Newspapers
praise blow to vaccine claims as
investigation forces MMR retraction
This page
is material from the award-winning investigation by Brian Deer for The Sunday Times of London, the
UK’s Channel 4 TV network and BMJ, the British
Medical Journal, which exposed vaccine
research fraudster Andrew Wakefield |
Investigation
summary
In
February 2010, following Andrew
Wakefield's disgrace before a statutory
tribunal of the UK General Medical
Council, the Lancet journal retracted a 1998 paper which Deer's investigation had targetted for
the previous six years. The retraction,
in particularm received huge media
attention, on TV, radio and in
newspapers, particularly in the United
States. Below is a selection of
editorials
New York Daily News:
Hippocrates would puke - Doctor hoaxed
parents into denying kids vaccine
February 6 2010
British physician Dr. Andrew
Wakefield has been branded a primary
instigator of the mania that drove
parents to avoid having their children
undergo routine immunizations for fear
that inoculations could produce autism.
It was Wakefield's article,
published in 1998 in the premier British
medical journal, The Lancet, that gave
authority to the proposition that
combined inoculations for measles, mumps
and rubella were connected to childhood
autism.
Now, though, the United
Kingdom's General Medical Council, which
licenses doctors, has concluded that
Wakefield cherry-picked the children who
became his study subjects, including
paying kids at his son's birthday party
to give blood.
The council also found that
he subjected children to unnecessary
procedures, such as colonoscopies, for
experimental purposes without getting
ethical approval. Oh, and Wakefield was
secretly bankrolled by lawyers who hoped
to sue vaccine makers. Oh, and he owned a
patent on a competing measles vaccine.
Perhaps no one did more than
Wakefield to fuel fears of a link between
vaccinations and rising autism rates -
fears that persist despite numerous
studies refuting any connection.
As Alison Singer, president
of the Autism Science Foundation, put it,
"That study did a lot of harm.
People became afraid of vaccinations.
This is the Wakefield legacy: this
unscientifically grounded fear of
vaccinations that result in children
dying from vaccine-preventable
diseases."
Steadfastly defending both
his integrity and his science - and
backed by supporters who mutter about
"show trials" and "witch
hunts" - Wakefield has been shamed
before the world. He deserves far worse.
New York Times: A
Welcome Retraction
February 5 2010
For a decade, many parents
have worried that vaccines might somehow
be causing autism in children. Repeated
assurances from respected experts that
there is no link have failed to quiet
those fears. Now The Lancet, a
prestigious British medical journal that
published the paper that first gave wide
credence to those fears, has retracted
it, saying that the paper’s authors
had made false claims about how the study
was conducted. The journal acted after a
British medical panel had found the lead
author, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, guilty of
dishonesty and flouting medical ethics.
The original paper,
published in 1998, was based on only 12
children. It nevertheless drew an
inferential link between an autismlike
disorder and the triple-vaccine used to
prevent measles, mumps and rubella.
Although that paper stopped short of
claiming the combination vaccine caused
the disorder, Dr. Wakefield suggested at
a press conference that parents would be
wise to use single vaccines for each of
the diseases.
What was not known at the
time was that Dr. Wakefield had filed for
a patent on a single measles vaccine that
would benefit if the triple vaccine
failed and that he was receiving payments
from a lawyer planning to sue
manufacturers of the triple
vaccine.Die-hard believers in the theory
that vaccines cause autism are already
denouncing the British medical
establishment for smearing one of their
heroes.
Many parents have moved on
to other theories as to how vaccines
might cause autism only to be met with
overwhelming evidence that there is no
causal link. What is indisputable is that
vaccines protect children from dangerous
diseases. We hope that The Lancet’s
belated retraction will finally lay this
damaging myth about autism and vaccines
to rest.
Windsor Star:
Autism and vaccinations study
flawed
February 12, 2010
The Lancet is probably the
most respected medical journal in the
world. Founded in Britain in 1823, it's
considered the authority on everything
from advances in health care to surgical
procedures and groundbreaking studies.
When The Lancet speaks,
people listen. But will people listen to
what the distinguished magazine now has
to say about the link between autism and
childhood vaccinations?
We can only hope so. Last
week, The Lancet disavowed itself of a
controversial 1998 British study that
suggested the vaccine for measles, mumps
and rubella (MMR) led to autism. Ten of
the 13 original authors of the study also
signed a formal retraction, saying that
while they'd never actually said MMR
vaccines caused autism, people did make
that "interpretation."
Indeed they did, and it
caused millions of parents in North
America and Europe to forgo vaccinating
their children, leading to many deaths
and the return of diseases that had been
all but eradicated.
There is now such a
persistent belief of that link between
MMRs and autism -- fuelled by influential
but uninformed celebrities like Oprah
Winfrey and Jenny McCarthy -- that it
will be difficult, if not impossible, to
change people's minds.
What's astonishing is not
that The Lancet admitted this was a
flawed study and therefore withdrew its
support. What's astonishing is that the
findings were published in the first
place. Only 12 children were involved in
the study. It was conducted eight years
after they were
vaccinated, and it was based
on the anecdotal reflections of parents,
who seemed to recall that the first signs
of autism coincided with the
inoculations.
The fact that autism first
presents around the time of childhood
vaccinations should have raised a red
flag. The credentials of Dr. Andrew
Wakefield, the study's lead author,
should have raised another.
Last month, the British
General Medical Council ruled that parts
of Wakefield's study were false and that
he showed a "callous disregard"
for the children involved. The council
called him unethical and pointed out he
had been paid by the lawyers of parents
who were suing vaccine makers because
they alleged the shots had caused autism
in their children.
There were 30 charges
against Wakefield, including conflict of
interest and scientific
misconduct. (The doctor was
not present; he now lives in Texas, where
he runs a centre for children with
autism. He is not, however, licensed to
practise medicine in the state.)
