramatically in recent times, which is an alarming trend to say to least.

It's not that I trust big pharma companies so much, or even that the scientific method is so perfect. It's just Occam's razor, a conspiracy of the scale that is proposed by anti-vaccination types reflects a complete disconnect from the realities of biomedical research. It's a dog-eat-dog world with thousands of competing sources of influences and hundreds of thousands of "players" who more like free agents all trying to make a name for themselves. It's not some monolithic organization like the military that was designed from bottom up to keep secrets from the public.

Re:End the debate?

[blueg3]

I think "more scientifically inclined" might help.

Ethical malfeasance when selecting your subjects casts serious doubt on your conclusions. For the most part, people can't actually verify your original data. They can replicate your study by gathering their own data, and then can verify your analytical methods (to the extent you provide original data), but it's basically impossible to verify that your original data were taken properly. Readers and reviewers rely on your honesty in data collection (knowing that when experiments are rerun in the future, you may well be shown to be wrong).

In a medical study, selecting subjects is part of taking your data. If that part is not done honestly, it casts doubt on the entirety of your results.

Re:End the debate?

[puroresu]

The issue isn't just that the research data was dubiously obtained, it's that the manner in which it was obtained renders it useless for any meaningful research. Wakefield selected his own small group of test subjects, which in itself allows for conscious or unwitting partiality.

In addition, there's the fact that no subsequent study conducted under properly controlled conditions has ever shown a link between the MMR vaccine and autism.

There has been a rise in autism diagnoses, but that's due to a number of factors including people such as teachers becoming more aware of the condition, and the growing understanding of autism as a nuanced condition which exhibits a spectrum of symptoms. This means that people are being diagnosed who might not have been previously. The anti-vaccine loonies see this and confuse correlation with causation.

The entire vaccine conspiracy lobby make some ridiculous claims, either misrepresenting information or blatantly making shit up as they go along. Unfortunately there are people out there who would rather make decisions about their children's medical care on the basis on Jenny McCarthy's opinion than that of someone who has the first fucking clue what they're talking about, and we're seeing preventable deaths of children as a result.

Nice of Lancet to come around

[rbrander]

I thought Kennedy had rather too-strong opinions on the subject when he appeared on Jon Stewart a few years back. Then I found this article on Slate, 2005: http://www.slate.com/id/2123647/ ...by Arthur Allen, the guy who first did an in-depth story on the subject for the New York Times magazine in 2002. Early paragraph:

"Since then, four perfectly good studies comparing large populations of kids have showed that thimerosal did not cause the increased reporting of autism. The best evidence comes from Denmark, which stopped putting thimerosal in vaccines in 1992; the rate of autism in kids born afterward continued to increase. "

...suffice to say, by the end of that article, I'd lost interest in the subject. About the only question of interest here, is "what took the Lancet so long?" Physician and SF writer F.Paul Wilson runs a blog at TrueSlant.com: http://trueslant.com/fpaulwilson/ ...where his most recent post riffs off the BBC story about the Lancet article author actually being cited for "acting unethically". Wilson puts it:

The MMR is the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine. The UK's General Medical Council also ruled that Dr. Andrew Wakefield ...acted "dishonestly and irresponsibly" in doing his research... Get this: the guy is a gastroenterologist and he was doing spinal taps on kids. He paid kids and his son's birthday party £5 each for blood. His so-called research was published in 1998 in the respected journal The Lancet, but he neglected to mention that he was being paid to advise the lawyers for parents who believed their children had been harmed by the MMR. The board said he had acted with "callous disregard for the distress and pain the children might suffer".

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.

Re:Who are you refering to?

[Cassius Corodes]

Not enough anecdotal evidence to make a conclusion?

Re:The debate is long from over.

[drsmithy]

Just because one side of the debate has used bad data and judgment doesn't mean there is no merit to the debate.

It does when the only reason the debate ever started was because of that bad data.

To name just one

[overshoot]

The technician who did the original PCR tests for measles virus in the biopsy samples came up negative. So Wakefield sent it off to a lab to do a different kind of test that's prone to false positives -- and which didn't use negative controls. Result: positives! For some reason the earlier results weren't reported.

