Court Rules Against Vaccine-Autism Claims Again 416
barnyjr writes "According to a story from Reuters, 'Vaccines that contain a mercury-based preservative called thimerosal cannot cause autism on their own, a special US court ruled on Friday, dealing one more blow to parents seeking to blame vaccines for their children's illness. The special US Court of Federal Claims ruled that vaccines could not have caused the autism of an Oregon boy, William Mead, ending his family's quest for reimbursement. ... While the state court determined the autism was vaccine-related, [Special Master George] Hastings said overwhelming medical evidence showed otherwise. The theory presented by the Meads and experts who testified on their behalf "was biologically implausible and scientifically unsupported," Hasting wrote.'"
"antivax" people (Score:5, Informative)
The use of vaccines is a public health necessity; vaccines are by far the most cost effective tool we have for preventing the spread of communicable diseases.
There have always been controversies about vaccines: there is non-zero risk to individuals from any medical treatment, and significant benefit to the population as a whole. As a single individual, you remove the (very small) risk by not having the vaccine, and you gain most all of the benefits if most everyone else around you has been vaccinated.
Spreading fear and misinformation about the safety of vaccines can cause direct, measurable and irreversible harm. Measuring the connection between a medical treatment and possible harmful effects is something drug companies can do very well, and the FDA approvals process (when it works) keeps the companies honest. We have solid, irrefutable and repeatable scientific evidence that shows vaccines do not cause these diseases, like autism.
The best article covering this was in the Bad Astronomy blog from Discover, aptly titled Antivax Kills. [discovermagazine.com]
The urge to lay blame (Score:3, Informative)
I can understand these parent's hurt and anger, and why they would seek to find a cause, a reason, someone to blame for their troubles. It's a natural human reaction in such a case, where so little is known of the real causes. And big Pharma has certainly proven, over and over, that it feels no responsibility towards it's customers and will choose 'making a buck' over 'doing the right thing,' pretty much all the time. But this is still ridiculous. At this point, you either have to buy into a full-blown whackadoodle conspiracy theory, or admit that vaccines do not, and never have caused autism.
Re:vaccines (Score:5, Informative)
I personally find the abundant anecdotal evidence . . .
You could have put that in your first sentence and saved us the trouble of reading the rest.
Re:"antivax" people (Score:5, Informative)
"Chicken pox also has a vaccine, but if you get it as a child you only risk a week at home, some itching, and maybe a scar if your parents can stop you from itching too much."
Actually chicken pox can lead to shingles later on, so it's not just an itchy week at home.
Re:Litigious society (Score:1, Informative)
Actually you CAN choose to not have your child vaccinated and still attend (some) public schools. Theres also religious exceptions but these are on a state-by-state basis.
Re:Vaccines aren't as simple as people think (Score:5, Informative)
Look into the HPV vaccines, actual risks.
Yes, let's look at them. [informatio...utiful.net]
Odds of dying of cervical cancer: 500 to 1.
Odds of dying from the HPV vaccine: 145,000 to 1.
Re:Litigious society (Score:5, Informative)
Problematic given that lawyers of differential quality have differential cost. So if I try to sue a big corporation, and they decide to run up the court costs into the millions, I'm screwed if I lose? I may as well not sue, no matter how legitimate my claim.
Re:look at the amish (Score:5, Informative)
Also, the number of Carribean pirates has dropped since the 1800's. Obviously, it's the lack of pirates that is causing global temperatures to increase.
And the Amish do vaccinate (Score:5, Informative)
Shoulda known better that the research into Amish autism rates [blogspot.com] had already been done...
Re:Litigious society (Score:5, Informative)
You are required in all US states to provide your child with an education that meets state guidelines. This is usually done via public and private schools, but some choose to home-school their children. In some states, home schooling is allowed only by persons with teaching credentials, meaning that parents must get such credentials if they wish to be their child's teacher, or hire a tutor.
