If any one person is responsible for the current anti-vaccination hysteria, it’s Andrew Wakefield, the surgeon who cobbled up a very bad study of vaccination and autism. For a good overview, read this summary of a talk by Brian Deer, a reporter who also has a very thorough summary of the Wakefield affair. It’s amazing how sloppy the work was, and how lavishly Wakefield was paid for perpetrating it. I guess it’s easy and lucrative to carry out medical fraud, as long as your conscience will let you overlook the little matter of dead children.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Ha, see what a conscience gets you? And the dead children matter, why?
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
But any one person is not responsible.
If it hadn’t been for the gullible, unscrupulous, dishonest press noöne but a few academics would ever have heard of Wakefield.
And in this case it was just the tabloids. The broadsheets took this idea and ran with it as well. And refused to back down until the additional evidence had mounted to such a degree that denying it was near impossible.
At which point all the blame suddenly lay with Wakefield. The journos being nothing but disinterested observers.
Wankers.
Since Wakefield’s dodgy publication an international study, led by a Japanese group, of thousands of children has shown no link between MMR and autism. Quel surprise!
Temple Grandin the autistic professor of Animal Sciences at Colorado State thinks that more studies need to be done in this arena. Of course I have looked at the literature and agree that mercury does not correlate to autism incidence. But total number of vaccinations has not been looked at in a scientific study that I know of. I could be wrong here. I have proposed a hypothesis that no one seems to take seriously that perhaps RNA from dead virus can cross the bbb and affect neuronal inter-cellular transcription factors that also happen to bind RNA. If this was the case increased concentration of viral RNA would somehow affect gene expression in developing brains. This particular topic has become so politically charged that it can’t be discussed scientifically, with a skeptical mind. You are either a pro-or anti vaccine individual and are categorized as such. Politically charged issues make them immune to any inquiry and I hate that even scientists have become victims of group-think and cognitive bias here. EVERYTHING is worth scrutinizing. In science nothing SHOULD be sacred even vaccines!
True. But now, you need to do the hard work yourself. Write up a proposal to scientifically test your theory, and get some funding agency to approve it. Then do the testing and report on it. Put your time and effort where your ideas are. Don’t expect other people to do your work for you. Those who expect other people to work on their ideas are called cranks.
Andrew Wakefield has the morals of a tapeworm.
Too bad there are millions who see him as a hero and (especially if he were to move to the US), he’ll be a millionaire because of the fraud he committed.
Thorsonofodin @ 4
Perhaps the reason for this is that it’s a very half-assed hypothesis. First question – why doesn’t this occur during natural retroviral infection as well as through vaccination? If your hypothesis can’t distinguish the two, then we should all be autistic and brain-damaged. Second question – how many vertebrate transcription factors bind both RNA and DNA simultaneously? Third question – do you know the difference between inter and intra?
Brian Deer is a very smart and competent investigative reporter. I’ve read his work before.
He is British. Too bad, the USA could use a few like him instead of Faux News.
You can come up with all kinds of half baked reasons to try and backprove an autism / vaccination link, but the problem is just making shit up like that is worthless without some scientific base to it.
Got any?
cervantes, I beg to differ. A tapeworm is much too gentle for the comparison.
Instead, I’m thinking more along the lines of one of those bugs that Sir David Attenborough likes to mention. You know? The ones that eat their way out of the eyes of their living victims? I’m sure somebody here can supply genus and species….
Cheers,
b&
—
EAC Memographer
BAAWA Knight of Blasphemy
“All but God can prove this sentence true.”
I read this differently. I know she was asked about the autism vaccination question but in her book (Animals in Translation) she talks about being a “tape recorder”. She says she prepares answers for questions she knows she will be asked and prepares for them. If a question that she has not planned for is asked, she cannot give an answer that is usual.
She freely admits that she has not done the reading that is required to give an answer to this question, but she does talk about how it needs to be scrutinised by scientists, not doctors or mothers. This has been done.
You should read Mark Crislip’s discussion about vaccines in his latest article Nine Questions, Nine Answers. It does not specifically respond to vaccine causes autism story, but it does discuss the safety of vaccines. And Mark Crislip is fun to read ;)
He just resigned from his job as Executive Director at Thoughtful House in Austin, Texas.
He works on a chelation clinic or some such woo woo altie ranch there already.