Ironically, the general
medical council was able to make these
charges because a reporter with Britain's
Sunday Times challenged the
doctor and his colleagues in
a series of investigative stories
published in 2004. Brian Deer uncovered
what the government and The Lancet did
not.
It's good that those 10
colleagues have come clean, and that The
Lancet has withdraw its support.
"But the truth of the matter is the
damage has been done," Dr. Allison
McGreer, an infectious diseases expert at
Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, told the
Canadian Press. In other words, the
perception of the link is firmly
entrenched. The effect this has had on
parents and children is shocking and
disgraceful. Now it's time for the
venerable Lancet to use its resources --
and its clout -- to spread the word and
set things right.
Los Angeles Times:
Vaccination vindication
February 6 2010
A study that showed a
possible link to autism has been
retracted.
It has been obvious for
years that a British study positing a
possible link between a common vaccine
combination and autism failed the
physician's injunction to "do no
harm." Still, it's significant that
the influential medical journal that
published Dr. Andrew Wakefield's
discredited study in 1998 finally has
retracted it.
The decision by the Lancet
won't change the minds of some parents.
It will not entirely dispel the
conspiracy theories about how the medical
establishment covered up a connection
between autism and the MMR vaccine, which
protects infants against measles, mumps
and rubella. Still, the conclusive
repudiation of what has been a sacred
text for the anti-vaccination movement
should reassure at least some of the
families that have refused to accept an
overwhelming medical consensus that MMR
was safe as well as effective.
In belatedly rejecting the
Wakefield study, the Lancet criticized
more than its bad science. Dr. Richard
Horton, the journal's editor in chief,
linked the retraction to a medical
panel's judgment that Wakefield's
research had been not only dishonest but
a violation of ethical rules. The panel
also said that Wakefield had shown a
"callous disregard" for the
suffering of children who participated in
the study. But it is not just the
participating children who suffered --
and not just Wakefield who showed callous
disregard. Those who propagated the
vaccine-autism connection exhibited
willful blindness to multiple studies
debunking it.
The Wakefield study seems to
have had worse consequences in Britain,
where vaccinations declined dramatically
after its publication, than in this
country. Even so, the anti-vaccination
movement it unleashed -- one that has
been amplified by the Internet and a
culture of skepticism toward mainstream
medicine -- certainly influenced
decisions by parents in the U.S. not to
have their children vaccinated. It's hard
to believe, for example, that
anti-vaccine propaganda played no part in
recent increases in measles cases or in
the number of parents seeking
"personal belief" exemptions
from vaccinating their children.
Children with autism
disorders face serious challenges, as do
their parents, teachers and caregivers.
The diagnosis is deeply unsettling to
parents, who are understandably
susceptible to theories pointing to an
external cause. But the price of the
vaccination scare stoked by the Wakefield
study has been more sick children. We
hope this will be a retraction heard
round the world.
San Francisco
Chronicle: A reality check on autism and
vaccines
February 6, 2010
Many worried and angry
parents of an autistic child believe that
vaccines may cause the disease. But it's
pure myth - disproved by numerous studies
and now a final slap from a British
journal disowning a report that started
the dangerous nonsense.
Will these parents accept
reality - and allow their children to
receive shots against a dozen or more
illnesses? And will fringe groups that
play to fears of autism give up their
indefensible claims?
The answers can't come soon
enough for public health experts.
Vaccination rates, while generally high,
have shown dips partly because parents
are citing the notion of vaccine dangers
in skipping shots for their children.
Smallpox and polio have been
virtually eradicated thanks to vaccines.
But whooping cough, pertussis and measles
- all but stamped out years ago - can
reappear via unvaccinated patients.
A law that allows parents to
opt out of school-required shots has
raised the worry level. This so-called
exemption rate statewide is 2 percent,
but it was 6.3 percent in Marin County
and 5.8 percent in Sonoma County in 2008,
according to the state Department of
Health Services. Vaccine
"denialism" has become a public
health issue.
In the case of autism, a
sketchy study by British physician Andrew
Wakefield in 1998 set the vaccine blame
game in motion. He claimed that a
combined measles, mumps and rubella
inoculation given to infants was linked
to the disease, and his findings were
published by a prominent British medical
journal the Lancet.
But follow-up research by
other teams failed to match his results.
In recent years, his study fell apart
amid charges of dishonesty, violations of
research ethics and a "callous
disregard" for the 12 children
involved in the research. The Lancet
disavowal this past week capped the
collapse. How does he feel about the
wholesale discrediting of his work? The
findings are "unfounded and
unjust," he said.
The damage will be hard to
undo. Autism, a range of conditions that
disrupts communication skills and social
interaction, has grown in reported
numbers as parents and doctors learned to
recognize its symptoms. Nearly 1 in 100
American children is diagnosed with
autism or a related condition.
Without any effective
treatment - or even a clear understanding
of the causes of the disease - parents
are primed to be impatient with slow
research results and look for villains.
The Wakefield study provided
an easy and dramatic message: Shots cause
autism. Avoid vaccines and save your
child from the troubling condition. It's
a scientific fact confirmed by a doctor.
His findings expanded on other, equally
ungrounded fears about other contaminants
in vaccines.
But it was pure quackery.
Public health experts fought the message
but were savaged by anti-vaccine forces
as flunkies of drug companies. Fringe
medical figures had a field day, stoking
the fears of worried parents desperate
for an answer. Hollywood celebrity Jenny
McCarthy, the mother of an autistic
child, pushed the claims on talk shows
and through a foundation she founded.
This past week she continued to defend
the discredited vaccine study.