Re:"antivax" people (Score:4, Informative)
As does the vaccine. In this case, shingles is tied to the virus itself. Since the vaccine consists of live, but attenuated viruses, the vaccine can lead to shingles just as much as getting chicken pox can.
Re:It's not like someone just made this up (Score:2, Informative)
Uh, please tell me you are not referring to the Lancet article by Dr Whackjob (Wakefield for the interested) The one that all the co-authors pulled out of, the Lancet withdrew it's endorsement from, and the author was discredited for not only cooking data but for not revealing that he has both direct and indirect financial conflicts of interest (including, if I remember correctly, a patent application outstanding for a new vaccine... or vaccine preservative... something, I forget.)
All the big, peer reviewed studies have revealed only one, single fascinating correlation between autism rates before and after both mixed and "mercury-containing" vaccines... 0 (or, technically, 0, since I believe in the big British one autism rates continued to climb in the non- or different vaccine group... which the above mentioned Dr. Whackjob then attempted to explain as being because there were still stockpiles of the old vaccine, a claim that was also resoundingly discredited... and so forth.)
Re:look at the amish (Score:4, Informative)
Re:This won't change anything... (Score:1, Informative)
Amazingly, Jenny McCarthy recently admitted that vaccines didn't cause her sons austism after doctors confirmed that her son didn't actually have autism. She still says we need to do more research into vaccines.
Re:This won't stop... (Score:3, Informative)
Then your pediatrician and physician need to get a better understanding of basic science. There's about 25 micrograms of mercury in 0.5mL of a vaccine preserved with thimerisol (see FDA & Thimerisol [autismcoach.com] under heading 'Thimerisol as a preservative'). The EPA recommendation is 0.1 micrograms/kg/day maximum mercury ingestion (see Mercury in Fish [pbs.org] under heading 'Step 1'.) That means for a 6 year-old child, their weight is estimated as (age + 4)*2=20kg. So 2mcg/day. That means a single dose of an average vaccine would give about 2 weeks worth of mercury ingestion, so unless your child goes and eats a swordfish steak the next day, they're perfectly safe.
I understand the desire to avoid ingesting toxic substances, but it's not necessary to avoid ingesting substances in safe levels. To do so really borders on superstition, where you believe that any amount of a 'bad' substance could be harmful.
Re:"antivax" people (Score:2, Informative)
Maybe I'm misunderstanding something, but isn't the point of an attenuated virus the fact that it is NOT as virulent as it's regular version?
While yes, technically it could mutate and become virulent again, it's significantly less likely to cause shingles as a regular chicken pox virus, for the same reason it's significantly less likely to cause a full outbreak of chicken pox to begin with.
Re:Correction (Score:3, Informative)
It is not necessary to wonder. This study was already done. In the places where thimerosal was replaced, autism rates did not decrease. In fact they continued to INCREASE.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080107181551.htm [sciencedaily.com]
Re:Litigious society (Score:3, Informative)
Umm.. they will be immunized and will therefore not be part of the epidemic?
You assume everyone can get vaccinated, that vaccines are 100% effective, that they do not wear off over time, and that the virus is an unchanging constant that will not mutate around the vaccine.
Re:Litigious society (Score:5, Informative)
I'm sorry, but a vaccine that gives people autism is pretty much the definition of 'defective in design or manufacture.' Not that there is such a thing, but if there were, the company that produced it would be at fault.
Well let's see
His "test subjects" were attending a birthday party hosted by a lawyer suing drug company over immunizations causing "autism". Wakefield was one of the last authors of the paper published in the Lancet, 10 of the 12 Co-Authors had had their names removed from the paper and finally the Lancet took the almost unprecedented action of officially retracting the paper.
Furthermore the British General Medical Council detremined that Wakefield was dishonest, irresponsibile and showed callous disregard for the distress and pain of children. [telegraph.co.uk]
Autism Spectrum Disorders are genetically based and the rates of diagnosis are increasing long after thimersol has been discontinued in vaccines. It's just coincidence that the symptoms of profound Autism become unavoidably obvious at the same time the MMR is given to toddlers.
