I'm glad that the General Medical Council is looking at this; it strikes me as criminal behavior.

As a college instructor, one research topic I proposed was concerning the vaccine debate in an attempt to get students to think about an issue many of them would deal with when they had children. Some amazingly diligent students researched this topic extensively and thoroughly and found significant evidence that, indeed, vaccines are the cause of autism, or at least one of its causes. Being anti-medical establishment myself, I have never embraced the "drugs will save us" mentality pushed so long and hard by the American Medical Establishment. In fact, my students found that the introduction of vaccines conincided with the earliest cases of autism, on and on and on.

But, go ahead, America! Believe the profit-motivated medical establishment that claims better health came with vaccines. No, vaccines conincided with greatly improved sanitiation and nutrition, supporting the argument that vaccines were never as effective as claimed, and in fact, are very, very dangerous.

How many vaccines are pushed on parents of newborns these days? As many as 40 according to my students. As if that tiny, new body could deal with all that!! How absurd!! But, hey....at least Big Pharma continues to make huge profits from unthinking, unquestioning parents, and as too many find out, autism is a curse on any family!

Personally, I predict that many of today's young people, the teens and twenty-somethings, will never see age 40 because between sitting in front of TVs, computers and video games and using cell phiones and microwaves their entire lives, plus tanning and using tanning salons, taking pharmaceuticals and OTC drugs like no generation before it, eating processed food and too much drug-laced meat, on and on, they'll die young. Not my children, but those of the unthinking, unquestioning supporters of the status quo. Think I'm kidding or exaggerating?

Nope.

Soap Box Amy, thank you. You said what I wanted to, only much better than I could have.

I do not believe that there is any peer-reviewed scientific evidence that shows a link between autism and vaccines. However, hearing all of the anecdotal stories is scary. My almost 2 year old does not have his MMR yet, mostly because we have been very busy, but also because I'm a little scared that maybe there is some truth to all of the anecdotal talk. My rational mind says "There is absolutely no scientific evidence showing even a correlative link much less a causative link, so just get him the vaccine." My scared mommy mind says "Well, what if?" I'm sure we'll drive him down to the health department when he turns 2 and to get the vax.

Personally I've had the MMR several times (as a child, and then most recently to start nursing school) and I didn't get so much as a fever. It does hurt though. That vax is really painful- even worse than tetanus.

You're correct Holly. There is no peer-reviewed scientific evidence supporting the link between autism and vaccines. And it's not for lack of looking, it has been pretty thoroughly researched. There just isn't a link.

Criminal in the extreme and explicit end of the dock, Rob, I agree. Thank you many times over, Amy.

This is devastating, bad news of the worst kind for the parents and loved ones of those children in the British Isles.

I think after this short piece anyone still supporting a stop to vaccinations will have to pause, look at all these deaths, and consider the many still to come.

This is a moral wake-up call.

The issue with vaccines is the preservative thimerosal used in them. Being mercury-based certainly presents a possibility that it ‘could’ be a factor in causing problems with brain development. No definitive link has been proven. There are studies on both sides that appear questionable in terms of who paid for the studies and ethical ramifications.

An interesting aspect of this entire debate is that there are two different forms of mercury that could be playing roles in the brain development of infants. Thimerosal is ethylmercury, which seems much less toxic than the other mercury beginning to be investigated, which is methylmercury. Methylmercury looks like it may be far more of a factor, and it is found environmentally in many settings.

Several recent studies have purportedly shown a coincidence of higher autism rates and higher levels of environmental methylmercury. Methylmercury gets into the food chain, and pregnant women consuming such contaminated food ‘appear’ to be more likely to have offspring with autism.

The other likely issue in this debate is the likelihood of a “predisposition” in the infants to be more susceptible to the effects of mercury exposure, which may be why such a vast majority of infants show no negative reactions to the vaccines. It is a complicated issue at this point. It’s good that it is being investigated on all sides, though.

As for the assertion that vaccines do no good, I think one must ignore the evidence to arrive at that conclusion. Vaccines may not be perfect, but the evidence clearly indicates a correlation between vaccine use and reduction in illnesses.

RATED

bumping the feed:

"Methylmercury easily crosses the placenta and accumulates in the blood and tissues of the developing fetus. It can be passed to newborns through breast milk, and a baby's growing brain and nervous system are even more sensitive to this toxin than an adult's. Children remain particularly vulnerable for at least several years because, compared to adults, they eat more food relative to their body size."

www.center4research.org/methylmercury2.html

Google methylmercury if you’re not familiar with it.

Thimerosal is no longer used as a preservative in the US. It was used in multidose vials, but since it's not used any more they've gone to single dose vials. A pregnant woman has a MUCH greater chance of exposure to methyl mercury from eating fish than from getting a flu shot.

(Maybe I shouldn't say this but I did my PhD work in toxicology)

Hi, sciencechick,

Why should you not say you did your “PhD work in toxicology”? What a valuable contributor you would be in a discussion such as this one.

I have been working on a BS in social work, which has temporarily been put on hold because of financial problems, but I was working on a research proposal during my last semester in school to do some compilations of data regarding this very issue of environmental methylmercury and occurrences of autism; I got short-circuited, but will probably submit the proposal when I go back to school (assuming I will be able).

