Doc Who Raised Vaccine Alarm Acted Unethically
A panel in Great Britain has ruled that the doctor who published a 1998 study that challenged the safety of vaccines acted unethically in his attempts to test whether the shots put children at risk for autism.
The General Medical Council didn’t look into the purported link shots/autism link — that study has long since been discredited. Rather, it looked into Dr. Andrew Wakefield’s research methodology and found that he acted with “callous disregard for the distress and pain the children might suffer.”
Wakefield was found to have performed invasive tests, such as spinal taps, on children, despite the fact that such tests weren’t in the best clinical interest of those children. They also found he had neither ethical approval — nor the relevant qualifications! — to perform these tests.
He also failed to disclose that he had been paid by representatives on behalf of parents who suspected their children had been harmed by MMR shots.
Two of Wakefield’s colleagues were also implicated in the probe.
More than a decade ago, Wakefield suggested in a study that there is a link between the MMR vaccine and autism, causing more than a decade-long drop in the shots and new outbreaks of measles, mumps and rubella.
His findings — long since discredited — sparked heated debates in the U.S., the U.K. and Canada, among other rich nations, over whether immunizations were responsible for increased reports of autism around the world.
Wakefield continues to defend himself, saying doubters should review the proceedings to determine whether they were fair. He said the science should continue in earnest.
Many parents continue to support the doctor and a crowd of them showed up to the public reading of the GMC’s findings. A number of them shouted in outrage as the panel’s leader read out the results of their investigations.
It’s interesting — not to mention alarming — that despite his study having been discredited and the journal that originally published it, “Lancet,” had long since apologized for its publication, that negative attitudes about vaccines continue.
What keeps parents from immunizing their kids? If you’ve been reluctant — or downright refused to get your kids shots — I’m curious why? What is the lingering doubt? Or do you support Wakefield, his research and his methodology?
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Well, we already knew that his study was weak and unrepeatable. But hearing the kinds of things he did (pay kids at his son’s birthday party for their blood samples, perform procedure on children that he was not qualified for and did not have consent for, etc.) disgusts me even further. It is amazing that groups like Generation Rescue still revere this man and act as if he is being persecuted.
The anti-vaccine mob are extremely to point out (or make up) accusations against real doctors, such as conflicts of interest, disregard for patients. But they’re silent about one of their own who displays all of this in abundance.
[...] but the attacks on Wakefield’s methods have been particularly damaging – prompting the medical panel’s look and ultimate declaration of unethical practices just last [...]
I immunize my kids, but since my first had a bad reaction one time (hives and fever), I have spread the vaccines out. It’s a bit of a pain in my ass, as I end up taking more trips to the doctor (because the kids only get one shot at a time), but, hey, it’s better than hives/illness. (And once I started splitting the shots, none of the kids has had a bad reaction.)
I haven’t vaccinated my son, but will have him vaccinated before entering school for illnesses that are still applicable (some are not known to occur past toddler-hood). Since toddler boys are the highest percentage of kids getting diagnosed with severe autism I decided to not take the chance. I personally know 2 moms that have had their sons (2 for 1 mom, 1 for the other) severely withdraw and become autistic after having the normal series of toddler shots. I just don’t want to take that risk with the person I love more than life itself, and would always question if it was due to the vaccines if he did get autism. I don’t necessarily think that vaccines cause autism, but it could be a combination of the vaccines reacting to some genetic predisposition or something. The think is, nobody knows, so I just want to wait til the crucial toddler period is over and then will still only do one shot per visit. I also have other issues with vaccines, mostly that they contain (some) unnecessary chemicals and use animal and fetus tissue. That is super creepy to me, plus our family is vegan and doesn’t use any animal products and is against animal testing. I would love it if there was money out there to A) separate some of the vaccines that are given together, as some have nasty chems and others don’t but they are grouped together on the assumption that parents only will take their kids to the doctor as little as possible and B) vaccines that contain only synthetic tissues and don’t have unnecessary chemicals.
Katrina – about the use fetal tissue. This is a common misconception. Here is a quote from scienceblogs that can explain it better than me.
“There is not “aborted fetal tissue” in vaccines. It is true that the virus stock for some vaccines is grown in a human cell line derived from an aborted fetus back in the 1960s. That cell line has been propagated continuously ever since. There’s a huge difference between “human aborted fetal tissue” and a cell line that’s existed nowhere other than in tissue culture growing in tissue culture media. Moreover, when the viruses are isolated, the cells are removed. There are none left in the vaccines.”
Unfortunately, you are making your decision to not vaccinate your son on false information, which is easily spread. (I won’t go into detail, but almost everything you list is incorrect.) You say “nobody knows”, but that is not true. There has been enough testing to show there is no autism-vaccine link.
