Orac is the nom de blog of a (not so) humble pseudonymous surgeon/scientist with an ego just big enough to delude himself that someone, somewhere might actually give a rodent's posterior about his miscellaneous verbal meanderings, but just barely small enough to admit to himself that few will. (Continued 
Thanks, Andrew Wakefield.
Thanks for bringing the measles back to the U.K. with your shoddy, litigation- and profit-driven pseudoscience:
Fourteen years after the local transmission of measles was halted in the United Kingdom (UK), the disease has once again become endemic, according to the Health Protection Agency (HPA), the public health body of England and Wales. In an update on measles cases in its weekly bulletin last week, the agency stated that, as a result of almost a decade of low mumps-measles-rubella (MMR) vaccination coverage across the UK, 'the number of children susceptible to measles is now sufficient to support the continuous spread of measles' [1].In an earlier update, the HPA reported that all recent indigenously-acquired cases with a genotype in England and Wales had been found to have the same D4 sequence (MVs/Enfield.GBR/14.07), a genotype first identified in April 2007 and which is now endemic in the UK [2]. In May, a 17-year-old with underlying congenital immunodeficiency died of acute measles infection, the first such fatality in the UK since 2006. The strain was also MVs/Enfield.GBR/14.07, genotype D4. The total number of confirmed measles cases in England and Wales so far this year is 461. In Scotland, there have been 68 cases of measles reported in 2008, of which 51 have been laboratory-confirmed [3]. All of the cases in Scotland were either not immunised or of unknown immunisation status. Only two of the cases were imported from abroad, both from Pakistan.
Unfortunately, with useful celebrity idiots Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey being used by Generation Rescue and other antivaccination groups to fire up antivaccinationists in the United States, our fair shores could soon be in similar straits. We've already seen signs of resurgences of measles in the form of localized outbreaks in areas with low levels of vaccination. I fear that a decade from now (or even less) we in the U.S. will likely be "thanking" Jenny McCarthy for the measles too.
Of course, by then she'll probably be back into "Indigo Child" woo.
Medicine & Health
Comments
I almost died of measles at age 7. I may have made medical history in surviving a high fever (107 F) for as long as I did during it. No child should ever have to go through any disease with such terrible sequelae. It ain't a scraped knee and it ain't the common cold.
Posted by: BB | July 8, 2008 3:02 PM
What is striking to me, at least, is the rapidity of the resurgence of measles and just how virulent it is. I am old enough to remember having measles, and wishing I did not. I had, what my doctor who made housecalls said, was a 'mild case'. I surely would not want to have a more serious case.
With AIDS as widespread as it is, I am surprised that there have not been more deaths.
Wakefield should fry.
Posted by: TheProbe | July 8, 2008 3:37 PM
As a child in the 50s, I remember clinics were full to bursting with children qeueing up to be vaccinated against all these "harmless childhood infections"; parents then could clearly remember when these diseases killed children in their neighbourhoods and their families, so they welcomed vaccinations. I don't remember hearing of any parent who refused to let their child have their 'jabs'.
It's awful to think that it's going to take some of the kids of these anti-vax nuts dying or being permanently injured by measles, rubella, etc. before the tide turns again.
Posted by: sophia8 | July 8, 2008 4:13 PM
Wakefield and his co-authors suggested a potential link that needed more investigation. period. If you can't handle someone investigating autism, even if it looks at vaccines, you do not belong in research.
I don't care how bad the measles is-this research should (and will) continue. You don't stop researching because you don't like the possibility of what it may find. I have a severely affected autistic child, and if you were in my shoes, you might agree that this research is important and no topic is too holy to be touched.
You quote someone dying with an immune deficiency because of measles. Guess how many people die because of their autism every year, drowning, getting lost, or getting hit by cars because they have little awareness? A lot. Several in the past couple weeks alone. AUTISM KILLS TOO. A little 6 year old girl with autism died in a swimming pool over memorial day weekend. A 9-yr old boy drowned this week. Autism is a serious disease. Research is needed. IF measles or any other vaccine is involved, I for one want to know.
What is needed most for effective research is a way to determine which kids have underlying immunological differences, a biomarker. With a biomarker, you can segment your population to test the effect on vaccines. It is well established that unusual immune system behavior accompanies autism (go to pubmed and type autism and immune). No biomarker is known, but certain cytokines may be feasible.
It is possible that a very small subset of children could have a reaction to vaccines that could trigger autism. We need to do more research to identify this group if it exists. The studies done to date do not have the power to find a relationship between vaccines and autism if a vulnerable subgroup of children exists; hence, the question remains unanswered, for measles and other vaccines including DTaP. How dumb will you feel if a small group of children is revealed to have a sensitivity to vaccines unlike other 99+% of all children? This is possible, and has not been determined by any study. I find your comments and your lack of appreciation of the seriousness and difficulty of autism to be disgusting and appauling.
Posted by: Tracy Stewart | July 8, 2008 4:21 PM
In some areas, the problem is even worse than stated. Hackney & City PCT reported 300 cases in only a few months last year. Hackney has a population that's absolutely ripe for problems: non-English-speaking immigrants, a yummy-mummy community, and the Orthodox Jews in Stamford Hill (for some reason, opposition to vaccines is a belief of some Orthodox sects; measles statistics in Israel are poor because of this).