What do you know about these studies about environmental methylmercury?

I also ran across this as an example:

“A study published in the June issue of Environmental Health Perspectives indicates that some genes have variations influencing the metabolism of methylmercury. These genes control a compound in the body called glutathione. Glutathione binds to methylmercury and brings it to the liver, where it can be excreted with bile.”
www.speciation.net/Public/News/2008/07/10/3711.html

I think there are genetic factors involved in the occurrence of autism.

Hi Rick,
I think my understanding parallels yours. Methylmercury does indeed bind to glutathione in the liver for biliary excretion. There are certainly genetic polymorphisms that have to be taken into account as far as detox enzymes (I don't offhand remember which ones do the MHg detox) so yes, some individuals would definitely be more susceptible to that sort of toxic exposure.
It's been widely accepted for years that pregnant women's exposure to PCB and mercury through fish meals is a HUGE cause of fetal toxicity. I haven't stayed up on the literature as closely as I used to but I think there is also a pretty good consensus that autism has a genetic component. What the environmental triggers are, is not quite as clear but fetal mercury exposure may be one.

Here's the point though: thimerosal isn't used in vaccines any more and thus isn't a source of mercury exposure. Furthermore, my understanding of the studies is that mercury uptake and excretion studies done on autistic kids don't show that they have any higher levels of mercury than non-autistic kids. (This is coming from my memory of some reading on this I did about a year ago so may be a bit faulty)

So whether mercury causes autism might be a point of discussion. Whether vaccines cause autism, because of supposed mercury exposure, just isn't.

sciencechick,

Another often cited factor in this debate is that the reported cases of autism have come to include a broader range of diagnoses, which would seemingly account for some of the increased incidence of autism cases.

I think that I've read that also - the diagnosis spectrum is broader and more parents are bringing in children for diagnosis. It's certainly a confounding factor that needs to be considered.

Joanne, thank you for posting. Sciencechick and Rick, thank you for your feedback as well. I appreciate those of you with science backgrounds helping get some information out there.

Soap Box: I lived in England when this MMR-Autism scare came out and I had a baby boy, whose uncle has autism. So, I was REALLY concerned about the chance that MMR might increase the risk of autism, in a kid who may have a genetic predisposition to it.

I did a bunch of research on the issue and the thing I realized was that the studies that showed no link between autism and vaccines had sample sizes of upwards of a thousand. There was one done by the California Dept of Public Health. One done in England, one done in Denmark (sample size of over 14,000) and one done in Japan.

All the studies suggesting a possible connection had small sample sizes. Andrew Wakefield's -- the most famous one, had a sample size between 12 and 30.

Er, viz my comment above, you are not Amy. You are Joanne. My apologies.

I generally don't get into these discussions because as both pediatrician and epidemiologist I believe that vaccines are the single greatest public health intervention of all times: greater than antibiotics, greater than anything else. Yet I respect the strong opinions this issue generates and wish to be respectful of the opinions.

However, the methylmercury/ethylmercury issue had a recent important study published in Pediatrics recently: http://www.medpagetoday.com/InfectiousDisease/PublicHealth/8168

And also, as we have seen, the removal of mercury from vaccines has not dropped the rate of diagnoses of autism.

I do wonder, though, how long it will be until these personal vaccine exemptions translate into legal liability when another child is harmed by this decision. For example, in the case in California where the unvaccinated kid brought back measles from abroad and infected several kids in the doctor's waiting room. What if one of those younger children (under the age of vaccination) had developed measles encephalitis and died? The family of the child who died could make a case that the family who chose not to vaccinate put their infant at undue risk and is responsible for their child's death. I believe this type of case will not be far off in our lawsuit-crazed country.

Statistically Britain has been lucky. The mortality rate of measles is higher than it has proven so far. I feel that people who do not vaccinate their children are putting other children at risk and their parents should be held liable if they refuse to vaccinate. We have become stupid about the horrible dangers of epidemics and the inevitable coming pandemic because we have not suffered one in our lifetimes. Politicians are railing against using government money to prepare for the next overdue pandemic. People who are old enough to remember polio are not taking our collective health seriously. I respect that people have a difference of opinion, but their opinion should not put my children at risk even as they risk the lives and health of their own children.

There's a point made in the article which I think needs to be singled out for emphasis:

The parents who claimed their children developed autism within days of the vaccination were lying.

They were lying.

They were lying.

The actual medical records show that their children did NOT develop autism suddenly following vaccination. Some developed it much later and some showed signs of it previously. Only one child in the study actually started showing symptoms of autism near the time of vaccination; and since most children are vaccinated about the time autism becomes evident, that's only to be expected.

When you worry about all the anecdotal evidence you're heard, please take this into consideration. When parents post on these forums claiming their children slipped away immediately following vaccination, please take this into consideration. Parents of sick children are desperate to find a cause and unwilling to accept a genetic cause because a genetic cause would mean that autism isn't something that can be cured but a permanent part of a child. Parents of sick children come from all walks of life and all educational levels and are not instantly experts on what makes children sick just because their child happens to be sick.