It's amazing what results you can get if you keep repeating the experiment until you get the results you want.

Re:To name just one

[Chris Burke]

For some reason the earlier results weren't reported.

It's amazing what results you can get if you keep repeating the experiment until you get the results you want.

You mean if you are unscrupulous and are willing to change the experiment until it is flawed in such a way that it provides the answer you want.

To use my favorite counter example, Michelson and Morley very much wanted their experiment to demonstrate the existence of the Aether. And to that end, they repeated it over, and over, and over, and over, with every variation they could think of, hoping that it would give them a positive result.

Yet, because they were scrupulous and their experiment was correctly designed, they were never able to report success, and their experiment became known as evidence against the aether.

So yeah, I get what you're saying. I'm just pointing out -- it's not wanting a certain result that results in bad science, it's unethical and unscrupulous behavior that results in bad science.

A message to Mrs. McCarthy

[elenaran]

suck it, Jenny McCarthy & Oprah!

Re:The debate is long from over.

[gd2shoe]

To remain clear, I didn't say that it was the measure of truth, only a measure of continuing debate.

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.

It's statistics. If a drug or vaccine is unsafe for a small population, it needs to be restricted or banned. At issue is a large group of parents of autistic children who blame the vaccines. It doesn't matter to them if vaccines usually don't cause autism. They each see their own child as evidence that vaccines can cause autism. They band together and support each other's beliefs. Rarity doesn't matter to them. (as it shouldn't, statistically.)

Additionally, autism is on the rise, and nobody quite knows why. Sometimes, anecdote is all that we have. (unfortunately)

Re:The debate is long from over.

[Knara]

No, autism *diagnosis* is on the rise. It is a subtle but important difference.

Re:The debate is long from over.

[Knara]

Oh, and it's "Autism Spectrum Disorder" now, which includes everything from very slight Aspergers to the very profoundly autistic. This is a good measure of the increase, if not most of it.

Re:The debate is long from over.

[Chris Burke]

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.

What does that even mean? "There's too much anecdotal evidence, even if there is no merit"? So, like, we both know that anecdotal evidence is crap, and the science all says otherwise, but because there's "too much" spouting off of post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacies, it has to mean something? Yeah, it means most people are incapable of making good observations, have no understanding of statistics, and are more than happy to let confirmation bias run wild.

Also, anecdotally, none of these geniuses I've ever seen discuss the issue have any understanding of history, and of the suffering the human race endured before vaccination existed. Whatever tiny increase in autism they think actually exists, even if it turned out against all reason and evidence to be true, wouldn't be worth going back to that.

I swear, if there's ever an outbreak of smallpox, and these retarded fuckers refuse to get vaccinated, I'm going to start taking them out for the good of humanity.

Re:Who are you refering to?

[lorenlal]

I believe it's due to what you wrote.

You've stated something as fact, and it is based on your perception. It's an example, and it may be valid, or it may be exaggerated, or it could be totally wrong... But to you, it's fact. You believe that the H1N1 vaccine gives people the swing flu... At the very least you imply that it does, and your proof is in your anecdote. If you have hard numbers to show us that people will get the swine flu from the vaccine (or at least that they have a higher incidence rate), then please provide them.

I'm guilty of this too on occasion.. I'm trying to be better about it.

Re:The debate is long from over.

[ThinkOfaNumber]

me too, but that's my point which you might be missing. You can't take one healthy MMR-vaccinated person and prove that all MMR vaccine cases will never cause any side-effects.

It only takes one person with a side effect LINKED to the MMR vaccine to prove that they're all potentially dangerous. Note the link has to be well proven.

I'm not saying it is or isn't a good vaccine, I'm just talking about proofs.

Let's not rush to judgement...

[nilbog]

...I for one am waiting to see what Jenny McCarthy has to say about this.

Re:Let's not rush to judgement...

[geekoid]

I can save you the time:

Big Pharma is out to get Dr. Wakefield.

See, conspiracy doesn't really require thinking.

