ABC show prepetuates autism/vaccine link

[Ocelot]

Much of the increase in Autism figures has been attributed to the broadening of the diagnostic criteria for autism spectrum disorders. What those same children would have been diagnosed with prior to the change in diagnostic practices is something I don't know.

 

[Chris Haynes]

...What those same children would have been diagnosed with prior to the change in diagnostic practices is something I don't know.

Developmental disability or Other Health Impaired or Specific Learning Disability... which is what my son received since he was receiving services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act before autism was placed on it as a seperate disability.

Only during his last year of high school did the school psychologist mention that he might be high functioning autistic. Even though I have several pages of child neurologist reports from between 1991 and 1995 saying he was NOT autistic.

It was added as a countable disability in 1992 to 1993:
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/116/1/e120 ... and was listed as a seperate disability for IDEA in 1997:
http://www.ncld.org/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=292

More detail here: http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/115/3/e277

Actually his diagnosis was more detailed (oral motor dyspraxia with functional dysarthria and some dysphasia which may or may not be related to a history of seizures), and not a generalized "autism". He received services that were geared towards his needs.

These days, the autism diagnosis can put a kid in a special classroom and not be as individualized.

The funny thing is when the psychologist said that he might be autistic, if he were placed in that catagory in the school his special ed. services would have been reduced.

 

[Dymanic]

Much of the increase in Autism figures has been attributed to the broadening of the diagnostic criteria for autism spectrum disorders.

The increase is rather significant, and unless we're prepared to say that ALL of it can be attributed to that, then we're still stuck for an explanation. If we can say that, and if anybody's got the math to back it up, I'd be happy to have it. Like Beth, my take is that while diagnosis can be a little sloppy, we're still looking at a real increase in a real phenomenon. The "lack of face to face communication" hypothesis appears to be nothing but a slight variant of the long-abandoned "refrigerator mother" hypothesis. The thimerosal hypothesis sounded reasonable enough at one time, but it's dead and stinking now as well. There clearly seems to be a genetic component. Now all we have to do is identify the environmental trigger(s). So many substances, so few human experimental test subjects. It must be very frustrating for those who are dealing with this directly.

 

[Beth]

No, I think it is just recategorisation. Lots of kids are now being diagnosed as being "on the austistic spectrum"; this includes everything from severe low-functioning autism, where the child will need lifelong care, to Aspergers Syndrome, where the child is able to develop into a functioning adult. Aspergers is a fairly recent diagnosis - they just used to be "funny kids" or social inadequates.
Add in the fact that in most Western countries a diagnosis of autism - any kind of autism - will get your child special priviledges, and it's easy to see the reasons for the rise in diagnosis.

According to a study released in 2005,

Study author Paul Shattuck of the University of Wisconsin at Madison said, there may be as yet unknown environmental triggers behind autism. Still his research suggested the past decade's rise in autism cases was more of a labelling issue.

http://www.bio-medicine.org/medicin...School-of-Public-Health-in-Baltimore--9029-1/

While changes in diagnoses can explain some of the rise in incidence of autism, apparently not all of it.

 

[Chris Haynes]

The increase is rather significant, and unless we're prepared to say that ALL of it can be attributed to that, then we're still stuck for an explanation. If we can say that, and if anybody's got the math to back it up, I'd be happy to have it. Like Beth, my take is that while diagnosis can be a little sloppy, we're still looking at a real increase in a real phenomenon. ....

You might want to check this blog entry:
http://photoninthedarkness.com/?p=117

This is one interesting chart:

 

[David Wong]

Ugh. I watched this show, it came on after Lost. Disgusting.

My wife watches Oprah, and twice Oprah has done entire anti-vaccination episodes with parents who believed their children were made autistic (including Jenny McCarthy, who claims she could see the autism appear in her child's eyes the moment they injected him).

Oprah is firmly in the anti-vaccine camp, the only opposition was at the end of the show she read an email out loud that she got from the CDC citing the studies.

It seems like they should be held liable for that somehow. Can't imagine how, but that's just disgusting to me.