Allie - I don't think it's lying, I think it's recall bias. Autism generally doesn't show up at one dramatic moment. So by the time a bunch of oddities you've noticed has coalesced into a serious concern, a lot of time has gone by. When did you first notice a problem? You can't quite say, but if you've heard about the vaccine-autism connection, you try to put your vague memories into that time frame and then convince yourself.

I am glad to see more facts that debunk the vaccines-autism theory. We must rely on evidence-based science to take care of our childrens' health, rather than internet hysterics by unqualified parents. Yes, my heart goes out to all with an autistic child - but keeping life-saving vaccines from our kids is not the answer to discovering the causes of autism.

Joanne thank you for bringing our attention to this important issue.

Paul Offit, MD, does a wonderful job of detailing the research and related controversies on the relationship between autism and vaccines in his recent book, Autism’s False Prophets (2008). The public is being done a great disservice by celebrity experts who decry the use of childhood vaccines based on poorly designed studies and a very limited understanding of the biological sciences.

A cursory look at the development and history of the smallpox and polio vaccines demonstrates the enormous value of reducing morbidity and mortality in humans. The development of vaccines is one of the great triumphs of science over the scourges of our species. Not vaccinating one’s children is foolish and irresponsible.

The MMR vaccine gave me Transverse Myelitis last year. I still can't walk.

OKAY! Now will someone please get this information out there to the general public so these parents who have been putting their own kids - and the others - at risk can do the sensible thing and them vaccinated?

I cannot believe the stupidity running rampant in this country. We spend billions of dollars figuring out what causes serious childhood illnesses and diseases and then billions more to prevent them and idiot parents with nothing more than some news story decides to NOT protect their kids. And there's the part that really fries me: They have no problem putting others at risk while they don't get their vaccinated!

I think parents of autistic kids should look to the lead and the other contaminents now found in plastics that have obviously been on the market now for quite some time. There simply cannot be an explosion of something like autism without their being a logical explanation for it. And if not generic, then look to the environmental suspects.

This article reminds me of a book I read a few years back called "The Death of Innocents" which chronicled both the Wanita Hoyt serial-child-murder case and Dr. A. Steinschneider who had used a case study based on Hoyt's case to promote sleep apnea as the cause of SIDS as well as the idea that there was a genetic component to SIDS which caused it to "run" in some families - even though his own data failed to support such a claim (among other problems, he included the death of one child who was significantly older than the diagnostic criteria of the time allowed for a SIDS death.)

The New York Times book review of "The Death of Innocents" summarizes the experience and recollections of the nurses who worked with Steinschneider: "Moreover, we witness in much detail the work of Steinschneider as he seeks to eliminate SIDS -- and as he seems to ignore data that do not corroborate the results he wishes to find. At Steinschneider's urging, the younger Hoyt infants were each kept after birth in his clinic, where they were monitored, as one colleague put it, ''under stressful conditions: the test itself, the temperature in the lab, the separation from the parents.'' The authors find these test conditions -- done in the interest of medical research -- tantamount to abuse. But perhaps more egregious, the nurses in Steinschneider's clinic emotionally recall their sense that Waneta Hoyt was a menace to her children, and they make clear Steinschneider's rejection of any reported data that controverted the results he sought to find. ''In 'documenting' prolonged apnea where it didn't exist, Steinschneider created his own reality,'' the authors conclude. ''The critical data upon which his thesis rested was based largely on clinical 'observation' that was either presumed, embellished, or on occasion apparently fabricated.''"

Not only did Steinschneider gain a great deal of prestige from his theory, but once he began promoting the use of apnea monitors as a means of alerting a parent that a child had stopped breathing for longer than was considered "safe," he entered into a financial relationship with a monitor manufacturer that turned out to be rather lucrative for him.

Steinschneider wasn't the only doctor, however, who was found to have handled data selectively (if not outright fabricating it.) A hospital in Boston ran a multi-year study on SIDS and sleep apnea which purported to show the same results Stenischneider had come up with. Data from the study was later reviewed by British scientists who discovered that the data did not support the sleep apnea/genetic link theory (sorry for being a bit vague, it's been a couple years since I read the book.)

Anyway, in that case - like this - there was money to be made by getting the data to show certain results. For the autism issue, either side stands to make a fair amount of money - pharmaceutical companies from the vaccines themselves, those who believe vaccines are dangerous could profit from lawsuits or the potential prestige that can come from identifying something that can cause so much devastation in an individual or family's life. With SIDS it was primarily those promoting the genetic link / sleep apnea theory who stood to profit - hospitals from operating special units to deal with the young children of nervous parents, others - like Steinschneider - could gain prestige and profit from the technology developed in response to his theory. And, in both cases, children who might otherwise have lived long and healthy lives are consigned to - at the best - an increased risk of contracting serious illnesses if they are not vaccinated against them, and - at the worst - death at an early age that very well could have been prevented.

Good catch - I don't think it will change minds though, as Soap Box Amy demonstrates. People will believe what feels good to them to believe.