Re:Let's not rush to judgement...

[Faerunner]

Doesn't matter; she "cured" HER kid!

The day that woman dies, I will dance. She has turned autism research into a farce, and has damaged so many families...

Re:The debate is long from over.

[drsmithy]

There are many cases like this. I don't make any claims, but this study isn't the only reason for the debate.

Yes it is. Blaming it on the vaccine makes about as much sense as blaming it one whatever she had for dinner, and would be as likely if it weren't for the "OH NOES THE VACCINES ARE CAUSING AUTISM" crowd.

Re:The debate is long from over.

[ThinkOfaNumber]

"Descending into autism" is an awfully broad term. It's sure as hell not scientific. Just right for anecdotal evidence really.

I'm not trying to use it as scientific evidence. I said "descending" because she wasn't diagnosed until much later, but the symptoms started then.

If you talk to autistic children's parents you'll find they often describe it as a descent. Changes don't happen immediately, or from birth, but they often reach a developmental point and then start going backwards, hence my use of the word

The scientific studies conducted over hundreds of thousands of people that showed no evidence that MMR caused autism may carry more weight than what your friends say.

Of course, but I never claimed to:
  - be a scientist
  - conduct studies
  - believe the link between MMR and autism

I was previously talking about proofs. I used an example because I have a close relationship to the story.

People don't understand statistics

[pipedwho]

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.

Re:The debate is long from over.

[Chris Burke]

There are many cases like this.

Yes there are many cases of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.

It's a very common fallacy.

Our brains are highly optimized for pattern recognition. Unfortunately this ability is overzealous, and not something we can turn off. It takes reason, logic, and in some cases careful observation to discover how this ability has led us astray.

In any case, "I took my kid to see Avatar and a week later they were autistic!" is not in any way a scientific data point. It also doesn't even make sense -- autism is a developmental disorder. If your kid is showing signs of autism a week after you accidentally insulted a gypsy on the subway, then the developmental disorder was already present and the gypsy had nothing to do with it.

Re:The debate is long from over.

[timmarhy]

lets get one thing straight. it's not that vaccines don't usually cause autism, it's that vaccines DONT cause autism. there is no proof at all.

these people are putting other peoples kids and the population as a whole in great danager due to dropping vacination rates, which completely contridicts your point that autism rates climbing is some how linked - after all if less people are vaccinating how can autism be increasing if it's the cause?

we are lowering whats called herd immunity. at the moment the rest of the herd is still largely immune to things like polio and mumps, this keeps those who aren't immune safe because no one around them generally has the virus. once this drops to a critical number (which is VERY close to happening, and has already happened with hooping cough) large numbers of kids are going to start being killed or crippled by preventable diseases. if you think the health care system is under strain now try adding an outbreak of polio. not only will kids get it but they will pass it on to adults as well.

when i see idiots refusing to vaccinate their kids, i just want to grab them and shake the bastards while shoving pictures of the 1920's polio outbreak in their face.

Re:The debate is long from over.

[jeff4747]

As a parent I can understand those that prefer to error on the side of caution, because even with 1000 to 1 odds against it happening that is still your kid that you are risking.

I'd suggest looking up the mortality rates of the diseases you're failing to immunize against.

And honestly with the amount of money these drug companies make if they did find something horrible happened to 1 out of 1000 I wouldn't be surprised if they just kept their mouth shut. The "screw everything but the quarterly earnings report!" attitude of the major corps doesn't exactly make them the most trustworthy of sources, you know?

You don't think some scientist out there wouldn't love to be the guy who figured out autism, and make a fortune as an expert witness at the hundreds of thousands of lawsuits?

Yes, drug companies are no angels, but they are not omnipotent.

Re:The debate is long from over.

[1729]

Exactly. It is like penicillin, which to most of the world is a life saver, but to me and my GF it would be a death sentence due to anaphylactic shock. If only 1% of the children given the vaccine end up with autism because of it that is STILL a pretty damned big number of kids. As a parent I can understand those that prefer to error on the side of caution, because even with 1000 to 1 odds against it happening that is still your kid that you are risking.

