Study found many autistic children with bowel problems before MMR was licensed

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

Among other things, Wakefield, working for lawyers, claimed to have discovered a new inflammatory bowel disease, apparently caused by MMR. But Deer's investigation revealed that almost all of the children ensnared in Wakefield's research were in fact profoundly constipated. This information, concealed by Wakefield, nevertheless sat well with reports on brain disorders and bowel problems dating back to the 1930s, and particularly with this work by Mary Coleman, a celebrated US paediatric neurologist

The patient information below was extracted by Brian Deer from The Autistic Syndromes, edited by Dr Mary Coleman, published in 1976. Seventy-eight autistic children - 64 males, 11 females, with a median age of 9 - were examined at the Children's Brain Research Clinic in Washington DC, each accompanied by a developmentally normal child of the same age and sex. Patients and controls came in special buses, each delivering groups of four children to the clinic, in the week of June 24-28 1974.

Coleman's interests focused on identifying different types of autism, but study of her data today - including the children's ages and the onset of any gastric problems - reveals a disproportionate incidence of bowel problems in autistic children before the MMR vaccine was even licensed in the US. Coleman's meticulous study reports that "the presence of constipation or diarrhea in 19 of the autistic patients and only 5 of the control children during the newborn period was significant". As can be seen from the ages reported in the histories, many of these children's bowel problems began in the 1960s.

Here are the anonymised notes on the 19, republished at this site in the hope that parents of autistic children with such problems may find this history of interest.