On 3 Mar 2009 at 8:57, [email protected] wrote:
> Here is an email a former student (who argues with me constantly about all
> kinds of psychobabble) sent me. She has been adamant for years that
> vaccines cause autism and will not listen to any of my evidence.
>
> I am swamped and don't have time to go over this but I am hoping someone
> on tips already knows more about this and can quickly reply. Especially
> regarding supposed the USA Today article.
You've pushed one of my buttons. This is a hot topic in our community,
thanks to one articulate but misguided contributor to a local paper. I've
just submitted (and was told will soon have published as a commentary) my
reply to her claims similar to those of your student. Hey, it's not the
New York Times, but it's still a newspaper.
The Banks case has not yet reached these parts. But the rest of it sounds
familiar, and it leaves out a lot. At the risk of seeming self-
promotional, I'm pasting in my (long) submitted commentary.
Stephen
-----------------------------
For publication in The Townships Outlet
February 19, 2009
Ivy Weir, our community´s own anti-vaccination agitator, is at it again.
Abandoning The Record where she published three such fulminations in
recent years, this time it´s The Townships Outlet´s turn. ("Independent
analysis is sorely needed", February 3, 2009). But we don´t need an
independent analysis. It´s been done, and the answer is always the same:
Vaccinations don´t cause autism. What is sorely needed is less
misinformation concerning the issues.
Ms. Weir relates the case of 9-year-old Hannah Poling and tells us that
"a panel of medical evaluators at the U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services (DHHS) have conceded a link between [her] autistic symptoms...and
her vaccination".
What Ms. Weir doesn´t tell us is that Hannah´s is far from a textbook
case of autism. She was diagnosed not with autism, but with a rare
mitochondrial enzyme deficit, with autistic-like symptoms. Dr. Julie
Gerberding, the director of the US Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, said about this case, "The government has made absolutely no
statement...indicating that vaccines are a cause of autism". Ms. Weir
disparagingly alludes to this statement as a "medical mantra", and
comments, "neither does any proof of no link exist".
Proof is a term more suited to mathematics than medical science;
nevertheless, when repeated attempts to find a link fail, we are as close
to "proof" as we are going to get. The onus is on those who assert such a
link to provide the evidence for it. Else we might as well claim that
autism is caused by little green men on Mars, because, as Ms. Weir would
argue, no one has shown that such a link does not exist.
For the DHHS "vaccine court" to award Hannah financial compensation, the
DHHS was not required to establish causation, only to find that the
petitioner "proposed a biologically plausible mechanism by which a
vaccine COULD [my emphasis] cause harm". This set the bar low for winning
the case. Nevertheless, experts still question the judgement in her case
on scientific grounds.
After Ms. Weir published her opinion, the DHHS vaccine court released
their judgement of three strong test cases on behalf of over 5,000
parents who believe that the MMR vaccine, either alone or through a
mercury additive, caused autism in their children. All three cases were
firmly rejected.
One judge stated, "The evidence was overwhelmingly contrary to the
petitioners´ contentions. The expert witnesses presented by the
respondent were far better qualified, far more experienced, and far more
persuasive than the petitioners´ experts...The petitioners have ...failed to
demonstrate that [the child´s] vaccinations played any role at all in
causing [her autistic] problems".
He also commented, "I have no doubt that ...parents and relatives are
sincere in their belief that the MMR vaccine played a role in causing
[the child´s] devastating disorders. Unfortunately, the [parents] have
been misled by physicians who are guilty...of gross medical misjudgement".
Another judge termed the evidence "weak, contradictory and unpersuasive".
We also need better information about Ms. Weir´s claim that when autism
spectrum disorder (ASD) was first "acknowledged by the medical world",
the initial hypothesis was to blame mothers for it. She says
dismissively, "so much for science". Actually, autism spectrum disorder
is a relatively recent term which includes mild cases of autism, and
dates from the 1980´s. The severe form of autism was first recognized by
the psychiatrist Leo Kanner in 1943. Then in 1967 the Freudian
psychologist Bruno Bettelheim, certainly no scientist, hypothesized
that "refrigerator mothers" caused autism. But by the time the term
"autism spectrum disorder" was coined, this claim had long been
discredited. We now know that the true cause of autism is overwhelmingly
genetic. Scientists were never responsible for the cruel and baseless
accusation that mothers caused autism but they were responsible for
refuting it.