Soap Box Amy - you REALLY believe that teens and twenty-somethings are all going to drop dead in 20 years? There are certainly no widespread somatic indications *now* that this is going to happen, unless you count fat and the diseases it causes - but you didn't mention fat as the soon-to-be-future killer of all of these young people, you mention electronics.tanning salons, OTC drugs and meat. What do you base this on? Are there cell phone and tanning salon related diseases being reported yet? Or are the symptoms all hidden until age 4 and then will rise up and slay everyone?

excellent post - thanks for bringing it to our attention.

My children do not have autism, and yes, they have been vaccinated, so perhaps I shouldn't wade into this discussion, but I have been following the larger debate for quite a while, as it interests me.

SBAmy - links? yes. causation? The published evidence isn't very convincing. Skepticism of the pharmaceutical industry is fine and what goes into vaccines and the scheduled dose should be considered. Rejecting vaccinations out of hand? well, baby - bathwater...

here's a little true story

my daughter (12) was rushed from the doctors' office to the emergency room when she was 2 weeks old. She had refused to nurse overnight and looked pallid & ashen, so we went to the doctor first thing in the morning. They called 911 - she was cyanotic and tachycardic (I didn't know what those words meant either, but I'd heard them on ER and they didn't sound good & oh yeah, they were calling 911) - turns out she was not getting enough oxygen and her heart beat was at about 350 bpm (according to the paramedic)

In the ER, they used the paddles on her heart to reset her heartbeat and started her on anti-biotics. They transferred her to Children's Hospital and ran all sorts of diagnostic tests to determine a cause. After 10 days in the hospital, she was fine and we were sent home with a regimen of heart medicine for the first year.

Well, the upshot is that I had had mastitis the weekend prior to this (it was a Tuesday). I attributed her refusal to eat to the breast infection and possibly my own fever/illness. I felt like a horrible mother for not recognizing how sick she was earlier and was looking for any reason or cause. The doctors think/thought she may have contracted a staph infection during delivery. No one really knew/knows what brought on the SVT (supra-ventricular tachycardia).

About 9 months later, her EKG showed a condition where she had an extra conduction pathway in her heart that could cause SVT. It was congenital and she was likely born with it. A couple of years ago (as a pre-adolescent, which our cardiologist had warned of), she had another SVT episode and we went right away to the ER. She has since had the pathway surgically repaired/removed. She is all good now. :-)

Point being - there is a LOT going on with infants/babies and their development that makes it difficult, if not impossible, to determine causation versus correlation.

I applaud all efforts to conduct more research into the causes of autism, but I think that vaccine refusal will have increasingly damaging consequences.

Jane: have you spoken to the people at the clinic and asked how many other of the kids that they vaccinated with MMR possibly preserved with thimerosal developed Aspergers? If you are convinced of causality, then surely there must have been tons of other children there similarly afflicted, right? There should have been a true outbreak of autism/Aspergers at that clinic, if your thesis is correct. But I suspect that this did not happen at the clinic you attended.

We have seen no decline in autism rates since thimerosal was removed from vaccines. How does one reconcile this with thimerosal as the culprit? And this MMR/autism connection has been refuted many many times. It always concerns me when the purported cause of vaccine induced autism keeps changing (MMR, thimerosal, multiple vaccines).

Joanne, thank you for opening up discussion here on OS about this!

I have two autistic children, they are half siblings, and I have never doubted that their autism was a consequence of the genetic material that I myself passed on to them.It infuriates me when I hear parents blame their childrens autism on vacines.

I think the real reason that so many parent's tend to blame vacines however is because they can not accept that the autism 'came' from them. The vast majority of parents of autistic children are people who have far higher than average I.Q's. My own is anywhere from 143-148, depending on which test I take, lunar phrase ;), etc.

When you grow up as a 'gifted' child, who never needs to study and always makes perfect grades, when you grow up as the type of person who is GOOD at everything you try, you naturally expect that your children will be just as lucky. The hardest part of dealing with an autism diagnosis is realising that your child will never become the person that you dreamed they would be. But they are still the very same child whom you already love, and that is enough.

I wish parents would accept their children for who they are, and stop BLAMING modern medicine for 'ruining' their child. It's unfounded, it's ridiculous, and it's ugly.

Jane makes one (if not more than one) good point:

"...you know anybody, you know of anybody, you know anybody who knows of anybody - whose kid died from chicken pox? bc i dont." and this ..."you really think all those vaccines are needed?"

Absolutely not. And to echo Janie again, the sheer anger that arises from Janie's anecdote signals some wierdess--and not on her part. Any mother should understand the agony involved in these decisions--weighing research. I researched and researched before making my own call about vaccinations and my kids--there is conflict even among doctors, so why get so fricken angry at the parents?

I can understand the regular shmo who has no kids saying dumb stuff, but a doctor should be especially sensitive to the parents' dilemma.

Jane-yes, I was talking to you. Stop saying ridiculous things about why your child has aspergers.

Ghostwriter validated your feelings for you? That's rich!

denise, you've got some wicked karma headed your way.