Posted by: Alexis | July 8, 2008 4:21 PM
Last heard Andrew Wakefield was doing research in the US. If you offer him enough you might be able to persuade him to come to your medical school to be the director of your department of Woo (integrated medicine). If you don't have such a department I'm sure he could set one up. He certainly knows how to do the research. He might even be able to get a bigger grant than yours.
Try not to throw up on your shoes!
Posted by: DavidCT | July 8, 2008 4:25 PM
I wonder how many of those parents have been to the funeral of a child who died from measles? When I was 10, seeing the body of my little sister's friend lying in a casket was pretty formative. She died of measles encephalitis.
You can be sure my children have been vaccinated.
Posted by: Michelle | July 8, 2008 4:26 PM
Read the link in the post. Wakefield's research was finance- and litigation-driven. He had a design for a competing vaccine, and trial lawyers paid him £435,643 plus £3,910 expenses. His work for litigants started two years before he published his execrable Lancet paper. Moreover, evidence and testimony presented during the Autism Omnibus demonstrated without a doubt just how incompetent Wakefield was. His "results," such as they were, were all false positives due to plasmid contamination.
Indeed, his work was so bad that most of the authors asked to have their names removed from the paper.
Posted by: Orac | July 8, 2008 4:32 PM
Tracy Stewart says "Wakefield and his co-authors suggested a potential link that needed more investigation."
They did no such thing. Wakefield's sloppy lab results (which he was, by the way, informed about before publication) wrongly showed the presence of measles virus in the guts of autistic children. The sloppy lab work (the whole lab was contaminated) meant the results were bogus.
So there was NO ACTUAL REASON to suspect the MMR at all, and Wakefield's whole "theory" was crap from the get-go.
Posted by: Dave | July 8, 2008 4:37 PM
Tracy Stewart Said: "You don't stop researching because you don't like the possibility of what it may find. I have a severely affected autistic child, and if you were in my shoes, you might agree that this research is important and no topic is too holy to be touched."
Tracy, it's because I am a parent of autistic children that I am against spending more time and money looking for measles in the guts of autistic children. I don't need to try on your shoes to agree that "no topic is too holy to be touched" but Wakefield has been wrong about nearly every claim he has made.
Don't assume that Orac or his readers are unable to appreciate and understand the difficulties associated with raising autistic children. Some of those difficulties are compounded by myths like those you perpetuate.
Posted by: notmercury | July 8, 2008 4:37 PM
The endemic strain of measles virus is called, MVs/Enfield.GBR/14.07.
Do you suppose they could rename it to something like MVs/Thx2/Wakefield ?
Posted by: Ms. Clark | July 8, 2008 4:45 PM
Please, please, please ignore the uneducated trolls.
Ms. Stewart, we are more inclined to trust researchers than we are inclined to trust mothers who probably do not know shit about what actually happens in people with autism. Please keep your dumb trollery to yourself.
Posted by: Katharine | July 8, 2008 5:02 PM
Oh, wow... Tracy Stewart... here is a newsflash for you:
The leading cause of death in ALL children between the ages of 1 and 24 (sorry, that last one is the one that includes 15 year old) are accidents. Mostly motor vehicle accidents. See the tables at http://www.disastercenter.com/cdc/ ...
1-4 years All causes 5,947 38.3/100000
1 Accidents and adverse effects 2,155 13.9/100000
. . . Motor vehicle accidents 834 5.4
. . . All other accidents and adverse effects 1,321 8.5/100000
5-14 years All causes 8,465 22/100000
1 Accidents and adverse effects 3,521 9.2/100000
. . . Motor vehicle accidents 2,002 5.2/100000
. . . All other accidents and adverse effects 1,519 4/100000
15-24 years All causes 32,699 90.3/100000
1 Accidents and adverse effects 13,872 38.3/100000
. . . Motor vehicle accidents 10,624 29.3/100000
. . . All other accidents and adverse effects 3,248 9/100000
Now the death rate for measles from the last major outbreak in the USA was over 1 in 1000 (from J Infect Dis. 2004 May 1;189 Suppl 1:S69-77. Acute measles mortality in the United States, 1987-2002.Gindler J, Tinker S, Markowitz L, Atkinson W, Dales L, Papania MJ.) Which of those accidental death rates come near that?
Why are you not crying about more research into motor vehicle safety?
Posted by: HCN | July 8, 2008 5:07 PM
By the way, this appears to be Tracy Stewart:
http://www.ageofautism.com/2008/04/the-vaccine-saf.html
http://www.ageofautism.com/2008/04/florida-autism.html
Yep, she's had her writing published in AoA. Her ignorance regarding the utter incompetence and dishonesty of Andrew Wakefield appears to be explained.
Posted by: Orac | July 8, 2008 5:11 PM
Let's suppose the MMR is harmless (I don't think it is, but let's go with that premise for the sake of argument). If parents are concerned, they should have the option to break up the vaccines - afterall parents should have some say in the medical treatment their children receive. So now Merck has announced they are not making any single does Mumps vaccines until 2009 (news released today). So parent who want to vaccinate, but want to try to space out the vaccines and possibly separate them (erring on the side of caution) are now being told NO by the vaccine manufacturer (who also by the way makes the MMR). So now the pharmaceutical companies dictate how we immunize our kids???? Does anyone believe this will help improve the vaccination rates? It is disgusting.