The rejection of Wakefield's
published work is way overdue. Also
overdue are similar rejections from
anti-vaccine groups and leaders like
McCarthy who are deluding desperate
parents with autistic children and
leading others to disregard vaccines. Too
much money and time has gone into
countering these ill-founded claims
instead being directed toward research
and reliable treatments for autism.
Disposing of a flawed theory
on autism is one issue. But there's
another that may be harder to end: a
disregard for science. That may be the
ultimate casualty of a misguided hunt for
an answer to autism.
Toronto Star: A blow
to vaccine `link'
February 4 2010
It took 12 years, but The
Lancet finally got it right this
week. The world's leading medical journal
retracted a 1998 study it had published
that linked the children's vaccine for
measles, mumps and rubella to the onset
of autism.
The study, by Dr. Andrew
Wakefield and others, had been
discredited before by scientists and
disowned by some of Wakefield's
co-authors. But until now, it had
remained part of The Lancet's
prestigious published record.
"It has become clear
that several elements of the 1998 paper
by Wakefield et al are incorrect,"
said The Lancet. "Therefore
we fully retract this paper from the
published record."
Unfortunately, much of the
damage has already been done. Doctors say
there has been a decline in vaccination
rates for children. They point to the
1998 Wakefield study as the spark, which
was fanned in TV appearances by celebrity
parents of autistic children such as
former Argonaut quarterback Doug Flutie.
A 2006 survey found that just 61 per cent
of 2-year-old Canadian children had
received the vaccine for measles, mumps
and rubella.
If this week's retraction of
the study starts the pendulum swinging in
the other direction, it is none too soon.
New Zealand Herald:
Dodgy science is bad medicine
February 7 2010
It's a sad fact that the
retraction this week of a controversial
research paper on the effects of a common
childhood vaccination will not have
anything like the impact on public
opinion of the paper's original
publication.
Poet John Milton observed
that "evil news rides post, while
good news bates" and it's
particularly true of medical alarm: fear
penetrates the public consciousness more
deeply than reassurance, and it latches
on more firmly, too. We would sooner
worry than believe that there is nothing
to worry about.
In 1998, the British Medical
Journal, the Lancet, published a paper by
physician Andrew Wakefield and others
that suggested a link between the
measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine
and autism in children.
The paper and Wakefield's
subsequent statements that parents should
beware of the vaccine led to a slump to
below 80 per cent in vaccination levels
in the UK and around the world - in New
Zealand, compliance dropped to barely 70
per cent - as anxious parents withheld
permission for their children to start or
complete the two-dose course.
Predictably, cases of
measles rose. Britain saw its first death
from the disease for 14 years.
Mumps reached epidemic
levels in Britain in 2005.
The controversy would have
been music to the ears of
anti-vaccination campaigners, who work
assiduously to foment a global distrust
of the MMR vaccine in particular and
vaccination in general. Wakefield was
hailed as a hero fighting to prevent
another thalidomide disaster. But his
science was dodgy, his research unethical
and his reporting dishonest.
The Lancet's online
announcement that "we fully retract
this paper from the published
record" followed a finding by the
General Medical Council, the statutory
regulatory authority of doctors in the
UK, that Wakefield had acted
"dishonestly and irresponsibly"
in reporting his research.
The evidence, of conflict of
interest, data-fixing and ethical
breaches, makes grim reading. But grimmer
still are the effects of the needless
anxiety his "findings" caused.
As Helen Petoussis-Harris,
the director of research at the
University of Auckland's Immunisation
Advisory Centre, remarked: the
"groundless controversy" had
led to many preventable cases of disease
internationally and in New Zealand.
That almost goes without
saying. The widespread use of the MMR
vaccine in the mid-1960s cut the
incidence of measles by 90 per cent
within two years in developed countries.
A similar result was
achieved with rubella. These are not
insignificant results - they translate
into the saving of 5200 lives and 17,400
cases of brain damage in 20 years.
The Chronicle Herald
- Nova Scotia News: Consequences of a
faulty study
February 7 2010
Children have died —
and more will die — in the wake of
the unethical actions of Dr. Andrew
Wakefield.
The influential British
medical journal, The Lancet, last week
formally retracted its publication of Dr.
Wakefield’s controversial 1998 study
linking autism to a common childhood
vaccination for measles, mumps and
rubella (MMR). A week before, the British
General Medical Council, commenting on
that study, stated Dr. Wakefield’s
actions had brought the medical
profession into disrepute.
The work of Dr. Wakefield
and his colleagues was hopelessly
compromised. Their study had received
funding from lawyers suing vaccine
manufacturers, clearly a conflict of
interest.
Dr. Wakefield had also
developed an alternative to the MMR
which, if used to replace the
multiple-disease shot given most children
in the U.K., would have benefited the
medical researcher financially.
Beyond that, the fact is no
credible scientific study has ever been
able to match Dr. Wakefield’s
results, which were based on a small
sample of only 12 children. Over and
over, scientists have found absolutely no
link between autism and childhood
vaccinations.
Unfortunately, as infectious
disease expert Dr. Allison Greer at
Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital put
it last week, "the damage has been
done."
In the U.K., and to a lesser
extent in the U.S., groups representing
the parents of autistic children have
campaigned against the supposed danger of
vaccinating infants, leading many new
parents — worried and confused by
the debate — to choose not to have
their kids inoculated.
The result, experts say, has
been a resurgence in illnesses caused by
measles and mumps, including unvaccinated
children dying from those diseases
The Ottawa Citizen:
A hoax exposed
February 4 2010
Twelve years ago a British
doctor started a nasty hoax that worked
its way into the public consciousness,
and though it has finally been exposed
the case is a cautionary tale of the
damage that irresponsible medicine can
wreak.
