The Cellar - Andrew Wakefield found to have faked research on vaccines/autism. Murder?

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They announced on the morning news that some study that had linked autism to some kind of vaccines, they had changed their mind and now want to take that back. This was a short blurb on the local morning news. I don't have any details other than that.

That was classicman's link. The Lancet, the journal that originally published the study, is retracting it.

I saw that on the morning crawl on MSNBC, Flint.

Wait what They retracted it already?

The journal is retracting the original 1998 paper.

A complete dissection of every issue surrounding the ruling, written by a man with both a PhD and a JD. It's long, but of course if this situation were simple enough to be explained by a run-of-the-mill AP article, it wouldn't have remained controversial for the last 11 years.

The way this story broke (and has continued to break) in the 90s has been damaging to everyone, on both sides. For a start we now have 'sides'. The initial story frightened thousands of parents into not vaccinating their children and we've consequently seen an exponential rise in dangerous childhoos illnesses, which had previopusly been all but wiped out. The way the rebuttal occurred (not helped by the shortcuts the original researcher took) has led people who should be looking at it dispassionately to batten down the hatches and 'take a side'. Anybody attempting to look into it properly, is labelled a crackpot and effectively becomes a pariah in scientific and medical circles.

It shouldn't be a matter of 'sides'.

There are two 'needs' at play here and there is no logical reason for them to be mutually exclusive.

There is a 'need' to prevent the high levels of infant mortality caused by such illnesses as measles and Rubella. Tackling that has to happen at a massified, societal level: vaccinations work against this need.

There is also a 'need' to ensure that individual children are not adversely affected by those vaccinations.

Now we have a situation where the vaccination is suspect enough, to enough people, that levels of vaccination have fallen below the 'critical mass' required for them to be effective at a mass level. And at the same time, all research into the individual effects of vaccination seems stymied.

The same people who advocate mass vaccination should be at the forefront of investigating how to ensure it is safe at an individual level. mass vaccination is beneficial at a mass level; but if yours is the child who is harmed so that we as a society can reduce infant mortality; that's pretty cold comfort.

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The initial story frightened thousands of parents into not vaccinating their children and we've consequently seen an exponential rise in dangerous childhoos illnesses, which had previopusly been all but wiped out.

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Originally Posted by jinx

Keep in mind that (in the US) we do not vaccinate for typhus, typhoid, TB, and one of the biggest pre-vaccine era killers: scarlet fever. Yet, their prevalence decreased right along with the diseases we do vaccinate for.

The measles vaccine was introduced in 1963, and as the CDC points out, it reduced measles deaths from about 400-500 per year to 1 or 2 - although there were epidemic years in 1970-72, 1976-78, and 1989-91.

According to the Vital Statistics of the United States, in the 63 years prior to the measles vaccination introduction, death rates declined from 13.3 per 100,00 to 0.2 per 100,000.

They used to blame the epidemic years on vaccine failure. Now they blame it on Wakefield.

Whooping cough in NJ

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All of the infected children had been vaccinated, but Hunterdon officials said the immunity to the vaccine can wane between ages 7 and 9 and that there is no licensed vaccine for children in that age group.

From the BBC news site in 2008:

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Measles cases in England and Wales rose by 36% in 2008, figures show.

Confirmed cases increased from 990 in 2007 to 1,348 last year - the highest figure since the monitoring scheme was introduced in 1995.

Health Protection Agency experts said most of the cases had been in children not fully vaccinated with combined MMR and so could have been prevented.

Immunisation expert Dr Mary Ramsay said the rise was "very worrying", adding measles "should not be taken lightly".
More than 600 of the 2008 measles cases occurred in London, where uptake of the vaccine for MMR - measles, mumps and rubella - is particularly low.

Public confidence in the triple MMR vaccine dipped following research - since discredited - which raised the possibility that the jab may be linked to an increased risk of autism.

It led to some parents opting to pay privately for single vaccines.

Across the UK, 84.5% of two year olds have been immunised with their first dose of MMR.

But by age five, when children are recommended to have a second dose, the latest uptake figures are 77.9%.
There are still many children out there who were not vaccinated as toddlers over the past decade and remain unprotected

Dr Mary Ramsay, Health Protection Agency

Q&A: Measles
Since 2005, the number of cases of measles has been rising year on year. There have also been sporadic outbreaks of mumps in recent years.

This isn't a case of an 'epidemic year' this is a progressive rise in the number of cases: year on year. Particularly noticeable in areas where take up of vaccines is at its lowest.

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Health Protection Agency experts said most of the cases had been in children not fully vaccinated with combined MMR and so could have been prevented.

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It led to some parents opting to pay privately for single vaccines.

Originally Posted by jinx

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Please keep in mind that typhus and typhoid are often water born diseases. Strides in public health have reduced the incidence of these diseases considerably. TB is in fact on the rise again, and many strains are now immune to the drugs once used to treat them. This is true here in the US and even more so in the third world. Finally, doctor report the drop in scarlet fever to be in part due to better diagnostics now available. Measles and diptheria among others were often misdiagnosed as scarlet fever.

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Strides in public health have reduced the incidence of these diseases considerably.

Yes I agree. I'm a big fan of sanitation and nutrition. :)

@ Jinx: the option to use singlew vaccines is available but not on the NHS. One of the problems with it has been that parents have started out getting the single vaccines, but not completed the programme.

Personally, i think if the single vaccine were available on the NHS and parents better supported in that option we could have saved a lot of trouble. As it is the medical profession are so completely wedded to the idea that the MMR vaccine is safe and does not cause autism that all parents who have concerns ion that area are treated as if they're an over-credulous, superstitious awkward squad.

It was specifically the MMR vaccine that was linked to autism originally, I believe.

Let me know if anyone wants the full article.

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Originally Posted by PEDIATRICS

Published online May 24, 2010
PEDIATRICS (doi:10.1542/peds.2009-2489)
Articles

On-time Vaccine Receipt in the First Year Does Not Adversely Affect Neuropsychological Outcomes

Michael J. Smith, MD, MSCE, Charles R. Woods, MD, MS
Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases, University of Louisville School of Medicine, Louisville, Kentucky

Objectives
To determine whether children who received recommended vaccines on time during the first year of life had different neuropsychological outcomes at 7 to 10 years of age as compared with children with delayed receipt or nonreceipt of these vaccines.

Methods
Publicly available data, including age at vaccination, from a previous VaccineSafety Datalink study of thimerosal exposure and 42 neuropsychological outcomes were analyzed. Vaccine receipt was defined as timely when each vaccine was received within 30 days of the recommended age. Associations between timeliness and each outcome were tested in univariate analyses. Multivariable regression models were constructed for further assessment of the impact of timeliness on neuropsychological outcomes after adjustment for potential confounders. Secondary analyses were performed on a subset of children with the highest and lowest vaccine exposures during the first 7 months of life.

Results
Timely vaccination was associated with better performance on 12 outcomes in univariate testing and remained associated with better performance for 2 outcomes in multivariable analyses. No statistically significant differences favored delayed receipt. In secondary analyses, children with the greatest vaccine exposure during the first 7 months of life performed better than children with the least vaccine exposure on 15 outcomes in univariate testing; these differences did not persist in multivariable analyses. No statistically significant differences favored the less vaccinated children.

Conclusions
Timely vaccination during infancy has no adverse effect on neuropsychological outcomes 7 to 10 years later. These data may reassure parents who are concerned that children receive too many vaccines too soon.

Would love to see one that compares vaccinated kids to unvaccinated kids, instead of differently vaccinated kids if you come across one.