Posted by: liz | July 8, 2008 5:18 PM
For clarity's sake,the previous liz is not me.
Posted by: Liz Ditz | July 8, 2008 5:49 PM
Several in the past couple weeks alone. AUTISM KILLS TOO. A little 6 year old girl with autism died in a swimming pool over memorial day weekend. A 9-yr old boy drowned this week."
That's not autism that kills. That's bad parenting. Regardless of the condition, children need to be kept away from pools without supervision. And if their children have a disability, there is absolutely no excuse!
Posted by: RJ | July 8, 2008 5:55 PM
My son is vaccine injured and he has Severe autism. He has Autistic Enterocolitis as described by Dr. Andrew Wakefield. He had the Jab on his first birthday and developed severe digestive inflammation, that he lives with, till this day.
We have become a society who worship vaccines and allow pharmaceutical companies to bully and scare us us into vaccinating our kids, with a one size fits all serious of shots, full of dangerous toxins, without screening each child and make sure their immune system can handle the assault.
For us, the ones on the side of Dr. Wakefield, the parents of the vaccine injured, the mercury moms as they call us. We are left to pick up the pieces of what is left of our affected children.It would appear that some would like to silence us-well forget it! We will not be silenced and we will not go quietly into the night. Our children are not collateral damage.
Let them attack Dr. Wakefield all they want, after all, they are just scared and they know that they can't stop us.
Posted by: Zurama | July 8, 2008 5:59 PM
And I disavow her sentiments
From the UK Daily Mail
Parents who choose to reject the MMR jab could soon have no alternative as the single injection vaccine for mumps may soon run out in the UK.
British clinics say current stocks are running low and have been told they will not receive new supplies for up to 12 months after the world's only supplier of the medicine halted production.
The drug, Mumpsvax, is used to vaccinate children whose parents opt out of the triple vaccination MMR jab which has faced controversy over suspected links to autism and bowel disease.
But yesterday it was revealed that the world's only Mumpsvax manufacturer, American pharmaceutical giant Merck, has ceased production of the drug until at least 2009.
The firm - which also supplies the UK with the MMR vaccine - has stopped making the drug twice before, but never for more than three months at a time.
From the Telegraph
The American company which makes the single mumps vaccination, Mumpsvax, has discontinued production until early next year.
The company says there is not enough demand for a single vaccination and that most people choose to take the triple MMR vaccine, for measles, mumps and rubella.
[snip]
Because Mumpsvax is not prescribed by the NHS there are no official figures for how many patients opt to use it every year.
However, a spokesman for the Department of Health said that only a small number of patients chose single vaccines instead of MMR.
Posted by: Liz Ditz | July 8, 2008 5:59 PM
"So parent who want to vaccinate, but want to try to space out the vaccines and possibly separate them (erring on the side of caution) are now being told NO by the vaccine manufacturer (who also by the way makes the MMR). So now the pharmaceutical companies dictate how we immunize our kids???? "
1. Should Ford be held accountable because Ford no longer makes purple trucks, because I believe that purple trucks are involved in fewer accidents and I want to have fewer accidents?
2. If only a small percentage of people are asking for divided vaccines and it is no longer cost effective for a private company to make the divided vaccines, why should they foot the bill to accommodate a few people? Are you willing to pay, out of your pocket, upwards of $250/dose for what is a specialty item? And, of course, this is all based on the (unsubstantiated) premise that the divided vaccine schedule is "safer".
BTW, how many antigens do you think you were exposed today from eating, drinking, breathing, and touching (and whatever else you and your significant other may do)? I bet it is at least 100 fold fewer than what is found in a multi-valent vaccine. Since when did the natural environment just become sterile and bacteria, fungi, and viruses just disappear? This makes no sense.
Posted by: RJ | July 8, 2008 6:05 PM
my poor son was vaccinated and not only is he autistic he has measles in his gut!He has paid a big price for other kids herd immunity, I hope they are enjoying it because he is miserable!
Posted by: alison Macneil | July 8, 2008 6:05 PM
Sorry....100 fold MORE than in a multi-valent vaccine. Orac, how about an edit function?
See, these idiots get me all riled up!
Posted by: RJ | July 8, 2008 6:11 PM
How do you know he has "measles in his gut"?
What kind of test does that involve?
Considering that is was brought out in the Federal Autism Omnibus Court that the tests Wakefield claimed found measles were flawed, contaminated and he ignored being told this (see http://rationalwiki.com/wiki/Autism_omnibus_trial#Measles_detected_in_the_GI_tract )... How do you really know?
What real evidence do any of you have, other than Wakefield, that MMR has anything to do with autism? Why didn't autism start increasing in 1971 when it was introduced in the USA? What peer reviewed papers replicate Wakefield's withdrawn Lancet paper? What peer reviewed paper even show the existence of this thing called "Autistic Enterocolitis?"
Posted by: HCN | July 8, 2008 6:14 PM
The autism/vaccine debate has already been settled. The coverup has been documented.