The doctor, Andrew
Wakefield, examined 12 children and
concluded that the measles, mumps and
rubella (MMR) vaccine may cause autism
and bowel disease. His team published the
findings in the Lancet, a major medical
journal, giving the work instant
credibility and causing parents to stop
vaccinating their children.
Soon the study started to
unravel. First it emerged that Wakefield
was secretly funded by a group suing the
makers of the vaccine. Then trial after
trial showed that his conclusions are
simply wrong. In 2004, his collaborators
publicly retracted the work, leaving him
as its sole proponent.
This week the Lancet finally
announced it "fully retracts"
the study. But it's too late to undo much
of the damage; vaccination rates have
fallen in Canada and many countries,
causing measles outbreaks.
Go hunting for vaccine
information on the Internet, as parents
of young children do, and you can't avoid
the anti-vaccine conspiracy theories. The
fear has spread to all vaccines -- most
recently, to the H1N1 flu shot. That
vaccine has turned out to be wonderfully
safe, despite fearmongering by people who
haven't actually studied the drug.
Even though the H1N1 virus
turned out to be far milder than health
authorities feared, it has still killed
more than 14,000 people around the world,
many of them young. But that doesn't
matter to the anti-vaccine conspiracists,
who remain convinced that flu shots are
part of a deadly plot by governments,
media and drug companies.
Yet all discussion of
vaccination must include the context of
the millions of deaths that vaccines have
prevented.
Polio. Smallpox. Diphtheria.
(Do you even remember what diphtheria
is?) Measles.
All these were killers on a
global scale -- yes, measles too -- yet
today they are either eradicated or
eliminated from developed countries.
These advances are due entirely to
vaccination. Some day, human papilloma
virus may join the list. Perhaps even
HIV.
Freedom from these
infectious diseases is such a medical
luxury that we forget vaccination's
value. We might be less squeamish about a
measles shot if we still saw people
ravaged by smallpox and crippled by
polio.
Wakefield, a
gastroenterologist, may even believe his
theory. He stands by it publicly. Yet an
inquiry showed that he fibbed extensively
about the research methods (that alone
makes the whole thing garbage in science
circles), so there's no reason to trust
him. The disciplinary body that oversees
British doctors found his work
"irresponsible and dishonest"
and said he showed "callous
disregard" for the suffering of
children.
With the Lancet's statement
-- which comes ridiculously late -- there
remains not one scientific reason to
avoid vaccinating a child for measles.
Websites are still buzzing with dangers
to your child's health, but those of us
who are parents have a responsibility to
look past a crooked study of 12 children
and make the choice based on evidence.
As for the rest, people who
don't vaccinate are getting a free ride
courtesy of those who do, and should be
slow to criticize.
Louisville
Courier-Journal: No autism link to
vaccine
February 16 2010
Earlier this month, a
renowned British medical journal, The
Lancet, retracted a controversial
scientific paper it published in 1998. It
wasn't just any old paper. It was the one
that linked autism to the
measles-mumps-rubella vaccine, an idea
that picked up such steam and speed over
the years that vaccination rates declined
in Britain and the United States and
outbreaks of measles increased in both
countries.
Meanwhile, the reasons for
rising rates of autism, a complex
developmental disability that shows up in
the first years of children's lives and
affects their communication and social
skills, remain elusive, and no other
study undertaken by scientists was able
to replicate the 1998 paper's findings.
Despite the pronounced
skepticism of the medical community, the
theory took hold. As another British
medical journal commented before Lancet
withdrew the article, however
belatedly, “The arguments were
considered by many to be proven, and the
ghastly social drama of the demon vaccine
took on a life of its own.”
The retracted paper had 13
co-authors and was based on research by a
British doctor, Andrew Wakefield, who
practices medicine in Texas now. There
actually were more authors of the paper
than there were subjects in Dr.
Wakefield's sample, which showed eight of
12 children evinced signs of autism, and
bowel problems, after receiving the MMR
combination vaccine. For his study, Dr.
Wakefield took blood samples from
children at his son's birthday party, and
paid them about $8 each. Recently,
Britain's General Medical Council
determined Dr. Wakefield's research was
unethical, irresponsible and dishonest,
and that he showed “callous
disregard” to the children in his
research.
That should take care of Dr.
Wakefield, who still faces losing his
license to practice medicine in his
native country and ought to face similar
questions about why he's practicing in
this country.
But it's hard to unring a
bell that has been clanging so loudly and
for so long. What will the retraction of
such an influential paper mean to parents
who are still worried about vaccines?
News stories often quote Dr.
Paul Offit, a vaccine researcher at
Children's Hospital in Philadelphia,
citing more than a dozen studies
concluding the MMR vaccine does not cause
autism. He said some parents cling to MMR
as a cause almost like a religious
belief. Instead, they should look to the
studies that have had more than a dozen
subjects and show a different outcome. He
said:
“We've reached the many
hundreds of thousands mark of children
who did or didn't receive MMR to see
whether risk of autism was greater in the
vaccinated group and it wasn't;
consistently, reproducibly,
redundantly.”
Sydney Morning
Herald: Debunking the link between autism
and vaccination
February 4 2010
The Wakefield case is a
scary example of how science can fail to
get its message across, with literally
fatal consequences.
Medical science has a
dangerously real PR problem.
The real villain here, of
course, is Dr Andrew Wakefield. Last week
the UK General Medical Council, in a
'fitness to practise' hearing, made a
series of 'findings of fact' that could
lead to a finding of serious professional
misconduct.
They were in relation to
research that culminated in 1998 in a
now-infamous paper in the distinguished
Lancet journal, which drew a link between
the MMR (measles, mumps + rubella)
vaccine for children, and autism.
His research suggested that
the MMR jab caused, in some children, a
previously unknown bowel disorder that
then somehow triggered autism.
Even back then it was
received with caution... by scientists.
