

 Damning verdict on doctor who linked vaccine and autism  - prat
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18447

======
timclark
The true scandal was the championing of the original story by the UK and
worldwide media. If it had been reported responsibly and not sensationalised
hardly anyone would have heard about the supposed link between vaccines and
autism - read Ben Goldacre for a good discussion -
<http://www.badscience.net/2008/08/the-medias-mmr-hoax>.

~~~
room606
I was just about to post that link but you beat me to it. It's more than a
little unfair that Wakefield is being blamed for the MMR scare when the
mainstream media in the UK did everything they could to fan the flames yet
remain for the most part innocent

~~~
anamax
> when the mainstream media in the UK did everything they could to fan the
> flames yet remain for the most part innocent

What definition of "innocent" are we using?

They may not be liable, but they're not innocent.

~~~
carbocation
From my read of your post and that of the parent, the two of you are in
agreement on that point.

~~~
room606
Yes, carbocation is correct, we are in agreement. The mainstream media still
refuses to acknowledge their complicity in all of this. When all of this was
going on in the UK, MMR scare stories were front page news but not once did I
see a headline on the cover of newspaper proclaiming "MMR Hoax, Sorry My Bad"
says . As Goldacre says, it's crazy to think that one man created this entire
mess.

------
pragmatic
It would be nice to get back on track looking for the real cause(s) of autism.

Our son was diagnosed and has received intense IBT/ABA therapy (along with
spech, OT and PT). It has been fantastic. Total turn around.

No low gluten diet, Jenny McCarthy BS, just Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_behavioral_therapy> .

Sadly as of the latest information I have, we don't know what causes Autism
and CBT is one of the only effective means for treating it.

~~~
chollida1
> No low gluten diet, Jenny McCarthy BS,

I wouldn't link a low gluten diet with "Jenny McCarthy BS". My wife teaches
autistic children and she told me that all the children, not most, all
children in the classroom have had improvement when put on low gluten diets.

I don't pretend to be as close to the issue as you, but you would be wise not
to dump on an issue just because it didn't work for you:)

~~~
tokenadult
<http://www.asatonline.org/suggreading/reviews/elder.htm>

A carefully designed study,

<http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html>

rather than anecdotes, doesn't support a conclusion that gluten-free diets are
helpful for autism. Nonetheless, the study reports,

<http://www.asatonline.org/suggreading/reviews/elder.htm>

"even after being informed of these disappointing results, some parents opted
to keep their child on the GfCf diet."

Patient human interaction with autistic children does seem to be helpful, and
my cheers to anyone who is providing that.

~~~
KirinDave
Going to show that the three most dangerous words in medicine are, "In my
experience..." They are both a blessing and a curse.

~~~
DenisM
The scary part is that once I realized this I was feeling all enlightened.
Then I realized it again and then I felt even more enlightened. And then I
stopped and asked myself - is my current realization the final one? How deep
is the rabbit hole? This is some seriously scary stuff.

------
ivankirigin
Vaccines don't cause autism.

That should be the first sentence of every story about this topic. Many people
will die because of this bullshit.

~~~
dschobel
There's a reason you'll never see that.

The problem is that there's no scientific evidence for the causation for the
same reason that there's no scientific evidence that smoking causing various
cancers as in either case it would be unconscionable to conduct a trial to see
if it truly is possible to induce autism with a vaccine or induce cancer via
smoking.

That's why the strongest statements you'll ever see from health organizations
(who usually care about things like scientific rigor) is that there is "no
known link".

Which obviously is totally uncompelling to a lay person and taken advantage of
by the conspiracy theorists much like the tobacco companies continued to use
the "no scientific evidence" line until the landmark settlement of 1998.

So no, there continues to be _no evidence that vaccines cause autism_. And
people still remain unconvinced until they hear something stronger.

~~~
ivankirigin
You're obviously correct. You are also 3 sigma out in your understanding of
the issue.

The response to bad science should be in the same dumbed down language that
the bad science used.

~~~
dschobel
I disagree. You can see the repercussions from that in things like the Global
Warming stories where everyone at HN collectively cringes when terms like
"scientific consensus" are tossed about.

There's no short-cut to good science and dumbing it down fundamentally
diminishes it. Honest people still care about facts and science.

~~~
ivankirigin
Global warming is a perfect example. There are way too many people that point
to a cold day and say: see?!

The message should be: there are huge changes going on right now, on a huge
scale, beyond today's temperature.

