The "vaccination causes autism" fraud
theincidentaleconomist.com
theincidentaleconomist.com
My daughter had complications 10 days after her MMR in the UK. She had episodes of going floppy and eyes rolling back in her head while making strange mewing sounds. 10 days is around the time that the measles component of the MMR can manifest side effects. We took her to the hospital where doctors absolutely refused to admit that the MMR vaccine could have anything to do with these symptoms she has never had before or since.
I found out later that in fact these exact symptoms were a known side effect of MMR in some cases. I also found out later that doctors are "encouraged" to not admit side-effects to MMR.
I also know that the UK government were using vaccines with a mercury preservative that had been banned in countries like Japan for years.
My point is, examine any claims by government or big Pharm or sensational reports about autism very carefully and make up your own mind.
Admittedly this is anecdotal evidence, but ...
I have diagnosed several medical issues with myself and my wife by web research, only to have to pay to go to a family doctor, who hems and haws, then gives a referral to a specialist, who agrees with what I have already stated.
Specialists in my area will not take you in without a referral from the family doctor, so basically the family doctor is collecting a fee for being a gatekeeper, since he/she adds zero value.
Something similar occurred many years ago with an eye problem I had (tear in retinal wall) - the regular eye doctor had me coming back week after week, collecting his fee each time, until I specifically asked for a referral.
The specialist saw in 3 minutes, the tear that the doctor had missed from the beginning and on each subsequent visit - the reason - the specialist had me recline to flat on my back and used a very powerful magnifying glass, while the hack ^H^H^H^H regular doctor did not.
The symptoms (large eye blockage in one eye due to large black cloudy thing that appeared one morning) clearly pointed to only this cause.
This is basically what you have to deal with with doctors. There are doctors who are very, very good and doctors who are just barely bright enough to continue to practice. The major problem is how you distinguish between the two or, in other terms, how do you find a good programmer if you don't really know anything about programming? Honestly, I don't have an easily cut-and-dried answer. I generally rely on my family (a large subset of my family are highly skilled physicians) to use their professional expertise and circles to find a very highly respected physician in the area. Similarly, I generally help in evaluating technical issues for them.
"One New England Journal of Medicine study found that patients get only 55 percent of the care that's recommended for the leading causes of death and disability. Similar research in children showed they get just 47 percent—and a mere 41 percent of preventive steps that are proved to help."[1]
"Despite 15 years of advances about what is known of [sinusitis], the information isn't making its way to internists because it is not been published in journals or other sources often reviewed by internists, who most often treat sinusitis. For instance, many internists are unaware that chronic sinusitis can cause serious chronic fatigue, Chester says."[2]
"It’s unrealistic to expect the majority of physicians to go back to the original literature or even to go back to systematic reviews of the original literature,” said Gordon Guyatt, MD, of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, who is credited with coining the term “evidence-based medicine."[3]
"In a 2005 systematic review in the Archives of Internal Medicine, most studies found a correlation between increasing years in practice and decreasing quality of care."[3]
[1]http://www.rd.com/living-healthy/is-your-doctor-out-of-date/...
[2] http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2010/08/17/Doctors-need-more-...
[3] http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2009/12/doctors-stay-date-curren...
Implying that doctors do keep up to date with peer reviewed journals, and that if all you're doing is trying to read journals with none of the medical background require to understand them, you're certainly not going to be any more informed than your average doctor.
Gordon Guyatt, MD, of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, who is credited with coining the term "evidence-based medicine."
You quote him, yet you are so quick to discredit all evidence that you don't agree with.
This implication, assuming that really is what they are trying to imply, is nothing more than speculation. But if you have better information then by all means post it.
I can't really say I'm surprised to encounter inexplicable lapses in critical thinking and logic here though.
Most doctors get their information about medical issues by reading the marketing pamphlets from drug companies. If you actually read the relevant journal articles then you'd be significantly more knowledgeable about any given topic than the average doctor.
Why would doctors be so eager to prescribe Lexapro as late as 2009 even though they knew that the manufacturer had faked the science behind it, for which it was later fined over 300 million dollars? Especially since the drug was unambiguously shown to be no more effective than previous generic versions of the drug, which were only a fraction of the price? Obviously because they are getting most of their information from the marketing campaigns and not the science, plus the massive amounts of bribes and kickbacks. There are tons of examples like this.
As for the second statement, if doctors aren't up to date on the research about any given condition, then it shouldn't be that difficult to learn more about your doctor about any given condition. Almost all of the academic research in medicine is written for a lay audience, unlike in physics or continental philosophy where you really can't understand it unless you're an expert. Plus there are tons of other resources to help you make sense of the research, everything from wikipedia to academic search engines that show you which papers are cited by which other papers.
Heh OK why don't I make you a deal: you read this paper[1], tell me what it studies and what the consequences are, and then I'll forward your response to my father and he can tell you all the things you got wrong.
