OK, I’d wish that Dr. Wakefield would up and do something more permenant than self-abuse, but that’s discourged.
Anyway, for those unclear who I am talking about Dr. Wakefield is a mercenary for the anit-vaccination crowd. He managed, by some miracle, to get an article linking autism and vaccines published in The Lancet. Resulting in hundreds of studies being used to find an imaginary effect, a panic amongst the new parents of the world, the lowest vaccination rates since the pre-vaccine era, and gleeful drooling by the anti-vaccination crowd.
Well, as it turns out, Ol’ Doc wakefield has what we call a “Fatal Conflict of Interest”. While he was doing this study he was commissioned to do another study linking vaccines and autism for a trial. Lo and behold, he found a link! Let the cash roll in Doc! Of course, every trial since then has found no such link.
Wakefield claims his work has been dupliacted, he lies.
Thanks Dr. Wakefield. I now call you what you are: A murderer for hire.
There is, however, anecdotal (ie unproven) evidence of a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. There are women who’ve come forward to say that their sons only showed signs of autism after they had the MMR jab. The situation is not helped by our beloved leader, Mr Blair, refusing to confirm whether his son Leo has had the jab. It is further not helped by the doctors having a financial incentive to use MMR.
Personally, I don’t know. I do know that the three seperate jab method has not had this problem.
Yes, but the age of MMR being given and the age of symptoms for autism showing happen to be the same. Causality is not causation (blah blah Blah).
I’m getting some more info from some who’ve had the full story. Wakefield is going down. He got his subject kids directly from the group planning to sue the vaccine makers. He doesn’t seem to think that was important enough to tell The Lancet.
Andrew Wakefield’s studies on MMR and autism have received a lot of coverage in Private Eye, which I follow … I’m not competent (and neither is Private Eye to assess his work, but the impression I’ve got is that he may possibly be on to something, and that this is an area where the government and the media should stop messing around and let the scientists do their bloody jobs.
Calling Wakefield “anti-vaccination” and a “murderer for hire” strikes me as the sort of hysterical overreaction which is making the scientific case difficult to assess. Wakefield has concerns, based on his studies, about one kind of vaccination - the combination measles, mumps and rubella “triple jab” - which he thinks has been linked to the onset of autism in some children. Now, it may well be the case that his results have been checked over and found wanting. Or it may be the case that the UK government is trying, as a matter of policy, to promote the MMR jab, and has a vested interest in discrediting research that casts doubt on it … The problem is, the government undoubtedly is hostile to Wakefield and his research, and this hostility muddies the waters so that lay people, such as myself, can’t tell if it’s justified or not. Certainly, if I had kids, I’d want a different method of vaccination for them (single vaccinations for each of the three diseases are possible, and Wakefield hasn’t been criticising them - it’s specifically the MMR vaccination that’s the cause of his concern.)
From what I gather, there’s no real prospect of Wakefield gaining financially from the stand he’s taken - it’s substantially damaged his career, and there doesn’t seem to be any chance of him sharing in some US-style lottery-jackpot-sized compensation payout. He seems to be genuinely convinced that there’s a danger here. Is he right, or is he just a crank with a bee in his bonnet? I don’t know. I would suggest, though, that the way to find out is for the government and the media (yes, including Private Eye) to back off and let the scientists do some actual research to check Wakefield’s hypothesis. The loud claims and counterclaims in this business just seem to be making the truth harder and harder to ascertain.
Wakefield’s studies are nicely crafted, pieces of SHIT.
I work with autistic kids and their families. Most of us have realised that this charlatan is trying to push the "no vaccinations!’ idiocy into the mass media…
THERE ARE NO PROVEN LINKS BETWEEN THE MMR VACCINE AND AUTISM. The onset of symptoms, in many cases, are hard to trace and certainly hard to identify. The age at which children get the MMR vaccination is close to the age the first “symptoms” of autism can be detected.
There are also forms of autism (including Rett’s syndrome, mostly found in girls) where children seem to regress after having learned some skills. This has been proven to have nothing to do with any environmental factor but may well be totally happily genetic, damnit.
MMR boosters are given to kids much later - like when they start kindergarten OR middle school in North America. Have we seen ANY cases of Late-Onset autism? NO!
Have we, however, seen more and more kids come down with measles or the mumps? YES. Is this a good thing? HELL NO.
Gah. This quack bothers me like there’s no tomorrow.
Every now and then we get parents who ask us about the MMR-autism “research”. Most parents are trying to find a culprit for their child’s condition - something that has triggered it that is outside of their own genetic makeup. Truth is autism runs in families (usually on the father’s side, if I remember correctly)… but it feels much better to pin the “responsability” on something outside ourselves…
::sigh:: I’d LOVE to be able to simply dismiss all this from my mind, line up and vaccinate my kids and get on with life. I wish I wasn’t living with two kids with autism and I wish I wasn’t spending a fucking shitload of money and I wish my kids were not on spectrum and life were simple and I could just say all the stuff coming out about possible causation of autism was a load of crap and, well, I wish a lot of things.
Simplicity for one.
FWIW, all the GPs in the practice I use ( which is a very conventional practice) are totally OK with our decision not to vaccinate until things are really clear. My developmental paediatrician is completely comfortable with it as well. Both paediatric gastros we see have agreed with me that it’s a reasonable choice. Maybe it’s cultural – I know I’ve been flamed here by US paeds as a bad parent because I’m just sitting with the decision because I absolutely cannot bring myself to use the MMR. If I gave my kids the MMR and they regressed, I could not live with myself.
