The MMR vaccine controversy began with the 1998 publication of a fake research paper on The Lancet linking a combined vaccine against mumps, mumps and rubella (MMR) to colitis and autism spectrum disorders.. Claims in newspapers are widely reported, leading to a sharp decline in vaccination rates in the UK and Ireland and an increase in the incidence of measles and mumps, resulting in serious death and serious injury. Following initial claims in 1998, several major epidemiological studies were conducted. Evidence reviews by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine, the British National Health Service, and the Cochrane Library found no association between the MMR vaccine and autism.
Investigation by journalist Brian Deer found that Andrew Wakefield, author of the original research paper that links the vaccine with autism, has many undeclared conflicts of interest, has manipulated evidence, and has violated other codes of ethics. The paper Lancet was partially revoked in 2004, and was completely recalled in 2010, when Lancet ' s editor-in-chief Richard Horton described it as "Completely fake" and says that the journal has been "cheated". Wakefield was found guilty by the General Medical Council for serious professional misconduct in May 2010 and dismissed from the Medical List, meaning he could no longer train as a doctor in England. In 2011, the Deer provided more information on Wakefield's incorrect research practice into the British Medical Journal , which in the signed editorial depicts the original paper as a fraud. The scientific consensus is that the MMR vaccine has no bearing on the development of autism, and that the benefits of this vaccine outweigh the risks.
Wakefield's paper is described as "perhaps, the most damaging medical trick in the last 100 years". Doctors, medical journals, and editors describe Wakefield's actions as fraud and tie them to epidemics and deaths.
Video MMR vaccine controversy
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Before the autism-related controversy began in 1998, some concerns have arisen about the safety of MMR vaccine due to side effects associated with Urabe goiter strains, including the rare side effects of aseptic meningitis, mild form while viral meningitis. A late 1980s UK experiment of the MMR vaccine form containing Urabe mumps resulted in three possible cases of febrile seizures associated per 1,000 vaccinations. Concerns about adverse reactions to vaccines are raised by US and Canadian authorities based on reports from Japan linking the Urabe MMR with meningoencephalitis. Canadian authorities withdrew Urabe-based vaccine in the late 1980s.
The British National Health Service introduced the MMR vaccine using a thyroid strain in 1988, replacing it entirely with strain Jeryl Lynn in September 1992 after identification of the risk of aseptic meningitis unacceptable 15-35 days after vaccination. In the absence of such risks seen in the vaccine using Jerryl Lynn's strain of goiter, the UK NHS withdraws two of the three available MMR vaccines (Immravax, created by Merieux UK, and Pluserix, made by SmithKline Beecham) in favor of Merck Sharp and Dohme's MMR Brand II , based on strain Jeryl Lynn. Although the MMR administration continued with MMR II, the rate of first MMR vaccination began to fall after 1996, following claims by Wakefield that it was associated with Crohn's disease.
Urabe tension remains in use in a number of countries; MMRs with Urabe strains are much cheaper to produce than Jeryl Lynn strains, and strains with higher efficacy along with slightly higher rates of mild side effects may still have the advantage of reducing overall incidence of the disease.
Campaign vaccination
In the wake of the measles epidemic, which occurred in England in 1992, and on the basis of seroepidemiological data analysis combined with mathematical modeling, the British Health authorities predicted a large rise of measles in school-aged children. Two strategies are then examined: whether targeting vaccinations in all children without previous vaccination history or to immunize all children regardless of vaccination history. In November 1994, the last option was selected and the national measles and rubella vaccination campaign, described as "one of England's most ambitious vaccination initiatives" began: within a month, 92% of the 7.1 million school children in the UK were 5 -16 year old received measles and rubella (MR) vaccine.
