February 10th, 2009
Was the vaccine-autism link a fraud?
The Sunday Times of London delivered a blockbuster this week, a story from Brian Deer (right) charging that the 1998 study linking MMR (Mumps, Measles, Rubella) vaccines to autism was manipulated.
Deer has been looking into the study’s author, Andrew Wakefield, since 2003 and his own Web site dubs this the Lancet scandal, after the medical journal which published Wakefield’s work.
At the site of an anti-vaccine group called CryShame, Wakefield continued to defend his work, below a link to a petition of support.
Wakefield has been defending himself for over a decade, and his work has led to a dramatic fall in the number of British children being immunized for these diseases, as well as a rise in measles cases.
Wakefield was trained as a gastroenterologist, and his original work noted a bowel disease he called autistic enterocolitis. This has made him a hero to both anti-vaccine forces and people who are working on developmental disorders.
The controversy has even spilled into the courts, with parents of one autistic kid winning a legal judgement against the government. (Correction. It was an administrative judgement, not a legal case.) The controversy has colored popular attitudes toward all childhood vaccines. Wen I wrote about this in September, however, I noted U.S. vaccine compliance is actually rising, with lack of money the main problem.
Here’s Deer’s most serious charge:
The global scare rested on claims by the parents of only eight children. But most of them were lawyers’ clients - countering assertions that the study was based on routine referrals - and Andrew Wakefield had been funded through an undisclosed deal to help them sue drug companies.
Bloggers like Science-Based Medicine now call Wakefield a fraud, while Discover Magazine’s Bad Astronomy blog writes that whether Wakefield faked his results or not he’s still wrong. Asks Tara Smith of Aetiology, “Vaccines and autism–can we stick a fork in it now, please?”
Not likely. But my rule remains that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Wakefield never offered any. Instead, he created a mini-industry of lawyers and activists around one study, with as few a 12 participants, and caused millions of children to risk their lives on the result.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist since 1978, and has covered technology since 1982. He launched the Interactive Age Daily, the first daily coverage of the Internet to launch with a magazine, in September 1994. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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| 02/10/09