Vaccines are evil. They interfere with My mysterious plans involving death and suffering of the innocent.
Not anymore. He got sacked.
@#2 True, but….
What if it had been a cancer cure, or similar, and the doctor had falsified his research to make it look effective when its not;
It wouldn’t be unscrupulous of the papers to report it and even hype it up – especially if it appeared in the Lancet.
What’s sad is how this is treated by anti-vaxxers.
One guy claims to find a link between vaccines and autism: he must be right!
Lots of others try to find data corroborating his findings and can’t: it’s a conspiracy!
It’s just inconceivable to them that he may have been dishonest. I mean, how can somebody be dishonest if they’re saying things you want to hear?
Yes it would.
The media is generally useless a reporting any kind of health story. It would be as unethical to report a small scale, non-repeated study into a potential cure for a type of cancer as it was unethical to report Wakefield’s study in the way it was.
@#4
It’s easy to make up all sorts of possible causes of autism out of whole cloth, it’s harder to scrutinize the data to come up with probable causes. The thing is that, beyond a simple correlation, the numbers don’t add up. The stats don’t incriminate vaccines any more than thousands of other environmental factors. In fact probably less so, given the similarity of incidence in places with fewer/different vaccines on the schedule, similarity of incidence across age groups (should be more prevalent in younger generations if the hypothesis is correct), the existence of unvaccinated autistics, etc.
No…no…that can’t be right. See, only doctors and scientists on the payroll of Big Pharma line their beds with benjamins to warm their deadened hearts at night.
Naturopaths, homeopaths, and those fighting in the good fight against the medical orthodoxy like Wakefield accept only children’s laughter as remuneration, and they pay their bills with dreams of a better world.
Isn’t that right, Chris Maloney?
@ Thorsonofodin #4:
Yes, you are. Before making assumptions like this, please take the time to browse the “Vaccines” category of the Science Based Medicine blog, where the issue is debated in language a lay person can understand!
Or, if you want to go to the scientific sources, search the PubMed database for “autism vaccine link”. You’ll find lots of studies who conclude there’s no such link, either with one particular vaccine or with the childhood vaccinations calendar taken as a whole.
—
“Check your assumptions. In fact, check your assumptions at the door.”
L.M. Bujold.
It doesn’t matter that Wakefield has been utterly discredited or that the supposed link between vaccines and autism has been repeatedly disproven. Quacks like Maloney will keep peddling the myth for as long as they can make a buck out of it. Which will probably be forever.
I present the Science News Cycle.
Alternative medicine practitioners aren’t in it for the money. Only Big Pharma shills. Jenny McCarthy says so.
But he’s a hero! How can they sack a hero?! One of their own!
He proved to be too dishonest even for some in the anti-vax movement. I know, who would have thought anti-vaxers could have standards.
I think the biggest tragedy here is that even if Wakefield was right and vaccines did cause autism in a small percentage of children, autism is not that bad compared to dying! Unless, I suppose, you don’t want to deal with a special-needs kid and would rather they die.
But vaccines have saved us from smallpox, polio, the measles-mumps-rubella in question, and even cervical cancer! Not vaccinating your children not only puts them at risk, but other people’s as well, since there is a small percentage where the vaccine doesn’t “take” properly and they remain vulnerable to infection.
Besides, thanks to this bullshit study, millions of dollars has been poured into vaccine/autism research rather than into finding the actual cause of autism. That guy who helped develop the rubella vaccine (his name escapes me) actually got death threats from people over this nonsense.
People are willing to believe whatever bullshit makes them feel better – “it’s not somehow MY fault my kid is autistic, it’s those evil vaccines! I have someone to blame!”
Rule 1.0 of Woo: The gravy train must be protected.
Rule 2.0 of Woo: If They are on to you, find a scapegoat, then carry on as normal.
Excellent summary of one of the best examples of investigative reporting I’ve ever seen at the linked article. As I was reading it, this thought kept occurring to me:
Wakefield has now been exposed as perpetrating one of the biggest medical frauds in history all for his own personal financial gain. In the process, he has helped to put millions of children at risk of catching diseases that were all but eradicated by vaccines. So what would that scumbag of equal stature, JB Handley of Age of Autism, think if he read the same article? Betcha it still wouldn’t change his mind.
Surely this is easily broken down into relatively trivial experiments, at least initially.
