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Article: Autism is NOT Caused by Immunizations -- I Have Proof!
Written on 11/29/2007
Every time I think this issue has been put to bed, it rears its ugly head. The most recent is Jenny McCarthy’s new book and publicity tour. It amazes me that people are following her intellectual arguments, after all, I believe it was her other assets that made her famous. Before I get into the whole Autism/vaccine story, let me just suggest that she has been less than honest with us.
First, Ms McCarthy told Oprah that her son was normal until 15 months when he received his MMR. Then “the soul is gone from his eyes.” But in her book she states “my Friends’ babies all cracked a smile way before Evan did…he was almost five months old” so he actually had signs of developmental delay long before the vaccine was given.
Second misinformation given was that the mercury in the immunizations caused damage to her son’s GI system which harmed his immune system thus leading to autism. Thimerisol (the mercury containing preservative) was removed from all US vaccines by 2001. Her son was born in 2002.
Now, let’s start with the original problem. Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are a set of devastating diseases which leave people searching for answers. Typically these kids are not speaking which bring them to the attention of medial professional. This usually occurs around 12-15 months. MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine is typically given around this age. So it was a natural leap to investigate a correlation. But this is not the first time the autism community was sure a vaccine caused the disease. In the last few decades they were sure DTP caused autism, when this was disproved, they started to blame Hep B. Neither of these got the traction from the press as the MMR villain.
The problem is ASD is a genetic problem. We have isolated the genes. This is also exemplified in twin studies. If one identical twin has ASD the likelihood of the other having it is 90 % because they have the same genes. If one fraternal twin has ASD, then the likelihood of the other having it is only 10%. (Higher than the general population due to more similar genes, but certainly not close to if the DNA were identical.) The reason the identical twins are not 100% must be because there is some environmental trigger involved. We just don’t know what it is.
We do know it is not MMR or thimerisol. How, you may ask. Science. As you read about this about this supposed link between MMR and ASD, make sure they are citing large medically sound studies. There are a lot of antidotal reports. It other words stories of a single or small group of individuals. The problem with this type of logic is because two things occur together doesn’t make one cause the other. (An example is if a child gets an immunization, and then gets in a car accident, you would never logically say one caused the other, but there are probably hundreds of people that this occurs to each year. If someone posted a web site about it, I’m sure, you could go there and read hundreds of stories about a similar incident and start to wonder if they are related).
The beginning of this scare was with Andrew Wakefield from Royal Free hospital in England. He and twelve other colleagues published a report in Lancet in 1988 called “Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis and pervasive developmental disorder,” In it he chronicles 12 children with PDD (persuasive developmental disease) and IBD (inflammatory bowel disease). 8 thought the PDD either began or got worse around the time of the MMR by parental report (a notoriously unreliable study method). His theory was that MMR causes an enterocolitis, which leads to IBD, which causes excessive absorption of peptides, and a disturbance of neurological development and autistic disorders within two weeks of the immunization. The conclusion actually written in the paper was “We did not prove an association between MMR and the syndrome described”. He suggested further studies, including seeing if there were a step up in the number of ASD cases around the introduction of MMR in the UK.
All this was well and good. Introducing skepticism in to the scientific community is a good method of checks and balances. We are very skeptical when new vaccines come out and are always reviewing the literature to scientifically back up our medicine. But he went on a world speaking tour, stating his theory as proven. Interviews on “Primetime Live” and “60 minutes” greatly help promote this theory.
In 1999, Brent Taylor, also from Royal free Hospital, published in Lancet a response. He looked at almost 500 ASD children in all the boroughs of London. What he found was there was no increase in ASD whether the kids got MMR before 18 months, after 18 months or NOT AT ALL.
In 2002 in The British Medical Journal, Brent Taylor published the information Dr. Wakefield requested. He reviewed all cases of ASD in UK from 1979-1999. (MMR was introduced in 1988) he found no change in bowel problems, and No step up in ASD cases after 1988. There has been a steady increase from the beginning of the study till the end, showing an increase but disproving MMR as a cause.
Kaye, etal, in the British Medical Journal, 2001, did a population based study which showed from 1988-1999 there was a 700% increase in ASD, but during the same time the rate of coverage of MMR stayed steady at 95%. One would think if MMR was causing ASD, that if the cases of ASD increased, the MMR should have also.
Dales, et al in Journal of the American Medical Association, 2001. Over a fourteen year period (1980-1994) in California the Vaccine rate of MMR remained stable (a 14% increase), meanwhile the rate of ASD increased by 572%. Again, quite a discrepancy if there is a correlation
Davis, et al in 2001 in Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine did a study through the four major HMOs. MMR was not associated with IBD, crohn’s or Ulcerative colitis. Risk was not changed weather MMR was given before 18 Months, after 18 months or NOT AT ALL. In Dr. Wakefield’s therapy, IBD is essential for the autism to occur.