If there's one thing I've learned reading papers it's that the way the author phrases things or what the author conspicuously leaves out is worth just as much as what's there. Even in my domain area I'm nowhere near qualified to judge academic papers as an expert.
[1] http://annonc.oxfordjournals.org/content/21/6/1203.abstract
Perhaps that is true, if "enough consideration" is equivalent something like 2 years of basic medical education and 2 years of clinical experience. Instead, most people have to make do with their own trusts, biases, limited information, etc. I think it's unreasonable to think that an untrained person is going to catch up enough after reading a few articles that they are going to make an informed decision. That's why we have doctors, to help us make informed decisions about our health. We can use their synthesis of education and experience to guide our values to make decisions that are not only self-satisfying but also reasonably accurate.
Any sufficiently intelligent and reasonable person wouldn't be questioning the established medical fact that vaccines provide an overwhelming net benefit. If they are, they almost certainly are not qualified to make an educated decision about it.
It's fine and dandy to play expert without a formal education in almost every situation, but in this case the lives of people, _and not just your own children_ is in play.
The problem with your position is that people still die from taking medication. Low statistical significance of harm doesn't matter to you if you're one of the statistically few that ends up harmed.
Statistics are valid over populations. Yes, if one looks simply at the greater good then vaccination to prevent epidemic is a good idea. However imagine a scenario where everyone else is vaccinated but you aren't - you're not exposed to the pathogen as the disease doesn't spread nor exposed to the risk of the vaccine, you win. This is of course not a scalable response.
Disease control requires those involved to consider the population and not the individual it would be beneficial to this end to pretend the vaccine is perfect and incapable of harm, this produces the best results for the whole population.
Looking further, you rightly say "vaccines" provide a net benefit. Of course one is being vaccinated with a particular vaccine which, by the nature of vaccines may not have been tested beyond cursory short term tests. We can't wait 5 years for the results of double blind experiments on a vaccine when it's been rushed in to mass production to match a particular strain of pathogen. Yes the variations may be small but small variations matter.
>It's fine and dandy to play expert without a formal education in almost every situation, but in this case the lives of people, _and not just your own children_ is in play.
Driving in the snow, say, would you do it without a formal education?
Let's look at the facts of this case. The author didn't cite his financial connections, but the journal failed to catch this. The author made up data, but the journal failed to catch this. The public demanded an investigation into the vaccines, but the government refused to start an investigation or even answer their questions. When the government finally did start an investigation many years later they did it behind closed doors, and the public wasn't even allowed to read the transcript of the conversation for several more years. The scientific establishment has been in the wrong here at literally every turn, and yet you're spinning the story and trying to use it as an example of how the general public shouldn't be allowed to make their own medical decisions. Yes, the anti-vaccine crowd was also in the wrong for putting excessive weight on this study in the first place, but this apologism for the scientific establishment is completely unwarranted.
This study came out in 1998, and the media coverage didn't peak until late 2005. The vast majority of those in the anti-vaccine movement had never even read the original article, and only gave it credence because of the lack of transparency. In between when the study was released and when the media hype peaked:
* The largest companies in the world were going bankrupt because the government was encouraging them to use fraudulent mark-to-market accounting methods
* The government prevented any investigation into 9/11 for over a year, and then stonewalled and lied to the investigating committee once it was finally formed.
* The government lied about the safety of the air at ground zero.
* The government lied about Iraq having WMDs and being connected to 9/11, and started a war based on these lies.
Even if it was scientifically unjustified to believe that vaccines caused autism based on one study, there was nothing unreasonable about parents avoiding the vaccinations once they heard that the government was once again lying.
You don't get to claim that people should trust you if you are constantly lying to them. What happened with regards to falling vaccination rates was completely reasonable and predictable given the circumstances, whether scientifically justifiable or not. And it was only after an epic government fuckup of 7+ years that the issue went from being a fringe concern to a mainstream panic.
In that environment, whether medical professionals or the NHS were for or against the treatments was really not pertinent at all.
But I'm finding it hard to see an argument in your post against the original point that people without medical backgrounds really shouldn't be making medical judgements. Especially if they consider the views of medical professionals and the NHS less pertinent to their kid's health than knee-jerk distrust in anything government-approved provoked by entirely irrelevant military intelligence scandals...
The myth that people in the Middle Ages thought the earth is flat appears to date from the 17th century as part of the campaign by Protestants against Catholic teaching. But it gained currency in the 19th century, thanks to inaccurate histories such as John William Draper's History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science (1874) and Andrew Dickson White's History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896).
Which brings me to my next point: any decision has consequences. If there is a 1 in 1 billion chance of a side-effect, and a 1 in 5000 chance of getting a debilitating disease, I think it's still fair to make the argument that the treatment is not just for society but also for the patient. Who is "society" if not "all the patients?"