MMR litigation started
In April 1994, Richard Barr, a lawyer, managed to win legal aid to pursue a class action lawsuit against MMR vaccine producers under the Consumer Protection Act of Britain 1987. Classroom action cases were aimed at Aventis Pasteur, SmithKline Beecham, and Merck, respective producers Immravax, Pluserix-MMR, and MMR II. This lawsuit, based on the claim that the MMR is a defective product and should not be used, is the first major class action lawsuit funded by the Legal Aid Council (which became the Legal Services Commission, which was subsequently replaced by the Legal Aid of the Agency) after its formation in 1988. two publications from Andrew Wakefield exploring the role of measles virus in Crohn's disease and inflammatory bowel disease, Barr contacted Wakefield for his expertise. According to Wakefield supporters, the men first met on January 6, 1996. The Legal Services Commission halted the process in September 2003, on the grounds of a high probability of failure on the basis of medical evidence, ending the first case of research funding by the LSC..
Maps MMR vaccine controversy
1998 The Lancet paper
In February 1998, a group led by Andrew Wakefield published a fake paper in the respected British medical journal The Lancet, supported by a press conference at Royal Free Hospital in London. The paper reports on twelve children with developmental disorders referring to the Royal Free Hospital. Parents or doctors from eight of these children are said to have linked early behavioral symptoms with MMR vaccinations. This paper describes a collection of intestinal symptoms, endoscopic findings, and biopsy findings that are said to be evidence of a possible new syndrome called Wakefield later called autistic enterocolitis, and recommend further research into possible associations between MMR conditions and vaccines. The paper shows that the relationship between autism and gastrointestinal pathology is real, but says it does not prove the link between MMR vaccine and autism.
At a press conference prior to the publication of the newspaper, later criticized as "science through press conferences", Wakefield said that he thought it wise to use a single vaccine rather than a three MMR vaccine until this could be ruled out as a trigger for the environment; parents of eight of the twelve children studied were said to have blamed the MMR vaccine, saying that symptoms of autism have occurred within days after vaccination by about 14 months. Wakefield said, "I can not support the continuous use of these three vaccines given in combination until this problem has been resolved." In a video news release issued by the hospital for broadcasters before a press conference, he called for the MMR to "suspend in favor of a single vaccine". In a BBC interview, Wakefield mentor, Roy Pounder, who is not a co-author, "admits the research is controversial". He added: "Come to think of it might be a better solution to give the vaccinations separately,... When vaccinations are given individually there is no problem." These suggestions are not supported by Wakefield's coauthors or by scientific evidence.
Press coverage of the beginning of the story is limited. The Guardian and Independent report it on their front page, while Daily Mail only gives a small mention story in the middle of the paper, and Sun not cover it.
Wakefield_The_Lancet_paper_controversy Wakefield The Lancet paper controversy
The controversy began to gain momentum in 2001 and 2002, after Wakefield published a paper showing that immunization programs are unsafe. This is a review paper with no new evidence, published in a small journal, and two papers on laboratory work that he says show that the measles virus has been found in tissue samples taken from children with autism and bowel problems. There is extensive media coverage including dreadful anecdotal evidence from parents, and political coverage that attacks health services and the government culminated with unfulfilled demands that Prime Minister Tony Blair revealed whether his infant son, Leo, has been given the vaccine. It was the biggest science story of 2002, with 1257 articles mostly written by non-expert commentators. In the period from January to September 2002, 32% of stories written about the MMR mention Leo Blair, compared to only 25% mentioning Wakefield. Less than a third of the stories mention the extraordinary evidence that MMR is safe. Newspapers, press conferences, and videos sparked great fears about health in the UK. As a result of fear, full confidence in the MMR fell from 59% to 41% after the publication of Wakefield's research. In 2001, 26% of family physicians felt the government had failed to prove there was no association between MMR and autism and bowel disease. In his book Bad Science, Ben Goldacre describes MMR vaccine fears as one of the "three fake classic science stories of all time" by British newspapers (the other two are the Arpad Pusztai affairs of genetically modified) plants, and Chris Malyszewicz and MRSA hoax).
Confidence in the MMR vaccine increases when it becomes clear that Wakefield claims are not supported by scientific evidence. A 2003 survey of 366 family doctors in the UK reported that 77% of them would suggest giving MMR vaccine to a child with a family history near autism, and that 3% of them think that autism can sometimes be caused by the MMR vaccine. A similar survey in 2004 found that this percentage changed to 82% and at most 2%, respectively, and that confidence in MMR had increased over the previous two years.