The debate is also often linked to a proposed solution, which is a big
mistake. Cap & Trade or a carbon tax are two of dozens of potential solutions.
ThatSmugFucksPrius™ is not a solution, but way too often involved in the
messaging.

Do you think there would be a big global warming debate if the proposed
response was $200B a year in research? I don't. That is chump change with a
bunch of positive externalities.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Sorry, but if the US decided to spend $200B per year on climate change
research, which is decidedly not chump change, "debate" hardly describes the
furor that would erupt.

~~~
ivankirigin
It depends on how you wrap it. You don't even need to mention climate change.
It's a "technology push for job creation"

What it isn't is an obvious friction imposed on the entire market. People
don't like that.

We spent 10X this number of bank bailouts and such. That didn't piss normal
people off because the messaging was that it was needed to fix the economy.
Obama should do this as a followup to 2010 being a year to push job creation.
The rest of the initiative could be to lower certain taxes and regulations,
which is generally free. Then the messaging could be "Obama backs $200B job
creation effort".

~~~
ryanwaggoner
_We spent 10X this number of bank bailouts and such. That didn't piss normal
people off because the messaging was that it was needed to fix the economy._

I think you're out of touch. Virtually 100% of the Republicans I know were
completely opposed to the bank bailouts, and a huge portion of the liberals I
know were as well. Almost every poll I saw showed that the majority of
Americans opposed bailing out Wall Street and the auto industry.

------
ikitat
Sadly, this will only put a small dent in the anti-vaccination cloaked as
autism advocacy movement.

~~~
prat
There aren't as many pseudo doctors as there are pseudo scientists. This bit
of pseudoscience is not as resilient as intelligent design. I think this dent
will quickly kill the movement.

~~~
lbrandy
I appreciate your optimism but I fear you haven't been following this very
closely. This is not the first time this guy and his work has been completely
tossed under a bus. The antivax people have known for a LONG TIME that this
guy was being seriously discredited and chalked it up to "big pharma funded"
witch hunting.

See for yourself: [http://www.ageofautism.com/2010/01/naked-intimidation-the-
wa...](http://www.ageofautism.com/2010/01/naked-intimidation-the-wakefield-
inquisition-is-only-the-tip-of-the-autism-censorship-iceberg.html)

This won't go away until serious and preventable diseases start frequently
killing children.

~~~
coolnewtoy
I think it will be more closely tied to progress made in identifying
preventable root causes of autism and the diagnosis rates start coming down.

I actually doubt the illnesses of other people's children will register as
loudly as the autistic symptoms of antivax advocates' own children.

------
patrickgzill
Can someone describe the editorial policy of The Lancet, given that the doctor
in question rose to prominence on the strength of being published there?

~~~
tokenadult
From the submitted article that opened this thread:

"The Lancet itself said in 2004 that in hindsight it shouldn't have published
the paper, following publication of a retraction by 10 co-authors on the
paper."

The Lancet editor commented on the 2004 retraction that the Lancet needed to
change its editorial policies, which I think has happened since.

<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC381161/>

------
apinstein
Just a few weeks ago it was announced that autism can be diagnosed very early
via brain scans:
[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100108101421.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100108101421.htm)

Now it's only a matter of time before this technique should definitively prove
that autism is there _before_ vaccines so that the autism/vaccine link can be
finally and thoroughly be tested (and likely debunked).

~~~
ovi256
I would very much like it to be so, but the vaccine objectors are far from
rational, it seems to me. They literally build cults of personality for their
various champions, and believe with religious fervour.

~~~
frossie
_believe with religious fervour_

Did you see the reports that the panel got heckled by some women when they
announced their conclusions on Wakefield?

They were told of the proof that this man compromised the herd immunity of a
nation and unethically experimented on children for no good reason and yet
they still cheer him on.

We're not in rational-land any more, Toto.

------
martythemaniak
Evidence against the conspiracy is actually evidence _for_ for the conspiracy.
In this case, They charged him because he was right and they felt threatened
by him.

~~~
rauljara
Ah. So if I provide evidence that you are wrong, really I am providing
evidence that you are right. Because I wouldn't bother presenting the evidence
that you are wrong unless you really were right and I felt threatened by your
rightness. Never mind the evidence itself.

~~~
jjs
I think he means, from the anti-evidentiary viewpoint of the conspiracy nuts.

