The Lancet Recants Study Linking Autism To Vaccine 590
JamJam writes "The Lancet, a major British medical journal, has retracted a flawed study linking the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine to autism and bowel disease. British surgeon and medical researcher Andrew Wakefield and his colleagues originally released their study in 1998. Since then 10 of Wakefield's 13 co-authors have renounced the study's conclusions and The Lancet has said it should never have published the research. Wakefield now faces being stripped of his right to practice medicine in Britain. The vaccine-autism debate should now end."
But (Score:5, Insightful)
Wasn't it peer reviewed?
Re:But (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:But (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a good way to think about it. Peer review, like the market, only works with honorable actors. Scientists are presumed to be honorable, so the way peer review is structured doesn't attempt to look for deliberate forgeries or falsehoods. Peer review is more along the lines of "this conclusion isn't backed up by your data" or "you forgot about this possibility" - that is, it catches mistakes or oversights. And it's pretty good for that.
These spates of disreputable science (this, and the ghost writers for example) is a good bit concerning. There historically hasn't been much deception at all, at least in modern science... I hope this isn't the harbinger of politics-as-science.
Re:But (Score:5, Interesting)
I know it's WAY off topic, in that it has nothing to do with vaccines or autism, but I really wanted to focus on this point you made:
"Peer review, like the market, only works with honorable actors. Scientists are presumed to be honorable, so the way peer review is structured doesn't attempt to look for deliberate forgeries or falsehoods."
This is SO important, it bears repeating. It bears framing, and should be put on the inside cover of every peer review journal.
I wasn't the only person who fell into that trap, when Michael Drosnin published "The Bible Code". Having a mathematics background, I read through the paper by Eli Rips and genuinely could not find fault with it. And the results were so conclusive, I gave serious consideration to becoming Jewish based on the results of what appeared to be an air-tight mathematical proof. (I still use this example now, as an atheist, to say that if someone ever shows me convincing evidence of gods existence, i'll accept it. Atheists follow the evidence, we don't "hate" god.)
Anyway, it later transpired that Rabbi / Professor Eli Rips was a lying son of a bitch, who clearly thought that lying was okay if it spread the word of his god. There was nothing wrong with the maths paper. Only the assumptions it relied on were false, and my assumption (that a maths paper wouldn't be submitted based on deliberate false precepts) was wrong.
(For those interested, it had to do with multiplying the probabilities of 50 independent events, thereby getting an extraordinarily low probability. Only the events were not independent at all, so multiplying the probabilities doesn't work.)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There have been many cases where the scientific orthodoxy of the day has been overturned by opposing views. Continental drift, or the big bang theory for example. "Group think", if you can call it that, was overturned by evidence and better analysis. There is absolutely no reason why we should assume that climate change science should be special, except for wishful thinking by those who don't like its conclusions.
--
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
In terms of science, this is wrong. Individual scientists or groups often gets things wrong (Wa
Re:But (Score:5, Insightful)
Pretty much bang-on. The only way to catch deliberate, willful fraud is to repeat each step of the experiment. That takes time (of order as much time as the original experiment) and cost, both of which would get pretty expensive quickly. In addition, you face the difficulty of using competitive peers to check each others' work as gatekeepers. (It'd be easy for me to shoot down my nearest rivals in a way that would be difficult to check against me. And I'm the best person to check my rivals.)
In the end, the best way to view a peer-reviewed paper is, "This looks accurate and reasonable enough to share with you all." Not, "This is true," but enough to share around with other academics. Sadly, real-world uses often confuse this with a stamp of approval for accuracy.
(Also note that any peer-review process, short of having a lot of people/group repeat each experiment independently, will be prone to willful fraud. The nature of any security is that once the precautions are known, someone can find a way around them.)
Re:But (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You don't normally retract a paper simply because it's wrong. Even if you do everything correctly, statistics say that you expect to reach the wrong conclusion in some cases. It's apparently taken longer than you might think for the details of the fraudulent nature of the work to be concrete enough to warrant this unusual step.
Re:But (Score:4, Informative)
As my memory serves, almost as soon as the paper was published, it was attacked. By 2003-2004 it was pretty well established that Wakefield's paper was a crock of shit and Wakefield was, at best, a quack, and at worst, an out-and-out profiteering con man (more than likely the latter). The Lancet, whose reputation ain't exactly inviolate as far as "questionable" papers getting published, sat around on its fucking ass for six fucking years, knowing full well that Wakefield was a fraud, that his "study" was worse than useless and that it had already spawned a whole legal industry dedicated towards getting Big Pharma, not to mention a great deal of damage to public health.
This isn't the matter of a paper that drew some weak conclusions, or was based on some bad data, this was a matter of the Lancet giving a fraudster a veneer of respectability and trust, and despite all the evidence, not blowing a hole in Wakefield's boat until long after the damage had been done.
The one up side is hopefully that Lancet has been irretrievably damaged by thus.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This is how peer review works - reputable journal doesn't want to publish rubbish, so a few peers get to review the research before journal publishes. Since journal is reputable other peers read it, and then they get to refute the findings, find errors, etc.
Oh, the naivete. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, right. Since when have facts ever got in the way of a 'good' conspiracy theory?
Re:Oh, the naivete. (Score:5, Funny)
Since when have facts ever got in the way of a 'good' conspiracy theory?
There was one once, but they covered it up, I swear it.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Hmm 1 (or 13) doctors responsible for the wave of anti-MMR vaccine hysteria that swept the UK for years. Bollocks.
