Journal: Study linking vaccine to autism was fraud

[Lineymom]

Love to here what you all think.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110106/ap_on_he_me/eu_med_autism_fraud

[mimim]

I'm a little surprised that no one has commented yet. I know this study is cited often by those who are arguing that autism is caused by vaccines.

[liliaceae]

Isn't this really old news?

[bugmenot]

I know very little about this situation, but Dr. Wakefield is on Anderson Cooper (CNN) about 15 minutes on. Sanjay Gupta also on the show.

[MommyDOK]

Yes, I'm watching Anderson Cooper right now. 

[cocoanib]

I just saw this on msn right now and heard about it on the radio.

I'll have to read it and see what all the hub bub is about.

[juniper_mama]

I just came here to post the exact same thing as I too was wondering what people think of the re-reviling of Wakefield.  This story keeps getting rehashed and I really don't know what to believe. 

I stumbled on this article a while ago and found it really interesting - it's Wakefield's (2009) response to the retraction of his paper in the Lancet.  See http://www.generationrescue.org/pdf/wakefield_100128.pdf. 

I expect to have to defend my decision to not vax my child (to my in-laws mostly) now that this is in the news again.  Mostly I just keep coming back to the fact that there are no studies of unvaccinated children to really set the matter to rest.  It seems to me that the real issue is still the cumulative effect of so many vaxs on children, not just one in particular.  I heard a great analogy that sums it up for me.  Studies were done on children who received the whole suite of childhood vaxes and these were compared to children who received the whole suite of vaxes minus MMR (the fourteen studies you keep hearing about).  These studies concluded that there was no difference in rates of autism between the two groups so therefore vaccines don't cause autism.  The terrific analogy is that this is like saying that we've studied people who smoke one pack of cigarettes a day and people who smoke three packs a day and since there is no difference in rates of cancer, cigarettes don't cause cancer. 

Seriously, there are plenty of unvaccinated kids out there - why can't we do a study tracking rates of chronic and infectious disease between the two groups??

[firsttimemama]

Originally Posted by juniper_mama 

Seriously, there are plenty of unvaccinated kids out there - why can't we do a study tracking rates of chronic and infectious disease between the two groups??

1. Because people with lots of money and power don't want the study done.  They have something to lose (money)

2.  Because the US Gov't is convinced that any change to the US vaccination schedule will be a major catastrophe

3.  Because fault would be found and the lawsuits would be enormous

Do vaccines cause autism? Yes, sometimes. (Hannah Poling)  Are vaccines the only thing that cause autism? No.  How do I know this? Because my unvaccinated son is autistic.  Do I regret not vaxing him? Heck no!  He would be much more severely affected (or not here at all) had I vaxed him with the typical US schedule.  What really gets under my skin is that the vaccine debate is always reduced to Autism causing or not Autism causing.  The schedule is insane and money driven regardless of Autism.  There are many problems with the safety testing and conflicts of interest and on and on - Autism or no.  
 

[daisymommy]

I have one fully vax'ed son on the spectrum, severe ADHD.  My other two healthy kids are not vax'ed. 

I will never forget my mother saying, after the birth of my next son, "well, if you find out he has it too, and that it wasn't the vaccines, won't you wish you had of just vaccinated him?" 

It does make me sad to think there is a possibility that Wakefield doctored any information (not saying he did--I want to read his side of the story).  It just gives "our side" even less credibility.  But even if that study was a fraud, what people don't get is that he is ONE doctor out of many that are anti-vax.  He is not the end-all and be-all of the anti-vaccine movement.  His study was with 12 children--what about the countless thousands out there who are vaccined injured?  No one on the outside seems to remember that.

[Youngfrankenstein]

Originally Posted by liliaceae 

Isn't this really old news?

That's what I was thinking.

[capretta]

Originally Posted by liliaceae 

Isn't this really old news?

Yes. From February of last year: http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/02/02/lancet.retraction.autism/index.html

[Marnica]

yes old news and look at the timimg of the story.

Personallly Im sick to death of this debate about Wakefied. Most people have no idea (except what they read on yahoo news - please) You have to dig beyond mainstream media and dig for the facts if you want the truth. Read his book - I did and I have to say it logically and rationally answered every single doubt and question I had. I have no doubts whatsoever and am 100% sure (Id stake my life on it actually) that this man is honest, has a crapload more integrity that 95% of most drones in the medical community and he got 100% screwed. JMHO

[daisymommy]

Last year it was all about how the study was retracted because he paid the parents of the children to participate in the study.

This is new because they are saying he fabricated or changed things in the study.

I think they will just keep picking away at this one man and his one study, and parading him around in the news every so often as a reminder that we non-vacc'ining parents followed a crazy man who lied to us...because that means we can all stop being scared now and get our kids caught up to date on their shots and the world can go on with the vaccine schedule  . 

I seriously had a nurse tell me that--I shouldn't be scared anymore because "that man was wrong, they proved vaccines are safe."  Whatever. 