1) How long are detectable levels of RNA from a dead virus able to survive in the blood. (I’m guessing not long, as this is one bottleneck in using naked RNAi rather than virally targetted RNAi therapeutically)
2) Can naked RNA cross the blood brain barrier. (Can’t find any info one way or the other in the literature, sounds a little implausible, especially in light of 1) above)
3) Are there any interactions between RNA found in dead viral vaccines and any (known and putative) transcription factors present in the human genome. This should be doable in vitro relatively easily (although I guess you’d be limited by numbers of TFs – paring down to known inter-cellular TFs in the brain would probably make it workable though) with an interaction study of some kind. (I’m guessing it would be somewhat unlikely that any TF would have affinity for a viral stretch of RNA – you could probably narrow down your search a lot by using bioinformatics to look for any homologous (to your RNA) binding sites for TFs to further scale down the study)
Although, as mentioned, the above studies (other than out of intrinsic interest for 1 & 2) are probably not worth contemplating as there isn’t any good evidence whatsoever for a link between vaccines and autism, and all the studies that have been done (by non-quacks) have shown this to be the case – why delve into looking for mechanisms for vaccines to cause autism or other developmental issues when the evidence for them doing so isn’t there – find the evidence, then look for the mechanism.
Oh yeah… and I can’t wait for the anti-vaxxers to find this thread. Methinks we’ll see denial/apologetics the likes of we’ve never seen before ;-)
Hypothesis are a dime a dozen. Mine about how it is turtles all the way down hasn’t been taken seriously either.
Data rules, not half baked ideas.
RNA is a fragile molecule and rnases, degradative enzymes, are ubiquitous everywhere. Especially in the human body. Free RNA molecules get hydrolyzed in a matter of minutes.
Getting things past the bbb can be difficult or impossible. It isn’t called a barrier for nothing.
The problem is that the woomeisters don’t understand this. They’re privileged enough to live in a time where depression* and ennui are much more prevalent than polio and smallpox, and so they have no clue how devastating those infectious diseases are. Further, because they’ve no experience with those infectious diseases, they tend to think they’re prevented by drinking wheatgrass smoothies while reading Eat, Pray, Love and The Secret after hot yoga.
*Not a criticism of depression or those who suffer from it. However, although its severity may be reduced by changing one’s thought patterns doesn’t mean that all diseases work that way, despite the assertions of the blame-the-victim woomeisters.
Sorry for all the serial posts, but this next one is just too good to pass over. On the Age of Autism site, there’s an advert for Andrew Wakefield’s book (coming out on 24 May):
http://callous-disregard.com/buythebook.htm
Callous Disregard: Autism and Vaccines-The
TruthBald Faced Lies Behind a Tragedy(forward by Jenny McCarthy no less!)
Here’s the tag line:
Wow. Just wow. Betcha the anti-vaxxers will lap it all up, despite the evidence provided by the likes of Brian Deer that it will be a pack of lies.
Just another case exposing the failings we can expect out of Libertarian-style medicine if you ask me… No matter how much you worship the market and pretend money-grubbing bastards won’t do what it takes to make money, the fact is this kind of thing is distressingly routine in, and out of, medicine.
Save $500K by not installing a rather common-sense shut-off switch. Poison the gulf fisheries and coast for decades…
And it’s not like BP couldn’t afford it. Their profits are measured in BILLIONS PER QUARTER. Five hundred thousand dollars is “rounding” on their financials…
The journal that published the original Wakefield article, and the peer reviewers that approved it, must share some of the blame.
Even before the ethical problems came to light, the methodology behind the paper was awful, and it should have been rejected for publication.
The peer review process after all is supposed to be the expert-manned gate that filters out bad science before it can get into the public sphere and do harm. I would say, in this case, someone was asleep at the switch.
Of course. They’ll just interpret this as the establishment persecuting their Jesus.
I wonder if I could get an Oprah book club endorsment if I wrote a phony exposé called The Protocols of the Elders of Pfizer?
[/misleading money-grubbing]
In theory, yes, but resources are finite, and priorities must be set. Hypotheses must compete for the resources needed to test them, and bad hypotheses (those with low a priori likelihood) should not be allowed to take these resources from better ones.