This story ran and ran and ran ad nauseum on all media. It was admittedly perhaps sparked by those doctor's (researchers??) paper but the journalists kept it going way beyond what it was worth. The media went quite literally beserk.
From what I can gather (IANAD) autism is a bit of a common diagnosis nowadays (it's a spectrum, and I'll bet most of /. readers will be on it somewhere. That's the
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Gullible media? I think you give them too much credit. I recall a lot of stories that said that the Wakefield study had been refuted (to put it kindly), but they still managed to mention that there was a possible link between MMR and autism, presumably just to keep fanning the flames. There was a constant call for single jabs, which sounds great, but it was fairly well proven that people missed single jabs, so they weren't as effective.
Personally I'd like to know if the statistics show that a child was m
Re:Oh, the naivete. (Score:5, Informative)
Scientists are, by nature, skeptics. They don't believe anything you tell them; they have to see the data themselves and replicate the results. In science, if you make a claim, but can't substantiate it, then your claim is unproven.
The Lancet is retracting the original paper not because the claims were not substantiated by further studies; normally the paper would remain in publication. Subsequent investigations also found that the study was highly flawed and that Wakefield misrepresented or changed data to support his claim.
In the original study, Wakefield reported 8 of 12 children in a hospital clinic experienced symptoms of autism as well as inflammatory bowel disease within days of a vaccination. Later investigation [timesonline.co.uk] revealed that the autism symptoms described by Wakefield were different from those described to the hospital, and that in only one case did the autism symptoms occur a few days after the vaccination. The majority were reported before the vaccination occurred. Hospital physicians at the time did not find any signs of inflammatory bowel disease but the study reported that they did.
Dr. Wakefield's integrity was questioned when it was revealed that he had been paid by parents of autism children to determine if the MMR vaccine was the culprit. This conflict of interest was not reported to the Lancet before the paper was published.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
On the other hand Sir Roy Meadows got away with giving evidence in court that lead to hundreds of children being wrongly taken away front heir parents because his stupid and negligently given evidence (basically he gave evidence on odds without understanding probability, and gave evidence that specialists disagreed with) was "honestly held".
Going back to autism, the British government also made things worse by what it told parents, which amounted to "do not worry your little heads about it, we know best and
It wasn't much of a debate to begin with (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It wasn't much of a debate to begin with (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Most current desertification, yes. One of the identified potential "tipping points" of climate change is the transition of a large fertile region of Africa into desert.
For our sake (Score:5, Insightful)
Can someone outline the flaws in the study? I know we here at /. are experts at things like that. But I also don't want to RTFA.
So why exactly should I not believe the original study? From where I stand (which is little to zero knowledge on the subject) I could conclude that each of the co authors one by one were persuaded by the various pharmaceutical companies which standed to be harmed by this research.
Re:For our sake (Score:5, Insightful)
By the same principle, since you know nothing, why exactly SHOULD you believe the original study?
Re:For our sake (Score:5, Informative)
So why exactly should I not believe the original study? From where I stand (which is little to zero knowledge on the subject) I could conclude that each of the co authors one by one were persuaded by the various pharmaceutical companies which standed to be harmed by this research.
From Quackwatch.org [quackwatch.org]:
The only "evidence" linking MMR vaccine and autism was published in the British journal Lancet in 1998. An editorial published in the same issue, however, discussed concerns about the validity of the study. Based on data from 12 patients, Dr. Andrew Wakefield (a British gastroenterologist) and colleagues speculated that MMR vaccine may have been the possible cause of bowel problems which led to a decreased absorption of essential vitamins and nutrients which resulted in developmental disorders like autism. No scientific analyses were reported, however, to substantiate the theory. Whether this series of 12 cases represent an unusual or unique clinical syndrome is difficult to judge without knowing the size of the patient population and time period over which the cases were identified.
If there happened to be selective referral of patients with autism to the researchers' practice, for example, the reported case series may simply reflect such referral bias. Moreover, the theory that autism may be caused by poor absorption of nutrients due to bowel inflammation is senseless and is not supported by the clinical data. In at least 4 of the 12 cases, behavioral problems appeared before the onset of symptoms of inflammatory bowel disease. Furthermore, since publication of their original report in February of 1998, Wakefield and colleagues have published another study in which highly specific laboratory assays in patients with inflammatory bowel disease, the posited mechanism for autism after MMR vaccination, were negative for measles virus.
Re:For our sake (Score:5, Informative)
second entry on Google:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704022804575041212437364420.html [wsj.com]
Ten of the 13 authors of the original paper, all of whom were researchers at the Royal Free Hospital and School of Medicine in London, partially retracted the paper in 2004. However, the first author, Andrew Wakefield, didn't. Dr. Wakefield, who is now at the Thoughtful House Center for Children in Austin, Texas, didn't immediately return phone calls seeking comment.
"Many consumer groups have spent 10 years waging a campaign against vaccines even in the face of scientific evidence," said Dr. Horton of the Lancet. "We didn't have the evidence back in 2004 to fully retract the paper but we did have enough concern to persuade the authors to partly retract the paper."
The Lancet decided to issue a complete retraction after an independent regulator for doctors in the U.K. concluded last week that the study was flawed. The General Medical Council's report on three of the researchers, including Dr. Wakefield, found evidence that some of their actions were conducted for experimental purposes, not clinical care, and without ethics approval. The report also found that Dr. Wakefield drew blood for research purposes from children at his son's birthday party, paying each child £5 (about $8).