I just said "No, they proved he paid the parents.  Thats all.  And he was one doctor out of many who oppose vaccines and feel they are unsafe.  It was one study out of many.  Thats just the only one most people have heard of"  She didn't know what to say after that.  Just walked out of the room.

[carriebft]

No, it isn't old news. We knew that one case (#11) had been altered, but now we have evidence that all 12 were altered. You can read the new evidence here:

http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c5347.full

[Marnica]

This article was written by Brian Deer - sorry but I don't believe any "evidence" he presents. 

 

Originally Posted by carriebft 

No, it isn't old news. We knew that one case (#11) had been altered, but now we have evidence that all 12 were altered. You can read the new evidence here:

http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c5347.full

Edited by Marnica - 1/6/11 at 7:12am

[carriebft]

Read the evidence to the panel then. He didn't write that ;)  and read the discharge summaries, again- he did not write those.

[carriebft]

Ah, so in his book he tells us how he got the dates wrong? He explains how children left the practice with no autism diagnosis and then magically were said to have gotten a diagnosis that same day in the lancet paper?

If I read his book he will tell me how he went from "at age 20 months" (medical records) to "at age 16 months" (the paper)? (just one example).

I am very interested in why he neglected to mention that two of the patients were brothers with no autism diagnosis and he ended up getting MMR dates and developmental dates wrong for them on top of it. Perhaps if the book will offer me all these things, I might have to read it ;)

I notice that, in his book, he claims that the colonoscopies and the punctures should be done on autistic children as a matter of course and was not just for the study. But many of them had no autism diagnosis. how does he reconcile that????

Edited by carriebft - 1/6/11 at 8:25am

[carriebft]

I think this quote hits the nail on the head (not by Deer but from the summary in the BMJ)

"Who perpetrated this fraud? There is no doubt that it was Wakefield. Is it possible that he was wrong, but not dishonest: that he was so incompetent that he was unable to fairly describe the project, or to report even one of the 12 children’s cases accurately? No. A great deal of thought and effort must have gone into drafting the paper to achieve the results he wanted: the discrepancies all led in one direction; misreporting was gross. Moreover, although the scale of the GMC’s 217 day hearing precluded additional charges focused directly on the fraud, the panel found him guilty of dishonesty concerning the study’s admissions criteria, its funding by the Legal Aid Board, and his statements about it afterwards"

http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c7452.full

Not one of the 12 cases was without error in reporting. Not one was free from changes in information between the medical records, discharge sheets and patient/parent interviews and the actual reported data in the lancet study. not a single one!

Edited by Mosaic - Quoted post removed

[firsttimemama]

..and their scheme works perfectly.  Everyone spends all day talking about whether Wakefield is a liar or not, and no one is talking about the 10% increase per year or 1 in 58 boys or the fact that researchers (Pessah, etc) are telling the US Senate that there is NO WAY this increase is genetic that it is absolutely ENVIRONMENTAL.  Why did the gov't seal the Hannah Poling record?  What don't they want us to see?  Why won't they do an unvax vs vax study?  Don't tell me it's because it's unethical to not protect kids via vax - Fine, use kids like mine where the parents refuse to vax. 

By the time America wakes up, I fear Autism will be 1 in 10.

[AllyRae]

Originally Posted by firsttimemama 

..and their scheme works perfectly.  Everyone spends all day talking about whether Wakefield is a liar or not, and no one is talking about the 10% increase per year or 1 in 58 boys or the fact that researchers (Pessah, etc) are telling the US Senate that there is NO WAY this increase is genetic that it is absolutely ENVIRONMENTAL.  Why did the gov't seal the Hannah Poling record?  What don't they want us to see?  Why won't they do an unvax vs vax study?  Don't tell me it's because it's unethical to not protect kids via vax - Fine, use kids like mine where the parents refuse to vax. 

By the time America wakes up, I fear Autism will be 1 in 10.

You can't self-choose to be in the study if you want it to be an unbiased study.  Just like you can't take specific populations (like the Amish) who might have a completely different genetic code than those who get autism.  It has already long been established that there is, in many cases, a genetic link to autism--either multiple autism cases in a family, or family members of an autistic individual that show some characteristics of autism without meeting full criteria.  You just aren't going to be able to replicate that studying a population that does not have a tendency towards autism.  Or they might life in an area free of the other toxins in the environment, etc that those who develop autism are exposed to.  There is just no legitimate way to get a completely unbiased and ethical study in this case.  BUT, Wakefield's study didn't even come CLOSE.  It wasn't even an attempt at being unbiased and ethical.  Noone with any scientific background at all would take that study as science.
 

 And there are children who have not had the MMR who have autism.  I have one of those children.  I know plenty of other ones.  There are also children of parents on this forum that are completely unvaccinated that have autism.  There is more to autism than vaccines.  And I think it has drastically hurt the autism research field to have wasted so much time on this one fraudulent study instead of focusing on things that could potentially be a link and the ethical studies being done to show those links.