One factor in the controversy is that only the combined vaccine is available through the UK National Health Service. In 2010 there was not a single vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella that was licensed for use in the UK. Prime Minister Tony Blair provided support for the program, arguing that the vaccine was safe enough for his own son, Leo, but refused for privacy reasons to say whether Leo had received the vaccine; Instead, the next Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, explicitly asserted that his son had been immunized. Cherie Blair insists that Leo has been given MMR vaccinations while promoting his autobiography.
The joint vaccine administration, not a separate vaccine, reduces the risk of children contracting the disease while waiting for complete immunization coverage. Two combined vaccine injections result in less pain and distress in children than the six injections required by separate vaccines, and additional clinical visits required by separate vaccinations increase the likelihood that some patients are delayed or lost altogether; vaccination uptake increased significantly in the UK when MMR was introduced in 1988. Health professionals have strongly condemned media coverage of the controversy to trigger a decrease in vaccination rates. There is no scientific basis for choosing a separate vaccine, or for using a certain interval between separate vaccines.
John Walker-Smith, co-author of the Wakefield report and the MMR vaccine advocate, wrote in 2002 that epidemiology has shown that MMR is safe in most children, but observes that epidemiology is a dull tool and that research can miss a risk group that has a tangible relationship between MMR and autism. However, if rare subtypes of autism can be accurately identified by clinical or pathological characteristics, epidemiological studies may answer the question of whether MMR leads to autism subtypes. There is no scientific evidence that MMR causes damage to the baby's immune system, and there is plenty of evidence to the contrary.
In 2001, Berelowitz, one of the authors of the paper, said, "I certainly do not know convincing evidence for the hypothesis of the relationship between MMR and autism." The Canadian Pediatric Society, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, and the British National Health Service all conclude that there is no evidence of a link between the MMR vaccine and autism, and the 2011 journal article describes the vaccine-autism relationship as " most damaging in the last 100 years ".
Conflicts of interest
In February 2004, after a four-month investigation, reporter Brian Deer wrote in London's Sunday Times that, before submitting his paper to The Lancet, Wakefield has received Ã, £ 55,000 of lawyers of the Legal Aid Agency are looking for evidence to use against vaccine manufacturers, that some parents are quoted as saying that the MMR has damaged their children as well as litigation, and that Wakefield has not notified colleagues or medical authorities of a conflict of interest. When the editors of The Lancet knew this, they said that based on Deer's evidence, Wakefield's paper should never have been published because the findings were "completely flawed". Although Wakefield maintains that legal aid funds are for separate studies, unpublished (subsequently rejected by the panel of the General Medical Council of England), the editors of The Lancet consider the sources of funding to have been disclosed to them. Richard Horton, editor-in-chief, writes, "It seems clear now that we appreciate the full context in which the work reported in the 1998 paper Lancet by Wakefield and colleagues has been completed, the publication will not occur as which happened. "Some of Wakefield's colleagues have also strongly criticized the lack of disclosure.
The deer went on to report on the television documentary channel MMR: What They Do not Tell You , broadcast on November 18, 2004. The documentary alleged that Wakefield had applied for a patent on a vaccine that is a competitor of the MMR vaccine, and that he knows the results of his own laboratory tests at Royal Free Hospital as opposed to his own claim. The Wakefield patent application is also recorded in Paul Offit's book in 2008, Autism False. .
In January 2005, Wakefield sued Channel 4, 20/20 Productions, and investigative reporter Brian Deer, who presented the Dispatches program. However, after two years of litigation, and the disclosure of more than Ã, Â £ 400,000 in an undisclosed payment by a lawyer to Wakefield, he stopped his actions and paid all charges of the defendant.
In 2006, Deer reported in The Sunday Times that Wakefield had been paid Ã, £ 435,643, plus fees, by a British court lawyer who tried to prove that the vaccine was dangerous, with an undisclosed fee starting two years before Lancet paper publication. These funds come from UK legal aid funds, funds intended to provide legal services to the poor.