Putting aside the fact that there is no evidence linking vaccine to autism, are you saying that this hypothetical risk outweighs the very real risk of deadly diseases such as measles and mumps? As a parent, it infuriates me to see scientifically-illiterate parents put my vaccinated children at risk by contributing to the failure of herd immunity.

Re:The debate is long from over.

[MightyMartian]

One side used a con artists absolutely moronic and quickly debunked study. The other side, well, they're the ones that debunked this quack's nonsense. They did it years ago. WTF was wrong with Lancet? They should have withdrawn it as soon as the extent of Wakefield's incompetence and dishonesty came to light. What it's done has generated several years worth nuisance lawsuits, parents tricked into believing there was someone out there to blame for their children's problems and posed a substantial risk to public health. Wakefield should be publicly drawn-and-quartered and Lancet owes the world an apology.

Re:The debate is long from over.

[ThinkOfaNumber]

As a parent I can understand those that prefer to error on the side of caution, because even with 1000 to 1 odds against it happening that is still your kid that you are risking.

I'd suggest looking up the mortality rates of the diseases you're failing to immunize against.

Negatory ghost rider. Statistics mean nothing to the individual, only to large groups. According to statistics, both my kids should have had Down Syndrome (from the scans) but neither of them have. That doesn't disprove the measurement theories for early detection of Down Syndrome, just that in my case we had 2 exceptions.

If he wants to ignore the vaccine, and go with the consequences, then that's up to him, so long as he accepts the consequences whatever they may be (including death).

Plenty of Studies Linking Vaccines to Ill Effects

[cybertoaster]

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]
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 :86 [4 pgs.]
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
Mumps Outbreak in a Highly Vaccinated School Population /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.
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

Re:The debate is long from over.

[dryeo]

Still when your child starts acting weird, and stops talking within days after getting a shot it is easy to draw a conclusion. Then when going on line there is lots of others who seem to have had the same thing happen it seems like more evidence.
At the time there also seemed to be quite a few incomplete studies found at various .edu sites which agreed with the autism MMR link. Generally along the lines that some people just couldn't handle being injected with 3 live vaccines at once, which caused intestinal problems and also seemed to lead to autism.
Some of the studies were pretty simple, graphing autism rates compared to when the MMR vaccine was introduced. These should be easy to redo if the data is still available.
I know the meme that correlation is not causation but in my experience there often is a correlation.

Re:The debate is long from over.

[TapeCutter]

"It's statistics. If a drug or vaccine is unsafe for a small population, it needs to be restricted or banned. At issue is a large group of parents of autistic children who blame the vaccines. It doesn't matter to them if vaccines usually don't cause autism. They each see their own child as evidence that vaccines can cause autism. They band together and support each other's beliefs. Rarity doesn't matter to them. (as it shouldn't, statistically.)"

That's the problem in a nutshell. You don't understand what the statistics are telling you. The stats say there is NO CORRELATIOM between MMR and autisim, therefore there is absolutely zero evidence MMR causes autisim. But statistical evidence doesn't seem to matter (or is incomprehensible) to a large section of the population, those people will continue to draw suspect conclusions based on anecdotal experience.

You cannot compare it to drink driving since those statistics show the opposite, ie: a high correllation between drink driving and car crashes.

I also object to you banning penicilin simply because some people are allergic to it.

Re:The debate is long from over.

[Dahamma]

As a parent I can understand those that prefer to error on the side of caution, because even with 1000 to 1 odds against it happening that is still your kid that you are risking.

But anyone looking at the statistics would see that erring on the side of caution would be to get the vaccine. Those diseases can cause serious complications or death, and while there is no actual proof of the whole autism claim, there is overwhelming proof of the effectiveness of the vaccine in providing immunity.

Even starting with the premise that the vaccine does have a 0.1% chance of causing autism, measles has a mortality rate much higher than that, especially in undeveloped countries. And it is HIGHLY contagious.

Re:The debate is long from over.

[DJRumpy]

Don't children who have not been vaccinated also develop autism? Didn't it exist long before vaccines?

Re:The debate is long from over.

