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Good science, bad science

Good science, bad science. Science as a process of knowing. Do vaccines cause autism?. True False. Would you refuse vaccination for your child?. Yes No. MMR vaccine and autism. Children with autism (Autism Speaks) Vaccine Wars (PBS.org). Studies.

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Good science, bad science

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  1. Good science, bad science Science as a process of knowing

  2. Do vaccines cause autism? • True • False

  3. Would you refuse vaccination for your child? • Yes • No

  4. MMR vaccine and autism • Children with autism (Autism Speaks) • Vaccine Wars (PBS.org)

  5. Studies • Results from Madsen et al. (2002) showing the relative risk of developing autism among Danish children who received the MMR vaccine compared to children who did not. • Cohort study—every child born in Denmark from January 1991 through December 1998 • 537,303 children total • Each child’s health status monitored for ~4 years (generating > 2 million person/years of data) • 440,655 children received the MMR vaccine; 96,648 children did not • Risk of autism in MMR treatment group relative to unvaccinated control group: 0.92

  6. Studies • Results of 31 high-quality studies whose combined sample size included over 3,000,000 children. • The conclusion reached by the numerous studies and the reviews is consistent: simply, there is no credible evidence that vaccines in general, or the MMR jab specifically, cause autism.

  7. Epilogue • In the period leading up to his 1998 Lancet publication, Andrew Wakefield was paid £435,643 in fees, plus £3,910 for expenses (totaling over $750,000) by Richard Barr, an attorney attempting to demonstrate a connection between MMR and autism in order to sue the vaccine manufacturer (Deer 2006). • The 12 children in the original study were not randomly selected; parents of nearly half of the subjects were actually litigants in Richard Barr’s lawsuit against the MMR manufacturer (Cox 2010).

  8. Epilogue • Andrew Wakefield was developing an alternative measles vaccine he hoped to patent and, thus, he stood to benefit financially if the safety of the MMR vaccine was suspect (Deer 2004). • In 2004, 10 of the 13 authors on the original paper (Wakefield et al. 1998) formally (and in print) reversed their opinion that the MMR vaccine caused autism (Murch et al. 2004).

  9. Epilogue • On 12 February, 2009, three federal judges (in the Office of Special Masters of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims) ruled that scientific evidence “overwhelmingly” refutes the claim that the MMR vaccine causes autism (McNeil 2009). • Eric London, a member of the scientific advisory board for Autism Speaks, resigned in July 2009 because of the group’s contention that vaccines can cause autism. Autism Speaks is the largest private funder for autism research. To quote London: “If ‘Autism Speaks’ misguided stance continues, there will be more deaths and potentially the loss of herd immunity which would result in serious outbreaks of otherwise preventable disease” (Stokstad 2009).

  10. Epilogue • On 28 January 2010, the General Medical Council of Great Britain found Andrew Wakefield guilty of unethical and irresponsible behavior in the original Lancet study (Salzberg 2010). • Five days later, on 2 February 2010, the Lancet formally expunged the 1998 paper—finding it “fatally flawed” (Editors of the Lancet 2010). (For editorials on how the Lancet might have presented the retraction more honestly, see Herper 2010 and Whelan 2010.)

  11. Epilogue • On 24 May 2010, the General Medical Council stripped Dr. Wakefield of his license to practice medicine in Great Britain (Burns 2010). • On 5 January 2011, Brian Deer (2011a) published an article in the prestigious journal BMJ (the British Medical Journal) showing how Andrew Wakefield manipulated the 1998 Lancet data to present a stronger association between the MMR vaccine and autism, including forging the records suggesting that the average onset of autistic behavior occurred within days of a child receiving the “jab.” In truth, only two of the 12 children in the study exhibited this temporal correlation, and many had shown signs of developmental dysfunction before they were vaccinated. In a response uncharacteristic of the stolid world of science, three editors at BMJ (Godlee et al. 2011) concluded that Wakefield et al.’s original 1998 study was “an elaborate fraud.” And what was the motive for Wakefield falsifying his data? According to Brian Deer (2011b), it was the huge sums of money Wakefield anticipated he might make from his new vaccine, and related diagnostic kits, if the MMR jab was discredited. • Advocates for the link between vaccines and autism (including Jenny McCarthy and Generation Rescue) continue to press ahead with their public campaign against vaccines (Generation Rescue 2011).

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