"the number of dose related relationships [between mercury and autism] are linear and statistically significant. You can play with this all you want. They are linear. They are statistically significant." - Dr. William Weil, American Academy of Pediatrics. Simpsonwood, GA, June 7, 2000
See the rest of the breathtaking smoking-gun admissions from government scientists and pharma representatives:
http://putchildrenfirst.org/media/2.6.pdf
Posted by: jk | July 8, 2008 6:23 PM
As a father of both an autistic child and a typical child I can unequivocally state that give me measles any day of the week over autism. A disease like the measles with a mortality rate of approx. 1 in 5,000 contracted cases (from the CDC) which in the vast majority of cases is a temporary condition vs a lifelong heartbreaking condition like autism is a no-brainer. Now I am not saying that the two or correlated and nobody knows for sure. But if you think that vaccines are anything but a money machine scare tactic from big pharma you are living a fantasy. The companies that manufacture these items don't give a rat's ass about you or me, they just found out a way to extract more than twice the revenue than would be generated from treatment of the disease in the form of a vaccine for the disease. (From Harvard University's Bureau of Economic Research) Also the politics of the research into a link between autism and vaccines are mind-blowing. The study done by the NIH that stated that there is no casual link between autism and vaccines that the CDC and IOM loves to point to was not the initial way that research read. The initial report showed that there was insufficient evidence to conclude either way based on their epidemiological lookback test. However, between the time of this report and the final report a $2 million contribution came to the NIH from the CDC and then the revised report was released. The NIH said this "donation" in no way altered their report's conclusion. (transcripts of e-mails and reports are on safeminds.org) Obviously I am in no position to know for sure if there is a link between vaccines and autism but I do know that the gov't conceded that vaccines exacerbated Hannah Poling's "autism-like symptoms" and that it was blamed on an underlying mitochondrial dysfunction and that up to 2% (1 in 50) may have a similar mitochondrial dysfunction. With current autism rates at 1 in 150 (.67%) and 1 in 88 boys (1.14%) and climbing every year this has to be further explored.
Posted by: K-Bob | July 8, 2008 6:24 PM
@Zurama: "they are just scared" -- the only thing that "we" are scared of in this issue is the damage to others that people like youself will cause. That's a big difference compared to what you are implying.
The measles cases Orac are pointing out are a fine example of just this damage.
Posted by: Heraclides | July 8, 2008 6:37 PM
How dare you call a mother ignorant. What is ignorant is comments made by people who do not live with autism everyday. A mother knows her child better than any stupid pediatrician. To them, a child falling off the growth chart is soooooo normal. I mean, hey, what is the growth chart for, just a souvenir to look back on.
"Oh yeah, I remember when Tommy weighed 22 lbs at six years old. That was normal for him. He gained one pound since getting his MMR shot at 18months."
I guarantee you that any child raised by their mother is smarter than any child of a MD mom raised by a daycare. Now who is the more intelligent woman? And the least SELFISH.
Posted by: Anna Ireland | July 8, 2008 6:47 PM
"Mercury is hazardous to humans. Its use in medicinal products is undesirable, unnecessary and should be minimized or eliminated entirely. Manufacturers of vaccines and thimerosal, (an ethlymercury compound used in vaccines), have never conducted adequate testing on the safety of thimerosal. The FDA has never required manufacturers to conduct adequate safety testing on thimerosal and ethlymercury compounds...Thimerosal used as a preservative in vaccines is likely related to the autism epidemic. This epidemic in all probability may have been prevented or curtailed had the FDA not been asleep at the switch regarding injected thimerosal and the sharp rise of infant exposure to this known neurotoxin. Our public health agencies' failure to act is indicative of institutional malfeasance for self-protection and misplaced protectionism of the pharmaceutical industry" - Mercury In Medicine: Taking Unnecessary Risks, Committee On Government Reform, U.S. House of Representatives, May 21, 2003
Posted by: jk | July 8, 2008 6:56 PM
I don't know if you're referring to me or not, but if you're referring to my characterization of of Jenny McCarthy as a "useful idiot," I wrote that because Jenny McCarthy is a useful idiot being used by antivaccinationist activists. She's ignorant. Dangerously, arrogantly, stubbornly, incredibly ignorant. She's utterly clueless. She has no idea what she's talking about. None. She knows nothing of how science works but thinks she does. The pseudoscientists of the antivaccination movement have stroked her ego so that she thinks she knows something about biology and medicine in order to use her.
I could go on, but here's a taste of McCarthy's malignant stupidity:
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2007/11/postholiday_the_stupid_it_burns_part_1_j.php
Posted by: Orac | July 8, 2008 7:11 PM
jk quotes a report from the House Committee on Government Reform in 2003. At that time, the chairman of that committee was none other than Dan Burton, who had a wee bit of an axe to grind about thimerosal and autism. Hardly an objective source. One of the nice things about the Democrats controlling the House these days is that we are no longer subjected to Burton's chairmanship and his hobby-horses.
Posted by: Dave | July 8, 2008 7:15 PM
"my poor son was vaccinated and not only is he autistic he has measles in his gut!"
Your son does not have measles in his gut. You've been lied to and that should make you angry.
"As a father of both an autistic child and a typical child I can unequivocally state that give me measles any day of the week over autism."
No one has to make a choice between autism or measles.
"How dare you call a mother ignorant. What is ignorant is comments made by people who do not live with autism everyday."
I live with autism everyday and statements like the above make you look ignorant, mother or not.
"Thimerosal used as a preservative in vaccines is likely related to the autism epidemic."
Not likely at all. Thimerosal gone, autism still here.
Posted by: notmercury | July 8, 2008 7:16 PM
It would appear that some would like to silence us-well forget it!