The Lancet's Dr. Horton said the journal was particularly concerned about the ethical treatment of the children in the study, and that the children had been "cherry-picked" by the study's authors rather than just showing up in the hospital, as described in the paper.
The authors "did suggest these children arrived one after another and this syndrome was apparent, which does lead you to think this is something serious," said Dr. Horton.
To name just one (Score:4, Informative)
It's amazing what results you can get if you keep repeating the experiment until you get the results you want.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
For some reason the earlier results weren't reported.
It's amazing what results you can get if you keep repeating the experiment until you get the results you want.
You mean if you are unscrupulous and are willing to change the experiment until it is flawed in such a way that it provides the answer you want.
To use my favorite counter example, Michelson and Morley [wikipedia.org] very much wanted their experiment to demonstrate the existence of the Aether. And to that end, they repeated it over, and over, and over, and over,
Re:For our sake (Score:5, Informative)
(1) Wakefield performed at least some parts of his study in an unethical manner.
(2) Subsequent to the publication of this study, other researchers have tried to duplicate Wakefield's results but nobody has succeeded in doing so.
(3) Wakefield is not a disinterested party; he has received a great deal of money from those who stand to profit from his conclusions.
(4) Various circumstances [including (2) and (3) above] have caused others in the medical community to suspect Wakefield of fraud related to this "study".
Re:For our sake (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I agree with you that there are similar disturbing circumstances surrounding some "global warming" research. However, interesting as the comparison is, it is somewhat off-topic.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
because Globbal warming studies have been looked at by many different scientist and many studies have been done that show that all the data we have points to global warming being influenced by C02 emissions.
This was just ONE study, done fraudulently in order to support and non scientific anti vaccine movement.
Also the difference is that global warming has been studied for 40 years, as we get more data and new data the overwhelming mountain of it points to global warming.
Re: (Score:3)
I don't think global warming was being studied 40 years ago.
It was first studied in the late 19th century, but not seriously until the early 50s. That's almost 60 years ago.
Re:For our sake (Score:4, Informative)
Sure.
His methodology was deeply flawed:
his selection of research subjects very biased as he chose subjects he already had experience with and knew their problems so he could skew the control group like he wanted,
Some research subjects were selected/tested at a children's birthday party,some without parents consent (serious violation of research ethics).
No proper double blinding was done,
and even then the results were mismanaged in such a way that they showed a strong correlation (which in fact, even his skewed results did not really show).
Apart from him (Dr.Wakefield) having ties to anti vaccination groups and heading some of them and making a ton of money on his scare tactics (the results of which are little things like an increase in children dying from measles and other such lovely things).
basically, anything which could be done wrong WAS done wrong. I've seen better done research in homeopathy journals, and they're not really known for using science at all.
Re:For our sake (Score:5, Informative)
The guys over at Science-Based Medicine have you covered: http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=3660 [sciencebasedmedicine.org]
If you look back through their post archives, you can find dozens more touching on the subject of Wakefield's paper in particular and vaccines in general, among other things.
Re:For our sake (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe you want to just understand why, and when you find a common denominator possibility, you jump on it, wanting to be a simple answer.
Like Mencken said, complex problems have easy and understandable answers, and they're wrong.
I wanted to find why a relative of mine has autism. Sure would be nice if we could blame it on the vaccine he got in 1963. But it wasn't. Like the retractions, many many things have been bandied about and none of them appear to be the cause. Was it his mother's smoking? Bad diet? He was a normal toddler, then it all went away. Years later, he can't live on his own. Do I want to know why?? Sure. But the Lancet published bad research that lots of people latched onto as a probable reason without knowing how low the sample size was, and so on. We still don't know. I wish we did.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Wakefield had a financial conflict of interest with lawyers [briandeer.com] suing HM Government
His sample size was 12
His study population were not randomly recruited
Some of the study siubjects showed signs of autism prior to their MMR vaccination
Doesn't dispell the basic fud (Score:3, Insightful)
Here my neck of the woods, I've heard countless mothers talk about how they would never get their kids vaccinated for seasonal or H1N1 flu, because of "what if..." syndrome. As in "What if.. the vaccine wasn't sufficiently tested, or what if my kid has a reaction, or I'd rather he get the flu than have a side effect.
Of course if their kid gets sick and gives it to the kid's entire 25student classroom. The mother doesn't give a shit, because atleast she didn't get the side effect.
My favorite is, "We have no idea what the side effect is of this vaccine in 10 or 20yrs."
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
1) Because their parents are also idiots.
2) Because no vaccine is 100% effective, the whole point is to try to prevent the disease from getting a foothold. But once someone has the full-blown disease and is exposing everyone around them to it, the system begins to fail.
In case 2, it's unlikely all the kids would actually get the flu. But some might, even if vaccinated. And then those sick kids might infect some others, even if vaccinated.
That's why these stupid fuckers are so dangerous -- not so much tho
Re:Doesn't dispell the basic fud (Score:4, Interesting)
as someone who has done research in this problem, there are tons of things in vax's that don't need to be there.. Aluminum? Did you know that was in your vax?
Oh noes! Not the metal that is present in all the food you eat and the water you drink! That's obviously what's causing this problem with vaccines!
There are tons of preservatives that in small doses are fine, but when your kids get 3 - 8 vaccines in one visit, that starts to add up. Where does it stop? When do we let the human body do what it does?
