How much of an affect will the recent retraction of the first paper linking MMR to autism really have?

Unfortunately, I think the genie is already out of the bottle on this one. People have their opinions; usually facts (or medical studies) don’t mean much to them.

Seeing as there wasn’t much evidence to begin with, linking the two, and the fact that the anti-vaccine movement took off like a rocket anyway, unfortunately, I doubt this will have much impact. The people that believe in the connection already pretty much are ignoring the facts and still are quite firm in their beliefs.

Not enough.

There was already a huge amount of evidence that the link between vaccines and autism was not real. It’s the way science moves forward – hypothesis, testing, more testing, and new hypothesis. It’s horrible when some jerk gets in the way and reaches for personal gory at the expense of believers everywhere.

My heart goes out to the parents of autistic kids who clung to the belief that vaccines were some how at fault. I’m sure they are trying to make sense of the difficulty facing their kids. And a cause that doesn’t mean they did anything wrong is that much better.

No one knows what causes autism. It’s just the way things are for now. And Wakefield is the biggest kind of ass there is – someone who bought a little personal success with a truck full of suffering and misguided rage from people around the world.

I do wonder why people always attack people who delay vaccination. While I do not agree with everything people like Jenny McCarthy stand for, the main thing she is a proponent of is “green our vaccines” Basically making them safer, and not learning a couple years down the road that they have serious adverse reactions and the risk of the vaccine is worse than the disease itself. Why do people say things like she’s a wingnut for wanting the vaccines not to have nasty ingredients? She does not tell people NOT to vaccinate.

I know plenty of non-vax parents who don’t care about the Autism thing at all. It is NOT the reason most parents delay vaccination. I think until medical professionals get that through their brains, then they might actually listen to parents with concerns.

The problem is that we already know what NOT vaccinating kids does to them. Why risk someone developing severe measles with complications or other vaccine-preventable diseases? There is plenty of evidence around that the vaccines are safe. I think non-vax parents need to understand where we’re coming from, too.

@Dr_Dredd The complications of Measles are similar to the side effects of the vaccine itself.

effect

@casheroo There is overwhelming scientific evidence that vaccines are safe and effective, there is no evidence to the contrary. The problem with this “green our vaccines” notion is that they can’t even tell us what’s wrong with the vaccines. First it was thimerosal, then when that was removed from the major childhood vaccines in spite of no evidence that it caused anything, they shift the goal posts and claim it’s some other unspecified “toxins”. Jenny McCarthy and her ilk got their start claiming that thimerosal in vaccines caused autism, and now that that has been entirely discredited and the thimerosal taken away, they change tack to this new “green our vaccines” business. Make no mistake, these people are anti-vaccine, not “pro safe vaccine”.

But perhaps worse than the vaccine issue is that they have many people believing that some unspecified toxins are causing autism and that their children can be cured by injections of phony stem cells downright dangerous industrial chelators, none of which have been shown to have any effect nor to be safe.

@casheroo No, no they are not. People can die from Measles. Measles at the least makes you very sick. Vaccine side effects are minimal and not particularly common. Serious vaccine reactions are extremely rare.

Another issue with actual measles is birth defects for the baby if the pregnant woman contracts German measles aka rubella, aka the 3 day measles. The more kids go without vaccines, the more potential for a community outbreak, since most of these diseases are very contagious. The protection from vaccines does not always last forever, and I regularly see pregnant women who were vaccinated as a child yet are not immune now. If one of those women is unlucky enough to get exposed to rubella during her pregnancy, her baby can be severely damaged.

@Snarp Complications from Measles are extremely rare. I didn’t quote it, because I paraphrased it, but what I said was from The Vaccine Book by Robert Sears (which I’m sure @shilolo thinks is a quack)
Measles is similar to Chicken Pox, the MMR shot was advertised towards parents so they wouldn’t miss work days anymore because children are usually sick for a week and have to stay home. That is literally how they campaigned it.

@MagsRags So true about pregnant women. That’s why whenever there’s an outbreak of Measles or Mumps….it usually doesn’t affect children at all, but people in condensed areas like college dorms….people who don’t get their boosters. I’d LOVE to know who has their boosters as an adult here on Fluther. Because they’re the ones that will contract the diseases. Not because the vaccines didn’t work, but people need to keep up on the boosters, but it’s rare that they do.

@casheroo “Measles vaccination is one of the most cost‐effective health interventions ever developed. Without the vaccine, 5 million children would die each year from measles.” From the Journal of Infectious Diseases

That may be how they campaigned it, but measles-induced encephalitis is not just an “inconvenience.” And it occurs much, much more frequently with a measles infection than a measles vaccination.