In your hypothetical case, the treatment is beneficial both for society and for the patient. On the other hand, if there is a 1 in 100 chance of a side effect versus a 1 in 1000 chance of getting a debilitating disease, the vaccination may not be good for the patient. But if the chance of getting the debilitating disease would be 1 in 10 without herd immunity, then the vaccination is good for society.
It's just that most of the benefits of the vaccination flow not to the patient but to the other people they don't infect, and transitively.
Trivial side effects (small temporary rash) are probably in the 1-in-100 range. Moderate non-life-threatening are probably in the 1-in-3000 range.
Dangerous or life-threatening side effects are in the one in a million+ range.
The doctors being encouraged comes from the mouth of a doctor friend of ours that used to work for the NHS. Sorry you are just going to have to take my word on this. I can't prove this.
Disagree with you on individual verse society point, but this is a discussion for another day.
Some of what you describes sounds a bit like Guillain-Barré Syndrome, but there are some more idiosyncratic elements. Either way, I hope your daughter is safe and feeling better.
My point here is not to be argumentative, but I really do feel that as a physician I have a duty to point out that the overwhelming majority of available data suggests that routine vaccines for common childhood illnesses (those recommended by the CDC and NSH) are safe and effective. Clearly, sometimes people have adverse side-effects, but the data support that the risk of a bad outcome is worse without the vaccine than with. Either decision has consequences.
How do you know it's unusual if the symptoms in question haven't been studied ? If there's no study, all you have is anecdotal evidence. It could be happening all the time, perhaps to a lesser degree.
edit: dear mr. downmodder. I appreciate your response ! I understand the rationale of doctors who shrug off what their patients tell them much better now, thanks, and I now have a deeper respect for their wisdom when they tell me my symptoms are all in my head or something similar.
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/side-effects.htm
The approximate odds of having a specific reaction, are listed. Seizure (jerking or staring) are listed as 1 in 3000 .
Bottom line: vaccines are good for society but fault lines occur because some vaccines are not always good for individuals, however the MMR vaccine has been found completly safe.
Nothing is completely safe. NOTHING. However, when something is safe for the vast majority of people and there's no demonstrable correlation between using it and detrimental effects (and if there is such a correlation but the net detrimental effects are outweighed by the benefits), then it doesn't matter that it's not completely safe.
A one-in-a-million coincidence happens 7,000 times in the world's population. There will always be anecdotes, correlation doesn't prove causation.
Which country is this in?
I don't really buy that the pharma corps would print a huge list of negative side-effects without any causality demonstrated unless of course it's to hide the known side-effects by making it all appear absurd ...?
Is it encouraging to know that the reported negative side-effects weren't even investigated enough to establish if they were likely to be caused by the drugs taken? My instinct is that this is a very bad thing.
If this is true they're basically saying we get lots of reports from patients who've taken this and get side-effects that they report and that medical professionals then collate and report to us but we can't be bothered to look and see if there's any credence to those reports.
Something seems wrong here.
Why not? It's likely a governmental requirement.
I guess I imagine that as in my country the pharmas managed to get a special extension to patent terms just for themselves and no other industry that they have enough sway with government to push it so they at least only publish proven side-effects.
Why would gov make this a requirement, that's part of my question?
This sounds like if someone gets run over wearing support stockings the support stockings have a document with them saying "may cause you to be hit by a car". This is strictly true but not helpful and the causal connection is decidedly tenuous.
seizure occurrence for MMR is listed as 1 in 3000; mild fever (1 in 6), rash (1 in 20), temporary stiffness in joints (up to 1 in 4) , etc.
Note this is MMR, not MMRV, which is listed separately, and for which seizure is listed as a 1 in 1250 occurrence ...
There are decades of research on this.
Measles kills. Polio cripples. Faking research to show a false result about vaccines doesn't protect children, it is tantamount to murdering children and adults by making them susceptible to dangerous diseases.
As you yourself admit, your daughter had a possible temporary reaction ("these symptoms she has never had before or since"). Temporary symptoms are hard to diagnose, especially in children who can't describe their symptoms. It was probably very scary but since I'm related to people who spent time in iron lungs because of polio, my family knows that there are other equally scary things. Watching your child succumb to a horrible easily preventable disease is probably pretty scary.
About the mercury:
The mercury in the preservative is ethylmercury not methylmercury, ethylmercury behaves differently and clears the body faster leading to a shorter period of exposure than methylmercury.
The bans in Japan and other countries weren't based on toxicity studies but on a precautionary approach and pressure from non-scientists. The bans may have been sensible or pointless but it doesn't prove things one way or the other.