Great post Joanne! I'll throw my scientific two-bits in here: my PhD is in Immunology - so yes, I'm definitely on the vaccination save lives side of the argument. I've had all of the usual vaccinations and then some. Did some of them hurt? Damn right, but as my mom always said, if you think that hurts, imagine what the actual disease would be like?!!! Yes, my child has been vaccinated, and she's as normal as anyone can be at age 13. You think vaccinations had nothing to do with decreasing childhood mortality? Look up some more statistics. The more we learn about genetics, the more we learn about sensitivities certain individuals have to environmental/chemical factors. People will get sick, be it from diseases or in some cases reactions to vaccinations. Also remember, that no vaccination works 100%. No one wants anyone's child to become ill - health, and how we maintain it, is not a sure thing.

Jane: I'm trying to think really hard about what you said that causation is bullshit. How is it bull?

There's either a direct cause -> effect happenstance, or causation, or there's a multitude of causes -> effect happenstance, or correlation. If there were a causal relationship between vaccines and autism, then every kid who's vaccinated will be autistic. Since not every kid who is vaccinated becomes autistic (rather, only a small minority do), then it's more likely that there's a correlation between vaccines and autism.

The strength of the correlation, though, appears weak. For most parents, they see a shift in behavior about the time the vaccine happens which sets up the causal relationship in their head. But, it's so odd that they immediately blame a vaccine, which they may have had themselves, rather than millions of other mitigating environmental factors, such as the increase of toxins and preservatives in our food and environment.

There is evidence that Y-chromosomes are being damaged extensively by environmental toxins. Currently, more males than females are autistic. That's something else to think about.

I personally do not know any children who have died of chicken pox, but I do know one adult who nearly died from it. She hadn't been vaccinated as a child. Pregnant women who haven't been vaccinated for German measles are told to get vaccinated because of the complications that can occur to the fetus. I remember seeing adults with polio and its after effects and was very grateful that effective vaccinations were in place for me.

"you know anybody, you know of anybody, you know anybody who knows of anybody - whose kid died from chicken pox? bc i dont. and i have ten brothers and sisters, more cousins than i can count, and about 30 neices and nephews at this point."

That's actually kind of a funny question since the whole point of giving vaccinated is to stop the spread of mumps, measles, rubella, tetnis, tuburculosis, polio and so forth (I've not heard of people being vaccinated against chicken pox, but if they are, then include it on the list.)

This is ALSO why so many people get angry at parents who refuse to vaccinate their children.

Here's the deal: Viruses are passed from person to person, and in many cases it doesn't require much (if any) actual contact with another to pick one up - if the virus is an airborne one, you can get it just by breathing the same air as someone with a virus.

Maybe you don't think there's anything to be concerned about if you haven't heard of a viral outbreak in your area, but that's not the case. While our ability to travel to distant locales has done wonders for our culture, it also makes it easier for viruses to travel from one part of the world to another - such as SARS, the bird-flu and so forth.

Viruses have only one imperative in "life" - survival of the strain. Now, I'm not saying viruses are conscious and make decisions about such things, but viruses will do whatever they can to exploit any weaknesses in their host, and unimmunized children are one of the most expoitable hosts they can find.

So when parents don't immunize their children and them send them to the local school with all the other kids, those unimmunized kids bring with them any viruses they might have picked up - and those viruses can start spreading among all the other children. Even though many (if not most) of the other kids may have been given vaccines, they still aren't going to have the same kind of ability to fight off the virus that adults do, and some of them will, in all likelihood get sick.

So, when parents choose not to have their kids immunized, not only are they putting their own child at a greater risk of becoming ill (and possibly dying or being left with brain damage or other effects from being ill,) but they're also putting other parents' children at risk.

That's why parents get so angry at parents who won't immunize their kids and still send them to school - and why many districts won't allow unimmunized kids to go to their schools. It's not just a personal decision affecting one's own kid(s) - it can affect every other kid in that school as well.

You don't hear about kids dying from measles, mumps, rubella, etc., etc., etc., because the vaccinations have - for the most part - been working. Yes, you do get some exceptions here and there, but immunized kids are much less likely to become sick themselves or pass a sickness on to the other kids in their school - and if they DO get sick, in many cases, they won't get nearly as sick as an unimmunized child would.

Parents who don't want to immunize their kids should also, really, home school them, so they don't run the risk that their child could cause other children to become sick. As Teendoc noted, there's been at least one case in the news where an unimmunized child went abroad and brought back measles - and proceeded to pass that measles on to several other kids in the doctor's waiting room.

Hopefully, that won't be a scenario that gets played out in schools anytime soon, eh?

Speaking of outbreaks happening because of unvaccinated children, here's a recent OS post from Dr. Rahul K. Parika citing a number of just such outbreaks: http://open.salon.com/content.php?cid=92489

Dr. Parika - who notes that he has never had "any relationship, financial or otherwise, with vaccine makers or drug manufacturers" - writes about a recent H.flu Meningitis case in Minnesota. He notes that he never saw a case of it during his pediatric training because most children have been vaccinated against it since the 1990's. In this case, however, one unimmunized child died and 4 others were sickened - 2 of them kids who also had not been vaccinated. He also notes that there have been a number of measles outbreaks around the country and at least one outbreak of whooping cough, all of which occurred because an unimmunized child got sick and spread it to others.