And I think Robert Sears is a quack, too…

@Snarp Then we should be giving the vaccine to people in Africa, East Asia and other third world countries..because it is not an endemic in the US anymore. The people who get affected most by it are people who do not have their boosters.
(I like how parents who don’t vaccinate on time are the root of all evil, because apparently they make the diseases come out of nowhere. I personally would rather my child get Measles and Chicken Pox on his own…but Measles is extremely rare in the US, so that’s not going to happen.)

I would not rather my child get measles on his own. I would rather he never get it. But when immunization rates drop these diseases do return, and that is when mothers who haven’t gotten booster become infected again, and when infants who are too young to be vaccinated get infected and sometimes die. The disease organisms have not been exterminated. If we stop vaccinating against these diseases, they will return.

@Snarp So you’re against delayed vaccination as well? Do you understand what it is at all, and what the schedule is?

@casheroo No, I don’t know anything about delayed vaccination, other than the fact that it is often touted by people who are grossly misinformed about vaccines and infectious diseases in general. But mainly I think that people ought to make their decisions about vaccination on the advice of medical doctors based on the latest reputable scientific research, not on anything Jenny McCarthy has to say, nor the handful of doctors who go against the scientific consensus and who are easily identified by the other quack cures they usually promote.

@Snarp Then that’s your choice to remain ignorant. I choose to do research and read studies. Any study you can pull up, I can pull up one citing the severe rare side effects of the vaccine and the disease itself. Not all parents blindly follow their doctors, and no one should. Asking questions is healthy, and keeps the patients informed. That’s what doctors are there for. If they have such problems with people questioning them, then they shouldn’t have become doctors.

@casheroo The problem stems from people, typically uniformed people, thinking they are better informed than their doctors. Reading Web.MD and/or other web sites doesn’t translate into an in depth understanding of the data. A little bit of knowledge is way more dangerous than no knowledge at all. Also, your comment that because the diseases are no longer endemic in Western countries, we can delay/avoid vaccination reveals a serious logical flaw. We need to continue to vaccinate, or we risk returning to pre-vaccine days. It’s like saying, “I finally got my diabetes under control, now I can take a break and do what I want.” That is completely the opposite of what should happen.

@casheroo There is not one reputable scientific study that does not conclude that vaccines are safe and effective. Not one.

@shilolo @Snarp You both just took things I said and completely twisted them.

@casheroo: I don’t think they twisted anything you said. I think they just offered counterarguments.

These are not the same thing.

@shilolo Also, I answered your original question. They can scream it from the rooftops that Autism isn’t linked…the media is just as much at fault for that ridiculous scare or scam, whatever it was that the doctor was trying to pull with saying it was Autism. There’s no way to take that fear back out of people, since people who believed it probably didn’t do much research or blindly followed the news.

@casheroo I disagree. I didn’t twist your words. You said you choose to do research. I am questioning that nature of your research (thus, my discussion of web.md and other sites). You say you can “pull up studies”. The problem is the selection bias of the studies you find. So you show me a paper describing someone’s side effect from vaccine A. Without a serious analysis of the data, how can you arrive at the cost/benefit ratio? Are you trained to analyze and interpret the validity of the study itself? Is it controlled? How were patients recruited? What type of study is it? How was the data analyzed? Who ran the study? Etc. etc. That is what general medical education, statistics, public health, and epidemiology coursework affords; knowledge that is not easily replicated by reading an anti-vaccine blog or a handful of links. Many people get upset that doctors resist questioning, but the converse are patients who arrive with preconceived notions and want to direct their own care, as if they know better.

@casheroo I don’t think I twisted what you said. You said you could pull studies showing side effects, well of course you can, of course there are side effects, but there’s a larger picture one has to look at when judging how save and effective vaccines are. My point is that you can’t just read off the description of a nasty sounding side effect, you have to look at that larger picture to draw conclusions, and that when scientists make conclusions based on their studies they find that vaccines, given on the usual schedule, are safe and effective.

@casheroo The problem with the supposed autism link is that those people have done what they consider to be research. They have heard from Jenny McCarthy, and whatever other quacks have blogs and write for the Huffington Post and have followed their links to flawed research. They think they are well informed, when they are in fact grossly misinformed, and they are still treating their children with industrial chelators because they mistakenly believe that Autism is really mercury poisoning.

When you’re scared and at sea you’ll grab onto anything that looks like it floats.

I think most parents will look for new possible causes. Some will not and in some cases I would venture to say that’s understandable. I might say it’s improbable that a child can develop Autism from a vaccine but I would never say impossible.