They warned that such a radical claim
based on such slim evidence (a bare dozen
cases) needed much more testing and
corroboration before the MMR jab - which
saves thousands of lives - was abandoned.
Wakefield himself only suggested
separating out the three jabs, not
getting rid of them altogether.
But the message to parents
was clear. The MMR jab was dangerous.
Immunisation rates
plummeted. After a while, inevitably,
measles infections rose.
In 2006 a 13-year-old boy
was the first person in the UK in 14
years to die from measles.
Fear, guilt and paranoia
were fuelled by a small but vocal bunch
of anti-vaccination campaigners, who were
convinced about the link between
vaccination and autism despite all
evidence to the contrary. (For instance,
they long held - and some still hold -
the mercury-based ingredient thimerasol
to blame, despite the fact that when
thimerasol was removed from vaccines,
autism rates went UP).
Meanwhile, science chugged
along, as it does. The autism claim was
always suspect, because autism 'presents'
naturally at around the same age that
children get their vaccine jabs. As any
logician will tell you, Correlation Does
Not Imply Causation. It's only our
natural instinct to see patterns that
gets in the way of this obvious sense.
And gradually it became
clear that the original study was a
furphy, as more and more follow-ups
failed to duplicate the original
findings. Science was satisfied. The link
was disproven. The caravan should have
moved on.
It didn't, of course. The
anti-vax groups were by now fervent
believers, given emotional justification
by the rightness of their cause,
defenders against what they believed was
a cruel assault on children by
profit-seeking big pharma and amoral
scientists. They diligently got to work
spreading that message.
In the US, Hollywood got on
board. Comedic actor Jim Carrey and
Playboy bunny-turned-actress Jenny
McCarthy were convinced vaccination
caused her son Evan's autism, and they
were welcomed with open arms to spruik
their views on chat shows across the
country.
But at the same time, some
serious questions were starting to arise
about Wakefield's original research. UK
investigative journalist Brian Deer
produced some excellent, scathing
articles.
He reported that, two years
before the Lancet paper, Wakefield had
been hired by a lawyer who hoped to raise
a speculative class action lawsuit
against drug companies which manufactured
MMR. The children used in the study had
been recruited through anti-MMR campaign
groups, and most of their parents were
clients and contacts of the lawyer. Deer
also uncovered evidence that Wakefield
had changed and misreported data used in
the study.
Most of the co-authors of
the study withdrew their names from it.
And then the icing on the
cake: the Medical Council's findings that
Wakefield had been "irresponsible
and dishonest". His research had
been performed without ethical approval.
He had shown ''a callous disregard for
the distress and pain that you knew or
ought to have known the children involved
might suffer ... such as to bring the
medical profession into disrepute''
(relating to children he had paid for
blood samples).
The panel did give this
caveat: ''The Panel wish to make it clear
that this case is not concerned with
whether there is or might be any link
between the MMR vaccination and
autism.''. But the implications were
clear. Five days later, the Lancet fully
retracted the paper from the scientific
literature.
It's odd that the Lancet
even needed to take that step. Though
cases this extreme are almost unheard of,
most medical research turns out to be
wrong, or at least badly exaggerated.
Science is rarely advanced in a single
step forward. It is a gradual march, as
evidence accumulates, proof is
cross-checked, speculation is verified -
or, of course, disproven.
This has not been a failure
of science. Science has come to exactly
the right conclusion about the link
between autism and vaccines, and it did
it in the usual way: initial hypothesis,
then extensive testing.
But even now, the anti-vax
groups are rallying in support of
Wakefield, and refusing to accept the
obvious conclusion about their beliefs.
The failure has been in
scientists' ability to communicate, in
the media's ability to explain, and in
(some of) the public's ability to put
aside instinct and emotion to understand
fully what's going on.
Some uncomfortable parallels
could be drawn with the current
disastrous state of the climate change
debate.
Wakefield should have been a
minor speedbump. Instead, his errors were
magnified into more than a decade of
mistakes by thousands, that in some cases
proved fatal, and put unknown numbers of
children through the pain of disease that
should not have happened.
Those who care about science
and reason should not sit back and say
''Wakefield guilty, study retracted, case
closed''. Processes have failed here that
need serious, ongoing thought.
Toledo Blade: Fixing
a medical miscue
February 6 2010
IT TOOK too long, but The
Lancet, an international medical journal
that published an article that theorized
a link between vaccination and autism in
1998, has finally retracted the research
paper as a fraud.
Only time will tell whether
the damage done by the study can be
repaired. But the prestigious journal's
repudiation of the study may lead to
improved childhood immunizations against
measles, mumps, and rubella.
Use of the three-in-one
vaccination to protect against these
diseases dropped significantly in the
United States, Britain, and other parts
of Europe after the autism research of
British doctor Andrew Wakefield appeared
in the journal. Dr. Wakefield's research
- conducted on only 12 children -
concluded that the combined vaccine was a
primary cause of autism.
His hypothesis, now widely
discredited, was that mixing the vaccines
for measles, mumps, and rubella into a
single shot weakened the immune system
and damaged the gut, which, in turn, led
to the development of autism. His
assertions caused one of the biggest
medical rows in a generation and prompted
alarmed parents to stop immunizing their
children.
Years of subsequent medical
research disproved any vaccine-autism
link, but not until a recent ruling by a
disciplinary panel of Britain's General
Medical Council did the world take note
and The Lancet formally retract the
study.
The committee said Dr.
Wakefield had presented his research in
an "irresponsible and
dishonest" way and shown
"callous disregard" for the
children he studied.
The doctor continues to
defend his work and accuses his critics
of making "unfounded and
unjust" allegations.But it's safe to
say that most in the medical community
are happy to put the erroneous study
behind them, in hopes that public
perceptions adversely affecting pediatric
patients will change.