When does it stop? It stops when our children are safe from measels, mumps, and rubella. It stops when we are assured that the diseases that ravaged our ancestors -- who would look on you with HORROR that you think you're better off risking getting these diseases -- will no longer plague us.
And hello? Letting the human body do what it does is what vaccines are all about. Let the immune system train itself to fight off the disease naturally. Oh, but you meant "let the body do what it does" without the influence of modern medicine. Well, in that case "what the body does" is maybe go blind, become sterile, or catch pneumonia and die.
And I'd say "you go on ahead and do that", but the problem is that your stupid choice affects me and my children. It affects everyone. You've done the research, eh? Ever come across the term "herd immunity"?
What about the kids who GET the vaccine and the infect other children (because the vaccine itself is contagious)????
Thankfully not much of a problem when everyone is getting vaccinated. Since rises in increases in incidents of measles and other disease can be directly associated with falling vaccination rates, I'm thinking maybe getting vaccinated is the better idea!
The long and the short of it is... (Score:3, Insightful)
I mostly hate how all /.'s assume they know better than those "crazy dumb shits out there" when they themselves admit knowing little information..
If you think life was better before vaccination, or would be better without them, then there's no if's and's or but's -- you're a crazy dumbshit who admits to knowing little information. Who is endangering everyone else. This is not tolerable.
So get your damn kids vaccinated. Once you do that, if you want to talk about maybe finding a way to take the aluminum o
The Retraction (Score:5, Informative)
Here's the actual retraction, rather than reporting on reporting on the retraction:
The Lancet, Early Online Publication, 2 February 2010
doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(10)60175-7
Retraction—Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children
The Editors of The Lancet
Following the judgment of the UK General Medical Council's Fitness to Practise Panel on Jan 28, 2010, it has become clear that several elements of the 1998 paper by Wakefield et al(1) are incorrect, contrary to the findings of an earlier investigation.(2) In particular, the claims in the original paper that children were "consecutively referred" and that investigations were "approved" by the local ethics committee have been proven to be false. Therefore we fully retract this paper from the published record.
References
1 Wakefield AJ, Murch SH, Anthony A, et al. Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children. Lancet 1998; 351: 637-641
2 Hodgson H. A statement by The Royal Free and University College Medical School and The Royal Free Hampstead NHS Trust. Lancet 2004; 363: 824.
End the debate? (Score:4, Insightful)
After reading TFA, as far as my medically ignorant mind makes out, the study was withdrawn due to ethical issues obtaining the samples for the study, not due to issues with the conclusions drawn. I can see how this would lead Wakefield to be deregistered due to ethical considerations however how does this disprove his conclusions? The logic seems to go "your study shows there may be a link between autism and vaccines, you obtained samples unethically, therefore this proves once and for all and hereby ends the discussion that there is conclusively no link between autism and vaccines". I always pay extra close attention when a scientific discussion starts descending into claims of absolutes, a statement like "the possibility is laughably remote that there is a link between x and y" makes sense, "there is no link between x and y and nobody is to suggest there is" smacks of dark ages medicine rather than science.
I would love someone more medically inclined to provide more background as I sense a lot of info was missing from the story / article.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There were 12 patients used in the study. They were not randomly selected. That's pretty much enough to ignore that study entirely, and there isn't really any other research showing any sort of link.
Re:End the debate? (Score:5, Informative)
The unethical conduct is just the last nail in the coffin.
1. The original supposition, based on 12 patients, was that MMR vaccine may have been the possible cause of bowel problems which led to a decreased absorption of essential vitamins and nutrients which resulted in developmental disorders like autism. No analysis was provided to substantiate this, it was pure unfounded supposition.
2. Subsequent laboratory assays on the patients in question found no evidence of measles virus DNA, indicating that the vaccine was not responsible for the cases of inflammatory bowel disease.
3. Clinical evidence doesn't support a link between IBD and autism.
4. Twelve subsequent studies have failed to find any evidence of a link between MMR and autism.
Calling the possibility of a link "laughably remote" is an understatement.
Re:End the debate? (Score:4, Insightful)
After reading TFA, as far as my medically ignorant mind makes out, the study was withdrawn due to ethical issues obtaining the samples for the study, not due to issues with the conclusions drawn.
One of the central issues with these sorts of studies, scientifically, is that there is no actual mechanism proposed by which having a vaccine can lead to autism, hence no specific hypothesis to prove or disprove other than the vaguely described "correlation" between the two. It turns out that Autism is typically diagnosed at the same stage in child development that one is supposed to be immunized, thus leading to an inevitable number of cases where one proceeds the other by a short time span and might appear to have been "causative" at an anectodal level, especially to devastated parents desperate for some sort of autism cure. This is precisely the sort of link that, in absence of a proposed disease mechanism to explain the connection, one can only deduce from rigorous, systematic studies that carefully test the hypothesis that there is some sort of non-random correlation in a large, statistically significant sample of patients.
12 children does not constitute a statistical sample, especially if you already secretly knew most of them already had autism, doubly so in fact you were being paid to represent the kids parents in anti-vaccine litigation (since we have to take the author's word that he didn't cherry pick to produce the observed correlation).
It doesn't help at all that autism is one of the least understood mental disorders, we know comparatively much more about the underlying causes of Huntingtons and Alzheimers, to the point at which I would not be surprised if there are effective treatments within 10 or 15 years. With autism your guess is as good as mine, the community is grasping at straws for a good explanation of what is going on. And we do know that the incidence seems to rising dramatically in recent times, which is an alarming trend to say to least.