Can you provide evidence of this claim?
I do not believe anyone wants to silence you. But unless you have evidence of the plausibility of your claims, we're inclined to not want to listen to your ramblings.
Posted by: Joseph | July 8, 2008 7:16 PM
How do we know these "drownings and accidents" are not parent-inflicted? Maybe we should be checking into why/how there is a disproportionate death-by-drowning in autistic children.
Posted by: advosnob | July 8, 2008 7:25 PM
The study done by the NIH that stated that there is no casual link between autism and vaccines that the CDC and IOM loves to point to was not the initial way that research read. The initial report showed that there was insufficient evidence to conclude either way based on their epidemiological lookback test. However, between the time of this report and the final report a $2 million contribution came to the NIH from the CDC and then the revised report was released.
Link please. I hadn't heard this before and Google is not turning up anything.
Either way, if you're referring to Verstraeten et al., first of all, its conclusion was "neutral" in fact. Verstraeten et al. had its limitations.
People need to move beyond that. There was a much more rigorous follow-up, Thompson et al. (2007). They evaluated a portion of the children and looked at 100s of measures. They hired outside consultants and even SafeMinds participated. The results were completely consistent with the null hypothesis. There's a sister study underway that looks at autism specifically.
Posted by: Joseph | July 8, 2008 7:29 PM
This is why woo will ulitmately triumph: its adherents are unstoppable. Nothing can stand in their way or sway them from their purpose: not facts, not reason, not the good of their children. They are Nemesis.
Posted by: D. C. Sessions | July 8, 2008 7:29 PM
Maybe we should be checking into why/how there is a disproportionate death-by-drowning in autistic children.
Before we do that, I'd suggest checking if there's actually disproportionate drowning in autistic children. If you google it, it seems that 9,000 people drown every year in the US. Of those, at least many hundreds would have to be children.
Posted by: Joseph | July 8, 2008 7:34 PM
"Not likely at all. Thimerosal gone, autism still here."
Not exactly, it's still present in Rhogam and flu shots. In additon Thimerosal was banned in 2000 and offically declared as removed in 2002. The CDC measures autism rates at age 7. The vast majorty of childhood shots and autism diagnoses are received around or before age 2. We'll know for sure if the autism rates decrease over the next 2-3 years.
"the only thing that "we" are scared of in this issue is the damage to others that people like youself will cause"
If vaccines do their job and prevent you from getting this or any other "vaccine preventible" disease, why do you give a second look to what another person chooses to do? It's not like the disease has been buried underground and an unvaccinated person dug it up to cause a mass pandemic. The virus/bacteria has always still been around. If you trust the vaccine you have been given why do you have a fucking thing to worry about???
Posted by: K-Bob | July 8, 2008 7:34 PM
Lets be clear. It wasn't a "mistake" that lead Wakefield to claim he found measles vaccine virus in the gut, it was fraud plain and simple.
Wakefield was told before the paper was published by the man who used PCR and got positive results that they were all false positives. He knew they were false positives because he sequenced each one.
Wakefield knew full well that the PCR results were all false positives, and PCR is several orders of magnitude more sensitive and more precise than the immunological tests Wakefield did use.
It was fraud plain and simple for Wakefield to claim a positive result based on immunology when every single one of the more precise and more sensitive PCR results was negative.
Posted by: daedalus2u | July 8, 2008 7:38 PM
Thimerosal was banned in 2000 and offically declared as removed in 2002. The CDC measures autism rates at age 7. The vast majorty of childhood shots and autism diagnoses are received around or before age 2. We'll know for sure if the autism rates decrease over the next 2-3 years.
People have been using the "2-3 years" prediction since 2002 at least, and I think they'll continue to use it for some time to come. It's like a zombie hypothesis.
It's ridiculous to suppose that the only way to know if autism rates have dropped is to wait for the CDC's survey of 7 year olds. There are many other ways. See, for example, Schechter & Grether (2008) out of California.
Posted by: Joseph | July 8, 2008 7:43 PM
So, K-Bob, once another few years go by and autism rates still haven't dropped, what excuse will you make then so that you can go on blaming vaccines? By the way, thimerosal has been removed from Rhogam also. And if if it is still in flu vaccine (not entirely true, only some fluvax has it), the total exposure from one flu shot per year is still well below what would have been typical for children in the late 90s, yet autism rates are not dropping.
Start planning now so you can have your next round of explanations lined up when the current set have fallen flat. So far, my money is on blaming aluminum and other "toxins" in the vaccines. That seems to be a growth area just now.
Posted by: Dave | July 8, 2008 7:43 PM
Mr. K-Bob stated:
"If vaccines do their job and prevent you from getting this or any other "vaccine preventible" disease, why do you give a second look to what another person chooses to do? It's not like the disease has been buried underground and an unvaccinated person dug it up to cause a mass pandemic. The virus/bacteria has always still been around. If you trust the vaccine you have been given why do you have a fucking thing to worry about???"
