Bad Science: How The Autism Vaccine Scare Snowballed

Kate Tuttle — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 16:31:00 GMT

Jenny McCarthy as an activist, "Green Vaccines," death threats against pro-vaccine doctors, deadly measles outbreaks: all sprang from one source, a flawed medical study with a tiny sample size, a lead author willing to fudge the facts, and a story the media found too fascinating to fully examine.

Writing in this week's Newsweek magazine, Sharon Begley lays out the timeline of what would become one of the biggest medical fairy tales of the past decade -- a narrative of corrupt pharamaceutical companies, poisoned children, and devoted parents. Too bad it wasn't, you know, true.

As is now clear, the study published in the Lancet medical journal back in 1998 linking the MMR vaccine to autism (via intestinal problems) was just plain bad science. The study looked at only twelve children, for one thing. Worse yet, the lead doctor, Andrew Wakefield, fudged the facts. A decade later, ten of the twelve co-authors have disavowed the research they published, but as Begley's story made clear, at the time the media and public found Wakefield and his findings not only trustworthy, but revolutionary. And he wasn't alone; in 2000 U.S. Representative Dan Burton chaired a congressional hearing to look into the connection, and TV's 60 Minutes gave it the old expose treatment. It wasn't hard to paint parents as heroes (because so frequently they are, even when their facts are wrong), nor to deride the drug companies as villains (because, again, they often are). A story so delicious has a tendency to rob the media of its hallowed skepticism -- how else to explain the major coverage of a study of 12 kids, when subsequent studies (such as one at Boston University that looked at two million children) showed zero relationship between the MMR and autism.

The story rode a wave of parental anxiety and media hype so big that it caused actual changes in behavior around vaccination -- and here's where, I think, Wakefield and his ilk bear some major culpability. As vaccination rates went down and outbreaks broke out, children died of easily preventable diseases. And despite the frequent exhortation from anti-vaccine crusaders to "follow the money" in looking at relationships between doctors and pharmaceutical companies, I'd love to see more digging into Wakefield's financial stake in the autism industry (he was officially sanctioned for misconduct in having hidden the financial support he had received from parents of children with autism before undertaking the 1998 study, and now makes his living running a center that claims to cure autism).

The recent ruling by a special court that declared no connection between autism and vaccines has settled the legal question, for now. As for what happens in the court of public opinion, it's clear that's a far more complicated matter. The anguish felt by parens of autistic kids is real, as is the desire of every parent to protect her child. Let's hope that getting past the vaccine witch-hunt will free up more energy toward finding causes, cures and treatments for peope with autism.

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They Say: Autism is Linked to Watching TV

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 15:15:00 GMT

If you ever suspected it was no coincidence that the rise in childhood autism began around the same time as the advent of cable TV, a Cornell study shows you were on to something.

Researchers at Cornell University claim to have established a definite link between autism rates and TV watching among toddlers in California, Pennsylvania, Washington, and Oregon. Beginning in 1980, when cable TV brought Nickelodeon and other children’s programs into people’s homes, autism rates rose most sharply in counties with a high percentage of homes with cable. Specifically, the Cornell study found that “roughly 17 percent of the growth in autism in California and Pennsylvania during the 1970s and 1980s was due to the growth in cable television.”

And studying the amount of time children watched television based upon particularly rainy and snowy years in the Western states (bad weather is known to increase child TV watching), the researchers concluded that “just under 40 percent of autism diagnoses in the three states studied is the result of television watching.” Although it’s possible that these numbers reflect a relationship between autism and staying indoors (not watching TV), these numbers are much more conclusive than any of the numerous studies looking to establish a link between autism and vaccines.

The Cornell researchers are advancing no theories as to why increased television watching among toddlers causes an increased likelihood of an autism diagnosis, but it’s possible the link is related to the fact that the ability to process visual data develops in the first three years of life; children with autism exhibit abnormal activity in these areas of the brain.

It may be time that researchers turned their attention away from chemicals and genetic links in the search for a cure for autism. If something as simple as avoiding TeleTubbies and Baby Einstein could help lower autism rates, this is something every parent needs to know.

Photo: Cleveland Leader

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