The Lancet has finally withdrawn the paper on MMR and autism that it published 12 years ago. The study: “Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children” consisted of a series of 12 children all of whom had been referred in to a paediatric gastroenterology unit with a triad of autism-like symptoms, abdominal pain and diarrhoea. Note that this study is little more than a series of linked case studies with a very strong pre-selection bias towards gastroenterology (they were referred in to the gastroenterology unit).
The study was seized upon by the anti-vaccination groups, despite its deep inadequacies, and used to promote unreasonable fear of the vaccination process. Long-time readers of this blog will know that I am not a fan of the drive to indiscriminately vaccinate children against every known disease. It seems to me that this is likely to be a counterproductive policy in the long run because each addition to the armamentarium of needle-weilding nurses meets with more and more parental resistance. After all, it is a traumatic experience having your child vaccinated. At some point (which we may have already reached) parents are just going to say “forget it” and ignore vaccination entirely. Of course articles like the above study simply reinforce this tendency.
I can’t see that the belated withdrawal of the study is really going to make any difference to this situation. At this stage, the withdrawal merely intensifies the suspicions of parents (look, they’re suppressing the truth) who increasingly tend to see the myriad of vaccines as just a ploy of vaccine manufacturers to make money. Given the combination of trauma and fear-driven conspiracy theory, it is a wonder that any parent has their child vaccinated!
I see a fair number of parents who opt out of the vaccination program. I usually try to (gently) persuade them to have the DTP, Polio and HiB courses. All of these diseases (Diphtheria, Tetanus, Pertussis, Polio and Haemophilus Influenza B) have appreciable mortality and are worthwhile having your child protected against. Thereafter, the benefit of vaccines compared to their cost becomes more and more dubious. Judging by the almost hysterical reaction of the public health department, one would have thought the recent measles “epidemic” – that did not actually happen – was an outbreak of ebola virus. Families who had not vaccinated their kids were being treated like some sort of plague factory. Measles is very unpleasant but not really a great deal more dangerous than seasonal flu, so some sense of proportion would have been helpful.
While the Lancet’s response to a poorly written article was “too little, too late”, the vaccination program could well be characterised as “too much, too soon”.
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Gosh, good recycling of anti-vaxx arguments, and sympathetic to them besides. You really are anti-vaccine, notwithstanding a couple of weak efforts at saying that some might be OK, but you’re not going to bother to persuade too much. Too much, too soon? Come on, this isn’t the US.
The study didn’t just have a pre-selection bias, it was bought and paid for by lawyers seeking to create a link between autism and vaccines for legal action. Wakefield took home a lot of cash out of this. That’s before you get to the falsification of data and the unnecessary invasive tests. On a science blog, there should be a better standard and that is to say exactly what led to the retraction and why the link is spurious. Anti-vaccination groups should be condemned for their part in this, not talked about as if their position was understandable. It isn’t, it’s scaremongering of the worst kind.
That is why parents are confused, it’s because anti-vaxx lobby groups are very vocal and very good at scaremongering with baseless claims and the media love a scare story while doctors and other health workers are not saying clearly enough it’s a pile of dung and here are the facts. It can’t get any worse when people buy into it that should know better. Those health professionals are the ones that do know immunology and about vaccines (or should do), not pro-disease groups who are ideologically opposed to vaccines and if the science doesn’t confirm their beliefs, they’ll lie and twist it to suit. It’s strange, if a study appears to support them they’ll follow it blindly but if it doesn’t it’s just bought by a drug company (never mind not all research is done by drug companies). The excuses I’ve seen elsewhere trying to defend this shoddy piece of research beggars belief.
And yes, unvaccinated children are plague factories. They are susceptible to the diseases if they encounter them and bird of a feather cluster together creating a risk of an outbreak. Look at Otago last year, non-vaccinated family goes to Vietnam, come back with the measles. It’s not inconsequential, there is the risk of pneumonia, encephalitis, SSPE and death included in there. SSPE is not related to the vaccine either, they’ve only ever identified the wild type as being responsible. But yeah, 1-3 deaths/1000 is merely unpleasant and just like a mild case of flu. Thank goodness for modern medicine which can help mitigate a lot of foolishness.