Grant the anti-childhood vaccine fanatics this, they are dogged.
No amount of data, no number of studies from any array of sources
will sway them from their assertions that thimerosal, a
mercury-containing vaccine preservative once used in many such
injections, is causing the so-called “autism epidemic.”
A devastating California Department of Public Health study in the current Archives of General
Psychiatry hasn’t swayed them either. Lynne Redwood,
co-founder of one anti-vaccine website,
warned the Baltimore Sun, “Our children are still
getting exposed to mercury.” She cautioned against “clos[ing] the
books on thimerosal,” even though the study has slammed them
shut.
But, for the rest of us there are two valuable lessons here.
First, the lack of a thimerosal connection to the developmental
disorder has once again been proved. Second, anti-vaccine activists
are truly fanatical. As a British Medical Journal book
reviewer rightly said, they live in an “angry and paranoid
universe.”
Anti-vaccinators like Redwood operate over
150 websites. Many of these sites claim not only a
thimerosal-vaccine connection but a Massive World Wide Conspiracy
to cover up the alleged link. The paranoiacs have sent death threats to Public Health Service officials who
subsequently quit their jobs in fear.
In the face of such fears, thimerosal was removed from all
childhood vaccines as of March 2001 (except flu shots, which
contain a trace amount). This allowed a before and after
comparison. The angry paranoids and those who make a living
catering to them confidently declared that soon the data would show
a dramatic drop in diagnoses.
Indeed they quickly asserted that the data had done so,
as did former New York Times writer David Kirby, author of the influential 2005 book
Evidence of Harm — Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism
Epidemic: A Medical Controversy.
Never mind that this alleged peak, in 2002, came far too early
to have reflected cessation of thimerosal use.
Later the father-son team of Drs. Mark
and David Geier published a study they claimed showed a dramatic 35 percent drop, also
beginning in 2002.
The Geiers make their living as expert witnesses and consultants for lawyers
making vaccine harm claims against the government’s National
Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. Big surprise.
NOW THAT THERE has been enough time for serious study, the news is
good for parents and bad for the fearmongers. The Archives
study evaluated autistic children referred to the state’s
Developmental Services System and covered the years 1995 to March
of 2007. Children as young as age 3 were evaluated. If
thimerosal-preserved vaccines cause autism, the researchers said,
diagnoses should have started falling in 2004 — not 2002.
But there has been no plummet, no decline, no leveling. There hasn’t
been the least bit of decrease in the increasing number of cases of
autism.
“We are reassured that we found no link between routine
childhood vaccination and increases in childhood autism in the
data,” study lead author and California DPH Medical Officer Robert
Schechter, a physician, told the medical e-zine WebMD.
Nor are these findings anomalous. As the Archives paper
noted, “Our findings are in concordance with the rigorous 2004
review of at least 12 previous published and unpublished studies by
the IOM Immunization Safety Committee, which concluded that the
body of evidence rejected a causal relationship between [thimerosal
containing vaccines] and autism.”
Included in the IOM review were three studies looking at the
entire populations of Sweden, Denmark, and Canada. In all three
countries thimerosal-containing vaccines were discontinued in the
late 1990s and in all three, as with California, autism rates
climbed at the same pace as before.
None of which has done the least to dampen the ardor or
arrogance of the anti-vaccinationists, who in fairness aren’t all
nuts. Some of them are just opportunists.
Included in the opportunistic category are environmentalists
such as the Environmental Working Group and individuals like
environmental crusader Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Scaring parents over
thimerosal in vaccines is intended to buttress their campaign
against coal-fired power plants.
The farcical relationship here is that thimerosal comprises
about 50 percent ethyl mercury, while the stuff from power plants
that gets into fish that pregnant women are warned about eating is
called methyl mercury.
Despite the difference of merely one letter (you know, like
“cat” and “rat”), scientists say there is a drastic difference in
how each is metabolized and thus their potential for harm. That
said, the Maternal Nutrition Group, a coalition of nutrition groups
and experts including several federal agencies, last October
concluded a review of studies by recommending that pregnant women eat far more fatty
fish than they do, citing in part a low risk even from methyl
mercury.
But the driving force against sound medicine remains that angry
paranoid universe that effectively opposes all vaccinations.
Critics also fiercely target the MMR vaccine
(measles-mumps-rubella), insisting it, too, causes autism — though
MMR never contained thimerosal.
The most recent “expert” to weigh in on that is former Playboy
Playmate Jenny McCarthy, who demonstrated her 38-C IQ in claims on Oprah and in her best-selling book. She’s
part of the bizarre segment of our society that sees childhood
vaccines as some sort of black magic and have latched onto the
unquestionable rise in autism rates to make the point.
Indeed, the single group most affiliated with this branch of
thinking, that published the Geier paper in its online journal, is
the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, Inc. It has
its roots in the old anti-fluoridation far right which really did consider fluoridation as Communist
plot.
Yet the evidence has long pointed to genetics as being the
overwhelming causation factor in autism, evidence strengthened by three studies published in the January 10 American
Journal of Human Genetics.
As to the indisputably large increase in autism diagnoses, the
so-called “autism epidemic,” “diagnoses” appears to be the key
word. Over the years, the definition of the disorder been expanded.
The increase in autism diagnoses in kids has paralleled a decrease in mental retardation
diagnoses. Growing awareness of the problem has also led to
identification and labeling of cases that once were missed.
One shouldn’t have to add that increased identification and
proper diagnosis of a problem is a good thing.
ANTI-VACCINE ADVOCATES have scared parents throughout not only the
U.S. but many other countries into refusing to vaccinate their
children. These parents become free riders, relying on those
parents who do vaccinate to keep diseases at bay through “herd
immunity.” That means that immunization rates in the wider
population are high enough (for example, 85 percent for diphtheria)
to protect those not immunized.
But if enough people free ride, then herd immunity is lost and
what follows is the return of childhood diseases we hardly think
about anymore. Diseases like pertussis have made comebacks in countries as diverse as the U.K., the
U.S., Australia, Japan, and Sweden after vaccination scares. Better
known as “whooping cough,” pertussis is a highly contagious
bacterial disease that causes uncontrollable, violent coughing.
(Listen to it here.) Pertussis cases went from fewer than 8,000
in
the U.S. in 2001 to over 25,000 in 2005.
Vaccine fearmongers won’t acknowledge any of this. Many even
claim vaccines never brought these diseases under
control in the first place and therefore play no role in keeping
them in check.
Appealing to such people is impossible, but the damage can be
limited by appeals to those susceptible to their vicious and false
propaganda. The Public Health Service needs to start a public
interest campaign to fight back. If only they could find a
spokesperson with a 39-D IQ…