@Snarp And the point I’m trying to get through to you is that, people don’t care. Not every person who doesn’t vaccinate or delays actually believes in the Autism connection. Heck, I’d even say the majority don’t. Just go to a forum of delay/non-vaxing parents, and they’ll tell you it’s a crock of shit as well. Some believe it, and I truly believe the media is at fault for that. Just as they made everyone terrified of H1N1, when that could have just been something discussed with a doctor who could give the vaccine and not terrify the person that any symptom would lead to death.
Discussing the question at hand, I really don’t think the damage can be undone for some. They will chose to believe it. Devils advocate, they will probably argue that it was a medical study and if that was false then couldn’t any study saying vaccines are safe is false? (seriously, I don’t believe that..I’m playing devil’s advocate) Who knows. I’m curious as to how it’ll be played out. People don’t like to admit they’re wrong, and I’ll be shocked if anyone who reported it or did news on it will talk about it in depth. Might not be sensational enough for the news since it won’t send people into a panic.

For the record, I was concerned about it. I read about mercury in vaccines causing autism and the case seemed reasonable. It seemed that I couldn’t find anyone saying that it was all a bunch of bunk then. Eventually I found more reputable information, and I now admit that I was very very wrong. I’m very glad that I finally got enough real information to make the right decision and get my child vaccinated.

The loud voices on blogs and comments often won’t be convinced, but there are many more lurkers who don’t comment, and they will be swayed by whoever makes the best case. That’s why the single medical journal article that basically launched the modern anti-vaccine movement being discredited is good and hopeful news.

Lurve, all, for good information shared and explicated.

We have an autistic 4 yr-old in the family. His parents and grandmother jump on any possibility. It is terribly difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. MY niece just had a third little boy on Sunday, and I don’t know what they are going to do about inoculations.

It is really difficult when it is your own ox that is being gored. I will check in with the family when things quiet down.

One issue is the number of vaccinations given immediately after the child is born, if I understand correctly.

The New York Times weighed in today with an editorial:
A Welcome Retraction:

For a decade, many parents have worried that vaccines might somehow be causing autism in children. Repeated assurances from respected experts that there is no link have failed to quiet those fears. Now The Lancet, a prestigious British medical journal that published the paper that first gave wide credence to those fears, has retracted it, saying that the paper’s authors had made false claims about how the study was conducted.

The journal acted after a British medical panel had found the lead author, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, guilty of dishonesty and flouting medical ethics.

The original paper, published in 1998, was based on only 12 children. It nevertheless drew an inferential link between an autismlike disorder and the triple-vaccine used to prevent measles, mumps and rubella. Although that paper stopped short of claiming the combination vaccine caused the disorder, Dr. Wakefield suggested at a press conference that parents would be wise to use single vaccines for each of the diseases.

What was not known at the time was that Dr. Wakefield had filed for a patent on a single measles vaccine that would benefit if the triple vaccine failed and that he was receiving payments from a lawyer planning to sue manufacturers of the triple vaccine.

Die-hard believers in the theory that vaccines cause autism are already denouncing the British medical establishment for smearing one of their heroes. Many parents have moved on to other theories as to how vaccines might cause autism only to be met with overwhelming evidence that there is no causal link.

What is indisputable is that vaccines protect children from dangerous diseases. We hope that The Lancet’s belated retraction will finally lay this damaging myth about autism and vaccines to rest.

Copyright© 2010 The New York Times Company

What’s interesting to me is that there’s been very little evidence to support the vaccine-autism link, yet when this study came out several years ago, it barely made a splash. I couldn’t even find subsequent studies that explored the suggested link between TV and autism. I’m not saying all autism is caused by TV, but there has been a link made to early TV watching and ADHD, so it wouldn’t surprise me at all if there was something to it.

@MissAnthrope Awesome link! We had our son watching “Your Baby Can Read” ;)

After watching Dr. Oz’s Autism show, my husband & I were baffled by the number of parents still believing this vaccine myth.

My husband and my son are both Aspies. As far as my husband and I are concerned, we feel the cause is genetics. We think there are undiagnosed Auties on both sides of our family.

@casheroo My mom’s best childhood friend died from measles. I personally had measles due to a local outbreak (just prior to the age when the vax is given).

I remember it WELL. The measles were not at all pleasant. I’d much rather have had a shot than the pain of measles. Add on top of the pain my mom’s extreme anxiety that I would have to be hospitalized or die from them——HORROR! Everything she gave me was ice cold (food, drinks, baths) for fear that the measles would multiply. (Mom’s friend was given a lukewarm bath due to the pain and itching. He died moments later from internal spread).

No actual facts here, just my opinion.

I think people are naturally sad to learn that their children cannot be the people they hoped they’d become. Some parents learn to love what their children will become, but some never do.

That sadness is a difficult thing. It seems to me that people are more comfortable with anger than sadness. So if they can find someone or something to blame, they latch onto it like a baby on a teat.

Until there is something that allows them to deal with the sadness, they will continue to find some straw man to rail against. Scientific evidence be damned.