Sir, your understanding of vaccinology is quite limited. Herd immunity has been gone into in depth on this website - a large percentage (usually 80-90%) of the population must be vaccinated against a certain pathogen in order for it to, for all intents and purposes, cease circulating in the overall population. If only 5% of the populution remains unvaccinated, they and the vaccinated folks are generally protected. However, when the herd immunity threshhold is broken (say 25% go unvaccinated) recirculation of the pathogen becomes a problem. Now, if only the unvaccinated were at risk in this case, then it would be a tolerable problem as they chose to assume the risk (although this leaves out the additional cost of treating the illness versus vaccinating in the first place, as well as the lack of say of children in the matter as to whether a skipping a painful jab is worth a case of mumps). In reality, though, a subset of the vaccinated population will also be susceptible - the vaccine doesn't "take" in everyone. Thus, your decision to not vaccinate directly impacts those who do.
I find it funny that the same people who decry the use of the MMR vaccine (too many antigens!) also are usually first in line to rail against the greed and perfidity of the pharma companies. Let's see, there are marked public health advantages of combining three attenuated viruses in one vaccine formulation. Public health authorities promoted this concept and the pharma companies produce it. If they were so greedy, why wouldn't they be pushing separate vaccines for all diseases? MMR-DPT - why not six shots instead of two? Hell, Merck can play on the fears already drummed up in the population by Wakefield and cronies with ease, put that Mumps-only vaccine back in production, and the dollars will roll in! I know looking for any consistence in conspiracy theories/woo is a fool's errand, but I still can't help but be amazed at the burning nonsense.
Posted by: Chuck Darwin | July 8, 2008 8:07 PM
Indeed.
Posted by: Orac | July 8, 2008 8:07 PM
I don't think that Andrew Wakefield deserves most of the credit for sowing undeserved doubt on the MMR vaccine. I would place most of the blame on the UK press, who blew the issue way out of proportion in order to sell newspapers and adverts. They could have reported things properly, but they choose to embrace Wakefield's claims and not do any real reporting. Please see here for an example.
Posted by: hardindr | July 8, 2008 8:08 PM
jk said :""Mercury is hazardous to humans. Its use in medicinal products is undesirable, unnecessary and should be minimized or eliminated entirely. Manufacturers of vaccines and thimerosal, (an ethlymercury compound used in vaccines), have never conducted adequate testing on the safety of thimerosal. ...."
K-Bob said "In additon Thimerosal was banned in 2000 and offically declared as removed in 2002. The CDC measures autism rates at age 7. The vast majorty of childhood shots and autism diagnoses are received around or before age 2. We'll know for sure if the autism rates decrease over the next 2-3 years...."
notmercury said ""Thimerosal used as a preservative in vaccines is likely related to the autism epidemic."
Not likely at all. Thimerosal gone, autism still here."
Just a reminder guys:
This is about measles, and the MMR vaccine. The MMR vaccine was approved for use in the USA in 1971. It is a live virus and has never contained thimerosal.
Some questions based on the above statements:
1) What evidence is there that autism increased in the USA starting in 1971?
2) What in the world does thimerosal have to do with the MMR?
... oh, and I still want to know how anyone knows that there is "measles in a kid's gut."
Posted by: HCN | July 8, 2008 9:25 PM
Not exactly on topic, because it's not MMR, but it is autism. From today's NYT (AP News): http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/health/AP-MED-Autism-Research.html
NO! NO! NO!
Posted by: Zscientist | July 8, 2008 9:25 PM
It's not any of the above that cause autism, it's lyme disease..........(cause I know I let my son play with ticks, and that's what happened to him)! What will they think of next?
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/113734.php
Posted by: perseveration nation | July 8, 2008 10:17 PM
So you're telling us that autism is markedly more common in Rh+ children of Rh- mothers, and also seasonal (mothers pregnant at a susceptible stage when flu-shot season came around.)
Those are both easy to check. Please do and get back to us with the numbers.
Posted by: D. C. Sessions | July 8, 2008 10:46 PM
This is really sad. Sort of makes you wonder about the logic behind the policy considerations, though. I was surprised to find that making vaccinations mandatory for school attendance is a controversial proposal rather than current policy in the UK. (Have there been any policy changes since that report?) It's a really simple way to solve the collective action problem that's occurring now. If the disease has already been basically eliminated, there's no incentive for an individual to get vaccinated, so the equilibrium outcome has some occasional incidences of the disease so that most people are still inclined to get immunized.
Posted by: thoughtcounts Z | July 8, 2008 11:19 PM
"As a father of both an autistic child and a typical child I can unequivocally state that give me measles any day of the week over autism. A disease like the measles with a mortality rate of approx. 1 in 5,000 contracted cases (from the CDC) which in the vast majority of cases is a temporary condition vs a lifelong heartbreaking condition like autism is a no-brainer."
About 1 in 4000 kids with measles get severe brain damage from the encephalitis.
Without vaccination the whole population is virtually guaranteed to get measles, so 1:1000 get encephalitis, with brain damage in a quarter of the cases. Frankly I'd rather not debate you on whether it's worse to have a child with brain damage or death, but let's agree that it's pretty bad either way.
This is before we consider the massive (and incredibly expensive) longitudinal studies which have been done which show no relationship between vaccination and autism.
Now we want more study of this "vaccine-autism" link. Every dollar spent on "vaccine-autism" is a dollar not spent on genetic and developmental studies, money not spent on early detection and intervention programs. The sort of research that might help your child and similar children.
Posted by: Patrick Caldon | July 8, 2008 11:50 PM
regarding Lyme Disease (one poster mentioned it), Lyme is a big factor in autism. Studies have shown abnormally large percentages of autistic youngers have Lyme, presumably passed on to them at birth from a parent.