[h4rr4r]

How about instead we just determine risk vs reward. Creating a couple autistics vs kids dieing of Measles, Mumps or Rubella. Worry about this is like worry about dieing in a terrorist attack, a stupid thing to waste your time on since the odds are far on your side.

Tell me something new...

[Faerunner]

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...

Re:The debate is long from over.

[h4rr4r]

Statistics mean a lot, the individual who ignores them is an idiot.

Risking infecting others with a dangerous disease should not be up to them, unless they plan to compensate anyone injured.

Re:The debate is long from over.

[h4rr4r]

Which would have been at the same time we stopped calling them retards and sending them off to the nuthouse.

Except that...

[tjstork]

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.

Re:Except that...

[tjstork]

There is nothing more scary to a parent than the possibility of something as debilitating as autism being inflicted on their child when they could have done something about it

I actually have an autistic child. I would say that its not the end of the world and actually has its own blessings. My bigger beef, actually, is with a society that has so little tolerance for neurodiversity. If my little boy were a hunter gatherer, or a farmer, he'd be fine.

Re:Except that...

[pipedwho]

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that it's 'the end of world'. I was referring to the characterisations that seem popular in today's media where the effect is extreme. There are different degrees (and types) of autism that go from 'slightly eccentric' to 'sits all day in a corner drooling'.

The fear of causing a perceived defect by ignoring some advice will more than likely be visualised in the worst possible light. ie. Being the parent of the kid drooling in the corner - all because of something that supposedly could have been avoided.

Imagine how the mothers of the thalidomide children would have felt when they found out it was directly caused by a pill they took for a headache. No it's not the end of the world, but if you had some advance information, it's a condition that any parent would want to avoid.

(BTW I'm not saying that any of these were the parent's faults in any way. But I'm sure many of them would have felt like it was anyway, at least for a time.)

And I have to say I also have very little time for people who are intolerant of others with perceived neurological differences. Your little boy will turn out just fine.

Re:The debate is long from over.

[drsmithy]

Still when your child starts acting weird, and stops talking within days after getting a shot it is easy to draw a conclusion.

"For every problem, there is an answer that is simple, obvious, and wrong."

Re:The debate is long from over.

[Chris Burke]

We're talking about profound changes in behaviour within a day of getting a vaccine. When your child stops talking right after injecting a bunch of live viruses into their body there is a tendency to blame it on the live viruses.

Who's talking about this? That post said a week, now it's the same day for a developmental disorder to suddenly transform the child? Are there any cases of this in any of the studies where children were given vaccines and then observed? No? Huh.

And since the effects of the live virus, and mercury poisoning (if it was the kind of mercury that could poison you) are well known, and aren't spontaneous autism, that leaves me with another hypothesis:

Parents ignored the symptoms before, but suddenly became aware when sensitized by fear of vaccines. Their fear and paranoia probably just make the child's already existent symptoms (i.e. introversion) worse.

Granted I have no evidence for this theory applying to any particular case, but it has one big advantage of at least being consistent with the existing scientific evidence.

Much like if they ate something that they never ate before then puked, there would be a tendency to blame the food for them getting sick.

Even if they'd been feeling a little queasy before but wrote it off as nothing. Even if it turned out that they had the flu and the food had nothing to do with it.

Yes, I know people have this tendency. However that tendency often leads to incorrect conclusions.

Re:The debate is long from over.

[TapeCutter]

"Exactly. It is like penicillin."

No it isn't, your comparing apples to orangatangs. The difference is that there is a statistical correlation between a penicilin jab and the ill effect, ie: that claim is based on evidence. There is no such correlation found in MMR vs Autisim, ie: the claim is based on anecdote and ignores cotra-evidence.

The fact that penicilin can be deadly to some people and the fact that some people are greedy parasites does not tell you anything about MMR and autisim.

The long and the short of it is...

[Chris Burke]

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!

Re:Who are you refering to?

[Anonymous Coward]

You believe that the H1N1 vaccine gives people the swing flu...

Better the Swing Flu than Flamenco Fever, baby!

Re:The debate is long from over.

