BMJ: vaccines "study" was an elaborate fraud

Parent Cafe
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<p>I also “let” the kids get chickenpox…sent all 3 to the neighbors when her son had it. Fortunately most physicians are astute enough to understand if you want a slightly different protocol as long as the end result is compliant…at least mine was. I, too, was tested for Hep when I was pregnant and I did the Hep B series and A with all 3 kids when they were in middle school. The only one I had to get a waiver for was number 3 because by then it had become part of the school mandate. At that time they also had mandated chickenpox, but the kids had already had chickenpox. </p>

<p>I had a scary reaction to a flu shot about 18 years ago when they first started giving them and they were giving them free at work and have never had another one. I always wondered what that was all about so I never had the kids get flu shots. My H gets one every year and has never had a problem with the shots.</p>

<p>Vaccines are great. I totally believe in them. I think it’s great that most colleges require the kids to be up to date since dorming is a fertile ground for illness, but I also think that babies and young children that are not high risk can work with their physicians to put a schedule together that is reasonable rather than piling all those vacinne doses so close together. I had a conservative physician who also requested we wait awhile before giving the kids antibiotics for “colds”, who didn’t put tubes in the ears unless the kids were still getting ear infections after age 3. I remember sometimes being tense getting through the colds and the ear infections but I have amazingly healthy kids and I think his guidance and my resolution contributed to the kids building healthy immune systems.</p>

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<p>He was practicing medicine as to established standards of care, not really a conservative approach. The doctors who prescribe antibiotics for viral infections simply to placate parents are the ones deviating from SOP and are partly to blame for the rise in antibiotic resistance we say today. Good for your doc.</p>

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<p>Thermerosal free flu vaccines are available; one just has to know this and request them. I’m sure a lot of people aren’t aware of this, but they do exist.</p>

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<p>So I read the article referenced by TSdad in post #32. Here is the quote at the end of the article:</p>

<p>"Says Rick Rollens of Sacramento, the parent of an autistic child and one of the founders of the MIND Institute: “This is just another sad installment of the continued public lynching of Dr. Wakefield by the vaccine establishment and their lackeys in the public health community. The relentless personal and professional assaults on Dr. Wakefield will do nothing now or in the future to alter what we as parents of vaccine-induced autistic children already know: that is, vaccines can and do cause autism. No amount of orchestrated attacks by those who have a vested interest in defending the status quo on the historic and courageous work of Dr. Wakefield will change the truth.”<br>
Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times</p>

<p>And here is a comment on that article that makes sense to me:</p>

<p>“Why has no health official ever called for an independent study comparing the autism rates of children who’ve never been vaccinated with children who’ve received the recommended vaccines in the childhood schedule. One percent of U.S. kids have autism. If one percent of kids who’ve never been vaccinated are also autistic, the proof would be there for all to see. We seriously need to ask why no such study has ever been done.”</p>

<p>Anne Dachel
Media editor: Age of Autism </p>

<p>If vaccines aren’t causing this epidemic, it’s time to figure out what is. Anyone who ridicules parents and their “findings” on what might be causing this should be banished.</p>

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<p>This is the one vaccine that troubles me. Chickenpox is a more serious disease in adults than children, so the fact that efficacy decreases as people get older is a concern. My own kids got the shots in late childhood because somehow, despite multiple exposures, they never managed to get the disease. But I make a point of telling them to tell their physicians that they had the shots – just in case more boosters are required later.</p>

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<p>So I read the article on Jenny McCarthy in post #34 by limabeans who called Jenny a fraud. I am just stunned that a mother of a neurologically impaired baby who couldn’t talk, make eye contact or friends, who received a diagnosis of autism by her doc, who is now informed that this is another condition with a fancy name and all the same symptoms but this one may be relapsing remitting (oy, ok so that’s why he’s better?, nothing to do with this mother’s work - except have you read her book? Shut up (yes) until you have, please; how ridiculously convenient) is being pilloried and labeled a fraud. </p>