Posted by: jk | July 8, 2008 11:58 PM
jk claims a connection between Lyme and autism. Interesting idea, so I went to PubMed -- and found exactly one article on the topic, and it was in Medical Hypotheses. Not exactly strong confirmation, is it?
Posted by: Dave | July 9, 2008 12:35 AM
Oh joy, the Lyme contingent is here. I had a fun foray into crazy when I discovered the woo associated with this disease. Good times.
Posted by: Liesl | July 9, 2008 12:38 AM
jk wrote:
regarding Lyme Disease (one poster mentioned it), Lyme is a big factor in autism. Studies have shown abnormally large percentages of autistic youngers have Lyme, presumably passed on to them at birth from a parent.
jk, this is a science blog. So we don't just babble on about "Lyme disease" and "studies have shown".
We define terms and cite studies, and elucidate the evidence.
As to the autism=Lyme disease hypothesis--there's exactly one paper indexed in PubMed:
Bransfield RC, Wulfman JS, Harvey WT, Usman AI.
The association between tick-borne infections, Lyme borreliosis and autism spectrum disorders.
Med Hypotheses. 2008;70(5):967-74. Epub 2007 Nov 5.
PMID: 17980971 [PubMed - in process]
Please note it was published in the fringe journal Medical Hypotheses. Various papers published in Medical Hypotheses, as well as the editorial approach of the journal, have been widely criticized for lack of scientific rigor -- indeed, its denial of the need of scientific rigor-- by (among others) Empirical Insanity, Neurocritic, the blog Denialism, Autism News Beat, Autism Street, Bad Science, and Anthony Cox's Black Triangle, to name the easier-to-find critiques.
Show me some real science on the autism-Borrelia burgdorferi infection hypothesis, and I'll pay it some mind. Until you have real science to show, stop spreading misinformation.
Posted by: Liz Ditz | July 9, 2008 12:50 AM
You can't rescue your beloved mercury whipping boy by pointing at the few vaccines that still use thimerosal. Neither of the vaccines you mention are universally administered. Many, many fewer people are receiving vaccines with thimerosal, and the small minority who receive any at all are receiving less. Fewer people receiving less mercury should mean a big reduction in the incidence of autism, if mercury is a major causative factor in autism. It hasn't happened. Not here, and not in any of the other countries in which the number of vaccines with thimerosal has been drastically reduced.
Scientifically speaking, the mercury notion is dead and buried.
Posted by: trrll | July 9, 2008 1:08 AM
jk said "regarding Lyme Disease (one poster mentioned it), Lyme is a big factor in autism."
So does that mean autism covers the same geographic area that Lyme Disease does? Lyme is mostly on the American East Coast, with very little in the American Southwest. So are you telling us that Arizona has a low number of autistic kids?
Also, Oregon only has a few Lyme cases per year... why are they among the highest in autism reports? Are you going to claim that is because most of the people from Oregon were born on the East Coast? Do you have the data, numbers and statistics to back that up?
(oh, and by the way... I am a native of the Pacific Northwest by well over a century and three generations, choose your words very very very carefully)
Posted by: HCN | July 9, 2008 1:10 AM
Why can't the medical issues of autism be kept out of politics? Autism is in epidemic proportions, and causes and treatments need to be meticulously investigated. The rise in autism coincides with the increase in vaccines given to children. The vaccine schedule needs to be investigated as causing neurodevelopmental conditions. Why so much arguement over this? All sorts of things need to be researched. Let's prove this to be a medical condition so that insurance companies will pay for the medical expenses so that these kids can get better. It's too much of a burden on the families. Please, lets work together for our children!
Posted by: Liz Duffy | July 9, 2008 1:19 AM
Bah! Everyone knows autism is caused by the Greys!
Posted by: DLC | July 9, 2008 1:27 AM
No one wants a child to get measles, and no one wants a child to get autism. Vaccination is not a simple issue. Vaccinating a child can cause huge problems, and not vaccinating a child can cause huge problems. We have to look at the vaccination question with eyes wide open. All research is welcome. The truth is the truth regardless of whether or not it is comfortable or convenient. Vaccination must be made as safe as possible. Toxins must be removed. The schedule must be much less aggressive. Long-term studies must be done on vaccines before allowing them to be on the pediatric schedule. Vaccination must not be looked at as a "one size fits all" kind of program. Until these issues are addressed, parents will be afraid to vaccinate. A measles outbreak is not caused by Dr. Wakefield's research. It is caused by agencies (CDC, FDA, NIH, AAP) denying there is a problem and not facing the vaccine questions head on. Parents have lost faith in these groups to protect their children, and so they do not vaccinate. If they want public trust, they must find the answers to the autism epidemic.
Yes, I have an autistic child. Without Dr. Wakefield, my son would still be screaming in pain from the severe inflammatory bowel disease that was destroying his GI tract just a few years ago. Thank God for Dr. Wakefield. God bless him every day.
Posted by: LInda Betzold | July 9, 2008 1:28 AM
First it's MMR.
Then it's Thimerosal.
Then it's "too many vaccinations".
None of which is substantiated by research. Only the internet.
What's the one thing in common...fear of shots and parents looking to place the blame.
How sad. Makes me want socialism (even though I detest the idea). To let a minority of idiots have even some say in policies that affect all of us...based on their ignorance. Yeah, really sad.