 

[MattusMaximus]

My wife watched the show last night, and I made sure to tell her the whole "vaccines cause autism" link was bullsh*t. It seems highly reckless to me for ABC to give even a twinkle of validity to such pseudo-science.

My wife is certainly hip to the fear-mongering about vaccines and whatnot (she rolls her eyes at the thought people wouldn't vaccinate their kids), but sadly I think too many people will have watched this show and think there's something to it all.

 

[Ziggurat]

ABC doesn't plan to cancel the show

Of course not.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/TV/01/29/pediatricians.tvshow.ap/index.html?iref=newssearch
"Marc Guggenheim, who helped create the show, said the first episode shows how a fictional company covered up a study that raised questions about its product, and that the message is really about "the downside of the corporatization of America.""

Yeah, yeah, corporations are bad. Standard Hollywood claptrap. That's why we have to portray them as bad, even at the cost of possibly triggering an outbreak of deadly disease. Because we can't cancel or refilm the show, because ABC would lose too much money. Yeah, they're showing the "downside of corporatization", all right, by exemplifying the problem. Congratulations, Mr. Guggenheim.

 

[Blackwell]

...ABC doesn't plan to cancel the show, but will preface it with a CDC website link and a disclaimer: “The following story is fictional and does not portray any actual persons, companies, products or events.”

I also watched the show; I was disappointed that they did not preface it with the disclaimer. They buried it at the end of the episode.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

While we're on the subject, I have my own thoughts about causes of autism, and why it's rising. I think it's mostly the lack of face to face communication with kids. They're stuck in front of computers at too early an age. Autism is associated with the inability of the individual to pick up on facial cues.

I think you have an autistic tendency which is genetic in origin. Couple this with a "toxic" environment and autism increases. The genetic component was always present. The environment has changed. With more face to face interaction at an early age, more family time with conversation, the genetic component can be worked around. Neural plasticity is very powerful at overcoming problems.

Conversely without the genetic tendency towards autism, even with less face to face interaction most kids can deal with it. They learn to pick up the facial cues anyway.

Autism might be as simple a matter of just requiring more trials before behaviour patterns become "learned".

Sorry for my $.02 I'm trying to post to bring my count up to 50 so I can turn on my avatar. Also I wanted to air my theory.

-Dave

Nice hypothesis but it totally fails to consider the evidence. Autism can be diagnosed before the age of one!

Welcome to the board though.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I missed the show but saw the trailer and read all about it. Part 2 is next Tuesday I guess. It is really an issue here at the moment. WA State has some idiot legislators who recently passed a bill banning the use of vaccines with any thimerosal in kids under 3 and pregnant women. They were convinced by one of the mercury-in-your-fillings-causes-every-disease-known-to-man nutcases and a position paper from 2001 that merely said the evidence was not yet in, while at the same time they ignored the position paper from 2004 from the same organization that said the evidence was in and thimerosal was safe. These idiots even wrote into the bill the claim that many people did not trust the science therefore they were banning the preservative.

Lest you think this is not a problem, for flu vaccine and Japanese Encephalitis vaccine, the law left many people unvaccinated this year for those 2 diseases. I suppose one could get the JEV at one's destination instead of before leaving.

In addition it seriously undermines the campaign to get parents off this misguided vaccine belief. And as far as I'm concerned, the legislators are essentially practicing medicine without a license thinking they need to tell providers how to practice.

Can you tell I'm really miffed about this? I am.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

First it was autism, then thimerosal, then a resurgence in polio as people feared the vaccine was a plot to sterilize Muslim women (I kid you not), them MS, and now criminal charges against vaccine manufacturers in France based entirely on bad science.

Two drug firms charged in France over hepatitis vaccine

Multiple Sclerosis and the Hepatitis B Vaccine

Studies have been completed which evaluate possible relationships between hepatitis B vaccination and multiple sclerosis (MS). The weight of the available scientific evidence does not support the suggestion that hepatitis B vaccine causes or worsens MS or other demyelinating diseases.

This is really getting so out of hand.

 

[MattusMaximus]

Nice hypothesis but it totally fails to consider the evidence. Autism can be diagnosed before the age of one!

Welcome to the board though.