Revocation of interpretation
The Lancet and many other medical journals require papers to include authors' conclusions about their research, known as "interpretations". The 1998 paper summary Lancet ended as follows:
Interpretation We identify associated gastrointestinal diseases and growth regressions in previously normal groups of children, which are generally linked in time to possible environmental triggers.
In March 2004, shortly after the news of alleged conflict of interest, ten of Wakefield's 12 co-authors retracted this interpretation, while insisting that the possibility of a typical gastrointestinal condition in children with autism deserves further investigation. However, separate studies in children with gastrointestinal disorders found no difference between those with autism spectrum disorders and those who did not, with respect to the presence of measles virus RNA in the gut; it also found that gastrointestinal symptoms and the onset of autism were unrelated to the time of administration of the MMR vaccine.
Data manipulation
On February 8, 2009, Brian Deer reported in The Sunday Times that Wakefield had "improved" the results and "manipulated" patient data in his paper in 1998, creating a look of relationship with autism. Wakefield denied this allegation, and even filed a complaint with the Press Reporting Commission (PCC) on this article on March 13, 2009. The complaint was extended with an addendum of 20 March 2009 by Wakefield publicist. In July 2009, PCC stated that they are keeping an inquiry about the Times article, awaiting the conclusion of a GMC investigation. In the event, Wakefield did not pursue his complaint, issued by Deer with the statement that he and The Sunday Times rejected him as "false and dishonest" in all material matters, "and that the action has been suspended by PCC in February 2010.
Investigation of the General Medical Board
The General Medical Council (GMC), which is responsible for licensing doctors and supervising medical ethics in the UK, investigates the matter. The GMC carries the case itself, does not quote a particular complaint, claims that the investigation is in the public interest. Later, the state secretary for health, John Reid, called for a GMC investigation, which Wakefield himself received. During the debate at the House of Commons, on March 15, 2004, Dr. Evan Harris, a Liberal Democrat MP, called for a judicial investigation into the ethical aspects of the case, even suggesting it was possible by the CPS. In June 2006, the GMC confirmed that they would hold a Wakefield disciplinary hearing.
GMC's Fitness to Practice Panel first met on July 16, 2007 to consider Dr. Wakefield, Professor John Angus Walker-Smith, and Professor Simon Harry Murch. All face serious allegations of professional misconduct. GMC examines, among other ethical points, whether Wakefield and his colleagues obtained the necessary approval for tests they performed on children; the cost of data manipulation reported in the Times , which appears after the case is prepared, is not questioned in the hearing. The GMC stressed that it would not assess the validity of competing scientific theories in MMR and autism. The General Medical Council alleges that the trio acted unethically and dishonestly in preparing research into the MMR vaccine. They denied the allegations. The case continues in front of the GMC Fitness to Practice panel of three medical members and two lay members.
On January 28, 2010, the GMC panel submitted its decision on the facts of the case: Wakefield is known to have acted "dishonestly and irresponsibly" and has acted with "shameful ignorance" for the children involved study, perform unnecessary and invasive. test. The Panel found that the trial was conducted incorrectly without the consent of an independent ethics committee, and that Wakefield had many undisclosed conflicts of interest.
Full retraction and fraud allegation
In response to GMC investigations and findings, the editors
Hansard's text for March 16, 2010 reported that Lord McColl asked the Government if he had any plans to recover legal aid paid to experts in connection with the litigation of measles, mumps and rubella/rubella vaccines. Mr. Bach, Minister of Justice dismissed this possibility.
In the April 2010 report on The BMJ, the Deer expanded the laboratory aspect of its findings which tells how the normal clinical histopathology results produced by the Royal Free Hospital was later changed in medical school to abnormal results, published in The Lancet . The deer wrote an article on The BMJ that cast doubt on the "autistic enterocolitis" claimed by Wakefield has been found. In the same edition, Deirdre Kelly, President of the European Society of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition and Editor of the Journal of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition expressed some concerns about The BMJ publishing this article while the GMC process is underway.