Sure, occasionally, we may err in assigning that a priori likelihood, and a hypothesis that seemed at first to be bad turns out to be correct. In a perfect world with infinite resources we could test them all. But this world isn’t like that. So, as others have said, if you are an advocate for such a hypothesis that the larger consensus thinks is not likely, then you are the one who must put your money, time and expertise where your mouth is, and do the work.
And in this instance, after Wakefield’s paper, there were several large and expensive trials that were done to check this link, and found nothing. This was both ethically and scientifically appropriate.
But every second of researcher time and every penny of money that was spent on those studies is time and money that could have been spent on other autism related research that might have proven more fruitful. From a scientific perspective alone, not even considering the human and social costs at all, we’ll never know what advances might have been delayed or even lost forever because Wakefield’s fraud made it into the public sphere, and forced the allocation of precious resources to their dismissal.
Also, if this hypothesis is true, then the rates of autism BEFORE vaccinations should have been astronomical. The actual infection produces far more RNA than what is contained in a single vaccine after all (and a self-regenerating supply to boot), and these are the exact same viruses too. And several of these viruses (polio, measles, etc) infect the central nervous system, which means, of course, that they routinely DIRECTLY cross the bbb and ferry their RNA straight into the brain.
Plus, not all vaccines contain any RNA at all. Some are just made up of viral proteins.
@#4Thorsonofodin:
Echoing others here: have you ever worked with RNA? We are full of/covered in RNases, and bare hands getting near a vial of RNA is its death-knell.
That it should survive in vivo and manage to cross the BBB is highly improbable. I would say (using Orac’s scale) approximately acupuncture-level improbable.
Find a correlation, we’ll investigate the mechanism. But the correlation simply has not held up to scrutiny, so no investigation of mechanism, even if more plausible, is warranted.
ha! raven #32:
Mine is about the invisible lizards (under the bed, and elsewhere). I know they are there because I can’t see them. You can’t see invisible lizards, by definition.
Actually, he was forced out by its board of directors after his second paper (the truly execrable and highly unethical monkey study that he did) was withdrawn by NeuroToxicology. In the wake of his having been recommended for being struck off by the British General Medical Council due to his breaches in research ethics, apparently even Thoughtful House thought that Wakefield had become a liability.
The truly ironic thing about the whole thing is that the head of the Thoughtful House board of directors is none other than Jane Johnson, an heiress to the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical fortune. Wakefield was clearly a tool of big pharma!
For beginners:
1998: The Wakefield scare (that the measles vaccine caused something called “autistic entercolitis”) and therefore the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine caused autism.
2001: Medical Hypothoses published “Autism: a novel form of mercury poisoning” setting off the great thimerosal scare.
These two theories of causation have sort of morphed and blended together in the popular mind.
The claim that thimerosal and/or the MMR vaccine are somehow causal in autism were examined separately and together in the U.S. “Vaccine Court” hearings and decisions. Both theories of causation have been dismissed.
A masterly summary of the hearings is available at Neurodiversity.com
Today, Squillo at Confutata examines how the stories of the the anti-vaccination activists have morphed over time, in Anti-Vaccination Stories Shift with the Times
It’s not the vaccines, it’s the bottled water from HELL:
http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/image/watertruth
@ #5
“Those who expect other people to work on their ideas are called cranks. ”
Oh I thought they were called principal investigators.
Ursula Major @ #44
So, based on that it’s not true that big bears micturate in the woods? ;-}
Only if their work is funded. ;)
We get wwwaaaayyyy to many folks who think we should drop everything and work on their ideas. Sometimes, they just need to hit the library for a day, then they could see from the prior literature that RNA is too fragile to last any length of time in vivo. And certainly appears too fragile for your hypothesis.
Off topic:
How come you haven’t told us about this?: http://scienceblogs.com/seed/scienceblogs/ask_a_scienceblogger/
Well, there was this one time camping, where between the toxicodendron diversilobum and the beer, this big bear had a couple weeks of hell.
@Amenhotepstein
“First question – why doesn’t this occur during natural retroviral infection as well as through vaccination? If your hypothesis can’t distinguish the two, then we should all be autistic and brain-damaged. ”
Good point. I’ll have to look up the raw numbers of what the molar concentration of RNA would be in an infant’s blood freshly vaccinated with 12 or so different vaccines versus a baby who has a retro-viral infection. I admittedly don’t know what the answer here is.
