I have hesitated to wade into this acrimonious public debate. Yet my family has gotten forwarded HuffPo columns that hype the supposed link between vaccines and autism. As a public health researcher and as a caregiver, I take umbrage.
I should say at the outset that I have never in any way taken a dime from a vaccine manufacturer. I should also that I accept the need to closely regulate the vaccine industry. Four million children are born in America every year. Most greatly benefit from vaccination. There are a small number of real tragedies in which some vaccine harms specific children.
Sensible regulation isn't easy. Vaccine epidemiology is an imperfect science, and policymakers must consider both the risks and benefits of these products. Autism spectrum disorders are especially mysterious, varied, and frightening. It is not clear that the incidence of these disorders is rising. Whatever the trend, these conditions merit a determined, disciplined, and sustained public health response to help individuals and families who suffer because of these conditions.
Spreading debunked rumors will not help anyone here. Last month, I watched the pilot episode of the ABC series, Eli Stone. This show is funny, well acted, inspiring. It includes a great cameo of George Michael singing "You've got to have faith." Mr. Stone himself is a heroic, Grisham-style litigator who sees heavenly visions brought about by divine intervention, a brain aneurysm, or some combination of these things.
Driven by these visions to forsake the usual corporate law road, Eli bravely represented a stunning young mom who is suing a vaccine manufacturer. The drug company makes vaccines which include an ingredient "mercuritol," a compound which the show clearly presents as the likely cause of her son's autism.
The show powerfully illustrates the dangers of corporate greed -- not the greed of the fictitious drug company, but of ABC itself for spreading damaging and unfounded myths.
Except when George Michael is singing, the whole episode is a thinly-veiled allusion to the thimerosal controversy. Despite all evidence, this faux debate has persisted because of the sincere but harmful actions of Congressman Dan Burton and a misguided segment of the autism advocacy community.
As reported in an excellent New York Times story by Edward Wyatt, there is no scientific debate over the alleged link between vaccines and autism. I know that many good people believe that vaccines have harmed their children, but there is just no evidence that vaccines lay behind the concerning rise in diagnosed autism cases in recent years.
Among the reasons not to believe it:
• The effective removal of thimerosal from vaccines brought no observable impact on autism rates.
• Unvaccinated autistic children show the same age of onset as do vaccinated autistic children.
• Major studies and several expert panel reports in the United States and around the world have investigated this issue exhaustively, and found no reason for worry.
For the real information, I encourage readers to check out the websites of the Institute of Medicine here, and the American Academy of Pediatrics here.
I'll simply say that the scientific controversy has been put to bed long ago, even if many people angrily respond to this post.
Unfortunately, the same social currents that lead people to fear vaccines lead people to dismiss the messengers and messages that might assuage these fears. Elaine Showalter's Hystories: Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Culture appeared 10 years ago. Too bad, because the vaccine-autism controversy provides a great illustration of how hysterical epidemics are spread through an interaction of families in pain, underlying cultural anxieties, issue advocates, and the modern media.
The vaccine-autism controversy features heart-wrenching testimony from parents who faithfully took their child to the pediatrician for shots, only to witness the onset of autism soon after. On the other side, it features pharmaceutical companies, often poster boys for corporate greed. It taps into public distrust of the influence and social authority of scientific medicine. It taps into public fears about strange chemicals that penetrate our bodies in novel combinations to do strange things.
The controversy also reflects complacency about infectious disease. The early Salk vaccine brought real danger. Early manufacturing errors infected hundreds of children with polio. Fifty years ago, Americans tolerated the risk, because my parents' generation had very recently lived in fear that their kids would become paralyzed after swimming in the local swimming pool.
When enough people are vaccinated in a given community, an infectious disease such as measles is unable to gain a foothold. The public health community calls this herd immunity. This is what tamed polio. That's also what we too much for granted these days.
Many people chafe at mandatory vaccination, for religious, political, and other reasons. Ron Paul raises this issue in his campaign litter. Whatever you think of the competing Democratic health plans, here is a real issue of individual mandates on which we should all agree. Especially if vaccination brings minor inconveniences, discomfort, and either imaginary tiny risks, it's very tempting to let someone else, let someone else's child, assume these burdens.
Public health practitioners fear that television shows such as Eli Stone and recent appearances by celebrities on Oprah spreading similar rumors will discourage people from getting flu shorts or immunizing their kids. Practitioners' fears are reasonable. They are rooted in long experience. Flu kills a surprising number of Americans every year. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, failure to immunize toddlers was a major cause of a U.S. measles epidemic which resulted in 11,000 hospitalizations and 120 deaths. Fanciful TV shows should not influence peoples' attitudes and behavior regarding important matters in the real world. A trainload of medical and public health studies indicate that they do.