Since the publication of the
article, measles has made a return in the
United States with an outbreak in 2008.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control had
declared the country clear of the disease
only eight years earlier.
Milwaukee
Journal-Sentinel: A study repudiated
February 8 2010
There is no scientific
evidence that vaccinations cause autism.
In fact, vaccinations save lives.
The prestigious British
medical journal The Lancet has, at long
last, retracted a 1998 study that first
suggested a link between vaccines and
autism and spawned a wave of fear that
swept from England to these shores.
The 1998 study of 12
children by Andrew Wakefield purported to
find a link between autism and the
combined measles-mumps-rubella - or MMR -
vaccine. Ten of the 13 authors of the
original paper partially retracted the
paper in 2004. Wakefield never has.
Since the study was
published, concern has mounted over the
use of the preservative thimerosal, which
contains mercury. But no link has ever
been shown scientifically between
vaccination and autism.
Parents have a right to say
no to childhood vaccination, but they
should base that decision on sound
science. With the repudiation of the
Wakefield study by The Lancet, perhaps
sober, rational inquiry can return to
this important topic.
Deseret News:
Redirect autism research
February 8 2010
For more than a decade, a
debate has raged whether there is a
connection between autism and the
three-in-one measles, mumps and rubella
vaccine, commonly known as the MMR.
The research of British
laboratory researcher Dr. Andrew
Wakefield, which was published in the
medical journal Lancet in February 1998,
blamed the MMR vaccine for the onset of
inflammatory bowel disease and
"regressive autism." Behavioral
issues surfaced in children within two
weeks of undergoing the combined vaccine,
according to Wakefield's findings. This
study of just 12 children — and a
similarly sized control group —
prompted many parents in the United
Kingdom and the United States to question
the safety of the vaccine. Wakefield, in
a 1998 press conference, called for a
boycott of the triple MMR.
In successive years,
researchers were unable to replicate
Wakefield's research. In 2004, Lancet
editor Richard Horton deemed the article
"fatally flawed" and apologized
for publishing it. Ten of the 13 journal
article authors retracted their previous
claims of a possible autism-MMR link
after London's Sunday Times revealed that
Wakefield had been compensated by an
attorney who was contemplating a
class-action lawsuit against drug
companies that manufacture the MMR
vaccine. It was also reported that the
control group for Wakefield's research
was composed of children attending his
son's birthday party.
Although the research had
been largely discredited at that point,
the genie was out of the bottle. An
intense anti-vaccination movement ensued,
resulting in significant drops in
vaccination rates in Britain and the
United States, as well as a resurgence of
measles. Wakefield, whose license to
practice medicine in Britain may be
revoked, maintains he has done nothing
wrong. He is practicing medicine in
Texas.
Many lessons should be
gleaned from this ordeal. A few years
after it was published, Wakefield's
research started to unravel. Seemingly,
Lancet would have more carefully vetted
Wakefield's article before it was
published. The co-authors should have
exercised greater diligence before
attaching their names and reputations to
Wakefield's research.
No one can blame parents of
children with autism for wanting further
explanations as to why and how it occurs.
No legitimate science has established a
link between autism and vaccines, nor has
a connection been proven between autism
and the vaccine preservative thimerosol.
It is time to look elsewhere.
Recently published research
suggests a genetic variant could account
for up to 15 percent of autism cases.
Clinical trials are under way to
investigate a compound that has proved
effective in rescuing mice from symptoms
of fragile X syndrome, which may be
related to autism.
Clearly, more resources are
needed for research and to support the
educational needs of children with
autism. We hope the retraction of
Wakefield's journal article will be
viewed a turning point in this process.
Times-Call,
Colorado: Study recall a wake-up call for
parents
February 9 2010
When The Lancet, a prominent
British medical journal, published a
study in 1998 that showed a potential
link between a common childhood
immunization and autism, it unleashed a
tsunami of parent reaction that is being
felt to this day.
That the researcher behind
the study has been discredited and the
methods for his work found to be
unethical is not enough; the damage has
been done in fewer parents getting their
children immunized, greater incidences of
childhood measles and no apparent
reduction in autism, despite changes to
the way vaccines are prepared.
The Lancet formally
retracted the study last week, joining
the majority of co-authors in announcing
the science was deeply flawed.
Dr. Andrew Wakefield linked
the immunization for measles, mumps and
rubella to an increase in autism rates in
England. However, in recent years, many
other studies have refuted
Wakefield’s conclusion. Perhaps more
troubling, information about the
doctor’s potential to benefit from
the research — he had patented an
alternative immunization method before
the paper was published — has
emerged.
The retraction of the
initial immunization study should be a
call to parents who opted their children
out of shots. The benefits of having a
populace shielded from the ravages of
potentially dangerous childhood diseases
have been proven time and again.
USA Today: Our view
on fighting disease: Vaccine
fear-mongering endangers child health
February 16 2010
When ‘herd
immunity’ declines, deadly illnesses
make a comeback.
Americans no longer
routinely see people disfigured by
smallpox or crippled by polio, so it's
easy to forget what terrible scourges
those diseases were before vaccination
eradicated them here. Routine shots also
nearly wiped out measles, a dangerous
childhood illness that killed 450 and
caused 4,000 cases of encephalitis
annually in the USA before a vaccine
became widely available in the mid-1960s.
But reported cases of
measles, while still tiny, are now
ticking upward, and the probable reason
is troubling: Fearful parents are
refusing to let their children be
vaccinated against once-common childhood
diseases. Anxiety — fanned by a
discredited British researcher and
misguided celebrities — has grown
that childhood vaccines, chiefly the MMR
vaccine (for measles, mumps and rubella),
are a reason for an alarming spike in the
number of children with autism, a
disorder that impairs a child's social
and communication skills, often severely.
