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.