------
prbuckley
I thought that the theory for linking vaccines to autism had to do with the
use of methylmercury as a preservative. Methylmercury is a known neurological
toxin, here is a great resource...

[http://www.fda.gov/BiologicsBloodVaccines/SafetyAvailability...](http://www.fda.gov/BiologicsBloodVaccines/SafetyAvailability/VaccineSafety/ucm096228.htm)

The fact that this article brings up the fact that Wakefield had a patent in
the same area as his research seems fishy to me.

"The panel resurrected and upheld most, if not all, of the main charges
against Wakefield, such as his undeclared conflict of interest in having filed
a patent relating to treatments for bowel conditions a year before his Lancet
study appeared. "The panel therefore rejects the proposition put forward by
your [Wakefield's] counsel that third-party perceived conflicts of interest
did not fall within the relevant definition at the time," it concludes."

I used to be a research scientist and it was common place for researchers (or
their institutions) to file patents on research that led to publications. No
one I know ever listed this sort of thing as a conflict of interest. It sounds
like this counsel might be reaching to try and discredit Dr. Wakefield.

Sadly their is more politics in science than most people want to believe.

~~~
tokenadult
<http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=14>

"Regarding the question of vaccines and autism, for ethical reasons we cannot
do a double-blind, randomized, control trial of vaccines with and without
thimerosal. However, we can do the next best thing, and, indeed, we now have
several good studies since 1999 that do just that. Some of these studies are
epidemiological; some are ecological. What allows us to use them to reject the
hypothesis that mercury in vaccines is an etiological agent that is either
associated with or causes autism is a very simple but powerful prediction that
the hypothesis makes. Quite simply, if the hypothesis is true and thimerosal-
containing vaccines (TCVs) cause autism (or are even merely a significant
contributing factor), we would expect that the removal of thimerosal from
vaccines would lead to a rapid decrease in autism incidence and prevalence
within 2-5 years.

"There have now been several studies that examined this very hypothesis in
countries that removed thimerosal from their vaccines before the U.S. did. For
example Hviid et al3 reported that autism prevalence in Denmark increased from
1991 to 1996 despite the removal of thimerosal from vaccines, while Madsen et
al4 looked at the time period from 1971 to 2000 and concluded that autism
diagnoses continued to increase after thimerosal was removed from vaccines.
Neither study supported a causal link between TCVs and autism, and they were a
prominent part of the dataset that was used by the Institute of Medicine to
conclude in 2004 that there was no good evidence to support a link between
TCVs and autism. A more recent study by Eric Fombonne5 in Montreal examined
27,749 children born from 1987 to 1998 attending 55 different schools.
Cumulative thimerosal exposure by age 2 years was calculated for the 1987-1998
birth cohorts. This exposure ranged from 100-125 μg from 1987 to 1991, 200-225
μg from 1992 to 1995, and then none after 1996, which was when thimerosal was
completely removed from vaccines in Canada. The result was that autism, ASD,
and pervasive developmental disorder diagnoses continued to increase in all
periods, demonstrating no relationship between TCVs and autism or ASDs. Even
more recently, a large study6 failed to support a relationship between
thimerosal and adverse neurodevelopmental outcomes, a result that led one of
the investigators in the study, Sallie Bernard, a proponent of the thimerosal
hypothesis, to disavow the study in a case of sour grapes, because it did not
show what she had hoped that it would show."

------
rbanffy
I am not aware of this specific episode.

What the hell does a British sci-fi series have with vaccines and/or autism?

------
dimas
I know that I will probably get down voted for voicing opinion against
majority but I will go with it anyway. There are evidence that vaccination is
not safe, contains mercury and has negative long term side effects. Also there
are long lasting debates on whether the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the
harm. I have looked at both sides of the argument and based on what I have
read and concluded that I would not vaccinate myself or my kids(see my
reasoning below). Government cares only of the short term effect and keeping
society from outbreaks of deceases where they are less concerned of long term
effect that will be hard to link to any past vaccinations anyways. Even the
fact the insurance companies do not cover vaccination due to possibility of
severe side effects poses a question why? The long trim effect of vaccine is
not well studied yet. If you look at both sides of the argument, the major
question is what side has more benefit for fighting. Pharmaceuticals make tons
of money on vaccination and have tons of money to promote it including usage
of science as well government policies. So looking at both sides where none
have concrete scientifically proof on long term effect of vaccines, what side
would you take thinking on benefits that each side might have in the argument
as well as possessing knowledge of possible danger of vaccine including the
fact that vaccine do not work 100% as well. So the ultimate question, would
you put substance containing mercury in your body knowing that it will have
side effect for sure what might be mild or severe in long term against some
low chance possibility of getting diseases that your body will fight anyway
and that having vaccinated might not even protect you against. Here is some
more info for consideration: <http://www.relfe.com/vaccine.html>

~~~
run4yourlives
I up-voted you because you are wrong, in the hopes that as many people as
possible will give you reasons as to exactly how.

