Childhood immunizations and autism

[Ritalin]

Dr. Steve,

My son Miles is 2 months old, and today he starts that long series of immunizations that are a part of childhood. I have to tell you, it scares the hell out of me.

The only thing that terrifies me about my son is the looming shadow of autism. I'm telling you that is probably an unwarranted fear, but aren't most fears irrational? He's male (that's one marker), I'm 42 and my wife's 40 (there's another), and my board name is a dead giveaway that I'm ADD (which isn't necessarily a red flag, but gives me pause).

Now I don't buy the hype that the MMR vaccine causes autism, and I know that at this point thimersosal isn't used in vaccines. I know that in my bones, but my irrational fear of autism makes this whole process very difficult for me. I'm not considering NOT vaccinating him because I thing that's just stupid, but I've heard/read some MDs suggest separating the MMR so as not to shock his system with so much at one time.

What are your feelings on this?

[Thebazile78]

Dr. Steve,

My son Miles is 2 months old, and today he starts that long series of immunizations that are a part of childhood. I have to tell you, it scares the hell out of me.

The only thing that terrifies me about my son is the looming shadow of autism. I'm telling you that is probably an unwarranted fear, but aren't most fears irrational? He's male (that's one marker), I'm 42 and my wife's 40 (there's another), and my board name is a dead giveaway that I'm ADD (which isn't necessarily a red flag, but gives me pause).

Now I don't buy the hype that the MMR vaccine causes autism, and I know that at this point thimersosal isn't used in vaccines. I know that in my bones, but my irrational fear of autism makes this whole process very difficult for me. I'm not considering NOT vaccinating him because I thing that's just stupid, but I've heard/read some MDs suggest separating the MMR so as not to shock his system with so much at one time.

What are your feelings on this?

Please, for the love of all that is Holy, get your son immunized.

If it makes you feel better, some doctors recommend spooling out the vaccinations over a longer period of time than traditionally/currently set ... but that may depend on your insurance and/or your son's pediatrician's schedule. You can space the shots out, but some HAVE TO have a booster within a certain amount of time.

TALK TO YOUR SON'S PEDIATRICIAN about your options for spooling the vaccinations out over a longer schedule ... i.e. - can he have the MMR series now, but maybe wait a little longer for the rotovirus & chicken pox vaccines or whatever. Mention to your pediatrician that, while you've got the official FDA declaration that vaccines don't cause autism in mind when you're asking this, you're still concerned because you love your precious little guy so much it's hard to be rational about this issue.

And, again, for the love of all that is Holy, get your son immunized. Please.

[Ritalin]

Please, for the love of all that is Holy, get your son immunized.

If it makes you feel better, some doctors recommend spooling out the vaccinations over a longer period of time than traditionally/currently set ... but that may depend on your insurance and/or your son's pediatrician's schedule. You can space the shots out, but some HAVE TO have a booster within a certain amount of time.

TALK TO YOUR SON'S PEDIATRICIAN about your options for spooling the vaccinations out over a longer schedule ... i.e. - can he have the MMR series now, but maybe wait a little longer for the rotovirus & chicken pox vaccines or whatever. Mention to your pediatrician that, while you've got the official FDA declaration that vaccines don't cause autism in mind when you're asking this, you're still concerned because you love your precious little guy so much it's hard to be rational about this issue.

And, again, for the love of all that is Holy, get your son immunized. Please.

No, no, not immunizing is not an option. That's out of the question.

[Thebazile78]

No, no, not immunizing is not an option. That's out of the question.

After I posted my rant, as I am paranoid about unvaccinated kids myself, I realized you were asking about what the risk/benefit is of spooling out the vaccinations over an extended period of time.

I read a quote from the CDC today that doesn't recommend spooling things out, but I don't know if that's the way things ought to be.

[Thebazile78]

There's a "new" book out trying to calmly debunk the autism/vaccines "link" ... which isn't a link at all, but rather a correlation. Today's (1/13/09) Science Times has a book review/essay about the author; here's the link:

Book Is Rallying Resistance to the Antivaccine Crusade (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/13/health/13auti.html?em) (NY Times, Science & Health section, dateline: 12 January 2009; registration is free, but required.)

[Dr Steve]

Dr. Steve,

My son Miles is 2 months old, and today he starts that long series of immunizations that are a part of childhood. I have to tell you, it scares the hell out of me.

The only thing that terrifies me about my son is the looming shadow of autism. I'm telling you that is probably an unwarranted fear, but aren't most fears irrational? He's male (that's one marker), I'm 42 and my wife's 40 (there's another), and my board name is a dead giveaway that I'm ADD (which isn't necessarily a red flag, but gives me pause).