The diagnosis of autism usually comes after the first birthday, which is coincidentally the same time when a child gets a series of shots, which is why some people believe the shots cause autism.
I know I won’t be able to change your mind, but in case anyone else is reading, I wanted to make sure the actual facts are presented. Not vaccinating a child is much riskier than vaccinating them. Since I love my son more than anything, I was sure to get him all of his shots on time so he could be protected.
I am not going to go into my position on immunizations or reasons behind it, obviously there will always be someone who disagrees no matter where I stand. I would just like to say I wish someone would donate the money and be the force behind a study of children who have received no immunizations to see where they are on the Autism Spectrum. Then and only then will parents’ minds be put at ease on the autism/vaccine link.
[...] Doc Who Raised Vaccine Alarm Found Unethical [...]
J – there actually have been analyses done on children who did not have immunizations. In general, they tend to have higher rates of autism than children who have had immunizations. No, vaccines do not prevent autism. However, in general, the type of person who would not get their child immunized (more affluent, white, etc.) is also the type that is more likely to get their kids evaluated for autism. Also, some parents who have a first child with autism will skip shots for their younger children. Since autism has a genetic component, these kids are more likely to be autistic.
These data analyses have obviously not silenced the anti-vaccine groups. Generation Rescue is asking for a prospective, double-blind study, when one group of children would get vaccinated and another would not, and neither the children, parents, nor doctors would know which group each child belonged to. Since we know the great benefit of vaccines, this would be highly unethical. No IRB would ever approve this, and it would be a public health disaster waiting to happen. Therefore we are stuck with the info we have, which does not show unvaccinated children to have particularly low rates of autism.
Laure68, I sure would like to see that study. You seem to have a lot of answers, but I’m looking for a link and some citations. Can you share that here?
Also, in the California study, they did say that the clusters of autism tended to be where the parents were slightly older. I don’t know a lot about this, but it seems to make sense. Older parental age is linked to other genetic anomalies. Does anyone know if there has been any research into this?
hmm, my earlier post is not showing. I apologize if this shows up twice.
Here’s one from a phone survey conducted by Generation Rescue themselves.
http://leftbrainrightbrain.co.uk/2009/06/a-vaccinated-vs-unvaccinated-study/
In Michael Specter’s book, Denialism, he discusses a review of vaccinated vs. unvaccinated children that the US government conducted, which had similar results. (And of course, they were labeled as pharma shills for arriving at this conclusion.) I admit I returned this book to the library already, but I’ll try to find the passage later.
Also, here is something from UC Davis, trying to find clusters of autism in Calfornia.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/booster_shots/2010/01/uc-davis-researchers-find-california-autism-clusters-but-the-cause-is-a-bit-of-a-surprise.html
Basically, the clusters where there were higher incidences of autism were in areas that tended to have higher-income, higher-educated white parents. Incidentally, these are the same areas where there are lower vaccination rates.
As I said above, this really does not tell us anything. The populations are too different.
Also, I don’t have a lot of answers, I just like to have the facts.
fyi, I actually tried to answer J’s question, but that comment is still awaiting moderation.
We don’t know the benefits of vaccines, which is why we need a double-blind study. We don’t know what the effect of so much aluminum, for example, is on developing immune systems.
For me, not vaccinating has never been about autism. It’s about asthma, allergies, behavioral disorders, and more that have been escalating. We’re learning that chemicals we once thought of as harmless (BPA, PVC, etc.) are really toxic. The chemicals in vaccines have not been studied in concert with one another.
I can’t give my 8 week old baby milk, eggs, berries, peanut butter, and so on, but I can have her injected with aluminum, polysorbate 80, ammonium sulfate, formaldehyde, sucrose, gelatin, and many, many more chemicals? I don’t think so.
Robin – “We don’t know the benefits of vaccines.” What do you mean by this. Scientifically and factually we absolutely know the benefits of vaccines. Again, no IRB will ever approve a prospective, double-blind study. Groups like Generation Rescue requesting one is just for show. I can’t believe anyone actually thinks something like this can happen.
Laure68: Do you know that the tetanus vaccine has never been tested for efficacy? Rates of tetanus went down, so they assumed the vaccine worked. This is in the CDC “Pink Book” available on their web site. Anyway, tetanus is mostly a rural disease, so, as the population became more urban, tetanus would have declined anyway.
So no, we don’t know that the “benefits” from vaccines outweigh the risks, in part because some of the benefits are assumed, and we have not ascertained the risks.
Robyn: link, please?
Never mind; I found it.