There is no grand conspiracy to make the world sick via vaccines to profit. If
they are truly 'evil', both insurance and big pharma would benefit much, much
more in not having people vaccinated and overpricing drugs every time there is
a panic and a run on supplies, ala H1N1. Could you imagine the demand with
today's media if there was a measles outbreak in a major city with many
deaths?

There is no conspiracy.

As for mecury, you ingest much more of it every time you eat some fish. It is
a fact of life.

With every medication, a certain percentage of people will experience side
effects. People have died from taking aspirin after all. The point is that a
major outbreak of a disease like measles, mumps, rubella, etc would be
catastrophic for a large group of people. It is in all of our interests to do
what we can to prevent this from happening, even if it means a small, small
percentage suffer in the process.

Look at a history book. There is but one constant dread in every story:
plague. Disease has culled populations quickly and dramatically in regular
fashion for as long as humanity has existed. When is the last time you
remember a major outbreak killing off half your neighbourhood? Exactly. That's
due 100% to vaccinations.

Get vaccinated. Help yourself and your children; help our civilization survive
the horrible effects of these diseases.

~~~
dimas
First of all, I was not referring to any conspiracy at all, it is simple
business and benefit analysis unless you believe in idealistic and
humanitarian business that only care about human well being(I am not saying
they do not exist either). Second, the mercury and heavy metals that fish you
eat might contain are not injected into your blood and small amounts if any
gets there. Third, "According to the British Association for the Advancement
of Science, childhood diseases decreased 90% between 1850 and 1940,
paralleling improved sanitation and hygienic practices, well before mandatory
vaccination programs. Infectious disease deaths in the U.S. and England
declined steadily by an average of about 80% during this century (measles
mortality declined over 97%) prior to vaccinations.". Once again I am not
forcing you to believe in what I believe and made conclusion based on what I
have read and reasoned so please do not attack me as an enemy of humanity I am
just voicing my opinion and believe I have a valid argument. Though I like
when people tell me that i am wrong, otherwise there will be no arguments and
learning.

~~~
run4yourlives
_it is simple business_

Yes, and I just gave you a better business case to not vaccinate.

 _Second, the mercury and heavy metals that fish you eat might contain are not
injected into your blood and small amounts if any gets there._

Fish are the number one source of Mercury poisoning incidents, according to
the USEPA ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_poisoning#cite_note-
EPA...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_poisoning#cite_note-
EPAMercuryStudyIII-3)). There is no protection offered from your digestion
system against this heavy metal. Your argument is irrelevant here.

 _childhood diseases decreased 90% between 1850 and 1940, paralleling improved
sanitation and hygienic practices, well before mandatory vaccination programs_

Really? Source this please, because according to wikipedia, the UK Vaccination
of 1840 first introduced vaccinations, which were made mandatory by the 1853
act. (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccination_Act#The_1840_Act>)

That seems to coincide pretty well with the drop in diseases, actually.

~~~
prbuckley
I think a lot of this disagreement could be cleared up if there were studies
done on the long term effects of low doses of mercury.

Mercury is bioaccumalitive and so I think such studies are justified. Why is
no one doing this?

Also from a business perspective if there is such concern about methylmercury
in vaccines why doesn't someone bring to market vaccines that use a different
(more natural?) preservative? It seems like this would be a win win all
around.

Also I would avoid using wikipedia as a direct source.

~~~
mhansen
[http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/Concerns/thimerosal/index.h...](http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/Concerns/thimerosal/index.html)

Thimerosal is a mercury-containing preservative used in some vaccines and
other products since the 1930's. There is no convincing evidence of harm
caused by the low doses of thimerosal in vaccines, except for minor reactions
like redness and swelling at the injection site.

However, in July 1999, the Public Health Service agencies, the American
Academy of Pediatrics, and vaccine manufacturers agreed that thimerosal should
be reduced or eliminated in vaccines as a precautionary measure.