I'd thought that the cause of autism is primarily genetic. Is this correct?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I'd thought that the cause of autism is primarily genetic. Is this correct?

There is more than one type of autism. That suggests there are probably multiple causes of autism and there are likely mixed forms as we see with some other brain centered illnesses.

At least one type of autism appears to have a specific chromosomal link.

The just-published research confirms Finnish studies of families that linked autism to the same region on chromosome 3, according to principal author Hilary Coon, Ph.D., research associate professor of psychiatry. In fact, the results of the U of U research were surprisingly similar to the Finnish studies, Coon said.

"It was remarkable to confirm the Finnish studies," she said. "Our results were so close to their evidence, we thought it was important."

When vaccines were first hypothesized to have a causal relationship to autism, it was because autism was diagnosed when toddlers increase their social behavior. That happened to coincide with the 15 month and 18 month shots.

But later research observing and cataloging behavior of one year olds in the many 1 yr birthday party videos parents now have, researchers were able to correctly identify diagnostic behaviors prior to the socializing age. We now diagnose autism by these earlier behavior patterns.

So, if autism occurs in the first year of life or earlier, now that vaccines have been completely ruled out, that pretty much just leaves genetics and/or fetal or birth injury.

Those fools still wasting valuable research resources chasing causes we have ruled out have also forgotten we been down this wrong road before. Mothering was blamed for autism for a very very long time. That has been thoroughly ruled out as well.

 

[Deetee]

Just a couple of follow ups on the issues around the TV show-
first an article in the Huffington Post by our favourite antivaxer, David Kirby.
Also one of Orac's excellent articles.

 

[Nogbad]

As a father of a daughter with Asperger's I can understand why parents of autistic children have a need for answers. Both my kids had the MMR and I can't say that my daughter reacted badly to that jab. She did react very badly to the whooping cough one which is given in three stages and the doctor decided against the third one as her reaction after the second was so bad, Perhaps they are looking at the wrong jab? That said my daughter is a very bright, funny and capable teen - albeit a tad (well more than a tad) eccentric. However, for those parents of severely autistic children things are not so easy and it is not hard to see why, if convinced that the vaccines were to blame, they would be so zealously against them.

 

[robinson]

I have a long time friend (since grade school), who went through a nightmare involving a simple "jab". He works in medicine, so he didn't buy the BS when it happened to his child. It wasn't the "jab", it was the immune response to it, and resulting infection, that turned his healthy normal boy sick.

A vibrant, healthy, intelligent little boy went from normal to a lifetime disability, in a week. It started the day of the "jab". The child's Doctor rejected any chance that the two events were connected, and insisted it was a normal childhood illness.

The ER refused treatment, based on no symptoms that they could see. It went on and on, a nightmare, until a week later he found an "alternative" Doctor (a real M.D.), who treated the brain infection and saved the boys life. He isn't autistic, he isn't retarded, he isn't any one diagnosis, but he is brain damaged. We all know it. We also all know it happened in a week, and it was connected to a vaccine.

This isn't a new story, or unique of course. It is the basis of what led to the theory it was the mercury causing it. It has to be something in the vaccine. It can't be just getting a vaccine, because that would be too terrible to even consider.

The obvious answer to this issue, to lay it to rest for good, as well as advance scientific understanding, would be to simply test the vaccines on animals, and do a large scale study of vaccinated populations compared to non-vaccinated populations.

That neither has been done tells a lot about the vaccine issue.

 

[robinson]

By animal testing, I mean give the entire mercury laden vaccine schedule that was/is used on humans to chimps. Lots of chimps. Use a control group. Wait for them all to mature and test them, observe them, see what happens to animals when you vaccinate them, just like humans.

The population study is even easier. There are vast numbers of people who have refused vaccines, living in the same areas as vaccinated people. Doing this seems almost like, I don't know, Evidence based Medicine.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

As a father of a daughter with Asperger's I can understand why parents of autistic children have a need for answers. Both my kids had the MMR and I can't say that my daughter reacted badly to that jab. She did react very badly to the whooping cough one which is given in three stages and the doctor decided against the third one as her reaction after the second was so bad, Perhaps they are looking at the wrong jab? That said my daughter is a very bright, funny and capable teen - albeit a tad (well more than a tad) eccentric. However, for those parents of severely autistic children things are not so easy and it is not hard to see why, if convinced that the vaccines were to blame, they would be so zealously against them.

