On 8th February 2009, Brian Deer published an article in the London Sunday Times (which, like Fox News, is owned by Rupert Murdoch) accusing Dr. Andrew Wakefield of falsifying data in his original study on a potential link between the MMR vaccine and sudden onset autism.
As the medical response shows (Sunday Times Sinks to New Low with Yet More Junk Journalism), Brian Deer's piece repeated debunked "facts" and makes new allegations that simple fact-checking would have revealed as false.
The same day as the ST article, Kossack ssentamu wrote a diary on the basis of the Brian Deer article; I tried to inject some objectivity into the discussion, but was threatened. I am writing this to present the facts, and ask you to keep an open mind - don't worry, your brains won't fall out.
The controversy has several aspects:
• Why the venomous hounding of Dr. Wakefield?
• Is there a link between MMR and autism?
• As a corollary - are vaccinations safe?
The Hounding of Dr Wakefield
To understand this requires an understanding of the UK medical system. Practically all doctors in the UK depend on the NHS either for their income or, even if they're private, for access to hospital infrastructure.
The medical establishment is rabid in the defence of its own interests. A particularly egregious example was the case of the heart surgery babies at the Bristol Royal Infirmary (BBC File). A group of doctors decided that BRI should be at the forefront of paediatric heart surgery, and started practicing. Between 30 and 100 babies died. Nurses would tell mothers to whom surgery had been recommended: Take your baby and run. This went on for years, until Stephen Bolsin, an anesthesiologist, could take it no more and ratted on them. Two of the doctors were eventually banned, but Bolsin was hounded out of Britain and had to move to Australia (made into TV play).
Dr. Wakefield has suffered a similar fate.
It has to be said that Dr. Wakefield never advised against vaccinations. Prior to Dr. Wakefield's study, the NHS allowed separate vaccinations for measles, mumps and rubella. After the article, the NHS withdrew the separate vaccines and forced parents to choose between the combined MMR jab and no jab. The NHS bemoans the reduced uptake of measles, mumps and rubella vaccinations, but has nobody to blame but themselves.
"Yes, Minister" may be a satire, but it is uncomfortably close to the truth (see also these machinations).
Somebody familiar with the workings of the Murdoch media might also be suspicious that the Brian Deer article appeared within days of Dr. Wakefield and seven other researchers publishing a response to a mindlessly pro-vaccine tract by Dr. Ari Brown (Response to Dr. Ari Brown and the Immunization Action Coalition).
The Link between MMR and Autism (and the safety of vaccines in general)
I want to make two points very clear:
• There is no proof of a direct link (but, as Kossacks like to point out logical fallacies, absence of proof is not proof of absence)
• Vaccines in general have been hugely beneficial to mankind
Having said all that, the medical evidence is overwhelming that vaccines have side-effects that are not yet fully understood - for example, see this Response to Dr. Ari Brown and the Immunization Action Coalition; but there are so many movable parts to the issue that it is not clear what (if any) links exist.
So far, the evidence for a link to vaccinations has been epidemiological - autism has risen dramatically over the last 20 years, in all countries with comprehensive childhood vaccination policies. Attempts to find a genetic link have failed. The strongest suspect is an environmental influence - so it could be vaccines, but it could also be food additives, pesticides, household cleaners, or a combination.
Regarding vaccines, questions revolve around:
• The number of jabs
• The number of jabs in combination
• The age at which jabs are given
• The stabilisers and adjuvants used in vaccines
There appear to be strong suggestions, for instance, that a predisposition to asthma is stronger the earlier a baby is given the DPT shot (see the Ari Brown Response linked above, at p 9).
Among the stabilisers, Thimerosal has been fingered as a suspect (e.g. here). Thimerosal is a mercury compound which is also used in cosmetics (including some eye drops) and is known to cause allergic reactions (see here). Drug companies have never been obliged to establish the safety of thimerosal at all or in which dosis (especially when given to a baby). Under pressure from the FDA, most newly made vaccines now no longer contain Thimerosal, but the drug companies were not obliged to withdraw old, Thimerosal-stabilised batches, and refused to say how much Thimerosal-stabilised vaccine was still extant.
On the aggressive vaccination schedules being pushed by drug companies and doctors, there has been no research into how safe the ever earlier vaccinations and layering of multiple jabs really is.
Regarding the sudden onset autism cases, they are clearly very rare - so rare they don't show up statistically significantly in epidemiological studies. But for the population as a whole, that's still an awful lot of children effectively taken away from their parents. For epidemiologists, the trade-off is acceptable: for the benefit of all ("herd immunity"), some will suffer (the English have no hesitation in voicing this; in the US, I don't think you could get away with it).
I am definitely not anti-vaccine; both my children have all their vaccinations (separate M, M and R jabs for the second one). But for all those "measles kills" scaremongers: if there is a link between vaccines/MMR and autism, then vaccines too cause heart-rending damage. To me, there is a clear difference between polio, cholera, small-pox and similar diseases, against which I was vaccinated ad nauseam (every six months for cholera), and diseases such as measles, mumps and rubella, where the "no harm" case for vaccinations has to be made with far greater thoroughness than it has been so far.
The pushing of vaccinations is on a level with the downward adjustment of the definition of hypertension and the consequential pushing of blood-pressure medication, and the pushing of cholesterol medication (when the link between cholesterol and heart disease is clearly secondary to other risk factors like diabetes, smoking, and obesity).
More research is needed on the vaccines, the stabilisers and adjuvants, the layering of vaccines, the timing of vaccinations etc. The drug companies have gotten a free pass on this so far. But as the nicotine controversy showed, the industry's first reaction is to try to shut up the researchers, deny the facts, sand-in-the-eyes counterfactual paid "research" and stonewalling. We need to keep our eyes on them.