On May 24, 2010, the GMC panel found Wakefield guilty of serious professional misconduct for four counts of dishonesty and 12 involving the abuse of mentally ill children, and ordered her to be removed from the medical checklist. John Walker-Smith was also found guilty of serious professional mistakes and engulfed the medical list, but the decision was dropped when appealing to the High Court in 2012, as the GMC panel has failed to decide whether Walker-Smith really thinks he's doing research under cover investigation and clinical treatment. The High Court criticized "a number" of wrong conclusions by the disciplinary panel and "inadequate and superficial reasoning". Simon Murch was not found guilty.
On January 5, 2011, The BMJ published the first of a series of articles by Brian Deer, detailing how Wakefield and his colleagues had falsified some of the data behind the Lancet 1998 article. By looking at the notes and interviewing parents, the Deer found that for all 12 children in the Wakefield study, the diagnosis was changed or the date changed to fit the article's conclusions. Following the BMJ series on January 11, 2011, Deer said that based on the documents he obtained under the Freedom of Information legislation, Wakefield - in partnership with the father of one of the boys in the study - had planned to launched an effort behind the threat of MMR vaccinations that would benefit from new medical tests and "litigation trials". The Washington Post reported that the Deer said that Wakefield predicted he could "make more than $ 43 million a year from diagnostic equipment" for new conditions, autistic enterocolitis. WebMD reports the report
Media role
Observers criticized the media's involvement in the controversy, what is known as 'science by press conference', alleging that the media provided Wakefield's study with more credibility than it should. A March 2007 paper on BMC Public Health by Shona Hilton, Mark Petticrew, and Kate Hunt postulated that media reports on Wakefield's study have "created a misleading impression that evidence for links to autism is substantial as evidence against". Previous writings in the Communication in Medicine and British Medical Journal concluded that media reports provide a misleading picture of the level of support for the Wakefield hypothesis.
A 2007 editorial at Australian Doctors complained that some journalists continued to defend the Wakefield study even after The Lancet had published retictions by 10 of the original 12 study authors, but noted that it was an investigative journalist , Brian Deer, who has played a major role in uncovering the weaknesses in this study. PRWeek notes that after Wakefield was removed from the public medical list for violations in May 2010, 62% of respondents in a poll on the MMR controversy stated that they did not feel that the media were reporting responsible for health problems..
The article the Journal of New English Medicine that examines the history of antivaccinationists says that rejection of vaccines has existed since the 19th century, but "now the media of choice antivaccinationists" usually television and the Internet, including social media, used to influence opinions public and divert attention from scientific evidence. "Editorials characterize anti-vaccinations as people" inclined toward full mistrust of government and producers, conspiratorial thinking, denial, low cognitive complexity in thinking patterns, reasoning disabilities, and habit of replacing emotional anecdotes for data, "including people who are" unable to understand and incorporate the concept of risk and probability into science-based decision-making "and those" who use intentional misunderstanding, intimidation, false data and the threat of violence. "
In an editorial in January 2011 at The American Spectator Robert M. Goldberg argues that evidence from the scientific community about the problem with Wakefield's research "... is weakened because the media allow Wakefield and his followers to discredit the findings simply by saying so."
Seth Mnookin, author of The Panic Virus, also partially blames the media for presenting a false balance between scientific evidence and personal experience of people: "Reporting falls into this 'on the one hand, on the other' error, presumption that if you have two sides that do not agree, that means you have to present both of them with equal weight. "
Fiona Godlee, editor of The BMJ , said in January 2011:
The original paper has received so much media attention, with the potential to damage public health, making it difficult to find parallels in the history of medical science. Many other medical scams have been revealed but are usually faster after publication and on lesser important health issues.