Now I don't buy the hype that the MMR vaccine causes autism, and I know that at this point thimersosal isn't used in vaccines. I know that in my bones, but my irrational fear of autism makes this whole process very difficult for me. I'm not considering NOT vaccinating him because I thing that's just stupid, but I've heard/read some MDs suggest separating the MMR so as not to shock his system with so much at one time.

What are your feelings on this?

It's a tough one...the spectre of autism is just so downright scary, that even a hint that there could be a correlation made me pause before giving my kids their vaccinations.

It's a risk-vs-benefit thing; the risk of diphtheria or tetanus trumps the vanishingly small risk that vaccines may be somehow responsible for autism. The scary thing about autism really is that no one knows what really causes it, and it just happens out of the blue sometimes in kids who before seemed "normal". Of course, since most every kid that has emerging autism has had a whole crapload of vaccinations causes some people to draw a connection between the two. Most of the good evidence out there says that if there is a correlation between vaccines and autism, it's immeasurably small.

Now, to the question of separating out the vaccines, I thought about this as well; my son (the one with the accent in the Weird Medicine promos) had to get pre-K shots recently and darned if they didn't stick him FIVE TIMES. The poor kid was traumatized by the whole thing. After it was over, though, he said he was glad he didn't have to go back for any more, so I felt better about not doing it in stages.

There is a range of months that the MMR is appropriate to give; talk to your health care provider if you want to come back a month later to give it instead of having them all at once. Most providers will have NO problem with this...there's nothing magical about having them all at once, it's just a convenience thing.

On another note, I am having problems figuring out what the Varicella Vaccine is all about. Chickenpox does cause some serious problems in a very small number of kids every year, but to vaccinate every kid in the country for such a small return seems extreme. Now, saving even one kid is worth it, don't get me wrong, but the problem I see with this vaccine is that when it quits working 20 years from now, we'll have a bunch of adults getting chickenpox. The risk to pregnant women in the future far outweighs the risk to unvaccinated children now. So it seems we're trading a small problem now for a larger one in the future. I'm not a vaccine specialist, but I sure wish one would explain this one to me.

[epo]

British doctor who kicked off vaccines-autism scare may have lied, newspaper says (http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/booster_shots/2009/02/british-doctor.html)

Dr. Andrew Wakefield, the British physician who jump-started the scare about a link between the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism, manipulated and changed data to make his case in the 1998 Lancet paper, according to an investigation by the Sunday Times of London. The purported link has subsequently been refuted by a large number of epidemiological studies.

That Lancet paper said that the families of eight of 12 autistic children attending a routine clinic at Wakefield's hospital claimed that symptoms of autism developed within days after they were given the shot -- or the "jab," as the British call it. Wakefield and his colleagues also claimed to have found the measles virus in the children's intestines and that the virus caused an inflammatory bowel disease linked to autism.

But by studying confidential and public records, investigative reporter Brian Deer, who has been following the MMR controversy since the beginning, found a different story. Hospital and other records indicated that virtually all of the children had begun developing symptoms of autism well before the shot, Deer's report said. Hospital pathologists examining the children for signs of inflammatory bowel disease were unable to find it in most of the cases, Deer discovered, but Wakefield or someone on the team changed the data to make it appear as if the condition was found, Deer reported in the Times. At least one parent of a child in whose intestines the virus was said to have been found took samples to three other labs, which were unable to find the virus, Deer's report said.

Moreover, Deer reported, Wakefield was retained as an expert witness two years earlier by a lawyer planning to sue vaccine manufacturers on behalf of parents who thought MMR caused their children's problems. The parents cited in the Lancet article came to Wakefield's clinic in response to an advertising campaign led by the lawyer's group, called Jabs, and not for routine screening, Deer's report said.

In 2004, 10 of the 13 original authors on the Lancet paper requested that the paper be withdrawn, concluding that "no causal link was established between MMR vaccine and autism because the data was insufficient." Wakefield has continued to stand by the paper's conclusions.

Wakefield and two other co-authors, Dr. John Walker-Smith and Dr. Simon Murch, are now defending themselves against allegations of professional misconduct brought by England's General Medical Council, which oversees physicians. Those charges are not related to the data in the newspaper, but to the researchers' ethics in using the children.

The Times said it was forwarding all the new data to the GMC for review. Through his lawyers, Wakefield denied the paper's allegations.

In the fallout from Wakefield's original paper, vaccination rates in the country have fallen from 92% to below 80%. As a consequence, 1,348 cases of measles were reported in England and Wales in 2008, compared with only 56 in 1998. Two children died of the disease.

Dr. Steve, this must be a shocker in the medical community!

[Dudeman]

Two points:

1. the very well known risk of driving to and from the doctor's office for vaccines spread out over time is greater than the unproven concern of having vaccines together.


