For many years now, there has been a mobilization against vaccinating small children based on shaky evidence of a link between the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine and autism. A new study out of Columbia University refutes that claim:
The theory was created in 1998, when British researcher Andrew Wakefield published studies that suggested the measles vaccine caused gastrointestinal problems and that those GI problems led to autism.
W. Ian Lipkin of Columbia University in New York, who co-authored the most recent study, said Wakefield theorized that the virus used in the vaccine grew in the intestinal tract, leading to inflammation that made the bowel porous. That allowed material to seep from the bowel into the blood, Wakefield's theory surmised, affecting the nervous system and causing autism.
In Wednesday's study, the researchers replicated key parts of Wakefield's original study to determine whether the vaccine causes autism and GI problems, said Mady Hornig, a study co-author. Irish pathologist John O'Leary, co-author of Wakefield's studies that supported the autism link, also is a co-author of the new study.
O'Leary and the other researchers looked for evidence of the measles vaccine in children's intestines after they had been vaccinated and sought to determine whether their GI problems and autism symptoms occurred before or after they were vaccinated.
They analyzed samples taken from 38 children with bowel disorders, 25 of whom also had autism. The investigators found only one child in each group had trace amounts of the measles virus in their samples.
The samples were analyzed at Columbia and at a laboratory of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as at O'Leary's lab -- the same one Wakefield used for his original studies.
The conclusion: "no evidence" linked the vaccine to either autism or GI disorders, Lipkin said.
Now hopefully we can have some sanity on this issue. Autism as you may know is a politically hot issue, with various celebrities lobbying (Jenny McCarthy, etc) for more awareness. Unfortunately, the guidelines for diagnosing autism have been expanding, so it's perhaps no wonder that more children have been diagnosed in the past 20 years. I find it somewhat similar to ADD (attention deficit disorder), an extremely vague and every-expanding category of "disease" that parents have rushed to treat with drugs not terribly different from cocaine. It's effectively the medicalization of our young people, and it makes me deeply uncomfortable.
Not meaning to be rude, but I think your commentary here is a little half-baked. The diagnostic criteria for almost every condition known to medicalkind have widened along with autism - it's called the DSM-IV - and refusing to vaccinate kids is actually the opposite of 'the medicalization of our young people', which is a tabloid/talkback term if I've ever heard one. Ben Goldacre from Badscience.net had a rather good analysis of this issue published in the Guardian as an excerpt from his upcoming book quite recently, and he identifies the problem more as a matter of shonky research practices amplified by uncritical journalism.
Free autism spectrum podcasts can be found at www.mic.mypodcast.com
They are put out by Midnight In Chicago and deal with a wide variety of topics of concern both to those on the autistic spectrum and those who know people on the spectrum.
1) Who are YOU and what are your credentials in terms of the ability to comment on what autism is and isn't?
2) As the parent of a profoundly disabled child with autism, I find it horribly offensive that you led this off with a cartoon that belittles not only my child's affliction, but my attempts to find cures for it. What you don't mention is that Jenny McCarthy CURED her son using alternative health care measures that the conventional medical community also thinks are bull.
3) Who funded Columbia University's study?
4) What you appear not to realize is that no person who believes that the vaccine may be to blame believes that it will affect everybody who gets it. If that were the case, we'd all have autism, right? Columbia University's study allegedly found that there were traces of the virus in one child out of 63. ONE OUT OF SIXTY THREE. So what you are essentially saying is that it's okay to throw one child under the bus for the marginal benefit of 62 others? Let me know how you feel about when you and your partner adopt a child someday, and that child turns out to be yours.
The fact of the matter is that the MMR argument is a red herring. All vaccines are loaded with aluminum, formaldehyde, propylene glycol (antifreeze), and other toxic substances. The problem is a) the inclusion of those toxic substances, and b) that the immunization schedule begins before the age of 3 (most of the brain's development is complete by age 3 and a lot of the risk could be eliminated if they'd just WAIT) and involves a bombardment of these substances instead of a conservative allocation of no more than 3 vaccinations per year and NEVER two or more on the same day.