[ehrichweiss]

Don't even give it a second thought. I've got a friend who didn't give her kid any vaccines and yet he's still placed on the autistic spectrum. Anyone who thinks it's due to the vaccines is, quite simply, wrong.

Re:The debate is long from over.

[ectotherm]

Of course the Autism study was DEFINITELY flawed. DEFINITELY flawed... Uh oh, almost time for "The People's Court." DEFINITELY five minutes until Wapner...

Re:The debate is long from over.

[dcam]

That isn't quite correct. Your friend's son's condition proves that vaccinations are not the sole cause of autism. It doesn't prove there is no link between autism and vaccinations.

Not that I think there is one, but we don't want to overreach do we now?

Re:The debate is long from over.

[SETIGuy]

Studies have pretty convincingly shown that people who work with children with autistic spectrum disorders (such as my wife) are about 95% accurate at diagnosing the disease based upon video of their 1st birthday parties. In other words, they where showing symptoms before the vaccines in question were given. Parent may not recognize the symptoms until their child hit 30 months, but the symptoms where there all along. Parents often will deny the diagnosis (and get mad at the diagnosing physician) after it is made. It's understandable why they do so. It's also understandable why the need to find someone or something apart from their own genome to blame for the disease.

One study is at this site. It is by no means the only one, but just the first one that showed up in a Google search.

Re:The debate is long from over.

[Chris Burke]

Well then I'm definitely not saying anything about what you were thinking or theorizing as to what has really happened in your case. I'm sorry for hardship, but glad he's improving.

All I'm going to say is that if you took the vaccination out of the picture, that's not that atypical a story about autism -- a kid who seems normal at first but then between the ages of 1 and 3 suddenly seems to take a turn. It's a developmental disorder, it has a large genetic component, and is about neuron organization and development. The process is not instantaneous, even if symptoms seem to come about rapidly. No autism is not fully or even particularly well understood. It's just that "vaccination causes spontaneous autism" doesn't match anything that is known. It doesn't match any of the research that's been done on the very subject. The one study that supported the idea that there's any correlation at all has been shown to be a misconducted sham.

I have a relative who was a kid at a time when autism diagnoses were very rare because the disease really wasn't understood, so I don't know for sure... but for years he was withdrawn and silent, and when he tried to talk, it was in a weird language nobody but his parents could figure out. He would get obviously frustrated that he couldn't communicate, and then simply withdraw further. Today, he's out partying at college while he busts the curve in science class.

If he'd caught measles instead, who knows if he'd be around. So, I'm sorry, but as tragic as autism can be, and as tragic as the hypothetical reality where vaccines are causing it would be, the evidence for the risk of autism and the evidence for the risk of disease in the absence of vaccines is not even close to a tough call. We can talk all you want about the hypothetical dangers of vaccines and the need to improve them, and I'll be with you, until your advice is to not vaccinate. That I simply cannot support, and no amount of anecdotal evidence will sway me, because real evidence (like history) is so strongly opposed to that idea.

Re:The debate is long from over.

[1729]

If your children are vaccinated, how exactly are they at risk?

Vaccines are not 100% effective. Parents who refuse to vaccinate threaten herd immunity, which puts my children at greater risk.

But you see that is one of the great things about this country...we have the freedom to believe in what we will, and to act accordingly. What YOU do with YOUR kids is YOUR business, and what I do with MY kids is mine.

Actually, that's not how it works. Try withholding medical treatment (or food, for that matter) from your kids and see what happens.

Re:The debate is long from over.

[Cow Jones]

Even starting with the premise that the vaccine does have a 0.1% chance of causing autism, measles has a mortality rate much higher than that, especially in undeveloped countries.

I was doubting your claim of a "much higher" mortality rate for measles, but after a quick web search it appears you're right - if we're talking about worldwide mortality. One UNICEF article states that "measles infects 25 to 30 million children each year and kills over 345,000", which is about 1.15%, an order of magnitude higher than the 0.1% chance for autism you stated (from which source, btw?). On the other hand, in countries where professional medical care is more advanced and/or more available to the general public, the mortality rates are much, much lower. According to this article, the mortality rate for acute (!) cases in the U.S. was about 0.25% - 0.28%. Between 1993-1999, there was only one reported death. Given that the complications of a measles infection can generally be handled when adequate medical care is available, and that autism is (as far as we know) "final", the decision isn't quite as clear-cut as you present it.

