Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Dr Rick · 11-07-2002, 02:22 PM

Here's a CNN <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2002/HEALTH/conditions/11/07/autism.vaccine.reut/index.html" target="_blank">report</a> on the study that looked at over one-half million children over a seven year period and found no relation between the MMR vaccine and autism.

Here's the abstract from this week's New England Journal of Medicine:

A Population-Based Study of Measles, Mumps, and Rubella Vaccination and Autism

Kreesten Meldgaard Madsen, M.D., Anders Hviid, M.Sc., Mogens Vestergaard, M.D., Diana Schendel, Ph.D., Jan Wohlfahrt, M.Sc., Poul Thorsen, M.D., J�rn Olsen, M.D., and Mads Melbye, M.D.

"Background It has been suggested that vaccination against measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) is a cause of autism.

Methods We conducted a retrospective cohort study of all children born in Denmark from January 1991 through December 1998. The cohort was selected on the basis of data from the Danish Civil Registration System, which assigns a unique identification number to every live-born infant and new resident in Denmark. MMR-vaccination status was obtained from the Danish National Board of Health. Information on the children's autism status was obtained from the Danish Psychiatric Central Register, which contains information on all diagnoses received by patients in psychiatric hospitals and outpatient clinics in Denmark. We obtained information on potential confounders from the Danish Medical Birth Registry, the National Hospital Registry, and Statistics Denmark.

Results Of the 537,303 children in the cohort (representing 2,129,864 person-years), 440,655 (82.0 percent) had received the MMR vaccine. We identified 316 children with a diagnosis of autistic disorder and 422 with a diagnosis of other autistic-spectrum disorders. After adjustment for potential confounders, the relative risk of autistic disorder in the group of vaccinated children, as compared with the unvaccinated group, was 0.92 (95 percent confidence interval, 0.68 to 1.24), and the relative risk of another autistic-spectrum disorder was 0.83 (95 percent confidence interval, 0.65 to 1.07). There was no association between the age at the time of vaccination, the time since vaccination, or the date of vaccination and the development of autistic disorder.

Conclusions This study provides strong evidence against the hypothesis that MMR vaccination causes autism."

Rick

[ November 07, 2002: Message edited by: rbochnermd ]

ksagnostic · 11-07-2002, 06:36 PM

Rick, isn't this the latest of a series of studies (I'm thinking the others were done in the UK, where vaccinationphobia has been a substantial problem, and here in the US)? I'm at home, and don't have my references.

Dr Rick · 11-08-2002, 09:26 AM

Yes, vaccines in current use have undergone rigourous clinical trials, and their efficacy and possible adverse effects are constantly monitored by public health institutions.

Routine vaccinations are one of the most effective and safest preventive health measures we can utilize. They've been so effective that many of us have forgotten just how serious the illnesses they prevent can be.

Last year, over 1 million children died from measles, almost all of them in undeveloped countries where the vaccine is not available. If we did not routinely vacinate children in the US and Europe against the virus, large numbers of children in those areas would also be dying each year.

Unfortunately, lots of unsubstantiated claims about adverse outcomes from vaccinations have made many people unnecessarily fearful of them. Tearful parents have appeared on television talk shows describing how their healthy child became debilitatingly-ill sometime after receiving a vaccination, clearly proving in the minds of some a cause-and-effect relationship. Other antedotal horror stories and anti-vaccine sites have popped-up on the web, and despite all the objective evidence to the contrary including the study in the OP, many people remain convinced that vaccines are harmful.

Some have argued that avoiding vaccination is just "playing it safe," but that position is entirely unreasonable: there is no safety in leaving your child vulnerable to dying from measles or paralyzed from polio, nor is their any justification in allowing a US or UN soldier into a potential biological war zone without an Anthrax vaccination.

Those rare cases of serious adverse effects associated with vaccines, such as Guillian-Barre syndrome associated with influenza vaccination and intestinal obstruction secondary to rotavirus vaccination have been quickly identified through monitoring programs and dealt with.