<p>Are you kidding me? Have you worked with any of these gorgeous beautiful children who are so awfully tragically impaired? Jenny McCarthy has done a ton to bring attention to this societal problem and to try to help figure out what is going on.</p>

<p>A quote from the article:</p>

<p>"A new article in Time magazine — which Jenny was interviewed for — suggests Evan suffers from Landau-Kleffner syndrome, “a rare childhood neurological disorder that can also result in speech impairment and possible long-term neurological damage.”</p>

<p>Many applaud Jenny, who has never stopped fighting to help her son since his autism diagnosis in 2005. Others, like the Center of Disease Control, say her claims about immunizations make her “a menace to public health.”</p>

<p>Jenny talks about her son’s progress saying, “Evan couldn’t talk — now he talks. Evan couldn’t make eye contact — now he makes eye contact. Evan was anti-social — now he makes friends. It was amazing to watch … when something didn’t work for Evan, I didn’t stop. I stopped that treatment, but I didn’t stop.”</p>

<p>And she is also reversing her initial position that the MMR shots caused Evan’s autism. "</p>

<p>I give her a world of credit for modifying her position based on new information. She has info about her son’s condition she didn’t have before. (Would she have gotten this info if she were a garden variety mom of a can’t speak, make eyecontact, make friends kid?) She has modified her position on shots due to the Wakefield study being called into question. For this you call her a fraud? </p>

<p>Got any better ideas? Seriously, somebody please figure this one out. Something is going on.</p>

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<p>I really wish the chickenpox vaccine had been around when my kids were small. I missed four weeks of work due to chicken pox. I caught it from a client’s kids and was sick as a dog for 2 weeks. The minute I got better my kid got it from me.</p>

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<p>I don’t know much about more that the average person about the whole supposed autism-vaccine link so I acknowledge I could be speaking out of turn here but my understanding is that the Wakefield Study was the only one to ever link the two. If that is the case, why in the world, would someone like Rick Rollens be defending Dr. Wakefield now? I would be calling for his head on a platter. I don’t get it. I get that parents of autistic children struggle every single day for answers and they deserve our full support and they have my utmost respect but I guess I don’t understand why it’s so hard to accept that vaccinations may not be the culprit. We don’t understand the genesis of lots of life-altering and life-threatening diseases. My husband has MS, a disease that actually more prevalent that autism (depending upon the stats - these things are often imprecise). No one knows the cause and there is no cure. There are numerous studies that loosely correlate different possible causes but nothing definitive. There are people in the medical community (particularly in the ‘alternative medicine’ community) that claim it’s linked to mercury fillings, gluten, a conspiracy theory and an abundance of other thing that have never been definitely proven. My husband and I don’t spend a lot of time looking for the cause but rather looking for possible solutions. People are always trying to get him to try all sorts of bizarre treatments and I always research them and have never found any substance to any of them. </p>

<p>IMHO, just because one researcher came up with a correlation doesn’t make it the gospel. </p>

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<p>Makes absolute sense. I hope someone does this and puts the whole vaccine-autism link to rest (or proves there is a link). I’m glad the whole vaccine-autism link didn’t come up until after my son had received his vaccinations. It would be stressful to have to make that decision after all the publicity on autism.</p>

<p>My hats off to all those parents who are struggling with this. You never really understand how hard it is to be on the other side until you or your family member is dealing with a life-altering disease, particularly one with no known cause or cure. We live daily with the knowledge that tomorrow my husband could wake up with severe visual impairment or in a wheelchair with little to no warning. It’s scary.</p>

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<p>“why in the world, would someone like Rick Rollens be defending Dr. Wakefield now?”</p>