“Second question – how many vertebrate transcription factors bind both RNA and DNA simultaneously?”
-Well this is the whole reason I’m interested in this. The protein I have spent the last 4 and 1/2 years studying – MeCP2 binds both RNA and DNA and is a global transcription factor/chromatin architectural protein. It is unlike your traditional transcription factor in that it is as abundant as the linker histone in vertebrate neuronal tissue. Very new data – http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WSR-4YG848P-5&_user=1493582&_coverDate=02%2F26%2F2010&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_acct=C000053133&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=1493582&md5=cf309045424e747378fb6c58f52ccc28
interestingly, when this highly abundant nuclear protein has mutations anywhere along it’s primary sequence Rett syndrome results. a disease on teh autism spectrum.
Third question – do you know the difference between inter and intra?
YES I DO! And this also is a subtle point about MeCP2. It is shown that it can shuttle between glia and neurons. A Rett mutant can and negatively affect wt neurons demonstrating that this large highly disordered protein can cross INTER-cellular space. see the following reference.
http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v12/n3/full/nn.2275.html
– Just had to say that, every time I see stories of this sort I can’t help but think of that shrill scream on Simpsons.
There are two guaranteed stories that will sell papers, food poisoning scares and threats to our children’s health.
I was always skeptical of the work supposedly linking vaccines and autism. One autism is a poorly defined spectrum and two there are way too many biochemical/genetic variables to take into account. More study is needed on way to many fronts before any definitive answer can be had concerning the cause of autism.
#8: re brain damage
It would explain Faux News devotees.
@shadow,
That’s what I’m talking about. Think about how dumb the average person is…
And then realize that half of everyone is dumber than that.
If I remember, Ellison rephrased ‘Sturgeon’s Law’ about 90% of everything is mediocre. Ellison said that meant that 90% of everything is crap.
Thanks to all for the kind comments!
@amphiox
I think it’s unfair to ask that the reviewers share the blame.
Remember, Wakefield did not declare the myriad conflicts of interest.
The data were manipulated to look plausible; manipulated a ridiculous amount, but seeing the paper by itself, there’s not a lot of reason to instantly reject it. I’ve seen a lot of clinicians’ papers (sorry guys) and that one, if it were all true at least, is not the worst – the suggestion of a vaccine/autism link would be, if it existed, well worth publishing.
The editors certainly deserve more than they got, for resisting investigations and retractions etc. after the issues (to put it mildly) started to become clear.
Has anybody ever done a study showing the risk of autism correlating to lazy absentee parenting?
The powers that be used to blame autism on “cold mothering”. Those days are gone, though many women went through hell blaming themselves for nothing they had any power over.
I’d duck if I were you. This is as nice an answer as you’re going to get around here.
AW has still made a lot of money out of this. Don’t fraudsters go to prison any more? Query manslaughter charges.
It took the Lancet 12 years to retract AW’s paper. What is wrong with them?
And I do appreciate the head’s up. I think I would like to at least slightly append my statement to “showing recent diagnoses of autism…”
A nephew of mine was diagnosed recently largely on the basis of his inability to draw with a crayon. After two days at Grandma’s house, he is now all of a sudden doing just fine with crayons.
I do sincerely apologize if my statement did offend anyone who knows someone who does actually have an autistic friend or relative. I largely should have checked my disgust at my personal situation at the door.
@ #45
lol
Re: the RNA question
Here’s a journal article that examines the stability of RNA under different conditions.
here.
There may be one that looks at it in vivo as well, but I haven’t found it.
I work with RNA a bit; it’s a pain in the ass to keep it from degrading. The paper shows why you should minimize the following when working with RNA:
1. heating it up above 4 degrees
2. keeping it above neutral pH.
3. keeping it with divalent cations (e.g. Mg2+)
4. two or more of the above
And this is without considering the effects of RNAses.
Wakefield’s either a crank who doesn’t realize his crankery or he’s a fraud who’s been hiding his fraudulence for more than a decade. Or, perhaps he could be both.
randydudek,
I understand your frustration. I have a nephew who’s mother did everything she could to have him diagnosed with ADHD. It seemed she could get more support money if he had a problem. Sure enough, he was put on the ritalin. A year later, my bro-in-law got custody and the new docs took the boy off the meds he clearly didn’t need. As real as these illnesses are, there are some people that will take advantage of their own kids for selfish reasons. It’s sad…and criminal.