I stand corrected. People are generally vaccinated against chicken pox if they haven't had it in childhood. But there are some Canadian provinces (Ontario is one) that vaccinate children as long as they are a year old. This was introduced in 1998. My friend had never had chicken pox, which was why she got deathly ill. The vaccine didn't exist when she was a child.

Are 55 deaths a year (mostly in the immunocompromised and rarely in health adults) worth vaccinating all of the children in the US? Not for my kids. We'll reevaluate when they are 13. Until then, CP just isn't going to kill them (as they are neither immunocompromised or over the age of 13), so it's not worth it to me. I had CP and I am perfectly fine. I'm still immune too (got my titers drawn last year).

The World Health Organization estimates vaccines save 2 million lives a year around the world. (cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5518a4.htm)

Before the MMR vaccine was available in the U.S., measles killed and brain-damaged children every year, mumps caused deafness and rubella caused birth defects. (http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/specialtopic/immunizations-general-overview/measles,-mumps,-and-rubella.html) Measles kills 745,000 unvaccinated children a year in the undeveloped world.

Kids do die in the developed world. when "herd immunity" is lost because too many people aren't vaccinating their children. In Japan, 41 children died of pertussis after a vaccine scare drove the immunization rate from 80 percent (no deaths) to 10 percent.

Many large studies here and in other countries have found no link between vaccines (or thimerosol) and autism. Stop the vaccines, you get more autism and Asperger's diagnoses -- and more measles, mumps and rubella. Take out thimerosol and you get more autism diagnosis. Nobody knows why autism diagnoses are increasing so rapidly. It could be that doctors missed it before or that they're over-eager to use the label now. It could be something else. But there's a ton of research that says vaccines aren't the cause.

New York Times Health Guide:
"Of special note, a 2002 analysis of vaccination records of children born between 1979 and 1998 found no higher incidence in autism, with or without behavioral problems and gastrointestinal disorders." That is, vaccinated children were no more likely to be autistic than unvaccinated children.

To switch to the anecdotal, my nephew, who has Asperger's, wasn't vaccinated at the normal time. He got the MMR vaccine only when an unvaccinated classmate came down with mumps. He had symptoms of Asperger's before the vaccination. By the way, it's not a death sentence. He's now in college majoring in computer science.

The chicken pox debate is a bit of a red herring here. One of my kids got it; one didn't. In most places, it is not a required vaccine. It is available and parents can choose it. In any case, discussing it doesn't really add any value to the arguments here.

My son is autistic. He also had reactions to his vaccines--all of them. Each time it got worse, until finally, at the age of 18 months, his leg swelled to 3x its normal size, was purple and blue, he couldn't walk on it, and he ran a fever of 104.5. That was with the DTaP. Years later, we decided to just give him the booster without the pertusis (since that's what usually causes a serious reaction). He, again, ran a fever ranging 103-105 for three days, was listless, cried, wouldn't eat. He has not had a vaccine since.

He was autistic before he was vaccinated at 18 months old, of this I am certain. I can't tell you that he was autistic before about 13 or 14 months old--he seemed to change before my eyes. I'm uncertain if, or how, vaccines contributed. But I do know that, for whatever reasons, he has an immune system that wasn't functioning properly. Until a few years ago, for example, he routinely ran very high fevers whenever he got sick. More than once he has had a fever of 105.5, which meant a rush to the ER. He had persistent eczema brought on seemingly by milk products, and sometimes wheat products, though no test was definitive. That's also subsided in the past few years and he eats pretty much anything now.

My girls got their vaccines (although the youngest on a slower schedule), and will continue to do so. And while I understand that the science in this case points to thimeresol not causing autism, I'm skeptical. Perhaps it's because every time I say, "No, really, his leg was terrible...there were all kinds of tests and doctors said he couldn't have that shot again..." or I say, "no, really, he has had fevers over 105 multiple times..." people don't believe me. I really don't know if vaccines cause autism, or if the reactions are the symptom of some other underlying problem.

But anyone who insists that I continue vaccinating my son, or that I should homeschool him, should piss off, frankly.

Also, Asperger's may not be a death sentence, but it's not an easy path. And without good (read: expensive) interventions, autistic kids don't do well later in life. And many people with Asperger's have a difficult time maintaining relationships and jobs. So, while yes, it's not a "death sentence" it's not what anyone wants for their kid. The idea that it turns you into Bill Gates is a damaging myth.

Parents of autistic kids have been vilified for a long while. In my mind, this is one big reason why the community is so reluctant to listen to medical professionals. I took Ivan to our ped. 10x in 10 months. She, at one point, told me I needed a psychologist...for me and that nothing was wrong with Ivan (who that same year scored well into the autism range, and below the 1st percentile for social skills, life skills, and receptive language, among others). I've never met a parent who had an autistic kid who DIDN'T have a story similar to that.

You want us to trust you? Start treating us better. Start listening. Be a little compassionate, for Chrissakes.

lpsrocks: My chicken pox comment was in direct response to a question that jane asked. I wasn't aware that I needed anyone's permission to respond to another member. Joanne is free to delete my comments if she so chooses.

