Lancet retracts vaccine/autism study

[mcconnellboys]

I agree. Single dose vaccines created under the sterile conditions that should prevail would probably be fine for most.....

[MeganW]

Sorry for bumping an older thread - I had to sit on this one rather than respond immediately. My emotions were a little hot!

 

We do our children a great disservice if we spend so much time arguing about who or what is to blame that we forget that we need to help them become as operational as possible in the world into which they have been thrust. They are made of our genes. We can try to blame Monsanto, Pfizer, or whomever we want, but ultimately, they are our flesh and blood, and we have to deal the deck we have.

 

I am doing everything there is to do for my kids. We are at therapy 3 days a week, and we do the exercises religiously at home. I spend half my life working with these kids. But that leaves me a little free time, and I use it educating others about what happened to us in hopes of sparing them the same issues.

 

It's not about blame. It's about trying to make more people aware and hopefully, slowly, encouraging change in our country's vaccination recommendations. It's too late for my kids, but maybe someone else's will be spared.

[Mergath]

It's not about blame. It's about trying to make more people aware and hopefully, slowly, encouraging change in our country's vaccination recommendations. It's too late for my kids, but maybe someone else's will be spared.

 

But how can you advocate change when we don't have any scientific data indicating what causes autism in the first place, and when all the research shows that vaccines don't cause autism? We can't just blindly change things around based on personal anecdotes and what Jenny McCarthy says.

 

My dd has a chromosome microdeletion that leaves her with about a 1 in 3 chance of being on the spectrum. The genes that she is missing- there are around twenty-five, if I remember correctly- have to do with brain development. I think scientists will continue to find more and more of these sorts of things in people. The other children with this abnormality that do have autism that I have spoken with all started to develop symptoms at around eighteen months or so. The only way to detect this is with a some kind of specialized genetics test, and they've only even known about this deletion for a few years. How many others are there out there that haven't been discovered yet? We need to spend our resources doing genetic testing on autistic children, not chelating them and sticking them in hyperbaric oxygen chambers.

 

Your guess is as good as mine about what causes these chromosome abnormalities in the first place, but one thing that ISN'T causing them is vaccines.

 

Rant over. ;)

[cjbeach]

But how can you advocate change when we don't have any scientific data indicating what causes autism in the first place, and when all the research shows that vaccines don't cause autism? We can't just blindly change things around based on personal anecdotes and what Jenny McCarthy says.

 

My dd has a chromosome microdeletion that leaves her with about a 1 in 3 chance of being on the spectrum. The genes that she is missing- there are around twenty-five, if I remember correctly- have to do with brain development. I think scientists will continue to find more and more of these sorts of things in people. The other children with this abnormality that do have autism that I have spoken with all started to develop symptoms at around eighteen months or so. The only way to detect this is with a some kind of specialized genetics test, and they've only even known about this deletion for a few years. How many others are there out there that haven't been discovered yet? We need to spend our resources doing genetic testing on autistic children, not chelating them and sticking them in hyperbaric oxygen chambers.

 

Your guess is as good as mine about what causes these chromosome abnormalities in the first place, but one thing that ISN'T causing them is vaccines.

 

Rant over. ;)

 

That's the thing with ASD...there is not TYPICAL case. Each case is so completely different and the spectrum is way too broad. There is no simple answer. What may have "flipped the switch" for one child, may not have in another.

..

And we do know that some kids may just be hypersensitive to oxidative stress. But there's also prenatal infection, virus exposure, nutritional deficiencies, etc... "Autism is a biologically based disorder of brain development. Genetic factors--mutations, deletions, and copy number variants--are clearly implicated in causation of autism. However, they account for only a small fraction of cases, and do not easily explain key clinical and epidemiological features. This suggests that early environmental exposures also contribute. "http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20087185

My thoughts are if vaccines are just THAT much more enviornmental exposure to "flip the switch" yes.. please do investigate that. But with scientists afraid of being called the next Wakefield, who is willing to touch the subject? And who would pay for the study and publish it (since most major medical periodicals have big pharma backers)?

[Mergath]

That's the thing with ASD...there is not TYPICAL case. Each case is so completely different and the spectrum is way too broad. There is no simple answer. What may have "flipped the switch" for one child, may not have in another.

..