As a mother, as a nurse practitioner and having been a nurse for many years before that, I can say I understand your desire for answers and frustration they are not coming as fast as might be helpful for your daughter.

As a nurse practitioner and having been a nurse for many years before that who is firmly rooted in evidence based medicine I can say that the medical community takes seriously evidence including initial evidence raising red flags about any treatment, vaccine or other drug. And when we see that evidence, we look for medical science to investigate the issues.

As a nurse practitioner and having been a nurse for many years before that I can also say that practitioners, public health or otherwise have no absurd and illogical motives to vaccinate the masses despite the danger of a vaccine in order to achieve herd immunity if there is evidence a vaccine is dangerous. Nor would health care practitioners, public health or otherwise ever consider risks to the individual outweighing the benefits to the masses as some motive to suppress research that a vaccine was dangerous. That is as illogical as it gets. Either that vaccine's benefits outweigh the risks or they don't. Vaccine risks cannot be applied to the masses and not to the individual regardless of the fact bizarre thinkers living in alternate realities have somehow construed this twisted logic into some explanation as to why health care providers would conceal vaccine risks.

Misconceptions about Immunization - Misconception #9: Vaccines cause autism

The beginning of the vaccine-autism connection began with a physician in France who believed his research indicated a connection between the timing of MMR vaccine and onset of autism reported on those findings. Members of his research team have since retracted that conclusion.

It was nearly four years before any member of the team broke the silence
It is also regrettable that Dr Wakefield's immediate colleagues were so reticent in making their own positions clear. Though, as it was widely pointed out, there were more signatories to the February 1998 paper (thirteen) than the number of children on whom it was based (twelve), Dr Wakefield's co-authors remained aloof from the controversy. While three paediatricians involved in the study distanced themselves from the call for single vaccines, it was left to another Royal Free paediatrician - Professor Brent Taylor - to provide a comprehensive exposure of Dr Wakefield's case.

Apart from muted endorsements of the national immunisation programme, it was nearly four years before any member of the team broke the collective silence (four years in which Dr Wakefield was highly vocal). Finally, in February 2002, the most senior member of the team, the eminent paediatric gastroenterologist Professor John Walker-Smith, wrote to the Lancet declaring his personal confidence in MMR (12).

This is from an excellent discussion of bad medicine, Andrew Wakefield: misguided maverick. Also well worth reading is, MMR: the making of junk science .

Once the connection was disproved with further research, the blame shifted to the mercury containing thimerosal in other vaccines and giving multiple vaccines together. Neither of these hypotheses were supportable.

But even further than that, as I have posted in this forum before,

The fact that autism is diagnosed during the second or third year of life does not mean that it began at that age. Analyses of home movies made from birth onward have shown that most children who are diagnosed as autistic during the second or third year have abnormal signs during the first year—and some even show abnormalities at birth [19-26].

In other words, not only has the connection of vaccines to autism been ruled out, the underlying premise that vaccinations preceded onset of symptoms was completely false. Rather, autism was being diagnosed when children's behaviors became more noticeable as they reached the age of increased socialization, but its onset is well before that and probably occurs before birth.

I understand your desire to find an answer, a treatment, a cure. What parents need to know is that continually looking for these answers down dead end roads only serves to delay the progress of research that has the potential to be successful.

In other words, you'd think people would want the scientific community to be looking in potentially fruitful directions. Why they prefer the magical thinking that big pharma/the government/& public health conspiracies underlie the truth and the answers if they could just convince people of the cover up and lies is difficult to understand. Not only does it lead to missed opportunities to save lives with perfectly safe vaccines, it also wastes research resources proving again and again vaccines have no bearing on autism or autism symptoms.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I have a long time friend (since grade school), who went through a nightmare involving a simple "jab". He works in medicine, so he didn't buy the BS when it happened to his child. It wasn't the "jab", it was the immune response to it, and resulting infection, that turned his healthy normal boy sick.