More to the point, a later-retracted 1998 study that alleged an autism link convinced many British parents not to vaccinate their kids. The study was discredited, but not before it stoked needless measles outbreaks in which hundreds of children were hospitalized and a few died. A 2006 story in the British paper, the Guardian, starts out:
England is experiencing its biggest measles outbreak in 20 years, fuelled by the reluctance of some parents to have their children immunised because of now-discredited claims of a link between the MMR jab and autism. There have been 449 reported cases of measles since the beginning of the year,... That, in less than six months, is more than double the 438 for the whole of 2003. Last year there were only 77 cases.
The article, which can be linked here makes sobering reading,
My own displeasure is personal. My wife and I are caregivers for an intellectually disabled man. I know only too well that families are drawn to quackery and hokum. I have also seen how hard it is for medical science to compete for airtime with unfounded theories and worthless products and therapies. I suspect that false rumors are hard to debunk through straight information. Many parents in difficult cirumstances have bad experiences with the schools, social services, and medical providers to whom they turn for help. When these systems and providers fail to show a competent and caring human face, parents themselves turn away. They easily fall prey to all sorts of mischief.
Given these realities, it is especially irresponsible to falsely blame vaccines for health difficulties. And there is something heartless for major television networks to coyly spread myth in this area. We are used to politicians who doubt global warming and evolution, the cranks who claim that Jewish doctors are spreading AIDS. Of course, the problem goes deeper, and crosses every ecumenical and political line. My friend Mark Kleiman spearheads one of the best blogs in the web: the reality-based community. Out in the real world, the reality-based community is always embattled because reality so often fails to provide the answers or the consolation that people seek. Hence the permanent lure of scapegoating and magical thinking.
And there is always someone willing to make a buck on it. ABC's misleading story line stacked the deck in the usual storybook TV way. The network was shamed into running the usual "this fictional account" disclaimer, together with links to an earnest CDC website that few viewers will ever frequent. The network claims that the episode showed both sides -- a statement that could apply with equal merit to airing a debate over whether mosquitos spread AIDS.
In the end, Eli takes down the drug company for $5.2 million when its CEO is forced to admit that he refused to vaccinate his own child with the company's product. The show's sole connection to reality was ironic: A handsome trial lawyer swayed a pliable jury and TV audience to believe something that isn't true.
ABC got good ratings. Some unknown and unknowable number of people will surely avoid useful vaccines. It is depressing how low the penalties are for unethical corporate behavior. John Grisham, I have an idea for your next book.
Follow Harold Pollack on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@haroldpollack
You may be right about new cases of polio being caused by the vaccine. The fact remains, however that 1000 or so new cases a year pales in comparison to many many thousands before 1954. I stated in response to your death statistics that deaths and new infections are not the same thing to which you replied "whatever". Well what of it?
You've stated that the reduction of polio and outright irradication of smallpox are not because of the vaccines. I asked what you base that on. I really don't know were you're coming from.You haven't made your case. Are you saying that all vaccines are a hoax?
http://www.nature.com/clpt/journal/v82/n6/pdf/6100407a.pdf
However, and I have stated this on previous posts, there are so many parents who can pinpoint when their child began showing symptoms of autism, and in so many cases, they can pinpoint it to within a few days after receiving a vaccine. With such a large group of people, can we safely discount the connection? If there was no link between mercury and autism, then wouldn't it have been safe to leave thermirisol in the vaccines? If vaccines were safe, then would there have needed to be a clause in the Homeland Security Act that protects vaccine companies from lawsuits pertaining to injuries resulting from vaccinations? And shouldn't we treat the reports released by the IOM, an organization that has in the past been known to accept money to doctor reports in the favor of companies that knowingly poison their consumers (i.e. Big Tobacco), shouldn't we treat these reports with the same skepticism as so many people treat the vaccine-autism connection?
Again, I thank you for the respect you've shown in your article, and I look forward to discussing this more with you.
What are you referring to with the IOM? They are currently extremely anti-tobacco, as their recent reports make clear.
http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/independence-of-cdc
I apologize for the multiple posts...my browser is acting weird. It seems to post previous posts that I've done today for some reason. Not trying to spam you guys. Again, apologies.
Uh oh.
