by Rebecca Baker
A recent article discusses a currently ongoing debate as to whether certain vaccines are linked to autism. According to the article, the confusion began when a study suggested that there was a connection between the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism. Dr. Paul Offit of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia reviewed more than a dozen studies and found no such connection. He states that the onset of the symptoms and the vaccine happen purely by chance because the time that the vaccine is administered happens at the same age that symptoms of autism appear. Another hypothesis is that the preservative thimerosal in vaccines causes the disease. The studies analyzed by Dr. Offit do not show a change in autism rates based on the presence or absence of the preservative in vaccines. Thirdly, some believe that giving children a combination of vaccines at the same time weakens the immune system, which in turn causes autism. Dr. Offit refutes this by saying that the immune system can generally endure much more than the small amount of material in vaccines. Also, Dr. Offit claims that vaccines today contain less immune-triggering components than those of the past.
This debate continues to be a problem because parents are now refusing to get their kids vaccinated, therefore leading to an increase in diseases, such as the measles and the Haemophilus influenza. According to Dr. Offit, parents are putting their kids at a greater disadvantage by not getting them the vaccines.
This article appealed to me for several reasons. First, I want to be a special education teacher so I am greatly interested as to what causes autism. Secondly, anybody who wishes to someday be a parent should be aware of what is best for their children. While this article refutes the hypotheses about this topic, I am not sure if I am completely convinced. There have been other studies that imply the opposite of what this article says.
I recently read a book by Jenny McCarthy called Louder Than Words: A Mother’s Journey in Healing Autism. She does not believe that vaccines are necessarily bad, but that certain kids may react differently to the vaccines. For example, her son, Evan, experienced problems with yeast overgrowth in his intestines. In order to treat this, McCarthy changed her son’s diet to a casein-free, gluten-free diet, gave him vitamin supplements and anti-fungals, and administered a detox of metals. Once he showed improvement with his intestines, he also demonstrated improvement in his neurological problems. McCarthy believes that the amount of vaccines given to her son caused his autism, but today he shows few signs of being autistic due to this diet and vitamin supplement.
Based on the radically different studies on the topic, I think that this debate has just begun. More research must be done in order to come to a definite conclusion. While reading the article I found, I had several questions. Whenever Dr. Offit was discussing one of the hypotheses, he stated that he analyzed several studies that refuted the idea. He never specified which studies he looked at. It seemed as though he did not provide enough evidence to support his findings. Also, if some children show severe reactions to the vaccines, is it not possible some kids are allergic to the vaccinations, as I am to penicillin? Because I am not convinced by both sides of the argument, more research must be conducted.
Source:
Infectious Diseases Society of America (2009, February 1). Vaccines And Autism: Many Hypotheses, But No Correlation Found. ScienceDaily. Retrieved September 29, 2009, from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090130093407.htm
By: Harold L Doherty on September 30, 2009 at 3:28 pm
“Because I am not convinced by both sides of the argument, more research must be conducted.”
I agree with you.
By: Danielle on September 30, 2009 at 9:07 pm
I think it is interesting that parents are now reluctant to get their children vaccinated but it is leading to an increase in other sicknessess.
By: MC on October 1, 2009 at 12:23 pm
Paul Offit goes into great detail about how the vaccine idea caught on, and how it is wrong in his book, “autism’s false prohpets”.
He includes a great number of citations.
The vaccine education center at his hospital (CHOP) includes a page on autism.
http://www.chop.edu/consumer/jsp/division/generic.jsp?id=84662
You can contact the vaccine education center–they have a phone number and email address.
There will never be a 100% refutation of almost anything. You can’t prove to me that the world wasn’t created 6,000 years ago–but created to look like it was old and that evolution works. I am quite fine accepting that no research funding is applied to creationism, though.
What if I had said, “I am not convinced by either side. Therefore more research needs to be done on creationism”?
By: AutismNewsBeat on October 1, 2009 at 1:53 pm
Offit was right when he said that vaccines today contain fewer immune-triggering components than those of the past. The entire pediatric schedule today contains about 150 antigens. The smallpox vaccine alone, given to every American school child until 1970 or so, contained more than 200 antigens.
Here are 25 studies that looked for, and found no association between MMR and autism:
http://www.immunize.org/catg.d/p4026.pdf
Here are some studies that similarly looked at thimerosal and autism and found no connections:
http://www.autismsciencefoundation.org/autismandvaccines.html
I am not aware that McCarthy’s claim that Evan has autism has ever been verified, and she has contradicted herself on many points in her story. The last I heard was that Evan no longer shows symptoms of autism, but that McCarthy could “make him autistic” by giving him wheat and dairy. That strains credulity.
Don’t let McCarthy fool you – she is anti-vaccine by the very fact that she deliberately spreads misinformation and fear about vaccines. She still tells us, for example, that vaccines contain anti-freeze and ether. Even her science advisor, Dr. Jay Gordon, has admitted they don’t. McCarthy also plays fast and loose with the data, claiming that the rate of autism has risen from 1:10,000 in 1983, to 1:150 today. That is misleading at best, and a deliberate lie at worst.
Among bona fide researchers, there is no autism-vaccine debate. The controversy, if we can call it that, exists in the news and entertainment media, and in shadowy corners of the internet. Don’t let McCarthy play you.
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