cross-posted to The Next Hurrah
Whereas the Bush Administration does
little to support science and
much to undermine it, an atmosphere of know-nothingness naturally follows. One clear example of this is Intelligent Design; see
previous posts on the Kansas embarrassment. But one example that is not so clear is the increasingly bitter debate about
vaccines and autism.
Public health officials like Ms. Ehresmann, who herself has a son with autism, have been trying for years to convince parents like Ms. Rupp that there is no link between thimerosal - a mercury-containing preservative once used routinely in vaccines - and autism.
They have failed.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, the Institute of Medicine, the World Health Organization and the American Academy of Pediatrics have all largely dismissed the notion that thimerosal causes or contributes to autism. Five major studies have found no link.
Yet despite all evidence to the contrary, the number of parents who blame thimerosal for their children's autism has only increased. And in recent months, these parents have used their numbers, their passion and their organizing skills to become a potent national force. The issue has become one of the most fractious and divisive in pediatric medicine.
"This is like nothing I've ever seen before," Dr. Melinda Wharton, deputy director of the National Immunization Program, told a gathering of immunization officials in Washington in March. "It's an era where it appears that science isn't enough."
No question that the movement to ban thimoserol is gaining strength. But that doesn't mean it's rational:
"We're not looking like a fringe group anymore," said Becky Lourey, a Minnesota state senator and a sponsor of a proposed thimerosal ban. Such a ban passed the New York State Legislature this week.
But scientists and public health officials say they are alarmed by the surge of attention to an idea without scientific merit. The anti-thimerosal campaign, they say, is causing some parents to stay away from vaccines, placing their children at risk for illnesses like measles and polio.
"It's really terrifying, the scientific illiteracy that supports these suspicions," said Dr. Marie McCormick, chairwoman of an Institute of Medicine panel that examined the controversy in February 2004.
Experts say they are also concerned about a raft of unproven, costly and potentially harmful treatments - including strict diets, supplements and a detoxifying technique called chelation - that are being sold for tens of thousands of dollars to desperate parents of autistic children as a cure for "mercury poisoning."
In one case, a doctor forced children to sit in a 160-degree sauna, swallow 60 to 70 supplements a day and have so much blood drawn that one child passed out.
Hundreds of doctors list their names on a Web site endorsing chelation to treat autism, even though experts say that no evidence supports its use with that disorder. The treatment carries risks of liver and kidney damage, skin rashes and nutritional deficiencies, they say.
Like
laeatril for cancer (and other bogus nostrums and snake oils), the issue is that when the discussion is not driven by science and objectivity, what inevitably follows is the worst kind of scum who take advantage of the gullible and push therapies that are potentially dangerous. And never free.
In any case, it is fascinating to watch the debate play out. When the DPT shots were felt to cause brain damage, they were halted in the UK... only to find babies began to die from pertussis (whooping cough), the P in the DPT shot. That's, of course, why the shots were given in the first place. But when a public health program is so successful, a generation later, folks forget why it was started in the first place.
Check out the creds of the so-called experts on vaccine safety:
In a series of House hearings held from 2000 through 2004, Mr. Burton called the leading experts who assert that vaccines cause autism to testify. They included a chemistry professor at the University of Kentucky who says that dental fillings cause or exacerbate autism and other diseases and a doctor from Baton Rouge, La., who says that God spoke to her through an 87-year-old priest and told her that vaccines caused autism.
Also testifying were Dr. Mark Geier and his son, David Geier, the experts whose work is most frequently cited by parents.
Dr. Geier has called the use of thimerosal in vaccines the world's "greatest catastrophe that's ever happened, regardless of cause."
He and his son live and work in a two-story house in suburban Maryland. Past the kitchen and down the stairs is a room with cast-off, unplugged laboratory equipment, wall-to-wall carpeting and faux wood paneling that Dr. Geier calls "a world-class lab - every bit as good as anything at N.I.H."
Dr. Geier has been examining issues of vaccine safety since at least 1971, when he was a lab assistant at the National Institutes of Health, or N.I.H. His résumé lists scores of publications, many of which suggest that vaccines cause injury or disease.
He has also testified in more than 90 vaccine cases, he said, although a judge in a vaccine case in 2003 ruled that Dr. Geier was "a professional witness in areas for which he has no training, expertise and experience."
In other cases, judges have called Dr. Geier's testimony "intellectually dishonest," "not reliable" and "wholly unqualified."
Some conclusions: a resume doesn't make you an expert. Neither do the letters after your name. Attacking and blurring science for political purposes will have some unexpected and negative side effects, including lessened ability for real experts to help direct research and policy (see stem cell research, flu preparedness, etc). And the war on science will embolden politicians to think that, with hard work, we can all be Kansas. After all, there's a willing constituency that never liked science and math anyway.
This reminds me of another topic, but I just can't put my finger on it at the moment. But I'm sure it will come to me.