Annamari Makela from Helsinki University published a great study in pediatrics in 2002. In Finland because of the national health care system, all information can be tracked through the National Hospital records. They looked at the results of 535,544 patents immunized with MMR. They looked for signs of inflammation in the brain which may lead to further long term damage. The results were no increased risk of encephalitis or meningitis. Actually it decreased the risk by 35%. Of all the 352 kids with ASD, none had IBD. No causality with autism. And No Clustering of autism cases around the MMR.
In 2002, Madsen in the New England Journal of Medicine did a similar study in Denmark. They looked at 537,303 children born between 1991 and 1998. 82% of children were immunized against MMR. There were 316 cases of autism, and 442 in the Autism spectrum. There was no increase risk of ASD in the vaccinated kids vs. unvaccinated. There was also, no association as to when the MMR was given. Again, no association between MMR and ASD.
In Lancet, 2004, Smeeth studied 1294 children with ASD compared to 4469 controls. The conclusion is MMR is not associated with an increase risk of ASD.
Uchiyama in 2006 had a study in Japan looking at 904 kids diagnosed with ASD between 1989 -1993. They found no change between those who got MMR vaccine and those that did not.
One solution Dr. Wakefield suggested was to split up the MMR into its component parts- Measles vaccine, Mumps Vaccine and Rubella vaccine. His though that all three “overwhelm” the immune system. The problem is this thinking is false. Each “thing” the immune system fights is call an antigen. Conservative estimates say that the human body can fight about 30,000 antigens at a time. Fifteen years ago, the entire immunization schedule for children which included whole cell purtussis had around 3300 antigens, today, although there are many more shot, they are much purer. Depending on the exact series, there are 174-192 antigens given from birth to 18 years of age. Seem insignificant compared to 30,000 at a time. Honda Et al did a study in 2005 looking at this. He looked at the rates of ASD in Japan in 1988-1996. As in all these other population studies, it showed a stead but significant rise. The important part is that after 1992 not a single MMR was given (separated due to an encephalitis problem). Despite following Dr. Wakefield recommendation to spit up M-M-R, the cases of ASD still increased.
In 2004, 10 of the original 13 authors of the 1988 Lancet article issued a retraction. They say they have withdrawn their support for the suggestion that MMR vaccination could cause autism.
In a Feb. 23 2004 statement, Lancet editors leveled charges against Wakefield, the most serious of which is that he did not tell his collaborators about funding he received from a Legal Aid Board, a British legal fund representing parents of children suing the vaccine’s maker. (The British newspaper “the Sunday Times disclosed 55,000 pounds paid to Wakefield)
Currently, the British medical licensing board is contemplating pulling his medical license.
Before you believe false claims and withhold a protective measure from you child, remember, according to the world health organization, in 2004 454,000 people died from measles (down from 871,000 in 1999 due to an increased vaccine effort in Africa).
Measles is often an unpleasant mild or moderately severe illness. Children usually do not die directly of measles, but from its complications. Complications are more common in children under the age of five or adults over the age of 20. The most serious complications include blindness, encephalitis (a dangerous infection of the brain causing inflammation), severe diarrhea (possibly leading to dehydration), ear infections and severe respiratory infections such as pneumonia, which is the most common cause of death associated with measles. Encephalitis is estimated to occur in 1/1000 cases, while Otitis media (middle ear infection) is reported in 5-15% of cases and pneumonia in 5-10% of cases. The case fatality rate in developing countries is generally in the range of 1 to 5%, but may be as high as 25% in populations with high levels of malnutrition and poor access to health care.
Rubella is an infection caused by a virus. Congenital rubella syndrome (CRS) is an important cause of severe birth defects. When a woman is infected with the rubella virus early in pregnancy, she has a 90% chance of passing the virus on to her fetus. This can cause the death of the fetus, or it may cause CRS. Even though it is a mild childhood illness CRS causes many birth defects. Deafness is the most common, but CRS can also cause defects in the eyes, heart, and brain. It is estimated that there are 700,000 deaths due to CRS each year.
Mumps is an infection caused by a virus. It is sometimes called infectious parotitis, and it primarily affects the salivary glands. Mumps is mostly a mild childhood disease. It most often affects children between five and nine years old. But the mumps virus can infect adults as well. When it does, complications are more likely to be serious. As more children receive mumps vaccine, it is expected that cases will become more common in older children than in younger ones. Complications from mumps are rare, but they can be serious. In men and teenage boys, an inflammatory condition called orchitis may cause swelling in one or both testicles. Orchitis is painful and sometimes can cause sterility. Encephalitis, meningitis, and hearing loss are other rare complications that can occur in people infected at any age.
So please think. Don’t be so afraid of the paper tiger that you run off a real cliff.