The paranoia against vaccines is not just limited to the MMR, either. Below is a table that has some of the more common and meritless claims against vaccinations

None of these unsubstantiated claims have any objective evidence to support them, and most, such as the concerns about the Anthrax vaccine, have been thoroughly refuted by large-scale surveilance studies.

Rick

[ November 08, 2002: Message edited by: rbochnermd ]

theyeti · 11-08-2002, 09:46 AM

But Dr. Kent Hovind has said that mandatory vaccinations were <a href="http://students.washington.edu/~ckthomps/lindahovind.html" target="_blank">concocted by Satan</a> as a tool to deliberately kill school children. I'm afraid I'll have to take the word of a doctor over yours, Rick.

theyeti

thebeave · 11-08-2002, 05:57 PM

The scary thing is that even with support of in-depth, rigorous scientific studies, many people will continue to believe in a link between immunization and autism. Careful, controlled studies mean nothing to them. I went through a similar exercise with a woman I dated recently who believed there was a cancer link from the electromagnetic radiation from electric blankets and overhead power lines. I sent her an article from quackwatch.com which explained the lack of a connection and told her I had a physics degree specializing in electromagnetics and that I was actively involved in this very area (health effects from EM radiation) for 12 years as part of my job. All this meant nothing to her; what mattered was that she heard several years ago on the news that someone claimed there was a connection, and years of worrying about it ingrained it into her head, thus making it "more true" (to her) as time dragged on. Eventually, I couldn't take it anymore (there were similar types of disagreements also ) and we ended it. <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" /> <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />

Toto · 11-08-2002, 09:52 PM

What do you think about thimerisol?

<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/10/magazine/10AUTISM.html" target="_blank">The Not-So-Crackpot Autism Theory</a>

Quote:

. . .As chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics committee on infectious diseases from 1995 through June 1999, he often appeared in the media administering calm reassurance. "Many of the allegations against vaccines," Halsey said in one interview, "are based on unproven hypotheses and causal associations with little evidence."

And then suddenly in June 1999, during a visit to the Food and Drug Administration, a squall appeared on the horizon of Halsey's confidence. Halsey attended a meeting to discuss thimerosal, a mercury-containing preservative that at the time was being used in several vaccines -- including the hepatitis B shot that Halsey had fought so hard to have administered to American babies. By the time the dust kicked up in that meeting had settled, Halsey would be forced to reckon with the hypothesis that thimerosal had damaged the brains of immunized infants and may have contributed to the unexplained explosion in the number of cases of autism being diagnosed in children.

That Halsey was willing even to entertain this possibility enraged some of his fellow vaccinologists, who couldn't fathom how a doctor who had spent so much energy dismantling the arguments of people who attacked vaccines could now be changing sides. But to Halsey's mind, his actions were perfectly consistent: he was simply working from the data. And the numbers deeply troubled him. "From the beginning, I saw thimerosal as something different," he says. "It was the first strong evidence of a causal association with neurological impairment. I was very concerned."

Kuu · 11-09-2002, 03:26 AM

People who refuse to immunise their children really annoy me.

I have a handicapped son who as a child was very sickly. Because of his illnesses he could not be immunised. I lived in fear of an outbreak of whooping cough and measles because my son would have been the child most likely to die of these diseases because of his weak health. It is the child with chronic illnesses and very young babies under vacination age that tend to die. If parents of healthly children all immunised their children there would be no breakouts as an immunisation rate of 90-95% is high enough to stop epidemics.

Ales · 11-09-2002, 04:39 AM

It seems that there are scientists who do not call for the withdrawal of vactination but for a better control and evaluation of potential risks of their use.

<a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheStealthVirusSupportGroup/message/3097" target="_blank">http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheStealthVirusSupportGroup/message/3097</a>

<a href="http://www.ccid.org" target="_blank">www.ccid.org</a>

Dr Rick · 11-09-2002, 08:05 AM

Quote:

What do you think about thimerisol?