<p>If you google around and read some of the tons of stuff about Dr. Wakefield’s work you find that he is one of the few doc’s who really listened to parents in depth, noted the correlation of autism with bad bad stomache / digestive difficulty and didn’t poo poo it (pun intended) and/or ridicule parents from a position of overarching authority. He listened. He honored their experience. He tried to follow up on their clues. He thought he found something. He has gone into great detail to tease out whether there is something genetically linking folks sensitive to chicken pox / measles and the vaccines. There are family histories of bad reactions (eg., death) from measles and/or chicken pox and then a bad rx to the vaccines. He has done a LOT of work. Families who have worked with him have been treated like cosleuths on a hunt for the truth.</p>

<p><a href=“http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/opinion/mailbag/article_4f770a06-1b3b-11e0-813e-001cc4c03286.html[/url]”>http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/opinion/mailbag/article_4f770a06-1b3b-11e0-813e-001cc4c03286.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>had you received a blood transfusion? That was a major route of transmission before they began testing blood for it.</p>

<p>No blood transfusions ever, & while I had been tested during my pregnancies for Hep A,B, non A,nonB, and other fluid transmitted diseases, I have a pretty boring life. ( substances wise)
:wink:
I’m not a carrier, I just have the antibodies.
I don’t even remember getting sick!
I do know that Hep lives much longer on surfaces than HIV, so I guess it could be picked up anywhere.</p>

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<p>Ah. That explains a lot. Thanks for sharing that. I hope someone can get to the bottom of this. I feel for these families. It must be blood-boiling to hear these accusations against him. </p>

<p>It amazes me how much the medical community can’t explain or doesn’t know. We like to think we are so medically advanced but the reality is there is still much to learn. Other than my husband’s MS, we have been truly fortunate health-wise. But I have several friends and family members who suffer from a wide variety of symptoms that are unexplained. I listen to their struggles to find relief, to find answers and not be summarily dismissed by their physicians. It’s frustrating. </p>

<p>The truth is we are only scratching the surface in terms of medical knowledge and since we have continuously introducing chemicals into our food supply, our bodies and the environment, in the name of profit, the waters get more and more muddied. I fear we are digging ourselves deeper into a hole, not the other way around. On top of that, many of the drug studies and a lot of the medical research out there is suspect because of their funding sources and/or lack of quality control. I just read a chilling article in Vanity Fair about how most clinical trials are being conducted outside the US with little oversight. Truly frightening.</p>

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<p>Haven’t you heard? Giving birth qualifies you as a pediatrician!</p>

<p>A quick google scholar search shows that there are a mountain of studies comparing autism rates in vaccinated and unvaccinated children for every vaccine given, and finding that the rates are THE SAME between the two groups.</p>

<p>The anti-vaccine movement is in the same boat with the flat-earthers and the birther movement as far as their willful ignorance. The pseudoscience behind the movement has diverted funding and research time from useful studies to find the real reasons behind autism (other than improved diagnosis, i.e. people formerly classified as mentally ■■■■■■■■ are now considered autistic.)</p>

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<p>The anti-vaccine movement is in the same boat with the flat-earthers and the birther movement as far as their willful ignorance.</p>

<p>I disagree.
Unless you give equal scorn to those who use $$$$$ as their motivation, and couch it under the guise of “health care”</p>

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[Ethical</a> Concerns Over Whooping Cough Vaccine | KPBS.org](<a href=“http://www.kpbs.org/news/2010/dec/15/whooping-cough-experts-rely-vaccine-companies-mone/]Ethical”>Ethical Concerns Over Whooping Cough Vaccine | KPBS Public Media)</p>

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<p>Not all of the journal articles are free, but you can pick and choose any of them:</p>

<p>[autism</a> in unvaccinated children - Google Scholar](<a href=“Google Scholar”>Google Scholar)</p>

<p>As for finding a epidemiological study with an ENTIRE population, they don’t exist on any topic in medical literature, and never have. Even the US. census doesn’t go to every house. We extrapolate and control for as many variables as possible. It’s possible a meta-analysis of all of the vaccine studies comes out in the next few years that combines the data from all of the smaller studies. The demands of the prior poster are unrealistic and don’t reflect how the scientific process works.</p>