Wakefield was just on Keith Olbermann's WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD list.

He highlighted the above point - in many of the cases medical concerns had been raised before the children were vaccinated.
saying
in some cases, concerns were raised whether the children were even well enough to BE vaccinated.

That should bring some more attention to the news.

emma - that wasn't directed at you. I think your response was relevant and valid (and yes, I'm aware of the dangers of CP to pregnant women as well). I'm sorry that my comment came across as curt, rude and/or dismissive.

my point was that the question itself seems like a way to redirect the discussion away from the main point.
i.e., It may or may not be true that the number of vaccines is too many or the combination too strong - that is a separate issue than the question of whether there is enough evidence to support the charge that vaccines cause autism.

peace,
Lisa

Heather,

Your situation is quite different from parents who refuse to vaccinate their children at all. For one, from what it sounds like, your son has had a number of the vaccines and at least one booster before it became necessary for you to discontinue them. For another, he's older, and most (if not all) of the other kids he's around will have had their vaccinations and boosters. Even if he were to pick up something and take it to school with him, their immune systems have had more time to develop and become better able to resist infection.

My comment about homeschooling was referring to parents who do not give their children any vaccinations at all but still send them off to mix with everyone else's kids.

Jane: so glad you calmed down. I was never mad. I can't even see anything in what I wrote that would make you angry. You however, clearly got riled. Sorry about that. It was not my intent.

But the fact remains that since 1988 when I started practicing medicine, I have seen kids die of measles, varicella (chicken pox), H. Flu (I'm older than Dr. Parikh, so I trained before the vaccine) (Also, I had to do a spinal tap on a 5 month old baby who died of H. Flu. Doing an LP on a dead baby was life changing for me.) and even influenza. And truly the few who die or get very sick with these ailments are no big deal, as Holly puts it...unless of course, the kid happens to be yours. And having seen to many kids with no risk factors get illnesses and die, become disabled, lose limbs or end up signficantly debilitated, I, as a parent, will do everything in my power to protect my daughter from these illnesses.

Recently I attended a CDC meeting where discussion was being held about requiring flu vaccination for all children. A couple came to the microphone and spoke about losing their 5 year old healthy daughter to the flu. They never would have believed it possible, they said. Who dies from the flu, they thought. And there they were facing life without their little girl.

Sure, most people survive these illnesses without problems, but who is to know whether my kid is the kid who will have a more serious consequence? How will I look myself in the mirror if I decide not to vaccinate her for even the flu and she ends up in respiratory failure thanks to that annual bug? Nah, I love her too much to play those kind of odds, especially seeing what I have seen in my career. Life is enough of a crapshoot. I'll stack the deck in her favor as much as I can as her parent. I vaccinate.

teendoc, what you say makes good sense. My only quibble is that you can take the vaccine stuff and reverse it for autism. When you've had a kid react in any way to a vaccine, and then that same kid is diagnosed with autism, you begin to see the vaccines in a different light. I don't think the science yet shows that vaccines=autism, but I will admit to dabbling with the theory for awhile. And part of it is that the experience of having a child with serious autism is probably as galvanizing as taking a spinal tap of a 5-month old. That's the problem with emotional experiences: they tend to make us fixed and rigid and are hard to deal with rationally.

So, I'm not saying vaccines=autism, but I am saying that, well, I'm tired of the Hate-On-Parents Bandwagon which rears its ugly head pretty frequently when the issue is vaccines. You've got to understand that these parents are isolated, fighting for too little of a very small pie in terms of services, and have often been mistreated by medical personnel. I have a laundry list of incidents, and each one is singular in its awfulness. Once, when we took Ivan to the ER with a high fever (he had earlier been under anesthesia, so there was a lot of worry that something else was amiss, in addition to the bad fever), the doctor insisted Ivan be strapped to a backboard before he was treated because "this is protocol for mental patients." Ivan was 2. He was also lethargic and not fighting anything. I found myself arguing (and arguing and arguing) that we couldn't strap him to a board--he didn't need one, and it would actually make Ivan freak out. I remember the doctor so well--his sneer, his insistence, and I don't really know how I did it, but he finally agreed to not strap him down. Ivan had an IV for 20 or 30 minutes and cried a bit, but was fine with it.

I have at least 10 other stories similar I could tell. I don't know anyone with an autistic kid who doesn't. I'm pretty rational, pretty calm generally, and I don't follow pseudo-science. But I also know that whatever that doctor told me, I'd have a hard time believing, he had eradicated my trust so completely. That isn't an unusual scenario for parents like us.

So, while I don't think there's good science to show vaccines cause autism, I understand the impetus to make that leap. And when I see all the Wakefield stuff, I think "the reason these parents believed this doctor is because he listened to them." You read those reports from parents, it's in there time and time again...parents (like me) who have no way to explain the weird symptoms their kids have. That wasn't a small thing he gave them.

Other than the Dr. group here, does anyone know what the number 1 killer of Americans was in 1900? I'll tell you in a minute.