I believe in a more relaxed vaccine schedule. Don't get the cocktails (the 3-in-1's like the DPT and MMR). Spread them out over a few weeks to allow the child's immune system to catch up. This makes far more since to me. posted 03/03/2008 at 12:04:29
People automatically assume that we are looking for someone to blame. We aren't. We are looking for answers. As any scientist will tell you, the way to solve a problem is to first find out what caused the problem.
And the government does nothing to help my son. I am a Network Administrator, middle class, and they say I make too much money to receive SSI and Medicaid benefits for my son. My insurance company refuses to pay because they say he has a pre-existing condition. So, I pay for his medication, his occupational and speech therapy, and his psychiatric visits all out of pocket. This adds up to more than my rent and utilities combined. I have no savings, no 401k, and I barely live from paycheck to paycheck, all so I can give my son as normal of a life as possible. And you tell me that the Government and the Medical Industry wants to help him?
Here's a little tidbit, and please don't take this as disrespect. Your post was quite thoughtful and respectful, and I appreciate that. So was Mr. Pollack's. The Government and the Medical Industry do not want my son to be healthy. Why? There is no money in healthy people. Sick people buy their products, and as everyone knows, the more we spend, the more the economy prospers.
This is actually on the MSDS sheet ( (pregnant women
should not be exposed to the product ) ) wonder if the
CDC has seen this? The CDC is currently recommending
pregnant women to receive two flu vaccines containing
25 micrograms of mercury each.. Armed with the simpson wood meeting knowledge from DR Weil
stated ( There are just a host of neurodevelopmental data that would
suggest that we've got a serious problem. The earlier we go, the more
serious the problem ) and two studies that state children 6 mos to 2 years old get no benefit except that of a placebo effect.. So what was their reason for putting it back in ?
When you are poisoning a population by accident
then you pull the poison out of product the numbers
would fall so rapidly it would be very apparent what happened to a generation of children. So you taper
it down and then is not so Crystal clear what
happened to the population...We even said if you
want ban thimerosal then please state a preference
for pregnant women with thimerosal free they said NO!
we will not and that goes along with what that guy
said the day David Kirby was on the radio that
worked for the pharma co. he said they the CDC
was not interested in removing the thimerosal
This is also on the MSDS
sensitization with allergic manifestations in predisposed
persons AKA maybe peanut allergies, ect . . .
The 2 studies you mention in your article, Mr. Pollack, were both sponsored and funded by the Institute of Medicine. Since it is their integrity, and dare I say their butts on the line, then they have a vested interest in keeping any possible injuries that may occur from their products under wraps. This is called a conflict of interest, and as any scientist will tell you, it does NOT make for a valid study.
Remember not too long ago all of the "studies" released that showed that Tobacco wasn't addictive? These were released by the same IOM that is releasing these vaccine reports. And then after the lawsuits were filed, we found out that Big Tobacco had bought these reports, doctoring them in their favor. Who is to say this isn't happening again?
Until a report is released by an Independant Research firm that is in NO WAY linked to the IOM, The Pharma Corps, the FDA and the CDC that proves that there is not link then parents will continue to try to prove what we've known all along; that vaccine cocktails are poisoning our children.
Remember not too long ago all of the "studies" released that showed that Tobacco wasn't addictive? These were released by the same IOM that is releasing these vaccine reports. And then after the lawsuits were filed, we found out that Big Tobacco had bought these reports, doctoring them in their favor. Who is to say this isn't happening again?
Until a report is released by an Independant Research firm that is in NO WAY linked to the IOM, The Pharma Corps, the FDA and the CDC that proves that there is not link then parents will continue to try to prove what we've known all along; that vaccine cocktails are poisoning our children.
Your bullet points are misleading. Thimerasol has not been effectively removed from vaccines, because it has not been banned. It's being removed on a voluntary basis only, and the new thimerasol free formulas are not even close to making up the bulk of vaccines being currently administered.
In populations of children who typically aren't vaccinated, such as the Amish, autism is virtually unheard of. You'd be hard pressed to find a child in America with autism who has not been vaccinated.
The studies you are referring to are funded by the pharmaceutical companies who manufacture vaccinations, so they can't be trusted to be unbiased.
Also, measles outbreaks have been known to occur in populations vaccinated against measles. Getting a measles shot is no guarantee you won't get measles.
I am not an immunologist but, based on my research I came to similiar conclusions; you're much more credible than I am because of your education so Im happy that you took the time and energy to write this statement.
Regarding dosage, there are all sorts of laws against having a kid even look at beer. If alcohol is that dangerous for children, why not at least some concern about something that cannot be metabolized?
What would be wrong with a thimerosal free vaccine in individual doses that was kept refrigerated?