A vibrant, healthy, intelligent little boy went from normal to a lifetime disability, in a week. It started the day of the "jab". The child's Doctor rejected any chance that the two events were connected, and insisted it was a normal childhood illness.

The ER refused treatment, based on no symptoms that they could see. It went on and on, a nightmare, until a week later he found an "alternative" Doctor (a real M.D.), who treated the brain infection and saved the boys life. He isn't autistic, he isn't retarded, he isn't any one diagnosis, but he is brain damaged. We all know it. We also all know it happened in a week, and it was connected to a vaccine.

This isn't a new story, or unique of course. It is the basis of what led to the theory it was the mercury causing it. It has to be something in the vaccine. It can't be just getting a vaccine, because that would be too terrible to even consider.

The obvious answer to this issue, to lay it to rest for good, as well as advance scientific understanding, would be to simply test the vaccines on animals, and do a large scale study of vaccinated populations compared to non-vaccinated populations.

That neither has been done tells a lot about the vaccine issue.

You denied that you post junk science sources, rob. Well here is an example of a completely ignorant discussion and not even a source.

Overwhelming research has been done thoroughly debunking any connection whatsoever of vaccines to autism, thimerosal or not.

The latest research to be added to this pile of already overwhelming results was an epidemiological study showing that removing thimerosal from childhood vaccines resulted in an INCREASE in autism cases. No one is suggesting the thimerosal had a protective effect but if anyone was really interested in the evidence rather than the conspiracy fantasy, maybe they should consider that hypothesis.

New cases continue to rise despite earlier suggestions it is merely the result of looking harder.

The mercury-containing vaccine additive thimerosal is not a primary cause of autism, says a study published yesterday in the Archives of General Psychiatry. (The journal article requires a subscription)

High doses of thimerosal were used throughout the 1990's in infant vaccines before being largely removed from U.S. supplies in 1999. Mercury is a potent neurotoxin, and some people have blamed it for the dramatic, tragic rise of autism in the United States.

Yesterday's study, authored by California Department of Public Health researchers Robert Schechter and Judith Grether, used California Department of Developmental Services data to track rate...

...The criticism echoes that of UCLA pharmacologist Paul Krugstad, who after the CDC study said, "The removal of thimerosal created the impression of risk, where none existed."

Of course, even with mounting evidence there is no identified risk of thimerosal in childhood vaccines, this article cites unrelated bad science and goes on to proclaim the mercury was bad and the false scare had the benefit of getting it removed from childhood vaccines.

For crying out loud, here's a guy admitting the whole vaccine scare was based on crap and then he goes on to suggest more crap based assumptions.

Allowing thimerosal doses to increase through the 1990s as the routine infant immunization schedule expanded was extraordinarily careless. Vaccine manufacturers and public health officials dodged a bullet -- and it's still not clear, and might not ever be clear, whether thimerosal might have caused autism in a statistically insignificant number of children unable to metabolize mercury.

The autism-thimerosal link appears, for public health purposes, to be dead. But rather than mocking the understandable anger of confused parents trying to grapple with early and imperfect science, critics ought to be grateful that vaccine carelessness didn't wreak havoc on the mental development of a generation.

(emphasis mine)

For the record, if there was a statistically insignificant number of children unable to metabolize mercury, that means there was NO DIFFERENCE between subjects and controls in the studies. That doesn't mean a tiny portion of kids exist which mercury harms, it means there is NO EVIDENCE any such kids exist! This is a common error in understanding science that many lay persons make, "well if it didn't show up it's because the tests are not detecting certain unusual kids".

We can detect an increase in 1 extra case of a syndrome per million doses of vaccine. I suppose a study looking at vaccine side effects could miss a single child the vaccine posed a risk to because of their unique genetic make up. But something like that wouldn't in any way suggest a connection between vaccines and autism.

The above article was written by one, Brandom Keim The bad science and poor logic of the above article is the kind of logic you frequently regurgitate, robinson. Keim's credentials:

A graduate of the Columbia Journalism School's M.A. science and health writing program,

Here is how a respectable science blog reported on the same thing which the above unqualified, nonmedical and unscientific reporter so poorly did.