Medical science has made great leaps in the last 110 years or so. How many diseases no longer kill us? The last American in an Iron Lung died last June. She lived in it for 58 years. Has anyone seen an Iron Lung? What do you think stopped the spread of polio? Vaccines.

My daughter has AS. My ex was talking to a friend of hers who is a Dr. She asked about my daughters AS. Funny, didn't know she had it. The Dr. doesn't think the disease is getting worse, the dx and reporting are getting better.

I'm with teendoc. People die of diseases today when there is no reason to. Granted we may better understand them, and have drugs to treat them, but they still die.

BTW, the number one killer was influenza. Snap, there is a vaccine for that also.

If I had an immunocompromised child, I would vax for CP. But I don't. And I think it's a complete waste of money on the governments part to spend all of this cash on CP. CP is not a PH crisis in our country. The fact that thousands and thousands of kids in the US don't have health care, period- that's a crisis. The rates of HIV in the US especially among minority women (and no, that's not a stick at you teendoc)- that's a crisis. 55 people a year is not a crisis. But of course it's been declared one since we now have a vaccine for it. I think it's ridiculous. There are other places that money could be used and save more lives- condoms, safe needle exchanges, vamping up our medicaid for children programs, etc. and fighting CP is not one of those places.

Heather: There is no hate on parents with regard to vaccination avoidance. There is confusion about their reasons, and fear, and worry about my kid's exposure to their kids. But neither as a physician or as a person there is no hate.

I get that many physicians are dictatorial and Draconian. I tried like hell to avoid doing that when I practiced. My teens uniformly told me that they felt listened to (My practice was limited to those 12-22). Sometimes, however, the parents felt that they didn't get as much time or voice, during our limited appointment time. I tried to make up for this with phone calls and e-mails. But yes, there is a crisis in patient/parent-physician relationships. All parties go into the exam rooms walled off and waiting for the fuck-up or offense. It wasn't like that when I started practicing.

But let me give you an analogy to the vaccine=autism belief. A few years ago, I went through infertility hell to try to have a baby. Not long after my mom died, my husband and I flew to Cape Town for a donor egg cycle. We returned and found out that it had worked. I was pregnant, and get this, due on Mom's birthday.

We had a bunch of early scares, but I made it through the first trimester. To ease my anxiety I ordered a doppler device so that I could hear the baby's heartbeat. On the day it arrived, I spent about 30 minutes trying to find the heartbeat, freaking out the more time I spent looking. Finally, there it was! I called hubby and let him hear as well. He cried. That was the last time I ever heard the heartbeat.

I then decided to go downstairs and walk on the treadmill. Part of me was thinking, should I do this? But the sensible part realized that at 14 weeks, there is no restriction on walking on the treadmill. So I walked for 30 minutes. I got a few pains in my abdomen, but nothing major. But I was so winded, that I opted not to do that again for a bit.

OK, 2 weeks later I start bleeding. In the hospital I learn that the baby died...and get this...most likely the baby died around the day that I was on the treadmill...the last day I heard the heartbeat. Even when I knew better, I asked every doctor whether my getting on the treadmill caused the baby to die. They all said no. My common sense said no. Yet still a part of me believes despite all knowledge to the contrary that had I not gotten on the treadmill, my baby would be alive.

I share this to explain that I get how one can get stuck in an association, despite science and despite appeals to reason. Yet, had I been lucky enough to get pregnant again, I hope that my treadmill freak out wouldn't prevent me from recognizing that walking on the treadmill during pregnancy is indeed safe, because that is the real truth.

And Holly: Not a problem. You don't think it is a problem. Fine. But there are others who do believe that mortality is not the only reason one vaccinates. Morbidity is also a problem. There are some diseases that don't frequently kill you, but cause the child a lot of distress, like rotavirus, for example or RSV.

My kid is vaccinated against varicella. I don't want her to get varicella pneumonia, bacterial superinfection or even to have such a craptacular disease. I didn't have it as a child and the adults I've seen with varicella (including my own brother) generally end up hospitalized. I was vaccinated as well. (PS Kids who are vaccinated are unlikely to get shingles when they are older...an added benefit.)

What's your take on meningitis vaccination? Do enough people die from this to make it worthwhile, in your book? How many kids need to die in order to make it cost effective?

Meningitis- Yes I think it's worthwhile, personally. I got it as a freshman living in the dorms. I've read an estimate of 3,000 cases per year with a fatality rate of 10-20% and a severe morbidity rate of 15%. So, we're talking about between 300-600 deaths per year and 450 cases of a year of severe morbidity (and morbidity with meningitis involves things like cutting off all of your limbs, so that's pretty serious to me). So, yeah, I think that's a worthwhile vaccine- at least I hope my kids choose to get it when they go to college, as it is optional and not mandatory.

When I was a sophomore there was a guy who got bacterial meningitis in one of the dorms. Everyone rushed to get their vax because no one had it. I already had mine so I wasn't super worried, but student health had to order more. No one else got infected, but I don't know what happened to that guy. Hopefully he still has all of his arms and legs.

amy, did you scour that soap box against residual chemicals before you climbed on it? you have some points but you are so over the top that they get quickly discounted.