Concern has also arisen over the peer review system of journals, which largely depend on trust among researchers, and the role of journalists who report on scientific theories that they are "barely in a position to question and understand". Neil Cameron, a historian specializing in the history of science, wrote for the Montreal Gazette, citing controversy as a "failure of journalism" resulting in unnecessary death, saying that: 1) The Lancet should not publish research based on "statistically meaningless outcomes" in only 12 cases; 2) the anti-vaccination campaign was followed by a private satirical magazine Private Eye ; and 3) grappling of worried parents and celebrities who "nincompoop" sparked widespread fear. The Sheet also reports that:
There is no guarantee that disassembling the original research will affect all parents. Medical experts must work hard to try to repair the damage inflicted by what appears to be a naughty medical researcher whose work is not adequately examined by top-ranking international journals.
Litigation
During the 1980s and 1990s, a number of lawsuits were filed against vaccine manufacturers, accusing the vaccine of causing physical and mental disorders in children. While these lawsuits are unsuccessful, they lead to a huge jump in the cost of the MMR vaccine, and pharmaceutical companies seek legislative protection. In 1993, Merck KGaA became the only company willing to sell MMR vaccines in the United States and Britain.
Italy
In June 2012, a local court in Rimini, Italy, decided that MMR vaccination had caused autism in a 15-month-old boy. The court rely heavily on discredited Lancet paper and ignores the scientific evidence presented to it. The decision was filed. On February 13, 2015, the decision was revoked by the Court of Appeals in Bologna.
Japanese
MMR fears cause a low percentage of mumps vaccination (less than 30%), resulting in outbreaks in Japan. There were up to 2002 deaths caused by measles in Japan while none in the UK, but additional deaths were caused by the application of Japanese vaccines at an advanced age. A Department of Health spokeswoman said that the termination had no impact on measles, but also mentioned that there were more deaths due to measles when MMR was used. In 1994 the government dropped the vaccination requirements for measles and rubella due to the fear of MMR 1993. Japan is currently the only developed country with a major measles epidemic. It has been called "the exporter of measles" by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As another consequence of fear, in 2003, 7 million schoolchildren had not been vaccinated against rubella.
The rate of autism continues to increase in Japan after the discontinuation of the MMR vaccine, which denies the large-scale effects of vaccination, and means MMR withdrawal in other countries is unlikely to cause a decrease in the case of autism. The Japanese government does not recognize the relationship between MMR and autism. In 2003 he was still trying to find a joint vaccine to replace the MMR.
It was later found that some vaccines were administered after the expiry date and that the mandatory MMR vaccinations were only withdrawn after the deaths of three children and over 2000 reports of side effects. In 1993 the Japanese government had paid $ 160,000 in compensation to the families of each of the three children who died. Other parents do not receive compensation because the government says the Vaccine vaccine has been the cause; they decided to sue producers instead of government. The Osaka District Court ruled on March 13, 2003 that the deaths of two children (among many other serious conditions) were caused by the Japanese strain Urabe MMR. In 2006, the Osaka High Court stated in another ruling that the state was responsible for the failure to oversee the rubella-measles-vaccine producers vaccine, which causes severe side effects in children.
English
Beginning before the announced Civil Rules Procedure, the MMR Litigation had status as group litigation achieved with the direction of practice then the Chief Justice Lord of July 8, 1999. On June 8, 2007, High Court justice Justice Keith ended the group's lawsuit due to legal aid withdrawal by the legal services commission makes the pursuit of most complainants impossible. He decided that all but two claims against pharmaceutical companies should be stopped. The judge stressed that his decision was not as great as the rejection of claims that the MMR had damaged the children.
A pressure group called JABS (Justice, Awareness, Basic Support) was established to represent families with children who, their parents said, were "vaccine-damaged". Ã, Â £ 15 million in public legal aid funding is spent on litigation, where Ã, Â £ 9.7 million goes to lawyers and lawyers, and Ã, Â £ 4.3 million to expert witnesses.
United States
The omnibus autism proceeding (OAP) is a coordinated process before the Office of the Special Masters of the Federal Court of Federal Claims - commonly called vaccine courts. It is structured to facilitate the handling of nearly 5000 vaccine petitions that involve claims that children who have received certain vaccinations have developed autism. The Steering Committee of the Petitioners claimed that the MMR vaccine could cause autism, possibly in combination with thiomersal-containing vaccines. In 2007 three test cases were presented to test the claims about the combination; these cases fail. The vaccine court ruled against plaintiffs in all three cases, stating that the proposed evidence did not validate their claim that vaccination causes autism in certain patients or in general.
