There is nothing that a research scientist less wants to do than publicly
repudiate his or her work, except maybe cause little babies to be born in
the condition that I described to you yesterday.  It took major guts for
them to come out and say what they did.  Even so, the hysteria the study
caused did not end.  The article I am quoting from goes on to note that
:"MMR uptake has fallen as low as 60% in some areas, is leaving British
children vulnerable to disease." What to do to calm the public's fears,
then?  The original scientists couldn't do it.  Perhaps another study?
Many, actually.  All over the world.
 
The British medical journal the Lancet, where the controversy first
started, has published the results of a follow up study.  And guess what?
Here is what the Doctor leading that study had to say:
 
Dr Liam Smeeth and his colleagues from the London School of Hygiene and
Tropical Medicine were unable to find any evidence to support an
association between the triple measles, mumps and rubella vaccine and
autism or other PDDs.Overall, 78% of the children with autism or a PDD
had received MMR.  Similarly, 82% of the other children had been given
MMR..This 4% difference was not significant, said Dr Smeeth.  Again, no
difference was found when they looked specifically at autism, children
vaccinated with MMR before their third birthday or the period before 1998
when controversy around the vaccine hit.
 
Dr Smeeth said: "We have found no convincing evidence that MMR
vaccination increases the risk of autism or other PDDs.
 
"No significant association has been found in rigorous studies in a range
of different settings." He said research was now needed to try to pin
down the real causes of autism."
 
<http://search.netscape.com/ns/boomframe.jsp?query=bbc+news&page=1&offset=1&resu
lt_url=redir%3Fsrc%3Dwebsearch%26requestId%3D45e8a44c6134edee%26clickedItemRank%
3D1%26userQuery%3Dbbc%2Bnews%26clickedItemURN%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fnews.bbc.co.u
k%252F%26invocationType%3D-%26fromPage%3DnsBrowserRoll%26amp%3BampTest%3D1&remov
e_url=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.bbc.co.uk%2F>
 
Will *this* calm fears?  No.  Because fear is not logical.  It doesn't
respond to reason.  I predict that my pointing this information out to
you will have no effect on your opinion regarding the causes of autism.
You will continue to cite the causal relationship as a fact, despite now
*knowing* that it is a discredited theory in the scientific community,
despite now *knowing* that the people who discovered the relationship in
the first place admit that they made a mistake.  You will continue to
take bad science, and urge others to make bad choices with it.  You will
back your assertions up with a handfull of short term studies without
double-blind controls, and call them 'proof', too, apparently without
understanding what the level of scientific proof actually is.  Bad
science, bad choices.
 
The bad response to these studies is, of course, "well, the doctors just
don't take into account any bad reactions caused by the vaccine."  No,
they are only interested in eliminating autism as one of those bad
reactions.  Any scientific experiment can only prove or disprove *one*
hypothesis at a time.  Once *one* question is answered, then others can
be addressed one at a time.  This is good science, it is not "ignoring
evidence', it is not some vast, right-wing conspiracy.  Many questions
remain to be answered about autism, and about vaccines.  But thanks to
the research of many scientists around the world, "Does the MMR cause
autism?" isn't one of them.
 
I have given you cumbersome BBC links.  If you Google "Autism and
measles, mumps, and rubella" you will get the second of the two articles
I have cited, also many other related links arguing both sides of the
issue.
 
Alexandra in MA
[Posted in FML issue 4649]