And we do know that some kids may just be hypersensitive to oxidative stress. But there's also prenatal infection, virus exposure, nutritional deficiencies, etc... "Autism is a biologically based disorder of brain development. Genetic factors--mutations, deletions, and copy number variants--are clearly implicated in causation of autism. However, they account for only a small fraction of cases, and do not easily explain key clinical and epidemiological features. This suggests that early environmental exposures also contribute. "http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20087185

My thoughts are if vaccines are just THAT much more enviornmental exposure to "flip the switch" yes.. please do investigate that. But with scientists afraid of being called the next Wakefield, who is willing to touch the subject? And who would pay for the study and publish it (since most major medical periodicals have big pharma backers)?

 

Genetic factors account for only a small number of cases that can be proven at this point in time. That doesn't mean that most cases of autism aren't genetic. More genetic abnormalities that cause some cases of autism are being discovered and researched every year. They've only known about the deletion my daughter has and the fact that it can cause autism since '06 or '07, I think it was.

 

And many, many scientists have investigated the link between autism and vaccines, and found that there is none. It's not as if Wakefield was the only one to venture into this territory.

[Jugglin'5]

I am conflicted about vaccines, but I do vaccinate my children, after initially going through an anti-vax stage with my older kids. I decided to vaccinate gradually because of several reasons. 1) I personally know three people (two were twin brothers) who got chicken pox as adults. One died, and two spent several weeks in the hospital in artificially induced comas. Some older non-vaxing friends of mine had their kids catch the cpox on purpose, and several of their teenagers ended up with very bad scarring. They were very sick kids. Chicken pox was going around the homeschool community, so I took mine and got the shots caught up. 2) We have a family that believes very strongly in non-vaxing. I always assumed that it was because their son who is on the Autism spectrum had been injured. I was surprised to learn that only their oldest had been vaxed, the one w/Autism had never been. 3) Next, we had a whooping cough epidemic go through our church. I felt very relieved at that point that I had decided to catch them up on their shots. I know that the pertussis vaccine is considered to be one of the least effective, but there was a 1 to 1 correspondence w/ vax/non-vax as to who got it and who didn't in the church. The vaxed kids didn't. We had immune comromised kids who had to disappear from church from a long time, and anyone with infants for whom pertussis is still VERY dangerous. There was a lot of anxiety for everybody during that time. 4) I know a man who is infertile because of mumps, and 5) a lady in a wheelchair from polio (she got it the old-fashioned way). All this to say, I do think there are still questions to be answered by the vax manufacturers, but the anti-vax promoters have some to answer, too, I think.

Edited April 22, 2010 by Jugglin'5
lol-bad typos

[emubird]

A safer whooping cough vaccine started to be used in Japan in the 80s, but didn't start to be used in the US until the 90s. Instead of using the safer vaccine, they made the NCVIA ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Childhood_Vaccine_Injury_Act ). The existence of the NCVIA shows that, while they may not cause autism, vaccines obviously have the ability to cause SOMETHING. Is the risk of those somethings, the risk of permanent damage or death, better than the risk of getting an illness that will go away after time and that is not fatal in this country anymore? Especially when your child is unlikely to encounter many of these illnesses?

 

The published risk of those "somethings" is generally WAY below the risk of getting severe complications or death from the disease. That's the whole point of vaccination. There would be major fatalities from these diseases in the US if no one was getting vaccinated.

 

The reason "no one gets those" diseases anymore is because most of the people in this country are vaccinated. We're more and more likely to encounter these diseases if fewer people are getting vaccinated.

 

I've even heard doctors make this mistake.

 

I've waffled about vaccination because I know that with most other people getting vaccinated, we could probably get away with not -- we'd just depend on the herd immunity. But if enough people felt that way, the herd immunity wouldn't work anymore.

[MeganW]

But how can you advocate change when we don't have any scientific data indicating what causes autism in the first place, and when all the research shows that vaccines don't cause autism? We can't just blindly change things around based on personal anecdotes and what Jenny McCarthy says.

...

 

See my prior post as to why. :)

[s0nicfreak]

The published risk of those "somethings" is generally WAY below the risk of getting severe complications or death from the disease. That's the whole point of vaccination. There would be major fatalities from these diseases in the US if no one was getting vaccinated.

 

The reason "no one gets those" diseases anymore is because most of the people in this country are vaccinated. We're more and more likely to encounter these diseases if fewer people are getting vaccinated.

 

I've even heard doctors make this mistake.

 

I've waffled about vaccination because I know that with most other people getting vaccinated, we could probably get away with not -- we'd just depend on the herd immunity. But if enough people felt that way, the herd immunity wouldn't work anymore.