In some cases, plaintiffs' lawyers opt out of the Omnibus Autism Proceedings, which are related only to autism, and problems related to intestinal disorders; they are debating their case in an ordinary vaccine trial.
On July 30, 2007, the Bailey Banks family, a child with a propagating development delay, won his case versus the Department of Health and Human Services. In a case listed as related to 'postponement of non-autistic development', Special Master Richard B. Abell ruled that the Bank has successfully demonstrated, "The MMR vaccine in question really causes the conditions from which Bailey suffers and continues to suffer." In conclusion, he decides that he is satisfied that MMR has caused a brain inflammation called disseminated acute encephalomyelitis (ADEM). He reached this conclusion because of two cases of vaccines in 1994 and 2001, which have concluded, "ADEM can be caused by natural measles infection, mumps, and rubella, as well as by measles, mumps and rubella vaccines."
In other cases, lawyers do not claim that the vaccine causes autism; they seek compensation for encephalopathy, encephalitis, or seizure disorders.
Research
The number of reported cases of autism increased dramatically in the 1990s and early 2000s. This increase is largely due to changes in diagnostic practice; it is not known how much, if any, growth stems from a noticeable change in the prevalence of autism, and there is no causal association with the MMR vaccine that has been demonstrated.
In 2004, an EU-financed meta review assessed evidence provided in 120 other studies and considered the undesirable effects of MMR vaccine, concluding that although vaccines were associated with positive and negative side effects, the relationship between MMR and autism was "unlikely ". Also in 2004, a review article published that concluded, "The evidence is now assured that the rubella-mumps-measles vaccine does not cause autism or certain subtypes of autistic spectrum disorder." A 2006 literature review of vaccines and autism was found "[t] he most evidence suggests there is no causal relationship between MMR vaccine and autism." A 2007 case study used the number in Wakefield's 1999 letter to The Lancet which states the temporal relationship between MMR vaccination and autism to illustrate how the graph can misrepresent its data, and advise writers and publishers to avoid the same. misinterpret in the future. A 2007 review of independent research conducted after the publication of Wakefield's preliminary report et al. found that the study provided conclusive evidence against the hypothesis that MMR is associated with autism. An overview of work done in 2004 for British litigation but not revealed until 2007 found that polymerase chain reaction analysis is important for the results of Wakefield et al. is fatal because of contamination, and that it could be impossible to detect measles that should be detected. A review of a 2009 study on the relationship between vaccines and autism discusses the MMR vaccine controversy as one of three major hypotheses not supported by epidemiological and biological studies.
In 2012, the Cochrane Library published reviews of dozens of scientific studies involving approximately 14.7 million children, who found no credible evidence of MMR involvement with autism or Crohn's disease. The authors state "the design and reporting of security results in MMR vaccine studies, both pre- and post-marketing, are largely inadequate". A June 2014 meta-analysis involving more than 1.25 million children found "vaccination was not associated with autism or autism spectrum disorders, and the vaccine component (thimerosal or mercury) or some vaccine (MMR) was not associated with the development of autism or disorders autism spectrum. "In July 2014, a systematic review found" strong evidence that MMR vaccine is not associated with autism ".
Outbreaks of disease
After the controversy began, MMR vaccination compliance declined sharply in the UK, from 92% in 1996 to 84% in 2002. In some parts of London, it was as low as 61% in 2003, well below the levels required to avoid a measles epidemic. In 2006 coverage for MMR in the UK at 24 months was 85%, lower than the coverage of about 94% for other vaccines.