2. read this article from the nytimes. it summarizes the mmr/autism issue quickly:

"Debunking an Autism Theory

Ten years ago, a clinical research paper triggered widespread and persistent fears that a combined vaccine that prevents measles, mumps and rubella — the so-called MMR vaccine — causes autism in young children. That theory has been soundly refuted by a variety of other research over the years, and now a new study that tried to replicate the original study has provided further evidence that it was a false alarm.

The initial paper, published in The Lancet, the prestigious British medical journal, drew an inferential link between the vaccine, the gastrointestinal problems found in many autistic children and autism. In later papers, researchers theorized that the measles part of the vaccine caused inflammation in the gastrointestinal tract that allowed toxins to enter the body and damage the central nervous system, causing autism.

Now, a team of researchers from Columbia University, Massachusetts General Hospital and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has tried and failed to replicate the earlier findings.

These researchers studied a group of 38 children with gastrointestinal problems, of whom 25 were autistic and 13 were not. All had received the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella. The scientists found no evidence that it had caused harm. Only 5 of the 25 autistic children had been vaccinated before they developed gastrointestinal problems — and subsequently autism. Genetic tests found remnants of the measles virus in only two children, one of whom was autistic, the other not.

The new study adds weight to a growing body of epidemiological studies and reviews that have debunked the notion that childhood vaccines cause autism. The Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, the C.D.C. and the World Health Organization have found no evidence of a causal link between vaccines and autism.

Meanwhile, the original paper’s publisher — The Lancet — complained in 2004 that the lead author had concealed a conflict of interest. Ten of his co-authors retracted the paper’s implication that the vaccine might be linked to autism. Three of the authors are now defending themselves before a fitness-to-practice panel in London on charges related to their autism research.

Sadly, even after all of this, many parents of autistic children still blame the vaccine. The big losers in this debate are the children who are not being vaccinated because of parental fears and are at risk of contracting serious — sometimes fatal — diseases."

[NewYorkDragons80]

On another note, I am having problems figuring out what the Varicella Vaccine is all about. Chickenpox does cause some serious problems in a very small number of kids every year, but to vaccinate every kid in the country for such a small return seems extreme. Now, saving even one kid is worth it, don't get me wrong, but the problem I see with this vaccine is that when it quits working 20 years from now, we'll have a bunch of adults getting chickenpox. The risk to pregnant women in the future far outweighs the risk to unvaccinated children now. So it seems we're trading a small problem now for a larger one in the future. I'm not a vaccine specialist, but I sure wish one would explain this one to me.

I was never really one for the vaccinations-autism hype, but is there any truth to the notion that we should allow people (let's say 14-35) to let their immune systems "fight off" illnesses like influenza or the chicken pox? Is there any proof that vaccines leave the immune system unprepared or "lazy"?

[Thebazile78]

I was never really one for the vaccinations-autism hype, but is there any truth to the notion that we should allow people (let's say 14-35) to let their immune systems "fight off" illnesses like influenza or the chicken pox? Is there any proof that vaccines leave the immune system unprepared or "lazy"?

The whole point of vaccines is to "teach" your (or your child's) immune system to recognize the proteins in the diseases against which you're being vaccinated.

It doesn't weaken your immune system, but rather strengthens it.

What's more alarming, in my opinion (and I know a few doctors who may agree with me, including one of the gents at the family practice I used to be a regular patient at) is the over-use of antibiotics and other anti-microbial products, including triclosan, because people are so afraid of getting sick. Personally, I'm more afraid of "superbugs" than I am of getting sick in the first place!

[Pestz4Evah]

British doctor who kicked off vaccines-autism scare may have lied, newspaper says (http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/booster_shots/2009/02/british-doctor.html)



Dr. Steve, this must be a shocker in the medical community!

What the Sunday Times did not report was that the GMC investigation into Wakefield was triggered by a complaint from... Brian Deer, who furnished the allegations against him four years ago. He has thus been reporting upon the hearing into his own complaint. Since when has a reputable paper published a story by a reporter who is actually part of that story himself -- without saying so - and who uses information arising from the disciplinary hearing which he himself has instigated and which is investigating allegations he himself made in the first place. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-kirby/keith-olbermann-todays-be_b_166103.html)

[HBox]

What the Sunday Times did not report was that the GMC investigation into Wakefield was triggered by a complaint from... Brian Deer, who furnished the allegations against him four years ago. He has thus been reporting upon the hearing into his own complaint. Since when has a reputable paper published a story by a reporter who is actually part of that story himself -- without saying so - and who uses information arising from the disciplinary hearing which he himself has instigated and which is investigating allegations he himself made in the first place. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-kirby/keith-olbermann-todays-be_b_166103.html)

For whatever conflict in interest there may be that post does absolutely nothing to disprove the allegations and yet goes on to call Deer wrong.