Quote:

It seems that there are scientists who do not call for the withdrawal of vactination but for a better control and evaluation of potential risks of their use.

Vaccinations have saved hundreds of millions of lives, and each year save miilions more. Withdraw them, and millions of people, mostly children, will die.

Rick

ps418 · 11-09-2002, 08:20 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by rbochnermd:


Vaccinations have saved hundreds of millions of lives, and each year save miilions more. Withdraw them, and millions of people, mostly children, will die.

Rick

It amazes me how often people appeal to a one-sided equation when it comes to issues like this. That is, they assert that X causes N deaths every year, without considering how many lives are saved or could be saved by X. Vaccination is a good example. Another example is genetically modified foods, for instance
<a href="http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/science/DailyNews/rice000113.html" target="_blank">beta carotene enriched rice.</a>

11-07-2002, 02:22 PM	#1
Dr Rick Veteran Member Join Date: Jul 2000 Location: USA Posts: 5,393	Vaccinations and autism not linked Here's a CNN <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2002/HEALTH/conditions/11/07/autism.vaccine.reut/index.html" target="_blank">report</a> on the study that looked at over one-half million children over a seven year period and found no relation between the MMR vaccine and autism. Here's the abstract from this week's New England Journal of Medicine: A Population-Based Study of Measles, Mumps, and Rubella Vaccination and Autism Kreesten Meldgaard Madsen, M.D., Anders Hviid, M.Sc., Mogens Vestergaard, M.D., Diana Schendel, Ph.D., Jan Wohlfahrt, M.Sc., Poul Thorsen, M.D., J�rn Olsen, M.D., and Mads Melbye, M.D. "Background It has been suggested that vaccination against measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) is a cause of autism. Methods We conducted a retrospective cohort study of all children born in Denmark from January 1991 through December 1998. The cohort was selected on the basis of data from the Danish Civil Registration System, which assigns a unique identification number to every live-born infant and new resident in Denmark. MMR-vaccination status was obtained from the Danish National Board of Health. Information on the children's autism status was obtained from the Danish Psychiatric Central Register, which contains information on all diagnoses received by patients in psychiatric hospitals and outpatient clinics in Denmark. We obtained information on potential confounders from the Danish Medical Birth Registry, the National Hospital Registry, and Statistics Denmark. Results Of the 537,303 children in the cohort (representing 2,129,864 person-years), 440,655 (82.0 percent) had received the MMR vaccine. We identified 316 children with a diagnosis of autistic disorder and 422 with a diagnosis of other autistic-spectrum disorders. After adjustment for potential confounders, the relative risk of autistic disorder in the group of vaccinated children, as compared with the unvaccinated group, was 0.92 (95 percent confidence interval, 0.68 to 1.24), and the relative risk of another autistic-spectrum disorder was 0.83 (95 percent confidence interval, 0.65 to 1.07). There was no association between the age at the time of vaccination, the time since vaccination, or the date of vaccination and the development of autistic disorder. Conclusions This study provides strong evidence against the hypothesis that MMR vaccination causes autism." Rick [ November 07, 2002: Message edited by: rbochnermd ]</p>