<p>In turn, I would like to see any study besides Wakefield’s that supports the opposite view. Hint: It doesn’t exist.</p>

<p>My speculation (I’m not going to do a literature search to shoot down each one of your questions) from my medical training and independent research (so I can better debate people on the topic) is that the rates are on the rise because:</p>

<p>1) Many more children on the spectrum, e.g. asperger’s children and similar developmental disorders, are counted in the autism data. That doesn’t mean that there is a sky-high number of new autism cases.</p>

<p>2) Many children that would have been diagnosed with mental retardation and learning disabilities in an earlier generation are now (properly) diagnosed with an autism disorder. In fact, the number of mental retardation diagnoses in the last several years has been going down commensurate with the increase in autism: [CBC</a> News - Health - Rise in autism rate misleading, study says](<a href=“http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2006/04/03/autism-children-rate-20060403.html]CBC”>http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2006/04/03/autism-children-rate-20060403.html)</p>

<p>3) Thimerosol was banned in many European countries in the 1980’s yet autism rates continued to rise. Other than the above reasons, I’m not sure what else could be contributing to the rise in rates around the world, given drastically different diet and public health measures in disparate countries. But continuing on the anti-vaccine bandwagon is beating a dead horse and a waste of resources.</p>

<p>4) The best treatment for autism so far has been early diagnosis and intensive therapy. It’s a developmental disorder, and the nervous system is basically a use-it-or-lose-it type system in childhood. The premise is similar to forcing a child with a lazy eye to wear an eye patch over their good eye to force the deviant eye to develop normally. The problem with this is that individual therapy is quite expensive and not always widely available.</p>

<p>5) The trenches: Why yes, in the course of my medical training, I have put in a great deal of time at St. Louis’s children’s hospital, and I can match you or anyone else anecdote for anecdote. And when our random stories cancel each other out, I still can fall back on empiric data.</p>

<p>6) I mostly do believe it is an improved diagnosis. I also believe people are fearful and paying attention to this issue, which leads to them noticing it more often. If you look for something hard enough, you’re likely to find it, whether it’s there or not.</p>

<p>It’s not good to go through life being unreasonably afraid of something. And especially of the wrong thing.</p>

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<p>Emerald- and those companies are probably working on a more effective version of the pertussis vaccine, so when they perfect it, they can make a profit from it. That doesn’t mean that the existing pertussis vaccine is bad. And any recently trained doctor or one that has been keeping up with the data (as they all should) knows that the childhood vaccine’s protection tends to wane in late adolescence/early adulthood. You get boosters for other vaccines as well. Recommended policy just hasn’t caught up with the numbers on this particular microbe.</p>

<p>And profit and public health are not mutually exclusive.</p>

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<p>Son of Opie,</p>

<p>You provide a lot of good information; thank you. However your tone makes me want to run screaming from your presence. I would not want you as my doc.</p>

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<p>Fair enough- then again, I get to be a little bit more aggressive on the internet than I would be with an individual patient. </p>

<p>My problem with the idea that there are two points of view to every issue, and the truth is somewhere in the middle is that sometimes one view is correct, and the other view is so far out there that the midpoint between the two still ends up being quite a ways from the truth.</p>

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<p>And profit and public health are not mutually exclusive.</p>

<p>[Apparently not](<a href=“Henrietta Lacks's cells were priceless, but her family can't afford a hospital | Ethics | The Guardian”>http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/04/henrietta-lacks-cancer-cells&lt;/a&gt;)</p>

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<p>These studies HAVE been done, repeatedly. They’ve been published in the medical literature and reported in the press. The rates of autism have consistently been shown to be the same in vaccinated and unvaccinated children. The proof IS there for all to see, but the True Believers don’t want to see it. They can’t bring themselves to let go of what they for so long have been blaming for their childrens’ misfortune.</p>

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<p>^That’s what I meant to say, but Coureur was much more diplomatic about it.</p>