According to the CDC Pink Book,
“After a primary series (three properly spaced doses of
tetanus toxoid in persons 7 years of age and older, and four
doses in children younger than 7 years of age) essentially all
recipients achieve antitoxin levels considerably greater than
the protective level of 0.1 IU/mL.
Efficacy of the toxoid has never been studied in a vaccine
trial. It can be inferred from protective antitoxin levels that
a complete tetanus toxoid series has a clinical efficacy of
virtually 100%; cases of tetanus occurring in fully immu
nized persons whose last dose was within the last 10 years
are extremely rare.”
Most people who have not worked on clinical trials don’t understand this, but you can’t just do a trial because someone likes the idea. There has to be good, solid, scientific data to perform a trial. I’m not sure it this is what you are asking, but the idea (put forth by many anti-vaccine groups) that there should be a trial where some children don’t get any vaccinations will never, ever be done. There is no scientific data that indicates a need for this, and the risks are too high. The only reason to do this is because some people have allowed certain groups to make them scared, which is not a good reason. In any case, if a trial like this was performed and it showed that vaccines were safe and effective, the anti-vaccine groups would just say that the data must have been manipulated by “big pharma” and the government.
One thing I forgot to add – this whole idea that vaccines are not effective and something else must be going on to make these diseases decrease – how can you explain the fact that recent outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases have occurred in areas where vaccination rates are low. Measles outbreaks have occurred in places such as Waldorf Schools, where a lot of kids do not get vaccinated. Also, there was a huge outbreak of polio in Nigeria after vaccination rates plummeted. It wasn’t like these areas all of a sudden stopped getting clean water.
Robyn, did you read the CDC Pink book? As in, the reason that further testing wouldn’t really be valuable? The antitoxin can be injected to help save patients infected with Tetanus, or the vaccine causes increased antitoxin levels for quite some time. If you test people’s blood, and the antitoxin levels are high enough to fight off a tetanus infection that shows its efficacy. Full-on double-blind studies of vaccines in pepole are pretty damn hard to do, since you pretty much have to intentionally infect people with a potentially fatal disease.
I plan on delaying the Hep B vaccine for my newborn unti l my baby is at least 2 months old. I’m negative, my husband is negative, and since Hep B is a bloodborne disease, the pediatrician agrees that there is no real risk of our baby getting Hep B in the first few weeks of life. It was a situation of weighing the costs and benefits; there is a risk (although slight) of adverse reactions, and a potential allergy reaction. Since my husband and I have 3 major food allergies between us (therefore raising the risk of allergies in our baby), why would we expose a stressed out, exhausted newborn to an unnecessary risk. Instead, we’re opting to wait a minimum of 2 months, perhaps 6 months to start the Hep B series, when he is stronger and healthier and his immune system is better equipped to handle it.
To be honest, Hep B is the only one I would have delayed. It’s bloodborne as you say, and it contains common allergens (wheat if I recall). However, I didn’t know that when my twins were born, and I am very pro-vaccine. So they got them. They get all their vaccines, on time, and I watch carefully for any sign of a reaction. One of my twins had a mild rash probably from the DTAP, and paranoid that I am, I took him to the weekend clinic. He’s fine, but I like to be safe rather than sorry. For me, that includes getting vaccinated against preventable disease. Like polio, which my aunt had, which resulted in her being confined to a wheelchair the rest of her life (she was 15, now she is 70), her uncle and cousin weren’t so lucky, they got it the same time and both died. It’s preventable not eradicated.
[...] The Lancet retraction came on the heels of Britain’s General Medical Council finding that Wakefield had acted unethically in conducting the research that led to his original 1998 paper linking vaccines with autism. These [...]
Thanks! This helped so much! I’ve read a couple
rather confusing blogs lately, this cleared up some confusion I had.
Laure68
Any idea, or facts on why cases of autism seem to have multiplied greatly since the shot schedule was increased(around 1990) to double the amount before age 5.
Were you insinuating that scientific data infers that not vaccinating may put children at greater risk for autism?
Vaccination shots may help with disease control but are they (all) neurologically safe for all children (including those with compromised body functioning due to prenatal drug exposure etc).
HIV outbreak, the result of a polio vaccination experiment (human error), or a naturally occurring epidemic? What do the facts show?
Should loving parents have a concern at all about the potential side effects of what is injected into their children even if it is intended for good?
barry — the rates haven’t actually increased, it’s the ability to diagnose it.. This also is potentially a problem when saying that white, affulent populations are more likely to have higher rates, while it very well may be just more likely to diagnose it. This is also why some second children get diagnosed more, because the parents have a 1stborn to compare developmental milestones to.