[KnoxHarrington]

For whatever conflict in interest there may be that post does absolutely nothing to disprove the allegations and yet goes on to call Deer wrong.

Typical of the people pushing this line: no challenge of the actual science, just conspiracy theorizing.

By the way, today a special court set up to deal with this issue ruled that it does not believe there is a link between vaccines and autism, saying "It was abundantly clear that petitioners' theories of causation were speculative and unpersuasive," and "The petitioners have failed to demonstrate that thimerosal-containing vaccines can contribute to causing immune dysfunction." So, hopefully, this nonsense is nearing its end.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090212/ap_on_go_ot/autism_ruling

[CofyCrakCocaine]

The whole point of vaccines is to "teach" your (or your child's) immune system to recognize the proteins in the diseases against which you're being vaccinated.

It doesn't weaken your immune system, but rather strengthens it.

What's more alarming, in my opinion (and I know a few doctors who may agree with me, including one of the gents at the family practice I used to be a regular patient at) is the over-use of antibiotics and other anti-microbial products, including triclosan, because people are so afraid of getting sick. Personally, I'm more afraid of "superbugs" than I am of getting sick in the first place!

Couldn't have said it better myself.

[IMSlacker]

Infamous 1998 Study Linking Autism to Vacines was an Elaborate Fraud (http://edition.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/01/05/autism.vaccines/?hpt=T1)

Well, I guess that settles that.

[Chimee]

Not remotely is the matter settled. You could offer the most conclusive evidence that there is absolutely no link whatsoever between vaccinations and autism and there will still be tons of people who will hold the initial, fraudulent, study up as absolute proof that their child is autistic because of vaccinations. Their minds are already made up on the subject, all the scientific evidence in the world won't get them to admit they're idiots.

[spoon]

Infamous 1998 Study Linking Autism to Vacines was an Elaborate Fraud (http://edition.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/01/05/autism.vaccines/?hpt=T1)

Well, I guess that settles that.

Yah this has been out there about that Lancet article being fixed for years bc the author was an expert witness in a case against the companies in question at the time.

Who would have thought Jenny McCarthy's science would be flawed!? :lol:

[StanUpshaw]

Not remotely is the matter settled. You could offer the most conclusive evidence that there is absolutely no link whatsoever between vaccinations and autism and there will still be tons of people who will hold the initial, fraudulent, study up as absolute proof that their child is autistic because of vaccinations. Their minds are already made up on the subject, all the scientific evidence in the world won't get them to admit they're idiots.

Yeah but mercury........:down:

[Dude!]

Their minds are already made up on the subject, all the scientific evidence in the world won't get their scumbag lawyers to stop filing lawsuits for big bucks.

fixed it

[Melk]

Not remotely is the matter settled. You could offer the most conclusive evidence that there is absolutely no link whatsoever between vaccinations and autism and there will still be tons of people who will hold the initial, fraudulent, study up as absolute proof that their child is autistic because of vaccinations. Their minds are already made up on the subject, all the scientific evidence in the world won't get them to admit they're idiots.
You got that right. The antivaccine scumbags are trying to get PSAs put into American cinemas before movies.

[KnoxHarrington]

You got that right. The antivaccine scumbags are trying to get PSAs put into American cinemas before movies.

And here's how they'll deal with this: they'll just say this report is a hit piece on Andrew Wakefield. Like the man himself says about the author of this report:

Wakefield dismissed Deer as "a hit man who has been brought into take me down" by pharmaceutical interests. Deer has signed a disclosure form stating that he has no financial interest in the business.

So why did he do it?

According to BMJ, Wakefield received more than 435,000 pounds ($674,000) from the lawyers. Godlee said the study shows that of the 12 cases Wakefield examined in his paper, five showed developmental problems before receiving the MMR vaccine and three never had autism.
"It's always hard to explain fraud and where it affects people to lie in science," Godlee said. "But it does seem a financial motive was underlying this, both in terms of payments by lawyers and through legal aid grants that he received but also through financial schemes that he hoped would benefit him through diagnostic and other tests for autism and MMR-related issues."

This scumbag basically doctored this report to be an "expert witness" in lawsuits by gullible parents suing vaccine makers.

Seriously, this piece of shit needs to go to prison.

[Recyclerz]

I suspect that the class action lawyers will move on after this development, leaving behind just a small rump group of poor saps that became true believers. It would be way too expensive to try to turn the public opinion tide back in their favor since all the real scientifc evidence undercuts their "facts."

But don't worry about them too much - there are plenty of other fears to monger for fun and profit.

[sailor]

Infamous 1998 Study Linking Autism to Vacines was an Elaborate Fraud (http://edition.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/01/05/autism.vaccines/?hpt=T1)

Well, I guess that settles that.

i'll believe it when i see the video of the needle going into the kids' arms. there hasn't been one video.