It's not that I trust big pharma companies so much, or even that the scientific method is so perfect. It's just Occam's razor, a conspiracy of the scale that is proposed by anti-vaccination types reflects a complete disconnect from the realities of biomedical research. It's a dog-eat-dog world with thousands of competing sources of influences and hundreds of thousands of "players" who more like free agents all trying to make a name for themselves. It's not some monolithic organization like the military that was designed from bottom up to keep secrets from the public.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I think "more scientifically inclined" might help.
Ethical malfeasance when selecting your subjects casts serious doubt on your conclusions. For the most part, people can't actually verify your original data. They can replicate your study by gathering their own data, and then can verify your analytical methods (to the extent you provide original data), but it's basically impossible to verify that your original data were taken properly. Readers and reviewers rely on your honesty in data collection (knowing th
Nice of Lancet to come around (Score:5, Informative)
Click on Dr. Wilson's link to see his copy of a graph showing the slight drop in MMR vaccinations resulting in a sharp increase in measles cases. Fortunately, a mere thousand or so more per year will only mean a couple of deaths, blindings, sterilizations, and so forth. Words fail me.
A message to Mrs. McCarthy (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's not rush to judgement... (Score:5, Funny)
...I for one am waiting to see what Jenny McCarthy has to say about this.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I can save you the time:
Big Pharma is out to get Dr. Wakefield.
See, conspiracy doesn't really require thinking.
People don't understand statistics (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is that most people don't understand statistics, numerical significance or even the scientific method. This leads the unwashed masses to jump to conclusions that are based on anecdotal evidence, un-normalised data comparisons and non-causal correlations which sound quite reasonable on the surface.
When a study is properly performed and analysed to remove various biases and incorrect assumptions, it usually involves counter-intuitive statistical analyses.
Unfortunately, due to a lack of understanding of the scientific method, and despite the fact that a denouncement has been widely reported, many people will still be given media time to promote their ignorant contrarian claims.
When discussing high profile scientific studies like this one, I keep hearing people argue with reasoning like 'well that is just another point of view'. I intentionally used the word 'claims' and not 'view point' in the above paragraph. A view point implies that a contradictory, but valid alternative explanation exists. In the case of scientific study, a falsifiable hypothesis can be shown to be true or false. If it is deemed false it may still be correct in some of it's underlying elements. In that case it would be revised and a more accurate hypothesis developed.
Some people seem to think that if they personally don't understand the complex reasoning process behind a peer reviewed scientific conclusion, then they should feel free to jump to their own. Because of this, many kids have not been immunised over the last ten years, and now we are seeing the fall out of what happens when too many people decide against the recommendations of the medical establishment.
Except that... (Score:4, Informative)
First, the problem with statistics is that they deal in huge quantities to be accurate, and, the human body is sufficiently complex that lurking behind any "outlier" might exist a causal relationship for just that person.
Second, the medical establishment has made some spectacular mistakes through the years and people simply do not trust them.
By anyone's admission, the number of medical mistakes and fatalities from them are so enormous that literally every family has a story where the doctor screwed up. Advice given out by the medical community has changed, as well.
At one point in time, the medical establishment advocated a diet of four food groups, one of which would turn out to be loaded in cholesterol. At one point in time, antibiotics were hailed as the end of bacterial infections, and now medicine is essentially backpedalling against a resurgance in diseases once thought "cured".
Most damningly though, is, the whole question of whether or not medical science is actually worth the expense. Some studies have shown that once you factor out hygeine and nutrition, the lifespan of humans has not actually changed in 100 years. Essentially, if you get a virus, you will either recover or not, and bacterial infections are actually not common enough to really effect the larger course of affairs.
Finally, the politicization of science has happened even in medicine. The whole concept of the university, and by extension, the doctor was of someone who earned a decent living but was removed from the field of genuine wealth in order to be free from not only its temptations, but its distractions. Now, we have very real cases where doctors are rigging double blind studies in order to try and sell stock in their biotech company, manipulating the lives of real patients solely to cash in.
Who do you trust in medicine these days? Who do you trust in science? As soon as universities started amassing huge patent warchests and enormous funds, as soon as science got -expensive-, it became political, and because it is political, it cannot be trusted, as much as nothing else political can be trusted.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
There is nothing more scary to a parent than the possibility of something as debilitating as autism being inflicted on their child when they could have done something about it
I actually have an autistic child. I would say that its not the end of the world and actually has its own blessings. My bigger beef, actually, is with a society that has so little tolerance for neurodiversity. If my little boy were a hunter gatherer, or a farmer, he'd be fine.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that it's 'the end of world'. I was referring to the characterisations that seem popular in today's media where the effect is extreme. There are different degrees (and types) of autism that go from 'slightly eccentric' to 'sits all day in a corner drooling'.
The fear of causing a perceived defect by ignoring some advice will more than likely be visualised in the worst possible light. ie. Being the parent of the kid drooling in the corner - all because of something that supposedl
Tell me something new... (Score:3, Interesting)
As someone who works with autism on a daily basis (I am a behavioral therapist in early intervention wraparound services), it frustrates me endlessly that we're focusing on something so trivial as finding a single cause for autism when it's beginning to look more and more like there are a constellation of causes, each one probably dependent on the presence of several others and a genetic predisposition toward autistic behaviors. I'd rather see funding go toward long-term care; more and more of these kids are growing up without the right care and intervention, and those kids when they reach adulthood will be the ones you'll see on the news: vagrants because the state won't provide care any more, filling our jails because of misunderstandings caused by a lack of socially appropriate behavior, or worse - violent and hospitalized because their caregivers can't or won't take care of them any more. What happens when that cute kid with autism grows up to be that 6' tall, 250lb adult with autism? I know one of those kids. He's in and out of the hospital because he can't take care of himself and abuses his spineless mother. When she dies, he'll be a constant drain on the system. And here we are debating the vaccine link.