Re:Litigious society (Score:5, Informative)
It has been pressed, and it has been found to be constitutional in most cases, as least in California.
In re Rachel L., et al., v. Superior Court of the State of California for the County of Los Angeles dealt with this. The 2d. District Court of Appeals, in a 3-0 opinion written by Justice Croskey, noted that "California courts have held that under provisions in the Education Code, parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children." The opinion addressed several points, including claimed religious exemption, and found that the parents' assertion that they can home school the children due to "sincerely held religious beliefs" doesn't hold up, in part because the assertions (which were not made under penalty of perjury) were too sparse to be taken as conclusive evidence of their beliefs. The sparseness may have included an apparently long string of reasons the parents gave to officials, religious reasons being added only fairly late in the game.
They do make note of an exception for Amish children under the case of Wisconsin v. Yoder, decided by the US Supreme Court in 1972. The Amish are able to make limited religious exemption to going to school. However, the Amish in that case still accepted compulsory external education through the eighth grade. It was only after eighth grade that an exemption applied, and only because the Amish way of life rests on "deep religious conviction, shared by an organized group, and intimately related to daily living" which is centuries old. That case involved witness testimony that compulsory education past the eighth grade, at which point Amish children begin learning a trade and incorporating fully into Amish society, would "ultimately result in the destruction of the Old Order Amish church community as it exists in the United States today."
In summary, compulsory education under the tutelage of credentialed teaching professionals is currently seen by the courts, at least in California, as constitutional. The case was remanded to the trial court for factual findings, but the opinion was appealed to the state Supreme Court. I can't find any listings for it there, so I can only presume that it was denied certiorari and the trial courts are sorting it out. If it is still going through the trial courts, the appeals court ruling would hold sway throughout the state.
Re:"antivax" people (Score:4, Informative)
Good grief people, troll isn't a mod for disagree. For anyone interested, here's the CDC link: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd-vac/varicella/faqs-nipinfo-varicella.htm [cdc.gov]
In a nutshell, vaccinated people have had shingles. Whether the risk is identical is unclear at this point, and requires more study.
Re:This won't stop... (Score:4, Informative)
At the time, it appeared that getting autism from the vaccine was a higher probability than getting the disease itself. For most of these diseases, Autism is more life altering the actual disease (assuming access to first world health care, which I have).
Autism is a spectrum disorder that is almost certainly genetically inherited. What you've actually done was to endanger your child because it's far more likely that an vaccine preventable illness would cause a fever sufficient to cause brain damage than it would for an immunization to have a similar adverse reaction. Many people and organizations have a vested interest in scare-mongering on this and other topics for example
yet when you look at their IRS Forms 990 for 2008 [autismspeaks.org] you see things like
Salaries, other compensation, employee benefits $17,756,876.
Total fundraising expenses $14,178,307 = 31,935,183 ;
Contributions and grants 65,826,629. ; 31,935,183/ 65,826,629 = 48 % of their revenues goes into salaries and fundraising! The only way you can pull those kind of number is to portray Autism in it's most devastating forms.
Re:Litigious society (Score:5, Informative)
Have you ever stopped to wonder why polio is so uncommon in the US? Yep, vaccines.
We are currently seeing a resurgent of measles cases in kids BECAUSE parents are not vaccinating their children due to concerns for vaccines causing autism. This will happen with polio as well. You assume a steady state of population in the US (or other country) without influx of unvaccinated, exposed people.
You fail to realize that not every vaccine works as a post-exposure prophylaxis. There are some that do and some that don't. I don't recall if polio is one of them, but a quick pubmed search could probably find out.
Modern medicine is a field of balanced risks. Every medication I prescribe for a patient has a potential to cause harm. I and the patient have to balance this risk versus the risk of not treating the disease. Absolutely no treatment in medicine is "safe". For most, the benefit outweighs the risk. Even supplemental oxygen can be disastrous in a patient with lung disease.
Re:Litigious society (Score:2, Informative)
Ah. Brain fart. I misread it. Thanks.