Notes

A few interesting (and very much related) items that have attracted my attention over the past week or so...

An investigation by The Times of London has revealed evidence that Andrew Wakefield, the doctor who initially raised concerns over the safety of the MMR vaccine for children, misreported the results of his research, creating the appearance of a possible link with autism. (Wakefield had filed for a patent on what he believed to be a more safe method of inoculation, but made no mention of this conflict of interest when his research was published.)

Following the publication of those results, rates of inoculation in the UK fell from 92% to below 80%. Official figures show that 1,348 confirmed cases of measles were reported there in 2008, compared with 56 only ten years earlier. Two children have died as a result of contracting the disease.

Also this week, according to an article in the Washington Post, "A special federal court [has ruled] that vaccines do not cause autism and that thousands of families with autistic children are not entitled to compensation, delivering a major blow to an international movement that has tried for years to link childhood immunizations with the devastating disorder."

According to the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 established this venue for those “allegedly suffering injury or death as a result of the administration of certain compulsory childhood vaccines may petition the federal government for monetary damages.” What I found particularly interesting is that the nature of this special court did not require the plaintiffs to prove their cases with scientific certainty — only to demonstrate a preponderance of the evidence (or "50 percent and a hair"). That they failed to do even that much, given the amount of research that was reviewed in the course of the hearings, seems especially revealing.

And last month, Alison Singer resigned as the Executive Vice President of Communications and Awareness for Autism Speaks, one of the nation's leading autism advocacy groups, citing a difference of opinion over the organization's policy on vaccine research. Singer has an 11-year-old daughter with autism, and joined the organization when it launched in 2005.

In an interview with Newsweek, she said:

"In general, I disagree with a policy that says, 'Despite what this study shows, more studies should be done.' At some point, you have to say, 'This question has been asked and answered and it’s time to move on.' We need to be able to say, 'Yes, we are now satisfied that the earth is round.'"

I wonder — where does this leave an organization like Autism Speaks? Will they continue to be bound to this specific agenda, in accordance with the beliefs of the constituency that supports them? Or will they invest resources in other areas of research that may prove more useful?

Believe me, I have a great deal of sympathy for parents of children on the Autism spectrum — I'm one of them. The experience of having a young child seems to introduce a sort of irrational insecurity that every decision you make is somehow wrong, and will result in disastrous consequences. It's easy to be terrified by statistics, to be motivated by fear, and to cling to what seems like the most obvious explanation in the face of something you don't understand. But that cannot be used as an excuse not to try to understand.

It frustrates me that, even in the face of considerable scientific evidence to the contrary, the belief persists among many that vaccination is harmful. People are too quick to discount legitimate science when it doesn't tell them what they want to hear, even creating outlandish conspiracy theories to explain away the discrepancy.

With the benefit of routine vaccination, diseases have disappeared — we've grown up without an understanding of the illness and death that they once caused. I'll bet most people of our age aren't aware that there were an average of 16,000 cases of paralytic polio in the United States each year before a polio vaccine became available in the 1950s. Or that there were an average of 450 deaths each year from Measles in the decade before a vaccine (now a part of the MMR inoculation) was introduced.