Crappy situation, randydudek. I hope your nephew gets the treatment he needs and none that he doesn’t.
Diagnostic errors, especially with respect to children, are unfortunately more common than we’d all like.
I don’t know who told you that, but given the criteria for a diagnosis of autism requires that a child meet at minimum of six diagnostic criteria, and must include:
– qualitative impairment in social interaction
– qualitative impairments in communication, and
– restricted repetitive and stereotyped patterns of behavior, interests and activities,
I’d be skeptical that that his diagnosis was primarily based on “his inability to draw with a crayon.”
Sili is right. As awful as Wakefield is, the majority of the blame lies with the press which perpetuated Wakefield’s nonsense for more than a decade despite it’s having been thoroughly debunked from day one. The press knew it was spreading nonsense and knew that it was causing harm by reporting the ‘controversy’ (almost exclusively on the side of the anti-vaxers) and just didn’t care. Wakefield was the press’ darling for years and now that this particular insanity is starting to go out of style in the UK, the press has turned on Wakefield, saying that he misled them. This is no excuse. The press had every opportunity to tell the real story and it *didn’t care*. Any reporter could have found out the truth about MMR and very few did. Even those reporters who told the real story almost invariably portrayed Wakefield and/or his ‘research’ as credible alternative to the mainstream scientific view. They shamelessly and relentlessly pandered to the “no smoke without fire” mentality we British seem to have and then blamed everyone other than themselves when they finally had to admit they were lying.
Even today, mainstream news outlets including the BBC simply *can’t* report on vaccines without claiming there’s a question over whether they cause autism, which there most certainly is not. They have no intention whatever of letting facts get in the way of a profitable story.
The situation was not helped by Tony Blair who refused to say whether his son had received the MMR vaccine, citing privacy as his reason (a requirement that later melted away when his wife published her autobiography detailing, among many other embarassing things, the exact shag during which that child was conceived). This is what brought the issue into the headlines in the first place and understandably so: he was promoting the MMR vaccine as head of the government, but obviously didn’t trust it himself.
A particularly excellent treatment of this whole sordid affair can be found in Ben Goldacre’s book:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bad-Science-Ben-Goldacre/dp/000728487X/?tag=bs0b-21
and on his blog: http://www.badscience.net/ which everyone should be reading anyway.
Back on Brian Deer for a bit and how this whole story actually ‘evolved’. You should all go and look at Deer’s web site, http://www.briandeer.com/. Don’t just read his work on the MMR scam but read some of his other stories. He’s the real deal.
If Deer’s reporting is accurate, the bottom line is that Wakefield was well paid to fake evidence in order to fleece big pharma. He then ran with the meme when it went ‘viral’. Excuse the pun. He turned a few seeds of doubt, poorly scrutinized, into a major scam raking in millions of dollars.
Yes I think the Lancet is highly culpable in continuing the fraud because even after most of the co-authors had disclaimed the paper, they refused to retract it. As with so many types of cons, the con man relies upon the unwillingness of the mark to admit that they were fooled.
There is plenty of externalized damage in this saga. Herd immunity in Britain has been broken and now the costs of every medical intervention for any of the MMR diseases, let alone a host of others dealt with by other vaccines, can be levied against the denialists. As already mentioned, all the research spent chasing the confirmation of the fraudulent link is also wasted, though maybe not completely. Most damaging of all though is perhaps the complicity of the press in this incident. Generally the press is complicit in the original perpetration of a fraud such as Piltdown Man or Cold Fusion because they are easily fooled. But when scrutinized claims are refuted by ordinary science, the press usually backs off and without admitting they were gullible, allows the con to die a quiet death. In this case the press has and is still giving voice to the small minority that thinks vaccines cause autism, and other things as well. The press is willing to compound the hysteria because they make money on it.
I’d also give a plug here to the neurodiversity blog but I don’t have the URL, easy to google.
I have no dog in this fight except for the integrity of science, I have no children and therefore I have no autistic children. But I do find it a trifle ironic that a journalist is the one ultimately responsible for moving the editors of the Lancet to admit they made a mistake.
This topic has always been difficult for me as a skeptic.