Has anyone here with even the least bit of scientific training found any of these "arguments" from these people compelling? At all? I certainly haven't.
Posted by: RJ | July 9, 2008 1:42 AM
Linda Betzold said "Vaccinating a child can cause huge problems, and not vaccinating a child can cause huge problems. We have to look at the vaccination question with eyes wide open."
Okay... What are the risks of the MMR vaccine (which has been in use in the USA since 1971) versus measles, mumps and rubella? Knowing that in the most recent outbreak in the USA the death rate for measles was more than one in 1000 (from J Infect Dis. 2004 May 1;189 Suppl 1:S69-77. Acute measles mortality in the United States, 1987-2002.Gindler J, Tinker S, Markowitz L, Atkinson W, Dales L, Papania MJ.), and that at least four people became deaf and over two dozen young men became sterile during a mumps outbreak in the American Midwest in 2006 (w w w .cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm55d518a1.htm).
Also, what about the effects of the MMR noted here:
http://archpedi.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/160/3/302 ... where it says "We assumed that approximately 1 in 5000 cases of measles leads to MR." (MR = mental retardation)
She continues " .... A measles outbreak is not caused by Dr. Wakefield's research. It is caused by agencies (CDC, FDA, NIH, AAP) denying there is a problem and not facing the vaccine questions head on."
Ummm... the outbreak is in the United Kingdom. That is in Europe, and includes England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland and of course, this is Great Britain. Last I checked the CDC, NIH and AAP were in the United States of America. How are those AMERICAN groups (and only two are federal... the AAP is the AMERICAN Academy of Pediatrics) causing a problem in a European country?
Posted by: HCN | July 9, 2008 2:16 AM
ooops, too late at night... when Linda Betzold blurted about "CDC, FDA, NIH, AAP"... actually, only THREE are federal. Obviously, I need to count my alphabet better.
So which of these are influencing the NHS? And how?
Posted by: HCN | July 9, 2008 2:23 AM
Could autistic kids in areas where Lyme disease is prevalent be more likely to contract the disease than non-autistic kids because they'd be less likely to tell their parents they had a tick on them? Maybe parents of autistic children should be more diligent about inspecting for ticks after kids go out, play with dogs, etc.
Likewise, could autistic kids be more likely to drown without yelling for help? Not that parents should *ever* let children swim unsupervised, of course--and maybe extend that supervision to older ages for children with disabilities.
Posted by: Arcata | July 9, 2008 2:52 AM
This, right here, is why alternative medicine and magical thinking have to be *banished* from mankind! Grrrrr! I'm pissed off!
Goddam alties!
Posted by: Pedro Homero | July 9, 2008 3:31 AM
If Lyme disease and autism are associated, why are the autism rates in Australia commensurable with the rest of the developed world but Lyme disease practically absent?
Posted by: Patrick Caldon | July 9, 2008 4:36 AM
"Autism is in epidemic proportions, and causes and treatments need to be meticulously investigated. "
Agreed. Vaccines of course have been meticulously investigated.
"The rise in autism coincides with the increase in vaccines given to children."
When you look at the data, kids who get vaccines get autism precisely as often as kids who don't. Numbers of very large (expensive) studies confirm this.
"The vaccine schedule needs to be investigated as causing neurodevelopmental conditions."
It has been. A bejeezus-load of cash has been spent looking at this and not come up with anything.
"Why so much arguement over this?"
Because a bejeezus-load of cash has been spent on this and come up with nothing. Now your proposal seems to be to spend another bejeezus-load of cash on the same thing. Meanwhile, kids with autism don't have effective treatments because we're spending the research dollars on spurious vaccine stuff, and other kids are getting sick and dying from infectious disease.
These kinds of things (dead kids; suffering kids) tend to raise one's passions, hence the argument.
Posted by: Patrick Caldon | July 9, 2008 4:45 AM
Ignorant mothers? Ignorant fathers? You bet. They are all over the Internet spreading ignnorance like Zurama who thinks she's going to cure Mickie with biomed. Zurama you have an autistic kid, get used to it. Don't torture him with stupid therapies to try to cure him. He isn't going to be cured. Just like Rick Rollens son was supposed to be autistic from the MMR and his son is still autistic after years of therapies. For more evidence of ingnorance just look at the ignorant "lyme-ees" who have invaded Orac's blog. There about as dumb as rocks. One reason they think that Lyme is an issue in autism is that they haven't been totally suckered by the vaccine thing for some reason. Instead of being suckered by the vaccine thing they are suckered by the Lyme thing. The main reason that they have been suckered by the "Lyme Induced Autism" game is that there are laboratories who will find evidence of Lyme disease in every person they test. If you are breathing you are suffering from Lyme disease, even if you and your mother and grandmother were born and raised in a tick-proof bubble in Antartica. Claiming to find Lyme disease is very profitable. It is similar to the way fraudulent laboratories find that everyone who sends in a urine sample is "heavy metal toxic". Also similar to the lab results that Jenny McCarthy got saying her son has "yeast" in his "gut." Jenny McCarthy's little indigo friend Lisa Ackerman of Talk About Curing Autism Now is a fan of Lyme Induced Autism. So how does Lyme cause autism? And do tell us, there must be a cure that costs some tens of thousands of dollars a year and is being sold by some guy in a white coat with charisma and an offshore medical degree.