That's assuming that your 0.1% figure is accurate. FWIW, I'm not in any way opposed to the MMR vaccination, and I'm not buying the autism scare either. Where I live, this vaccine is administered to children systematically, and hardly anybody ever opts out.

CJ

Re:The debate is long from over.

[Chris Burke]

when i see idiots refusing to vaccinate their kids, i just want to grab them and shake the bastards while shoving pictures of the 1920's polio outbreak in their face.

Exactly. Oh man, we are so on the same page on this. These fools obviously have no idea of the kind of human suffering they are avoiding because of vaccines.

Birhter?

[OrangeTide]

It's a different group of people who are against vaccines. Please keep your labels for conspiracy nuts straight in the future.

Re:The debate is long from over.

[blueg3]

It certainly raises a red flag for me when you consider that a single vaccine can give a child an exposure 5-10x the OSHA limit for mercury poisoning.

It doesn't. The OSHA limit is for chronic exposure to methylmercury. Thimerosal exposes you (via breakdown) to ethylmercury, and only once. It's the wrong substance and is a non-chronic exposure. There is not an established toxicity for ethylmercury, as far as I recall -- it is generally thought that the toxicity is lower than methylmercury, and so the limits for methylmercury are used. (But again, the limit you are referring to is the chronic-exposure limit.)

Re:The debate is long from over.

[blueg3]

Yes. In fact, the common myth is that the Amish, who don't vaccinate their children, also don't get autism. Those who study autism know this isn't true: the Amish are useful as a study population because of their limited interaction with modern medicine, and there are still Amish with autism.

Re:The debate is long from over.

[Cassius Corodes]

On the other hand, there are PROVEN bad reactions to almost every vaccination. The next opportunity you get to watch a doctor stick needles into an infant or a young child, STAY ALERT. You will see that the legal guardian is offered brochures on each and every vaccination. Take those brochures, and read them. Take the information from them, and research.

Writing stuff like this makes you look rather silly. When you go and get vaccinations the doctor plainly tells you what the risks are and if you are interested you can ask for more information. You don't have to STAY ALERT - you can just follow what the doctor tells you and keep an eye on potential symptoms. There are potential side-effects to all medicine, including vaccines, this should not be a surprise to anyone.

As for mercury in vaccines - you now don't believe what the "huge corporations" tell you even though they are the ones that print the PROVEN side-effects on the vaccines, and the brochures. The same procedures that discovered and reported on the side-effects would have also found any negative effects from the mercury. You can find more information about mercury in vaccines here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiomersal_controversy

Re:The debate is long from over.

[st0nes]

If he wants to ignore the vaccine, and go with the consequences, then that's up to him, so long as he accepts the consequences whatever they may be (including death).

Except that the consequences are not his alone. Humans have developed "herd immunity" due to vaccines; there is not enough prevalence of the pathogen for infection to pass amongst the population. By not vaccinating your child, you are compromising the herd immunity and that may lead to the illness or death of someone else's child who could not be vaccinated for other legitimate reasons, like allergy.

Re:The debate is long from over.

[jaydge]

Actually many pregnant women receive multiple mercury-laden shots even to this day. That 25-50mcg of mercury, plus formaldehyde and other toxic ingredients do reach the baby in the mother's womb as well. Autism may not always show up right away but this is a factor to consider. Also consider this: nobody has absolute proof that vaccines DON'T cause autism. Many studies favor institutional or political bias, especially as the majority of studies are funded by institutions who financially benefit from vaccines. Also, the U.S. government has settled hundreds of lawsuits over the past few decades with parents whose child became autistic or died immediately following a shot. Another question is what causes SIDS? Again, mothers are injected with mercury-laden shots while pregnant, up to 50 mcg per shot, even though pregnant women are warned to stay away from any type of mercury including trace amounts in tuna fish.

