AP/Washington Post:

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) has announced the cancellation of a study of chelation, a controversial treatment for autism. Funds for the study would be better used testing other potential therapies for autism and related disorders, the NIMH statement said.

Critics had called the experiment unethical because it subjected children to the risk of harm. The study had previously been suspended after a drug used in chelation had been linked to lasting brain problems in rats.

Chelation is a process that removes heavy metals from the body and is used as a treatment for lead poisoning. Many parents of children with autism have sought it out as a therapy based on the unproven theory that mercury in vaccines triggers autism.

See earlier posts:

• ‘Fringe treatment could get federal study’ — AP
• Doctors alarmed by availability of OTC chelation agents — Los Angeles Times
• Charges dropped in chelation death of boy with autism – AP

In the Philadelphia Inquirer, an interview with vaccine expert Paul Offit, whose new book defending the safety of vaccines is already generating heat. It’s called “Autism’s False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure.”

Offit is director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a leading expert on infectious diseases. He gets regular hate mail as the public face of the majority in the scientific and medical communities who agree there is no evidence connecting vaccines and autism-related conditions.

Offit doesn’t think any of his critics mean him real harm, though he was rattled once when a caller knew his children’s names and where they went to school.

“We put a new security system on our house as a way of celebrating the launch of this book,” Offit said during an interview in his office. “Which I think most authors don’t do. Maybe Salman Rushdie.”

Offit worries that parents will choose not to vaccinate, allowing for a resurgence of long-forgotten diseases.

See earlier posts here and here.

(Photo from Philadelphia Inquirer)

The editors of the New York Times say new research has provided further evidence that an old study purporting to link vaccines with autism was a false alarm.

Further, they say, the old study has been cast into doubt by subsequent events. Ten of the paper’s co-authors have retracted the paper’s implication of an autism-vaccine link. Three more “are now defending themselves before a fitness-to-practice panel in London on charges related to their autism research.”

The big losers in this debate are the children who are not being vaccinated because of parental fears and are at risk of contracting serious — sometimes fatal — diseases.

From Scientific American, Bloomberg News, Newsday, the Washington Post and elsewhere:

Scientists released new research yesterday showing that the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine, known as MMR, does not cause autism. The study was designed to replicate a 1998 report that first suggested a link between the shot and the disorder.

The research by Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health is the latest of more than 20 studies that have dismissed the link between the vaccine and autism. It is published today online in the journal of the Public Library of Science.

“We are confident that there is no link between [the measles vaccine] and autism,” says lead study author W. Ian Lipkin, an epidemiologist.

Physicians are alarmed at a recent doubling in the number of U.S. measles cases, triggered by parents who decline to have their children vaccinated for fear of autism. Recent post here.

(AP/Washington Post photo)

From Chicago Tribune, New York Times editorial, and New York Times

Federal officials report measles cases in the U.S. have reached their highest levels in more than a decade, and public health officials are blaming parents who choose not to vaccinate their children because of autism fears. Measles outbreaks have also soared in Britain, Switzerland, Israel, Austria, and Italy, sickening thousands and causing at least two deaths.

From January through July, 131 measles cases were reported to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 15 states and the District of Columbia, and 15 people were hospitalized. Of those old enough to be eligible for vaccines, two-thirds had not been vaccinated. Autism and anti-vaccines advocates are unapologetic about the return of measles.

Physicians say they must increasingly spend time counseling parents who believe vaccines cause autism. Multiple studies have refuted the connection between vaccines and autism.

Measles is the first disease to reappear when vaccination rates decline because it is highly contagious. In the decade before the measles vaccination program began, each year nearly 4 million people in the United States were infected, 48,000 were hospitalized, 1,000 were chronically disabled and nearly 500 died.

From the Minneapolis Star-Tribune:

School authorities in Minneapolis report that Somali children are being placed in autism-related programs at about twice the average rate for children in the district.

As of July, 3.6 percent of Somali students were enrolled in such programs. While Somali children made up just under 6 percent of the school population, they comprised 17 percent of those in the early childhood autism programs, and 25 percent of the class for severely autistic preschoolers.

Parents in the Somali community are worried, and health department officials are concerned that they may stop vaccinating their children over unproven fears that the shots might trigger autism. Experts say people with autism face stigma within the Somali community.

From ABC News:

Appearing on “Good Morning America,” X-Files actress Amanda Peet advised the public not to listen to celebrities when it comes to vaccines.

“It seems that the media is often giving celebrities and actors more authority on this issue than they are giving the experts,” Peet said. “I know it’s a paradox, but that’s part of why I wanted to become a spokesperson, to say to people, ‘Please don’t listen to me. Don’t listen to actors. Go to the experts.’”

Peet also apologized again during her appearance for comments she made in the July issue of the parenting magazine Cookie in which she stated, “Frankly, I feel that parents who don’t vaccinate their children are parasites.”

Peet’s advice is intended to counter the position of former Playboy model and author Jenny McCarthy, who says the current vaccine schedule places children at a higher risk of developing autism.

With video

(Photo: Screen capture from ABC GMA website.)