When I was 8 years old I had the first round of my Hep B shot. I was completely normal with no health problems. 24 hours later I had full blown Tourette Syndrome, and was having full body tics. I was terrified. My mom was terrified. I didn’t get any more vaccines after that…and I still haven’t. I don’t know what caused my TS, but it does not run in the family and popped up very suddenly and severely which isn’t normal. But since then my health hasn’t been normal. I’m absurdly sensitive to medication and drugs like caffeine, and I’m that girl that they send the medical students to observe when I go to the hospital. There is a strong connection between TS and Strep, and I had full on PANDAS, so maybe when I went to the doctor to get the shot I got a strep infection and that triggered it. I had chronic strep for 5 years until my tonsils came out, and that probably did major damage. (fucking insurance companies wouldn’t cover taking my tonsils out)
I’m lucky enough to live in a world where everyone else is vaccinated, so that helps keep me safe. I know I’m being horribly selfish and scientifically obtuse, but I’m scared. Even though I got the H1N1 flu this year when I should have gotten a shot (during midterms too. In addition to the three rounds of c-diff. its been a fun freshman year in college)A simple virus or head cold will often make me pass out, so surely something like shingles would kill me.
Haley, with all due sympathy for your condition and subsequent phobia, if you are a skeptic, you know better than to generalise from a single incident.
I know but I also know that my health never follows the norm. I get side effects that no one has ever heard of. Half a can of coke will make me pass out. I can’t sleep less than 12 hours a night. I’m just abnormal and if the specialists who’ve worked with me can’t figure me out, if the other things the doctors said were safe left me comatose or convulsing or asleep for 26 hours, I can’t help but feel like I’m the really really rare exception to the rule.
I’m going to bed, I have a final in the afternoon. I’m not fleeing the scene and I’m not trying to be a troll I promise. I’m confused about the whole thing.
Wakefield calls his book Callous Disregard?!!
*SPONNNNNNG*
Callous Disregard is actually an appropriate title for a book about Wakefield, just not in the ironic way that Wakefield apparently thinks.
BTW, if you doubt that Wakefield is anti-vaccine, note that he’s going to be the keynote speaker at an antivaccine rally to be held in Grant Park in Chicago in two weeks:
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2010/05/a_confluence_of_the_anti-vaccine_and_hea.php
RandydudeK,
Please keep an open mind about your nephew. You aren’t there 24/7 to observe him like his mother. While Bastion of Sass laid out the major criterion for autism, there can be other comorbids. My son is autistic. When he was a toddler there were signs but I wasn’t aware of what they meant. Playing side by side instead of interacting with his peers at the appriate developmental stage, sensitivity to sound/light/texture, lining up toys instead of playing/interacting with them, gross motor control deficits (clumsy)and fine motor control (holding crayons/pencils). Any of these can be a red flag and should be brought to the attention of a physician.
If your granmother had to teach your nephew how to hold crayons and use them that could be a red flag…or not. As a mother, I would rather err on the side of caution. Especially as early intervention can ease the way, as the child develops and grows.
Regards,
kaz
No, you’re not being selfish. You and people like you are precisely the reason (well, one reason, anyways) why it is so important for the rest of us do get vaccinated. Because there are people who cannot get vaccines, who will have rare and esoteric reactions to them, or who have immune systems in whom the vaccines just don’t work. These people need herd immunity.
And this isn’t just a few random genetic outliers, this also includes people like newborn babies who have not yet had their vaccines, and elderly and/or chronically ill people with suppressed immune systems.
As for scientifically obtuse, well maybe you’re falling for confirmation bias here, but yours is a situation where it’s hard to argue that it would be prudent to do the appropriate test (which would involve exposing yourself to a vaccination under controlled conditions).
As to the anti-vaccine nuts, it would serve them right if they didn’t get their tetanus booster each 10 years and got the disease while working in their garden or fixing things in their garage.
Haley–
Seconding what Amphiox said. Part of why I got my DTP booster and both flu shots last winter is precisely that some people can’t. (No, my tetanus vaccine won’t help you, but the diphtheria and pertussis are doing my part for herd immunity.)
The press do deserve most of the blame by supporting this fraud. One of his supporters was the godbot, Melanie Phillips. The smearing of Andrew Wakefield I suppose if you can believe in a god you can believe anything but why do they always side with the non-scientific viewpoint. She also thinks that there is no evidence at all for global warming and says so in her new book. Spectator article