Waiting for the news that more states are approving funding for Autism care and proven wraparound services under mental health/disability guidelines...
Hell, that's a bonus (Score:4, Insightful)
Birhter? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a different group of people who are against vaccines. Please keep your labels for conspiracy nuts straight in the future.
Re:The debate is long from over. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Who are you refering to? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Who are you refering to? (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe it's due to what you wrote.
You've stated something as fact, and it is based on your perception. It's an example, and it may be valid, or it may be exaggerated, or it could be totally wrong... But to you, it's fact. You believe that the H1N1 vaccine gives people the swing flu... At the very least you imply that it does, and your proof is in your anecdote. If you have hard numbers to show us that people will get the swine flu from the vaccine (or at least that they have a higher incidence rate), then please provide them.
I'm guilty of this too on occasion.. I'm trying to be better about it.
Re:Who are you refering to? (Score:4, Funny)
You believe that the H1N1 vaccine gives people the swing flu...
Better the Swing Flu than Flamenco Fever, baby!
Re:The debate is long from over. (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, there are PROVEN bad reactions to almost every vaccination. The next opportunity you get to watch a doctor stick needles into an infant or a young child, STAY ALERT. You will see that the legal guardian is offered brochures on each and every vaccination. Take those brochures, and read them. Take the information from them, and research.
Writing stuff like this makes you look rather silly. When you go and get vaccinations the doctor plainly tells you what the risks are and if you are interested you can ask for more information. You don't have to STAY ALERT - you can just follow what the doctor tells you and keep an eye on potential symptoms. There are potential side-effects to all medicine, including vaccines, this should not be a surprise to anyone.
As for mercury in vaccines - you now don't believe what the "huge corporations" tell you even though they are the ones that print the PROVEN side-effects on the vaccines, and the brochures. The same procedures that discovered and reported on the side-effects would have also found any negative effects from the mercury. You can find more information about mercury in vaccines here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiomersal_controversy [wikipedia.org]
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Re:The debate is long from over. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Still when your child starts acting weird, and stops talking within days after getting a shot it is easy to draw a conclusion. Then when going on line there is lots of others who seem to have had the same thing happen it seems like more evidence. .edu sites which agreed with the autism MMR link. Generally along the lines that some people just couldn't handle being injected with 3 live vaccines at once, which caused intestinal
At the time there also seemed to be quite a few incomplete studies found at various
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How about instead we just determine risk vs reward. Creating a couple autistics vs kids dieing of Measles, Mumps or Rubella. Worry about this is like worry about dieing in a terrorist attack, a stupid thing to waste your time on since the odds are far on your side.
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Still when your child starts acting weird, and stops talking within days after getting a shot it is easy to draw a conclusion.
"For every problem, there is an answer that is simple, obvious, and wrong."
Re:The debate is long from over. (Score:5, Insightful)
True enough. The problem is that when hundreds of millions get some treatment, quite a few of those WILL (for entirely unrelated reasons) fall ill shortly after the treatment, thus the existence of these people prove nothing at all.
Like a doctor commented: If 10 million people get the H1N1 vaccine, you'll have around 8000 that die within a month after getting the vaccine. Proof that the vaccine is dangerous ? No, just the result of the fact that in a sample of 10 million, around 8000 will die EVERY month. And if you offer the vaccine first to the weakened, the elderly, those who are typically the most at risk, then the death-numbers will look even worse.
Besides, the question is never if something is entirely safe. The proper question is, is it safer than the alternative. Even if a vaccine -does- have side-effects (and all of them do, to varying degrees) it can still be totally worth it, if the total suffering from side-effects is significantly smaller than the suffering from the disease would otherwise be.
Re:The debate is long from over. (Score:4, Interesting)
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Because it's wrong:
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2008/03/the_hannah_poling_case_and_the_rebrandin.php [scienceblogs.com]
Re:The debate is long from over. (Score:5, Interesting)
Studies have pretty convincingly shown that people who work with children with autistic spectrum disorders (such as my wife) are about 95% accurate at diagnosing the disease based upon video of their 1st birthday parties. In other words, they where showing symptoms before the vaccines in question were given. Parent may not recognize the symptoms until their child hit 30 months, but the symptoms where there all along. Parents often will deny the diagnosis (and get mad at the diagnosing physician) after it is made. It's understandable why they do so. It's also understandable why the need to find someone or something apart from their own genome to blame for the disease.
One study is at this site [springerlink.com]. It is by no means the only one, but just the first one that showed up in a Google search.
Re:The debate is long from over. (Score:5, Insightful)
Also consider this: nobody has absolute proof that vaccines DON'T cause autism.
Also consider this: nobody has absolute proof that my rock DOESN'T repel tigers.
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There is more anecdotal evidence to prove vaccines don't cause autism, so wouldn't that push the debate into being over, if anecdotal evidence is the measuring bar?
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To remain clear, I didn't say that it was the measure of truth, only a measure of continuing debate.
There are lots of people who drink and drive who have never been in an accident. Does that push that debate to being over? Of course not.