Re:The debate is long from over.

[Eivind]

True enough. The problem is that when hundreds of millions get some treatment, quite a few of those WILL (for entirely unrelated reasons) fall ill shortly after the treatment, thus the existence of these people prove nothing at all.

Like a doctor commented: If 10 million people get the H1N1 vaccine, you'll have around 8000 that die within a month after getting the vaccine. Proof that the vaccine is dangerous ? No, just the result of the fact that in a sample of 10 million, around 8000 will die EVERY month. And if you offer the vaccine first to the weakened, the elderly, those who are typically the most at risk, then the death-numbers will look even worse.

Besides, the question is never if something is entirely safe. The proper question is, is it safer than the alternative. Even if a vaccine -does- have side-effects (and all of them do, to varying degrees) it can still be totally worth it, if the total suffering from side-effects is significantly smaller than the suffering from the disease would otherwise be.

Re:The debate is long from over.

[ommerson]

The problem with this approach is that in practice not all parents get round to taking their children to the doctor's for each of these separate vaccinations - even worse if several doses are required for full immunity. Net result is a significant proportion of children who are not fully vaccinated. Once again we balance the vanishingly small (and as of yet unproven) risk associated with vaccination against the risk of death or long-term side effects of Measles, Mumps and Rubella.

Re:The debate is long from over.

[gjscott332]

Last week, my youngest baby very suddenly came out with a rash across his whole body (which fortunately faded away pretty quickly). Two day's LATER he was given the swine flu vaccine. If my local doctors had set their vaccine day three day's earlier the two events would have lined up - entirely randomly. This is why 'The plural of anecdote is not evidence'. Unfortunately you have observed a possibly correlation between two events, we have to use statistics to see if it's likely there is a correlation of if it's just random chance. To my knowledge huge effort has been put in to researching this since the original scare and the overwhelming result has been negative.

Re:The debate is long from over.

[ommerson]

That doesn't happen in the UK, hence the rise in cases of all three diseases in some area - particularly London.

A policy of coercing the public into any kind of medical intervention here is very unpopular. Unfortunately when we're up against highly misleading reporting of science and health scare stories in the popular press, there's not a lot of alternative.

Re:The debate is long from over.

[LanMan04]

Also consider this: nobody has absolute proof that vaccines DON'T cause autism.

Also consider this: nobody has absolute proof that my rock DOESN'T repel tigers.

Re:The debate is long from over.

[DuckDodgers]

Read the link he provided on Thiomersal. It has not been used in vaccines in the US in ten years, and further was never proven to cause autism in any published, peer-reviewed study. Per the original article, the first author who published a 1998 article linking thiomersal in vaccines with autism was financially involved with alternative technology. He wasn't trying to save children, he was trying to get rich.

Re:A reasonable reply that should not be marked tr

[Dr. Manhattan]

I don't see how that got set as troll...

Because it's wrong:

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2008/03/the_hannah_poling_case_and_the_rebrandin.php

Re:"The vaccine-autism debate should now end".

[grumbel]

Science isn't about debating, its about evidence and data. And the evidence that vaccines cause autism just isn't there, on the other side there is plenty of evidence that vaccines are extremely beneficial and that the current vaccination scare actually kills people.

Re:The debate is long from over.

[SETIGuy]

The FDA hasn't established limits on ethyl mercury and has several articles suggesting that the methyl mercury limits be used for chronic exposure. See my other post showing one daily exposure limit was being exceeded by 3x for a typical 6-month getting his vaccinations.

I know you're an idiot who likes to argue for no reason, but I will point out that a "daily exposure limit" is that amount you are allowed to be exposed to every day ad infinitum. To calculate an approximate single exposure limit you would take that daily limit and multiply it by the half life of the substance in the body.

The half life of methyl mercury in the body is about 80 days, so a single exposure limit would be about 80X the daily limit.

The half life of ethyl mercury in the body is about 8 days, so if the EPA actually determined a daily limit scientifically, you would expect it to be about 10X the daily limit for methyl mercury.