Posted on 07/24/2006 11:55:22 PM PDT by neverdem
The percentage of American children who receive childhood vaccinations is dropping. Experts say that vaccine-resisters are more likely to be highly educated and well off financially. What has spooked them? Their chief fear is that vaccinations may trigger autism, a neurological disorder that typically appears before a child reaches the age of three. Such children suffer language and communication deficits, withdraw from social contacts, and react intensely to changes in the immediate environment.
Many parents of autistic children fervently believe that the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) triple vaccine causes autism. Autistic symptoms make their appearance just about at the time that most children are vaccinated. The typical story is that little Johnny was fine until a couple of weeks after he was injected. However, most research suggests that parents are confusing correlation with causation—the symptoms of autism just happen to emerge at the about the same time as recommended vaccinations are given. It's a coincidence, not a cause. Public health experts worry that many parents are wrongly discounting the dangers that infectious diseases pose for their children because many have never seen a child afflicted with polio or whooping cough.
The MMR/autism hypothesis took off in 1998 with the publication of a study of 12 autistic children by Canadian gastroenterologist Andrew Wakefield at the Royal Free Hospital in London. Wakefield's study, appearing in the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet, found traces of the measles virus in the guts of the children he tested; Wakefield concluded that these traces derived from the MMR vaccination. The study noted that the onset of eight of the children's developmental disorders occurred shortly after they had received the MMR vaccine.
As a precaution, Wakefield suggested that children be vaccinated for each disease separately rather than with the combination vaccine. The MMR/autism connection was boosted by a report published in 2001 in the journal Medical Hypotheses by autism activist Sallie Bernard. Bernard argued that the mercury in the vaccine preservative thimerosal was "a novel form of mercury poisoning" that was responsible for autism. In June 2005, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fueled the controversy with a sensational article in Rolling Stone and Salon that claimed there is a massive government cover-up of the dangers of MMR vaccines. Kennedy quoted school nurse Patti White who told the House Government Reform Committee in 1999. "Vaccines are supposed to be making us healthier; however, in twenty-five years of nursing I have never seen so many damaged, sick kids. Something very, very wrong is happening to our children."
Fortunately, years of subsequent research have not found an association between MMR vaccination and autism. In 2004, the National Academy of Sciences issued a report that concluded that "neither the mercury-based vaccine preservative thimerosal nor the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine are associated with autism." In 2005, a comprehensive review of MMR of 31 studies by the non-profit authoritative medical collaboration, the Cochrane Library, found "no credible evidence behind claims of harm from the MMR vaccination."
These conclusions have been bolstered by other research. In 1993, Japan stopped using the MMR vaccine and began vaccinating for each disease separately. A study published last year found that autism rates continued to climb from 48 to 86 cases per 10,000 before MMR vaccination was halted to 97 to 161 cases per 10,000 after the MMR vaccine was withdrawn. A new study published by McGill University researchers in the July 2006 issue of the journal Pediatrics found that autism rates rose from 52 per 10,000 to 70 per 10,000 in Quebec after the preservative thimerosal was removed from vaccines in 1996.
Many researchers believe that the increase in autism is largely the result of physicians applying broader diagnostic criteria for the condition in recent years. On the other hand, some researchers believe that the incidence of autism spectrum disorders has dramatically increased. In any case, the best medical advice is that whatever the cause of autism turns out to be, parents should not let their fears prevent them from immunizing their children against the very real threats posed by infectious diseases.
Ronald Bailey is Reason's science correspondent.
ping
Wrong. Many parents wonder if the MMR shot may "trigger" the onset of the disease, which is probably genetic, or hardwired into the brain already. I don't think the shot "caused" my son's autism. But I wonder if it had any effect on his development and lack thereof.
Of all the logical slips to which our fallible minds are prone, is there any in the history of mankind which has caused more misery (or, for that matter, entertainment) than this?
12???
12 subjects.
And then who published this "study"?
"Wakefield's study, appearing in the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet, found traces of the measles virus in the guts of the children he tested; Wakefield concluded that these traces derived from the MMR vaccination."
Right. How's this:
Daughter gets MMR. On the ride home she becomes lethargic, gets a fever, and confused.
Within an hour of arriving home, she starts screaming..hutched, like she's impaled on a red-hot pike.......for 12 freaking hours. Frantic calls to the doctor: "Nothing to worry about...bye!"
Emergency room: "Uh....call your doctor....uh...some kids react this way...uh.." I can read something on the faces of the on duty nurses and PA's. Something is not right.
IMMEDIATELY , signs of nascent autism. Kid was never the same. After 20 years, not the same. And neither are we: guilt, forever. If not for the herculean effort we made homeschooling her [like dragging a mule through a brier patch for 8 years] her life would have been a disaster. The public school teachers had her labeled ADD, troublemaker, daydreamer, lazy. The kid could solve quadratic equations in her head. A mathematical savant with absolutely no natural attention span: only disciplined grooming got it back to a moderate level.
Some things a parent just knows. And the white-coated PHD's will only admit of it when they are not culpable for participating in a disaster. A reckoning is a comin'.
Her daughter will never have a vaccination.
One need go no further than to note this political, weaselly, red-herring rejoinder - "most research suggests that parents are confusing correlation with causation.." - to realize that someone is tap dancing the issue. Most? Suggests? What does this "research" have to do with parents watching their children zone out after the MMR vaccination, never to return to their former state?
The politics of 'the ends justifies the means' is never more evident in the government philosophy that 'to make an omelet (75% of the kids will be fine,) you have to break a few eggs (25% of the kids and your daughter are tossed on the sacrificial pyre.)'
It is pretty easy to discount the need for vaccines when one has never lived through something like a polio epidemic. And I didn't even live through it. But my mother did. She said the fear was palpable amongst parents...everyone wondered EVERY DAY...is it going to be my child...a child complaining of a stiff leg or neck was enough to freeze the heart of a parent and stop them dead in their tracks.
I don't think anyone is discounting the need for vaccines across the board....I do think it should be the parents choice...without having to sign ridiculous religious exemption forms. My oldest child is fully immunized, my youngest has had virtually none. At birth she showed signs of allergies, excema, dark circles under her eyes etc. Immunizations would have over taxed her immune system which was still learning to regulate itself.
By age 3 she was free of all allergic symptoms...and has rarely been ill in her 12 years of life. We will have her tested in the next few months for antibodies...she has never caught chicken pox for example, although we've over exposed her numerous times. If she still comes back as negative, we'll probably opt to have her get the chicken pox vaccine.
IN the end it's the parents who are responsible for the welfare of their child, and have to live with all the choices they make.
Researchers are focusing on unusually high levels of testosterone in the womb as the must likely culprit. Parent activists need to press for testosterone level testing during prenatal care.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4800465
WABOBS
Don't skip the polio vaccine!
Why would you get her the chicken pox vaccine? If she were a boy, I could see it.
I was using the polio as an example of out of sight out of mind (fear)
My best friend in college died from post polio syndrome.
Well, probably out of precaution...it can be very dangerous to a developing baby in utero if the mother contracts chicken pox. Her physician and I are assuming she has the antibody, having contracted chicken pox earlier, with few if any actual pox.
Rubella (German measles) and fifths disease pose the greatest risks to fetuses.
Many people avoid the pertussis vaccine.
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