No one should demean
parents' fear of autism. A federal study
released in December showed that about
one in 110 children (and one in 70 boys)
has been diagnosed with autism, up from
one in 150 in a prior study. But the
conviction that vaccines are the cause,
despite convincing scientific proof that
they're not, is turning into a dangerous
threat to public health.
The supposed MMR-autism link
got a huge boost with a controversial
study published by the British medical
journal The Lancet in 1998. Though
the lead author, surgeon Andrew
Wakefield, was careful to say no such
link had been proved, the study strongly
suggested the possibility. Wakefield's
research was widely reported, and the
idea caught hold with worried parents.
Child vaccination rates in Britain fell
from 92% in 1995 to 81% in 2005,
jeopardizing "herd immunity,"
in which enough children have been
vaccinated that unvaccinated children
rarely encounter pathogens.
Vaccine critics have also
suggested that a mercury-based vaccine
preservative called thimerasol is the
link to autism. But research has shown
almost identical autism rates in
vaccinated and unvaccinated children, and
autism rates continued to rise after
thimerasol was removed from virtually all
child vaccines in 2001.
Last month, Britain's
medical regulatory body said Wakefield's
conduct of the 1998 study had been
"dishonest,"
"irresponsible" and
"unethical." The Lancet
retracted the study this month. Wakefield
remains a hero to a passionate community
of people who say the current vaccine
regimen is unsafe. Though
well-intentioned, their obsession with
thimerasol and MMR has diverted attention
from a search for likelier causes of
autism.
Complications from
inoculations are very rare but not
unheard of. The notion that they should
be avoided, however, is dangerous and can
do real harm. During the recent swine flu
epidemic, nearly one-fifth of those who
didn't get vaccinated cited fears that
the shot was harmful. Diseases such as
measles, meanwhile, are now just a plane
ride away. Infected travelers have come
to this country and infected unvaccinated
children.
Though U.S. child
vaccination rates never fell as they did
in Britain, and remain at 92%, a growing
number of parents have
"exempted" their children from
the shots that are otherwise mandatory
for attending school — more than 6%
of children in California's Marin County,
for example, or almost 27% of children in
Washington's Ferry County.
It would be tragic if the
current generation has to learn what
their parents and grandparents knew from
watching children get sick or die —
that yesterday's diseases are still
lurking, and that vaccines are most
effective when virtually everyone gets
them.
Chicago Tribune: Get the
vaccines
March 1 2010
In 1998, the British medical
journal The Lancet published an article
claiming that there may be a link between
the MMR vaccine — measles, mumps and
rubella — and the development of
autism in children.
The story got plenty of
press, touched off a raging debate about
the safety of vaccines, and scared many
parents away from inoculating their kids.
There was just one problem.
Researchers hadn't actually proved a link
between the vaccine and autism. They were
pushing a theory, one that lead
researcher Andrew Wakefield was paid
nearly half a million pounds to pursue.
He was paid by lawyers who were trying to
prove that the MMR vaccine caused autism.
Earlier this month, Lancet
editors issued a startling statement:
"We fully retract this paper from
the published record." It was a
humbling admission. It came too late.
The article, combined with
many anecdotal cases, scared people. No
one can help but be rattled by the
accounts of vibrant, lively toddlers who,
within days or weeks of receiving a
vaccine, retreated from human contact and
showed other signs of autism. Many
parents decided that the dangers of
vaccines far outweighed the risks. And
that created some significant health
risks.
Measles was once prevalent,
and killed one out of every 500 children
who got it. Measles was virtually
eradicated in the developed world, thanks
to vaccines, but it has been making an
alarming comeback. In 1998, there were
just 56 confirmed cases of measles in
England and Wales. In 2008, there were
1,348 cases there and two children died.
MMR immunization rates in
Britain dropped from 92 percent shortly
before The Lancet article was published
to 79 percent in 2003. In some parts of
London, the rate fell to 50 percent.
That poses a danger to the
unvaccinated kids and even to some kids
who got the vaccine. Vaccines don't
activate immunity in every patient who
receives them. As long as 95 percent of
kids in a group are vaccinated, the
others are protected by a "herd
immunity." The virus, for lack of
enough hosts, won't survive long enough
to be transmitted.
In Illinois, 98 percent of
schoolchildren were immunized in 2008-09,
according to the State Board of
Education. But immunization rates were
below 90 percent in three public school
districts and 28 private schools.
"If you've got clusters, it just
takes one person getting (a disease like
measles)," Dr. James Singleton, an
immunization expert from the U.S. Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention, told
us. "If there's a group of exempted
kids that are going to school and aren't
immunized and exposed to that, you'll get
these localized outbreaks."
When parents avoid
immunizing their children, there is a
greater risk of losing that herd
immunity.
A dozen epidemiological
studies have not found a link between the
MMR vaccine and autism. But the fear of a
link remains. And some parents complain
that kids receive too many vaccines. In
1960, young children were routinely
vaccinated against five diseases:
diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, polio and
smallpox. The CDC now recommends
vaccination by age 2 against 13 diseases.
The vaccines, though, have
become safer. They require far fewer
antigens — the molecules of bacteria
or virus used to cause a reaction from
the immune system. One example: the
pertussis vaccine once used 3,000
antigens. Now it uses five. That
decreases the likelihood and severity of
side effects.
Some parents report seeing
the onset of autism soon after their
child received some standard vaccines.
But that doesn't mean vaccines cause autism.
It is often diagnosed around the age of
2, which is when kids are scheduled for
some routine vaccinations.
It's understandable that
some parents have focused on vaccines as
the cause of their child's autism. It is
a mysterious disorder. Scientists don't
know what causes it. But if more parents
refuse to vaccinate their kids, it is
more likely that some nearly forgotten
diseases will enjoy a renaissance.