I didn't say no one gets them - I said no one DIES from them anymore. Even people who get them. In the US, we have the health care to keep people alive when they get these diseases. And yes, if everyone stopped getting vaccinated, some of them would come back; but the majority of people are just going to blindly trust what they are told is best, so I don't have to worry about my kids as much.

[Mergath]

I didn't say no one gets them - I said no one DIES from them anymore. Even people who get them. In the US, we have the health care to keep people alive when they get these diseases. And yes, if everyone stopped getting vaccinated, some of them would come back; but the majority of people are just going to blindly trust what they are told is best, so I don't have to worry about my kids as much.

 

I'm not sure where you're getting your information, but people die from childhood diseases all the time. Chicken pox, influenza, measles... all can be and are sometimes fatal.

 

Just to give you an example, according to the wiki, seventeen infants died from pertussis in the US in 2001 alone, and measles can cause "bronchitis, pneumonia, otitis media, hemorrhagic complications, acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, acute measles encephalitis, subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (sspe), blindness, and death."

 

If you are choosing not to vaccinate your children, it would be good to take a more detailed look at the risks you're taking, since you don't seem to fully appreciate just how dangerous these diseases can be.

[s0nicfreak]

And you don't seem to fully appreciate how dangerous vaccines can be, nor the fact that vaccines aren't even totally effective.

[Mergath]

And you don't seem to fully appreciate how dangerous vaccines can be, nor the fact that vaccines aren't even totally effective.

 

As has been said before, I'll take the extremely miniscule risk of a vaccine reaction over the much more considerable risk of disease any day of the week.

[smalltown mom]

Well, as has been quoted elsewhere: "When you have a mountain of information on one side, and a mountain of information on the other side, what you have to do is follow the money."

[Perry]

Well, as has been quoted elsewhere: "When you have a mountain of information on one side, and a mountain of information on the other side, what you have to do is follow the money."

Information is not the same as evidence.

[smalltown mom]

Ok, so big Pharma's got our best interests in mind? How long did Merck know about the cardiac dangers of Vioxx (and covered it up)? Try 5 years!

[smalltown mom]

On questioning the safety of vaccines, here's some more evidence for ya:

 

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/vitalvotes/archive/2010/03/24/major-vaccine-suspended-due-to-contamination-with-pig-virus.aspx

[nmoira]

On questioning the safety of vaccines, here's some more evidence for ya:

 

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/vitalvotes/archive/2010/03/24/major-vaccine-suspended-due-to-contamination-with-pig-virus.aspx

 

From the linked CNN article:

 

"There is no evidence at this time that this material poses a safety risk," Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Margaret Hamburg told reporters in a conference call."

 

"GlaxoSmithKline emphasized Monday that the pig virus is not known to cause illness in humans, saying "it is found in everyday meat products and is frequently eaten with no resulting disease or illness.""

[smalltown mom]

Read about that the other day - thought about posting it but then decided not to. The story I read had a lot of information about the man who conducted the study and his possible ulterior motives and possible financial gain from the vaccine alternative he was working on. I think things like this (fake science) make it really hard to get genuine objective truth about a situation. Could be that some vaccines do harm some kids but there is so much emotion and now false information that it will be hard to sort it all out. Sad.

 

No. They don't retract papers for obsolete information. They retract them because the methodology is sloppy and because the results can't be replicated both of which were the case here. Essentially, the results were useless to begin with.

 

Back to the original point of this thread, though, I'm just wondering if any of you have actually listened to Wakefield defend himself against these allegations before making assertions like those above. There are always two sides to every story, guys.

 

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/04/10/wakefield-interview.aspx

[smalltown mom]

Bernadine Healy, MD. Former head of NIH. Worth watching.

 

 

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/05/12/cbsnews_investigates/main4086809.shtml

 

Edited April 24, 2010 by smalltown mom
link doesn't work

[Haiku]

Britain bans Andrew Wakefield:

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100524/ap_on_sc/eu_britain_autism_doctor

 

Tara

[smalltown mom]

Smearing the opposition has been done in the past. Why not this time? See what Merck did:

 

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb6664/is_200905/ai_n39231765/

[ThatCyndiGirl]

resurrected thread alert!!!

[Haiku]

I'm the OP, and I resurrected it because there was more information to be shared.

 

Tara

[ThatCyndiGirl]

I just noticed that.

 

I did that because so many people have been complaining about resurrected thread alerts and people seem to feel "duped" when they reply to something thinking that it is NEW only to realize that a troll (not saying that about you or the poster after you or anybody else) was responsible for it.

 

We had a rash of stuff like that recently.

 

No harm intended!