After the rate of vaccination decreased, the incidence of two of the three diseases increased greatly in the UK. In 1998 there were 56 confirmed cases of measles in the UK; in 2006 there were 449 in the first five months of this year, with the first death since 1992; cases occur in unvaccinated children. Mumps cases began to increase in 1999 after years of very few cases, and in 2005 the UK was in a mumps epidemic with nearly 5000 notices in the first month of 2005 alone. Affected age groups are too old to receive regular MMR immunization around paper time by Wakefield et al. published, and too young to contract a natural goiter as a child, and thus to achieve the effect of herd immunity. With a decrease in mumps following MMR vaccine introduction, these people have not been exposed to the disease, but still have no immunity, either natural or induced vaccines. Therefore, when immunization rates decrease after controversy and illness reappears, they are susceptible to infection. The cases of measles and mumps continued in 2006, at incidence rates of 13 and 37 times greater than 1998 levels respectively. Two children were injured severely and permanently by measles encephalitis despite undergoing a kidney transplant in London.
Outbreaks of disease also cause casualties in nearby countries. Three deaths and 1,500 cases were reported in the Irish outbreak of 2000, which occurred as a direct result of decreasing vaccination rates after MMR fears.
In 2008, for the first time in 14 years, measles were declared endemic in the UK, meaning that the disease suffered in the population; this was due to the low level of MMR vaccination in the previous decade, which created a population of vulnerable children who could spread the disease. The rate of MMR vaccination for British children did not change in 2007-08 from a year earlier, at levels too low to prevent a serious measles outbreak. In May 2008, a 17 year old British teenager with an underlying immunodeficiency died of measles. In 2008 Europe also faced a measles epidemic, including major outbreaks in Austria, Italy, and Switzerland.
Following the 2011 2011 BMJ Wakefield 2011 declaration of Wakefield fraud, Paul Offit, a pediatrician at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and "long-term critic of the dangers of the anti-vaccine movement," said, "the paper kills children" , and Michael Smith of the University of Louisville, an "infectious disease specialist who has studied the effects of autism controversy on immunization rates", says "the results of this study (Wakefield) have an impact." In 2014 Laurie Garrett, a senior fellow at The Council on Foreign Relations, blaming "Wakefieldism" for increasing the number of unvaccinated children in countries like Australia and New Zealand, said, "Our data shows that where Wakefield messages have been caught, measles follow."
Impact on society
The New England Journal of Medicine says that antivaccinationist activities lead to high costs for society, "including individual damage and public welfare from previously controlled disease outbreaks, withdrawing vaccine producers from markets, sacrificing national security (in cases anthrax vaccine and smallpox), and loss of productivity ".
The cost to the community from the reduced vaccination rate (in US dollars) is estimated by AOL's
In the United States, Jenny McCarthy blamed the vaccinations for her son's disorder Evan and used her celebrity status to warn parents about the relationship between vaccines and autism. Evan's disorders begin with seizures and their repair occurs after seizures are treated, symptomatic experts have noted more consistent with Landau-Kleffner syndrome, often misdiagnosed as autism. After the Lancet article was discredited, McCarthy continued to defend Wakefield. An article in Salon.com called McCarthy a "threat" to his ongoing position that the vaccine was dangerous.
Bill Gates reacted strongly to Wakefield and the work of the anti-vaccination group:
Dr. [Andrew] Wakefield has been proven to use data that is completely fake. He has a financial interest in several lawsuits, he makes fake paper, the journal allows him to walk. All other research is done, showing no connection at all over and over and over again. So that's an absolute lie that has killed thousands of children. Because of the mothers who heard the lie, many of them did not ask their children to take pertussis or measles vaccines, and their children died today. So people who go and get involved in anti-vaccine efforts - you know, they, they kill children. This is a very sad thing, because the vaccine is important.
See also
- History of the science portal
- Drug portals
- Virus Portal
References
Further reading
- "The Vaccine War". Frontline . PBS. April 27, 2010 . Retrieved December 28 2013 .
- Willingham, Emily; Helft, Laura (September 5, 2014). "The Autism-Vaccine Myth with Timelines". PBS NOVA.
- DeNoon, Daniel J (January 6, 2011). "Autism/MMR Vaccine Study Faked: FAQ". Health News WebMD . Retrieved December 27 2013 .
- "MMR timeline of research". BBC News. February 4, 2008 . Retrieved December 27 2013 .
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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