And let's say this might have been a legit concern (it is proven that it isn't) for the sake of argument. Thimerisol hasn't been used in single-dose vaccines in the West for the last 7-10 years! It's only used as a stabilizing agent in multi-dose vials; Vials typically seen as part of low-budget vaccination programs in Africa and Asia.
There are potential side effects from the MMR vaccine. Autism is not one of them. A mountain of money and research effort has gone into this. There is no credible correlation.
He'll, the man who proposed this correlation (Wakefield) has been forbidden to practice in the UK because he was illegally taking spinal fluid sample from children without consent or a proper medical review of his study. He recklessly endangered the lives of children and caused them undue pain to try and prove his theory. He then lied about his data because it didn't show what he wanted it to show.
PLEASE let this crazy idea rest. Any rational person examining the evidence can only find overwhelming evidence to the contrary. If you want to claim that you're a responsible adult worthy of making reasonable decisions then you should demonstrate that you've examined even a few of the salient facts about the subject. My reading of your comments suggests you have not.
Which is inexcusable "bedside manner" and they should be held up for it.
But the bottom line is; yep, maybe it was caused by the MMR vaccine. Maybe not.
The real secret is that medicine, even tried and tested medicine, causes all sorts of random and unexpected results in a tiny amount of people - which is why those boxes list silly numbers of symptoms (i.e. I challenge you to find a medicine that doesn't potentially cause nausea :)). It's not so much that doctors are encouraged not to admit these side effects, it is that they know it is a product of random variance.
The actual problem is; you can't rationally explain this to people. The majority simply don't "get it" and it risks persisting fear over proven (and safe) medicines. So the question is; is it morally right or wrong to do so?
So... yeh it could have been a Vaccine. It could have been a random coincidence (that happens a LOT, particularly in young children when parents happen to be looking for a change). It could have been simply the fact someone stuck a needle in her triggering some medical phenomena (also relatively common).
The doctor should have told you all this, and they need a kicking for failing to be open with you :)
However:
My point is, examine any claims by government or big Pharm or sensational reports about autism very carefully and make up your own mind.
Is a point I wholeheartedly agree with.
Perhaps at the least, there is a UK website that you can report the event at (link is the US site): http://vaers.hhs.gov/index
Being careful to consider who paid for any studies you examine, as that is very important.
What did the doctors say was wrong with her and what do they think caused it?
If you only have one explanation, the natural tendency is to latch on to it. But there are probably millions or more different things that can go wrong with the human body and nobody knows them all.
"Retracted autism/vaccine study an 'elaborate fraud,' British journal finds (cnn.com)"
Look at this site and their forum for a broader perspective on vaccines and side-effects. Some highly qualified people from both sides of the fence express opinions here.
http://www.bnet.com/blog/drug-business/study-that-triggered-...
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health/andre-picard/medi...
http://consumerist.com/2011/01/study-linking-vaccines-to-aut...
Or did I miss something?
Even if JABS commissioned the research unless they instructed that fraud should be carried out I don't see the harm they did?
I'm surprised by the poor reporting in the start of the article, I expected careful balance and avoidance of sensationalism.
Three examples - reporting on the paper published in the Lancet 28 Feb 1998:
>“Onset of behavioural symptoms was associated by the parents with measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination in eight of the 12 children,” began the paper’s “findings.” Adopting these claims as fact,4 its “results” section added: “In these eight children the average interval from exposure to first behavioural symptoms was 6.3 days (range 1-14).”
I've not read the whole paper but there's nothing wrong with this is there? Adopting a claim that "parents associated [...]" as fact isn't wrong, or at least not provably by us. The association is apparently wrong but that doesn't speak to this result. The later result is not surprising as they would have been seeking incidences where there was a temporal association. I'm assuming that the paper didn't actually say there was an association (just a reported one) otherwise this article would have quoted that surely.
Two, the author questions how they would have had sight of the result before conducting the study. Fraud is possible, like Hubble's constant. But "knowing" the result is commonplace isn't it. One has a theory that one believes in enough to test, "this must be it, I think I'm really on to something".
Last is the questioning of the case histories, after talking to Mrs2:
>The next day, she complained to my editors. She said my methods “seemed more akin to the gutter press.” But I was perplexed by her story, since there was no case in the Lancet that matched her careful account.
Basically the author of the article is doing what has been so decried in comments here, they are trusting the (at least 5 year old) recollection of a layman vs the records of medical practitioners at the time. There is certainly more than one conclusion that fits including the possibility that Mrs2 gave a misreport to either the original study or Mr Deer. He also calls her account careful, but he describes her not remembering when the symptoms appeared being badgered into an answer.
Thankfully the article greatly improves as it goes on.
Parting shot:
>he and Barr explained in a confidential grant application to the UK government’s Legal Aid Board
Confidentiality isn't what it used to be!
Evidence against the conspiracy is only seen as further exposing the vastness and deviousness of the conspiracy.