An MD really should not promote these kinds of claims. integrativepediatricsonline/blog/2014/06/06/dear-parents-you-are-being-deceived-about-vaccines-and-autism/#comment-763 Do you think he will let my comment out of moderation? Here it is: It is extremely distressing to see an MD promote anti-vaccine misinformation, especially when he does it by making so many inaccurate claims. Starting from the top: A. Dr. Offit did not sit on the ACIP when it made the recommendation to add rotavirus to the schedule. He joined the committee later. He did vote to add it to the Vaccines for Children program, that makes it accessible to the poor. B. The Rotashield vaccine did, rarely, cause intussusception, and one baby did die from it. The new vaccines apparently are linked to a much lower rate of intussusception. But before the vaccine, according to the CDCs Pink Book, rotavirus infection was responsible for more than 400,000 physician visits, more than 200,000 emergency department (ED) visits, 55,000 to 70,000 hospi- talizations each year, and 20 to 60 deaths. In other words, the claim that nobody died is simply incorrect. C. We do have less than 1000 cases a year. Thats because vaccination rates are very, very high. Yet we have the higher rate since 1994, mostly in the unvaccinated - directly because vaccination rates are dropping. Pre vaccine we had millions of cases, sans vaccines, they would come back. Similarly, we had no deaths because measles is so rare, thanks to high vaccination rates. Europe, on the other hand, has seen deaths. D. There is no credible evidence supporting a link between vaccines and autism, and plenty on the other side. Its unfortunate the parents in your practice believe otherwise, and even more unfortunate that you do not help them see that their belief - and the guilt and anger that comes with it - is unfounded. Your job as a physician is to help your patients understand the evidence, not encourage their belief in incorrect information. See: justthevax.blogspot.co.il/2014/03/75-studies-that-show-no-link-between.html E. The Goodman and Gallagher study is a very bad one. leftbrainrightbrain.co.uk/2009/09/17/another-weak-study-proves-vaccines-cause-autism/ leftbrainrightbrain.co.uk/2010/09/16/autism-causation-and-the-hepatitis-b-vaccine-no-link/ harpocratesspeaks/2013/05/mind-institute-no-difference-in.html lizditz.typepad/i_speak_of_dreams/2012/07/1-hepatitis-b-vaccination-of-male-neonates-and-autism-diagnosis-nhis-1997-2002-2010.html F. Many studies examined vaccines and autism. Its both difficult and problematic to do the study of vaccinated v. unvaccinated children. First, remember that the percentage of completely unvaccinated children in the U.S. is tiny - about 1%. Second, remember that they are not a random sample - there will be a lot of confounders. A prospective study - in which children are left unvaccinated on purpose - would be unethical, because it means leaving children at risk. As for retrospective, some were done and they show you the difficulty: A. A large scale German study - over 17000 - compared vaccinated and unvaccinated children. In spite of the large number, there were only 94 unvaccinated children - reflecting the rate in the population - showing you again how hard this is to do. Because of that, autism was not assessed. Here is the link to the study: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3057555/ B. Two studies compared rate of autism by level of vaccination - how many vaccines the child got - and found no difference: pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/125/6/1134.abstract; jpeds/webfiles/images/journals/ympd/JPEDSDeStefano.pdf. C. This study compared siblings of children with autism and found no difference in rates of autism by whether the sibling was vaccinated or not: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23045216 On this background, and in addition to many, many other studies that examined different hypotheses that there is a connection between vaccines and autism and found none, the anti-vaccine activists keep demanding more work. They offer no plausible hypothesis; but they seem to think its appropriate to spend more scarce research dollars on this issue. Since history suggests they will not accept any study that does not fit their preconceived notion, scientists are not eager to take up the invitation. With so much work done on the debunked vaccines claim, its a lot more appropriate to spend research dollars on avenues of research that are actually promising.
Posted on: Sun, 08 Jun 2014 03:59:30 +0000
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