As for the scientific
community, we hope even more effort is
poured into discovering the cause and
treatments for all of the autism spectrum
disorders.
Daily Mirror: Dr
Shameless
25 May 2010
Struck-off Dr
Andrew Wakefield predictably claims to
the end that he's right and everyone else
is wrong.
Yet the
scaremonger's flawed research, wrongly
claiming a link between MMR vaccinations
and autism, put lives at risk by
frightening parents into denying children
protective jabs.
Wakefield, like all
doctors, was in a privileged position of
authority. Yet this shameless man - found
guilty of serious professional misconduct
- abused that trust and his bleating
disgraces the medical profession.
Seattle Times:
Discredited autism researcher's penalty
is a shot in the arm for medical
integrity
25 May 2010
British medical
authorities pulled the license of Andrew
Wakefield, a doctor who stirred parental
fears with unsubstantiated links between
a common childhood vaccine and autism.
Science is not on the side of those who
frighten parents into not protecting
their children.
THE long, sordid
and destructive tale of Andrew Wakefield
continues. The discredited British
physician and autism researcher has been
banned from practicing medicine in
Britain.
One can hardly
overstate the heartache and turmoil his
unsubstantiated rants against the
childhood vaccine for measles, mumps and
rubella have caused. His sloppy work and
loose talk raised fears about a link
between the vaccine and autism. Wakefield
frightened legions of parents away from
rudimentary protection against entirely
preventable illnesses.
Wakefield fled his
practice in Britain in 2004 and landed at
an alternative-medicine research center
in Texas. He was still under
investigation back home, and the lengthy
review ended in January. The General
Medical Council announced its decision on
Monday.
Wakefield thrived
by exploitation of the raw emotions of
parents with children diagnosed with
autism, and by inflating the fears of
millions more who were worried about what
might happen.
Parents crave
information on which to make informed
decisions for their infants and toddlers
as vaccination cycles begin. Wakefield's
reckless behavior continues to haunt
concerned families.
Science is not on
the side of the doctor or those who mouth
his theories.
Wakefield is most
thoroughly repudiated by generations of
healthy children and their families who
have not suffered the pain, inconvenience
and expense of 14 childhood diseases
prevented by timely immunizations
Aurora Sentinel:
Diagnosing Wakefield: Bad medicine
May 25 2010
Slowly, it appears
that common sense and reason will prove
wrong once again the man responsible for
putting hundreds of millions of children
at risk for common juvenile diseases.
The government of
Great Britain this week forbid Dr. Andrew
Wakefield from ever practicing medicine
in that country again. Wakefield was the
chief pediatrician behind the repeatedly
discredited research project that he says
shows a distinct link between autism and
vaccines for measles, mumps and rubella.
For years, physicians and researchers
have been trying to undo the damage
Wakefield has done because of his
fraudulent science. After his 1998
research was published and gave enormous
credence by the media, millions of
parents across the world began refusing
to vaccinate their children, fearing they
would become autistic.
Since then,
numerous studies have failed to find a
link between the vaccines and autism.
Wakefield was essentially run out of the
country after it was revealed that he
flubbed much of the study and had
committed a host of unethical stunts
along the way. He has since set up shop
in Texas, although he cannot practice
medicine, attracting a big following of
parents of autistic children, including a
handful of celebrities.
The notion that
autistic children suffer from so-called
“leaky gut” syndrome was
created by Wakefield. In his report,
Wakefield tied some forms of autism and
gastric maladies to the combined measles
vaccine. The research has been
discredited by numerous studies across
the globe, but the stubborn
disinformation continues.
Not only are
children’s wellbeing needlessly
jeopardized when parents cling to this
and other myths, the health of other
children, too, are endangered. Children
who are too young or physically unable to
undergo vaccination depend on the rest of
the community to follow vaccination
protocols to help control the incidence
of disease at-large. With increasing
numbers of children forgoing vaccination,
some diseases are needlessly on the rise,
creating a greater danger for us all.
The most recent act
by the British government revokes
Wakefield’s medical credentials
because of how he conducted the studies,
pulling blood from children at his
son’s birthday party and paying them
5 British pounds each. The revocation did
not address the faulty science.
Undaunted,
Wakefield this week said he will continue
his work in Texas, telling reporters that
he absolutely “will not go
away.”
Perhaps he’ll
be just as mistaken about his longevity
as he was about the vaccines. Worldwide,
physicians and government agencies are
taking up the cause, fighting back
against Wakefield’s dangerous
disinformation. The campaign can’t
come too soon since so many are at risk.
Boston Globe:
Bad science gets its due
May 30 2010
The revocation of
Dr. Andrew Wakefield’s license to
practice medicine in Britain comes too
many years too late.
It was back in 1998
that Wakefield, who now stands accused of
unethical and irresponsible research,
published a medical article suggesting a
link between autism and the measles,
mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine. Since
then, the research has been discredited
by follow-up studies that failed to find
a link between the vaccine and the
disease. As far back as 2004, 10 of
Wakefield’s original co-authors
retracted the findings of the article in
a letter to The Lancet, the prestigious
medical journal where it was initially
published. Puzzlingly, it took the
journal six more years to issue its own
official retraction, which came out in
February.
By then, alas, the
damage had been done. The work worried
millions of parents and prompted many
others to endanger their children’s
health by declining vaccination.
Scientifically unproven treatments,
modeled on a theory of autism spearheaded
by Wakefield, have been given to children
in attempts to treat the condition.
But sadder still is
the possibility that, in the minds of
thousands of parents desperately clinging
to hopes of finding a cure for autism,
Wakefield’s legend might survive
untarnished, possibly even exalted. In
reality, his work on autism offers an
unfortunate example of poor research
trumping the scientific method.
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