11-08-2002, 09:26 AM	#3
Dr Rick Veteran Member Join Date: Jul 2000 Location: USA Posts: 5,393	Yes, vaccines in current use have undergone rigourous clinical trials, and their efficacy and possible adverse effects are constantly monitored by public health institutions. Routine vaccinations are one of the most effective and safest preventive health measures we can utilize. They've been so effective that many of us have forgotten just how serious the illnesses they prevent can be. Last year, over 1 million children died from measles, almost all of them in undeveloped countries where the vaccine is not available. If we did not routinely vacinate children in the US and Europe against the virus, large numbers of children in those areas would also be dying each year. Unfortunately, lots of unsubstantiated claims about adverse outcomes from vaccinations have made many people unnecessarily fearful of them. Tearful parents have appeared on television talk shows describing how their healthy child became debilitatingly-ill sometime after receiving a vaccination, clearly proving in the minds of some a cause-and-effect relationship. Other antedotal horror stories and anti-vaccine sites have popped-up on the web, and despite all the objective evidence to the contrary including the study in the OP, many people remain convinced that vaccines are harmful. Some have argued that avoiding vaccination is just "playing it safe," but that position is entirely unreasonable: there is no safety in leaving your child vulnerable to dying from measles or paralyzed from polio, nor is their any justification in allowing a US or UN soldier into a potential biological war zone without an Anthrax vaccination. Those rare cases of serious adverse effects associated with vaccines, such as Guillian-Barre syndrome associated with influenza vaccination and intestinal obstruction secondary to rotavirus vaccination have been quickly identified through monitoring programs and dealt with. The paranoia against vaccines is not just limited to the MMR, either. Below is a table that has some of the more common and meritless claims against vaccinations None of these unsubstantiated claims have any objective evidence to support them, and most, such as the concerns about the Anthrax vaccine, have been thoroughly refuted by large-scale surveilance studies. Rick [ November 08, 2002: Message edited by: rbochnermd ]</p>

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11-07-2002, 06:36 PM	#2
ksagnostic Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2000 Location: Wichita, KS, USA Posts: 2,514	Rick, isn't this the latest of a series of studies (I'm thinking the others were done in the UK, where vaccinationphobia has been a substantial problem, and here in the US)? I'm at home, and don't have my references.

11-08-2002, 09:46 AM	#4
theyeti Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: Denver, CO, USA Posts: 9,747	But Dr. Kent Hovind has said that mandatory vaccinations were <a href="http://students.washington.edu/~ckthomps/lindahovind.html" target="_blank">concocted by Satan</a> as a tool to deliberately kill school children. I'm afraid I'll have to take the word of a doctor over yours, Rick. theyeti

11-08-2002, 05:57 PM	#5
thebeave Veteran Member Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Silicon Valley, CA Posts: 4,183	The scary thing is that even with support of in-depth, rigorous scientific studies, many people will continue to believe in a link between immunization and autism. Careful, controlled studies mean nothing to them. I went through a similar exercise with a woman I dated recently who believed there was a cancer link from the electromagnetic radiation from electric blankets and overhead power lines. I sent her an article from quackwatch.com which explained the lack of a connection and told her I had a physics degree specializing in electromagnetics and that I was actively involved in this very area (health effects from EM radiation) for 12 years as part of my job. All this meant nothing to her; what mattered was that she heard several years ago on the news that someone claimed there was a connection, and years of worrying about it ingrained it into her head, thus making it "more true" (to her) as time dragged on. Eventually, I couldn't take it anymore (there were similar types of disagreements also ) and we ended it. <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" /> <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />

11-09-2002, 03:26 AM	#7
Kuu Senior Member Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Tasmania Posts: 710	People who refuse to immunise their children really annoy me. I have a handicapped son who as a child was very sickly. Because of his illnesses he could not be immunised. I lived in fear of an outbreak of whooping cough and measles because my son would have been the child most likely to die of these diseases because of his weak health. It is the child with chronic illnesses and very young babies under vacination age that tend to die. If parents of healthly children all immunised their children there would be no breakouts as an immunisation rate of 90-95% is high enough to stop epidemics.

11-09-2002, 04:39 AM	#8
Ales Regular Member Join Date: Aug 2001 Location: Czech Republic Posts: 226	It seems that there are scientists who do not call for the withdrawal of vactination but for a better control and evaluation of potential risks of their use. <a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheStealthVirusSupportGroup/message/3097" target="_blank">http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheStealthVirusSupportGroup/message/3097</a> <a href="http://www.ccid.org" target="_blank">www.ccid.org</a>

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