It's statistics. If a drug or vaccine is unsafe for a small population, it needs to be restricted or banned. At issue is a large group of parents of autistic children who blame the vaccines. It doesn't matter to them if vaccines usually don't cause autism. They each se
Re:The debate is long from over. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Don't children who have not been vaccinated also develop autism? Didn't it exist long before vaccines?
Re:The debate is long from over. (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes. In fact, the common myth is that the Amish, who don't vaccinate their children, also don't get autism. Those who study autism know this isn't true: the Amish are useful as a study population because of their limited interaction with modern medicine, and there are still Amish with autism.
Re:The debate is long from over. (Score:5, Insightful)
Which would have been at the same time we stopped calling them retards and sending them off to the nuthouse.
Re:The debate is long from over. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The debate is long from over. (Score:5, Insightful)
these people are putting other peoples kids and the population as a whole in great danager due to dropping vacination rates, which completely contridicts your point that autism rates climbing is some how linked - after all if less people are vaccinating how can autism be increasing if it's the cause?
we are lowering whats called herd immunity. at the moment the rest of the herd is still largely immune to things like polio and mumps, this keeps those who aren't immune safe because no one around them generally has the virus. once this drops to a critical number (which is VERY close to happening, and has already happened with hooping cough) large numbers of kids are going to start being killed or crippled by preventable diseases. if you think the health care system is under strain now try adding an outbreak of polio. not only will kids get it but they will pass it on to adults as well.
when i see idiots refusing to vaccinate their kids, i just want to grab them and shake the bastards while shoving pictures of the 1920's polio outbreak in their face.
Re:The debate is long from over. (Score:4, Insightful)
when i see idiots refusing to vaccinate their kids, i just want to grab them and shake the bastards while shoving pictures of the 1920's polio outbreak in their face.
Exactly. Oh man, we are so on the same page on this. These fools obviously have no idea of the kind of human suffering they are avoiding because of vaccines.
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That's the problem in a nutshell. You don't understand what
Re:The debate is long from over. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd suggest looking up the mortality rates of the diseases you're failing to immunize against.
You don't think some scientist out there wouldn't love to be the guy who figured out autism, and make a fortune as an expert witness at the hundreds of thousands of lawsuits?
Yes, drug companies are no angels, but they are not omnipotent.
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Statistics mean a lot, the individual who ignores them is an idiot.
Risking infecting others with a dangerous disease should not be up to them, unless they plan to compensate anyone injured.
Re:The debate is long from over. (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that the consequences are not his alone. Humans have developed "herd immunity" due to vaccines; there is not enough prevalence of the pathogen for infection to pass amongst the population. By not vaccinating your child, you are compromising the herd immunity and that may lead to the illness or death of someone else's child who could not be vaccinated for other legitimate reasons, like allergy.
Re:The debate is long from over. (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. It is like penicillin, which to most of the world is a life saver, but to me and my GF it would be a death sentence due to anaphylactic shock. If only 1% of the children given the vaccine end up with autism because of it that is STILL a pretty damned big number of kids. As a parent I can understand those that prefer to error on the side of caution, because even with 1000 to 1 odds against it happening that is still your kid that you are risking.
Putting aside the fact that there is no evidence linking vaccine to autism, are you saying that this hypothetical risk outweighs the very real risk of deadly diseases such as measles and mumps? As a parent, it infuriates me to see scientifically-illiterate parents put my vaccinated children at risk by contributing to the failure of herd immunity.
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If your children are vaccinated, how exactly are they at risk?
Vaccines are not 100% effective. Parents who refuse to vaccinate threaten herd immunity, which puts my children at greater risk.
But you see that is one of the great things about this country...we have the freedom to believe in what we will, and to act accordingly. What YOU do with YOUR kids is YOUR business, and what I do with MY kids is mine.
Actually, that's not how it works. Try withholding medical treatment (or food, for that matter) from your kids and see what happens.
Re:The debate is long from over. (Score:5, Insightful)
As a parent I can understand those that prefer to error on the side of caution, because even with 1000 to 1 odds against it happening that is still your kid that you are risking.
But anyone looking at the statistics would see that erring on the side of caution would be to get the vaccine. Those diseases can cause serious complications or death, and while there is no actual proof of the whole autism claim, there is overwhelming proof of the effectiveness of the vaccine in providing immunity.
Even starting with the premise that the vaccine does have a 0.1% chance of causing autism, measles has a mortality rate much higher than that, especially in undeveloped countries. And it is HIGHLY contagious.
Re:The debate is long from over. (Score:4, Informative)
Even starting with the premise that the vaccine does have a 0.1% chance of causing autism, measles has a mortality rate much higher than that, especially in undeveloped countries.
I was doubting your claim of a "much higher" mortality rate for measles, but after a quick web search it appears you're right - if we're talking about worldwide mortality. One UNICEF article [unicef.org] states that "measles infects 25 to 30 million children each year and kills over 345,000", which is about 1.15%, an order of magnitude higher than the 0.1% chance for autism you stated (from which source, btw?). On the other hand, in countries where professional medical care is more advanced and/or more available to the general public, the mortality rates are much, much lower. According to this article [unicef.org], the mortality rate for acute (!) cases in the U.S. was about 0.25% - 0.28%. Between 1993-1999, there was only one reported death. Given that the complications of a measles infection can generally be handled when adequate medical care is available, and that autism is (as far as we know) "final", the decision isn't quite as clear-cut as you present it.
That's assuming that your 0.1% figure is accurate. FWIW, I'm not in any way opposed to the MMR vaccination, and I'm not buying the autism scare either. Where I live, this vaccine is administered to children systematically, and hardly anybody ever opts out.
