British panel says he acted ‘dishonestly and irresponsibly’

From the BBC, [UK] Times, AP/San Jose Mercury-News:

A British doctor whose research stoked fears that vaccinations cause autism has been censured by a medical panel, which found that he had “abused his position of trust” in doing the research. Research published by Dr. Andrew Wakefield in the Lancet medical journal led many parents to refuse to vaccinate their children.

Britain’s General Medical Council found Wakefield guilty of a series of misconduct charges, including putting children through painful and unnecessary tests.

The disciplinary panel said Wakefield was misleading in describing the study, and should have disclosed that he was being paid to advise parents who believed their children had been harmed by the vaccine. Ten of the study’s 13 authors have renounced the study.

Wakefield has denied all charges.

See also:

How MMR saga shaped science’s rules of engagement with the media. Fiona Fox, writing in the [UK] Times, says the scientific community should have raised a concerted voice to counter erroneous claims that children had been damaged by vaccines. The consequences for silence have been catastrophic, she says, as a fearful public withheld vaccinations from their children.

Los Angeles Times media columnist James Rainey says public criticism of journalist Amy Wallace reflects an increasing rejection of professional authority and journalistic expertise. Wallace wrote a recent piece in Wired Magazine debunking the idea that vaccines cause autism, sparking angry rebuttals by activists.

An excerpt:

Wallace has run smack into an abiding, perhaps growing, phenomenon of the Internet Age: Citizens armed with information are sure they know better. Readers who brush up against expertise believe they have become experts. The common man rebels against the notion that anyone — not professionals, not the government and certainly not the media — speaks with special authority.

Wallace, who spent more than three months interviewing dozens of people for a 7,000-word piece and cites epidemiological studies to support her assertions, faced accusations that she was naive, ignorant, un-American or a shill for the pharmaceutical companies.

… “It’s great that people can find out more than they ever could before,” Wallace said. “But it seems it will make trusting in experts even more important. More than ever now, we need help sifting through the torrent.”

See also:

“Readers Respond to ‘An Epidemic of Fear”-Wired

A Short History of Vaccine Panic-Wired

In a cover story in Wired magazine, writer Amy Wallace says vaccine deniers like Jenny McCarthy are exploiting public anxieties over autism to create a climate in which children are dying of diseases that could be prevented.

The war on vaccines, she says, amounts to a challenge to traditional science that is being stoked by instant communication and easy access to information that is often erroneous.

People are clinging to the illusions of pseudo-science, Wallace says, because science has yet to find the precise cause of autism and pseudo-science offers consolation. Pediatrician Paul Offit is fighting to restore rationality to the vaccine conversation, but Wallace says his effort is “probably a losing one.”

“There will always be more illogic and confusion than science can fend off. Offit’s idea is to inoculate people one by one, until the virus of fear, if not fully erased, at lease recedes.”

See also:

The misinformants: Prominent voices in the anti-vaccine crusade — Wired

How to win an argument about vaccines — Wired

From ABC News:

Medical experts at the annual American Academy of Pediatrics meeting said there are cases when it’s ethical and legal for pediatricians to ‘fire’ a patient who refuses vaccines.

Experts said pediatricians struggle to cope with a growing number of parents who fear a link between autism and vaccines despite adamant statements to the contrary from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the U.S. Centers of Disease Control. The experts say some pediatricians face an ethical dilemma because they feel that the parental concerns about vaccines conflict with their responsibility to protect the safety of the patient and other patients in the office. In those cases, experts say it is not unreasonable for pediatricians to recommend that the patient switch to another provider.

Dr. Steven Abelowitz, director of the Coastal Kids clinic in southern California, said it used to be rare for patients to express concerns about vaccines. Now he says doctors in his clinic “deal with vaccine concerns 10-20 times a day,” with the big change coming after Jenny McCarthy appeared on TV.

Abelowitz said the major concern about keeping unvaccinated children in a practice is the risk it poses for other children, particularly for “young babies who are under the age of 2 months who are not vaccinated.”

From the Des Moines Register,

Early data suggests that children with disabilities are at a higher risk of death if they contract the H1N1 swine flu. (Earlier post here.) This leaves parents with a tough choice: leave kids with disabilities in school to keep things as normal as possible, or keep them home to avoid exposure.

In Iowa, school officials and health care agencies say most parents are keeping their kids with disabilities in school. They are taking precautions, like frequent hand washing and avoiding ill people, and are hoping to be among the first to receive H1N1 vaccinations as they become available.

See also:

CDC: Children with medical issues should get first H1N1 flu shots — CNN

(Des Moines Register photo)

Finds one in 100 adults has autism

From BBC News:

A report from the UK’s National Health Service Information Centre has found that one in every hundred adults living in England has autism, a rate that is comparable to that among children. The report’s authors say the findings should dispel the notion that the MMR vaccine, which did not become available until the early 1990′s, is to blame for the current prevalence of autism.

Tim Straughan, chief executive of The NHS Information Centre, said:

“While the sample size was small and any conclusions need to be tempered with caution, the report suggests that, despite popular perceptions, rates of autism are not increasing, with prevalence among adults in line with that among children.

“It also suggests that, among adults, rates of autism remain broadly constant across age groups.

“The findings do not support suggestions of a link between the MMR vaccine and the development of this condition.”

Unproven fears of an autism-vaccine link are leading parents to make risky decisions that could endanger the lives of their children, Caryn Sullivan writes in the St. Paul, MN, Pioneer Press. An excerpt:

The decision to ignore vaccine schedules has far-reaching and dangerous implications. By delaying or forgoing vaccines, parents must be prepared to live with the outcome if their unvaccinated child dies a painful, but preventable, death from meningitis or tetanus, or causes another to become seriously ill or die.

It is time to push past the fear to rationality. Certainly, financial hardship, stress, and exhaustion are autism’s unwelcome companions. However, what does it say about our society that trepidation about an autism diagnosis drives a decision to delay or forgo life-saving vaccinations, imperiling our children? To make that decision, one would have to believe that living with autism is a fate worse than death. I passionately disagree.

Sullivan is a writer and the mother of a son with autism spectrum disorder.

(Photo from carynsullivanscribe.com)