Finally, we need accurate information about Ms. Weir´s claim regarding
the Amish. She says that while the incidence of autism in the general
population is 1 in 166 cases {she is referring to ASD, not severe autism,
which is much rarer), in certain Amish communities the rate is a mere 1
in 1,500 cases. She tells us that the Amish do not vaccinate their
children for religious reasons. Thus, no vaccination, no autism.
Moreover, despite not vaccinating their children, she asserts, "nor is
there any spike in mortality from childhood diseases".
Her source is apparently an Internet report of the anti-vaccination
journalist Dan Olmsted, not a scientific paper. In fact, Olmstead
contends that the autism rate among the Amish is 1 in 15,000 cases, ten
times lower than Ms. Weir reported. But where does he get this figure?
He cites Dr. Heng Wang, the medical director of the Clinic for Special
Needs Children in the Amish community around Middlefield, Ohio. Dr. Wang
states that he is only aware of a single case of autism in this community
of 15,000 Amish. Note that Dr. Wang does not say that he examined these
15,000 individuals or carried out a systematic survey of them. No, all he
asserts is that he personally is acquainted with only a single case of
autism. This is not reliable information.
It gets worse. Olmsted then reports that "Wang said that most Amish
parents in the area he serves do vaccinate their children". This turns
Ms. Weir´s contention upside down. A low rate of autism with vaccination
argues that vaccination does not cause autism.
What of Ms.Weir´s claim that there was no "spike" in childhood mortality?
Of course, we would not expect this if vaccination rate is high, as Dr.
Wang reported. Jonathan Yoder and Mark Dworkin, writing in The Pediatric
Infectious Disease Journal in 2006, support Wang´s observation that at
least some Amish communities do vaccinate their children. In a
systematic survey of an Amish community in Illinois they found a rate of
90%.
However, they also cite other sources to point out that:
"Multiple studies...of outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases have made
a direct link between the low rate of reported vaccine coverage in Amish
communities and their susceptibility to disease outbreaks. Outbreaks of
rubella, measles, pertussis...influenza, and polio, as well as increased
cases of childhood tetanus, have disproportionately affected Amish
communities in the United States. In each of these outbreaks, the
vaccination rates were too low".
Closer to home, three cases of measles in unvaccinated students have
already been recorded in Sherbrooke this year. How many more such cases
are we likely to find if Ms. Weir´s anti-vaccination campaign succeeds?
Ms Weir ends her opinion by drawing our attention to a new anti-
vaccination film which she calls "A Shot in the Dark". I think she has
the title wrong and is referring to the new National Film Board film
"Silence on Vaccine".
Two professors in the Department of Biology at the University of
Sherbrooke, Dr. Brian Talbot and Dr. Viktor Steimle, after viewing this
film published a letter to the editor of The Townships Outlet ("Vaccines,
What Silence?, February 17, 2009). They expressed their alarm that the
film misrepresents research findings to persuade parents that
vaccinations are harmful and cause autism.
Ms. Weir would surely complain, as she did in her essay, that these
professors are arrogant in warning against those who would question the
value of vaccinations. But as Talbot and Steimle point out, the issue has
been examined many times. They refer to the just-published review by
Gerber and Offit in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases which lists
13 studies carried out in six different countries which failed to support
an association between MMR vaccine and autism, and 7 studies in six
countries which failed to find an association between the mercury
additive thimerosal in vaccines and autism. To this we can now add the
very strong judgement of the DHHS vaccine court against parents claiming
that vaccinations caused their children to become autistic.
How many more such investigations would Ms. Weir require? Is there any
amount of evidence which would convince her?
Stephen L. Black
Lennoxville
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Stephen L. Black, Ph.D.
Professor of Psychology, Emeritus
Bishop's University e-mail: [email protected]
2600 College St.
Sherbrooke QC J1M 1Z7
Canada
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