Another very bad day for antivaccinationists: Yet another study fails to find a link between thimerosal and autism; (Respectful Insolence)

A little more than three months ago there came to pass a very bad day for antivaccinationists.

On that day, in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine appeared a study that was powerful evidence that vaccines are not associated with adverse neuropsychiatric outcomes in children. Not surprisingly, the usual suspects in the mercury militia went on the attack immediately, not wanting to believe that yet another strong piece of evidence was attacking their hallowed belief that mercury in the thimerosal preservative previously used in vaccines is a major cause or contributer to the development of autism.

Yesterday was another very bad day for antivaccinationists, a very, very bad day indeed. Three months ago, the study released that supported the safety of vaccines did not directly deal with autism and autism spectrum disorders. Yesterday, however, a study was released in the Archives of General Psychiatry that did study the question of whether vaccination with thimerosal-containing vaccines is at all correlated with the development of autism or autism spectrum disorders. Not surprisingly, given the growing number of other studies that have failed to find an association, the answer was a resounding "No!"

[snip]

In a pointed editorial that accompanied the study, Eric Fombonne asked the same question that I've been asking for the last two years now about the magical thinking that leads the mercury militia to cling to this failed hypothesis no matter how many studies fail to support it:

Despite the accumulation of scientific evidence rejecting these 2 hypotheses linking autism to various components of childhood vaccines, these theories and the practices that accompany them have not faded away. Why? How many more negative study results are required for the belief to go away, and how much more spending of public funds on this issue could even be justified

This is an excellent question. Millions of dollars of taxpayer money are likely to be spent studying this hypothesis, virtually all thanks to the political clout of activists and antivaccinationists legislators like Indiana's Dan Burton. Moreover, the hypothesis that mercury in vaccines was the cause of an "autism epidemic" was never particularly scientifically plausible in the first place; it was just barely plausible enough that activists with an agenda could make scientists throw up their hands and say, "All right, let's take a look." Powerful forces are at work to keep this hypothesis on life support, to the point where the federal government has even invited known antivaccinationists to sit on the new Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee. It doesn't matter that, in the face of the onslaught of multiple new studies like this that fail to find even a whiff of a correlation between TCVs and autism, even some of the most diehard zealots are starting to back away from the attitude of "it's the mercury in vaccines, stupid." In the meantime, even David Kirby and those more zealous than him were starting to back away from the hypothesis, invoking hand-waving and vague "environmental toxins" or even going so far as to blame mercury from pollution wafting over from China or, even more ludicrously, mercury from the cremation of bodies with mercury amalgam dental fillings.

Read the entire blog. It is really good. I love this blogger who has an excellent reputation in the science blogger community.

Respectful Insolence's author goes by the pseudonym, Orac.

Orac is the nom de blog of a humble pseudonymous surgeon/scientist with an ego just big enough to delude himself that someone, somewhere might actually give a rodent's posterior about his miscellaneous verbal meanderings, but just barely small enough to admit to himself that few will....

Respectful Insolence is a repository for the ramblings of the aforementioned pseudonymous surgeon/scientist concerning medicine and quackery, science and pseudoscience, history and pseudohistory, politics, and anything else that interests him (or pushes his buttons). Orac's motto is: "A statement of fact cannot be insolent." (OK, maybe it can be just a little bit insolent.)

Orac tries to keep his insolence respectful most of the time, but admittedly sometimes fails in the cases of obvious quackery and pseudoscience, personal attacks on him, very poor critical thinking skills, bigotry or racism, and just general plain stupidity.

Finally, Orac's "real" identity is an open secret, but he nonetheless keeps using the Orac pseudonym because (1) he doesn't want his blog to be the first thing that comes up when patients Google his name; (2) he has a long history on the Internet under this particular pseudonym; and (3) he likes it....

So there you have it, the surgeon vs the journalist, and a slough of sources refuting robinson's absurd claim that because some research he proposes wasn't done, not enough research exists to draw a reasonable conclusion. The jury is in, robinson. Vaccines are not the cause of autism. Time to look elsewhere.