CJ
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No it isn't, your comparing apples to orangatangs. The difference is that there is a statistical correlation between a penicilin jab and the ill effect, ie: that claim is based on evidence. There is no such correlation found in MMR vs Autisim, ie: the claim is based on anecdote and ignores cotra-evidence.
The fact that penicilin can be deadly to some people and the fact that some people are greedy parasites does not tell you anything about MMR and autisim.
Re:The debate is long from over. (Score:5, Informative)
It certainly raises a red flag for me when you consider that a single vaccine can give a child an exposure 5-10x the OSHA limit for mercury poisoning.
It doesn't. The OSHA limit is for chronic exposure to methylmercury. Thimerosal exposes you (via breakdown) to ethylmercury, and only once. It's the wrong substance and is a non-chronic exposure. There is not an established toxicity for ethylmercury, as far as I recall -- it is generally thought that the toxicity is lower than methylmercury, and so the limits for methylmercury are used. (But again, the limit you are referring to is the chronic-exposure limit.)
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That isn't quite correct. Your friend's son's condition proves that vaccinations are not the sole cause of autism. It doesn't prove there is no link between autism and vaccinations.
Not that I think there is one, but we don't want to overreach do we now?
Re:The debate is long from over. (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because one side of the debate has used bad data and judgment doesn't mean there is no merit to the debate.
It does when the only reason the debate ever started was because of that bad data.
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There are many cases like this. I don't make any claims, but this study isn't the only reason for the debate.
Yes it is. Blaming it on the vaccine makes about as much sense as blaming it one whatever she had for dinner, and would be as likely if it weren't for the "OH NOES THE VACCINES ARE CAUSING AUTISM" crowd.
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There are many cases like this.
Yes there are many cases of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.
It's a very common fallacy.
Our brains are highly optimized for pattern recognition. Unfortunately this ability is overzealous, and not something we can turn off. It takes reason, logic, and in some cases careful observation to discover how this ability has led us astray.
In any case, "I took my kid to see Avatar and a week later they were autistic!" is not in any way a scientific data point. It also doesn't ev
Re:The debate is long from over. (Score:5, Insightful)
We're talking about profound changes in behaviour within a day of getting a vaccine. When your child stops talking right after injecting a bunch of live viruses into their body there is a tendency to blame it on the live viruses.
Who's talking about this? That post said a week, now it's the same day for a developmental disorder to suddenly transform the child? Are there any cases of this in any of the studies where children were given vaccines and then observed? No? Huh.
And since the effects of the live virus, and mercury poisoning (if it was the kind of mercury that could poison you) are well known, and aren't spontaneous autism, that leaves me with another hypothesis:
Parents ignored the symptoms before, but suddenly became aware when sensitized by fear of vaccines. Their fear and paranoia probably just make the child's already existent symptoms (i.e. introversion) worse.
Granted I have no evidence for this theory applying to any particular case, but it has one big advantage of at least being consistent with the existing scientific evidence.
Much like if they ate something that they never ate before then puked, there would be a tendency to blame the food for them getting sick.
Even if they'd been feeling a little queasy before but wrote it off as nothing. Even if it turned out that they had the flu and the food had nothing to do with it.
Yes, I know people have this tendency. However that tendency often leads to incorrect conclusions.
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Well then I'm definitely not saying anything about what you were thinking or theorizing as to what has really happened in your case. I'm sorry for hardship, but glad he's improving.
All I'm going to say is that if you took the vaccination out of the picture, that's not that atypical a story about autism -- a kid who seems normal at first but then between the ages of 1 and 3 suddenly seems to take a turn. It's a developmental disorder, it has a large genetic component, and is about neuron organization and d
Re:The debate is long from over. (Score:5, Insightful)
Is there a link between vaccines and autism? I don't know. I don't believe for a moment that the debate is over. There's way too much anecdotal evidence, even if there is no merit.
What does that even mean? "There's too much anecdotal evidence, even if there is no merit"? So, like, we both know that anecdotal evidence is crap, and the science all says otherwise, but because there's "too much" spouting off of post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacies, it has to mean something? Yeah, it means most people are incapable of making good observations, have no understanding of statistics, and are more than happy to let confirmation bias run wild.
Also, anecdotally, none of these geniuses I've ever seen discuss the issue have any understanding of history, and of the suffering the human race endured before vaccination existed. Whatever tiny increase in autism they think actually exists, even if it turned out against all reason and evidence to be true, wouldn't be worth going back to that.
I swear, if there's ever an outbreak of smallpox, and these retarded fuckers refuse to get vaccinated, I'm going to start taking them out for the good of humanity.
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One side used a con artists absolutely moronic and quickly debunked study. The other side, well, they're the ones that debunked this quack's nonsense. They did it years ago. WTF was wrong with Lancet? They should have withdrawn it as soon as the extent of Wakefield's incompetence and dishonesty came to light. What it's done has generated several years worth nuisance lawsuits, parents tricked into believing there was someone out there to blame for their children's problems and posed a substantial risk t
Re:Not much of a debate... (Score:4, Insightful)
Herd immunity issues aside, I'm all for the stupid reducing their evolutionary fitness. Natural selection and all that.
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Science isn't about debating, its about evidence and data. And the evidence that vaccines cause autism just isn't there, on the other side there is plenty of evidence that vaccines are extremely beneficial and that the current vaccination scare actually kills people.