People sometimes ask why this blog is all about vaccines when it is supposed to be about autism. Of course it is not all about vaccines. But it must seem like that because a lot of the time I am responding to the argument that vaccines are a cause of autism. Why do I bother when there is no scientific basis for any of the supposed pathways?
MMR was only ever supported by the work of one team of researchers grouped around Wakefield and working for the lawyers pursuing claims for compensation against the vaccine manufacturers. The testimony of Bustin and Chadwick at the Omnibus Autism Proceedings demonstrated the flawed nature of much of that research. Other scientists have failed to replicate Wakefield’s findings and epidemiological studies have shown no connection between autism and MMR.
Thiomersal, a mercury based preservative that used to be found in minute quantities in some childhood vaccines, has also been blamed. A speculative paper suggested similarities between the symptoms of mercury poisoning and autism. This idea was thoroughly debunked but the idea persisted because the growth in reported prevalence of autism in the USA coincided with an increase in the number of vaccines containing thiomersal. Advocates for this theory never adequately explained why autism numbers in the UK were growing at least as fast as those in the USA while the number of thiomersal containing vaccines [TCVs] in the UK never increased. And when TCVS were eliminated from the recommended childhood vaccine schedule in the USA in 2002 the numbers continued to rise.
The latest “theory” that we give our children “too many too soon” and overwhelm their natural defenses ignores the simple fact that advances in vaccine development mean that the entire vaccine schedule contains less active ingredients than ever before. A single dose of smallpox vaccine with 200 antigens contained more antigens on its own than all today’s vaccines put together. And in 1960 smallpox plus polio plus diptheria, tetanus and pertussis vaccines delivered 3,200 antigens!
“Too much too soon” is part of the “Green Our Vaccines” campaign. It is coupled with a spurious argument about toxins in vaccines. The Green Our Vaccines list of alleged toxic ingredients has been thoroughly dismissed. There are some potentially toxic chemicals used in vaccine production. These have all been tested for safety and are necessary to prevent contamination during production, storage and delivery of vaccines. I wonder how many of us use equally potent ”toxins” to cleanse work surfaces on which we prepare food for our children.
Their “science” is non-existent. But the anti-vaccine element have proved impossible to ignore because the media continue to give them publicity. And this publicity has contributed to the decline in vaccine uptake, paticularly the MMR. For example last month the Daily Telegraph published a ridiculous story entitled “MMR; the debate that will not go away.” Yesterday the Telegraph, with no apparent sense of shame, carried another story, “Teenager dies of Measles as cases continue to rise, Government officials say.”
This young man did have problems with his immune ystem which made it difficult for him to have vaccinations. Instead he relied on the “herd immunity” conferred on society when sufficient people are vaccinated to prevent a disease taking hold. 95% is usually held out as the threshold figure. But thanks to previous scare stories in papers like the Telegraph coverage is much lower. 84% of two year old have had the MMR. But only 75% of 5 year olds have had their second shot. In London the situation is worse with figures of 71% and 50% respectively according to the Independent. Measles is once again becoming endemic in the UK with 461 cases so far this year.
Most cases are thankfully not fatal. But they can still cause terrible illness. A woman in Blackpool nearly lost her daughter to the complications of measles.
Leah, who picked up the disease from her brother, was rushed into Blackpool Victoria Hospital on June 4 and kept on a drip for four harrowing days.
Mrs Hartley explained: “She had an horrendous sounding cough, a sky-high temperature, an upset stomach, conjunctivitis and she couldn’t stay awake.
“At one point she woke up and was hallucinating so she started screaming and crying, it really was terrifying.
“My mind was racing and I didn’t think she was going to pull through it – I never would have believed measles could make anyone so ill.”
Out of curiosity I visited the JABS forum. JABS claims to be neither pro nor anti vaccine. But it comes across as anti-vaccine and a supporter of the mmr-autism connection. Both the Telegraph report on the death from measles and the Independent report on the rise of measles were posted there on Saturday afternoon. Thus far at 1.00am on Sunday morning the young man’s death has been read 29 times with no comments. But the Independent report on the endemic has attracted 88 readers and comments like these.
Natural measles exposure is the best immunity you can get so I would imagine many parents will welcome this news with open arms.
One case of measles [in which a young man dies] makes the front page thousands of cases of autism unmentioned…agenda or what???
MMR RIP
if they can now justify mentioning individual measles cases, [He means a measles death]when normally they dismiss them in favour of epidemiology, then this must give the green light to discussing adverse reaction individual cases??
I will continue to post stories about vaccines in order to remind myself of what happens when quackery combines with conspiracy theory to drive out reason and compassion. Let us hope that the need to post such stories will diminish as the link between vaccines and autism is finally severed.
June 22nd, 2008
Posted by
Mike |
Andrew Wakefield, MMR, journalism, mercury, vaccines |
9 comments
I suppose the people behind Green Our Vaccines had a plan. While Jenny and Jim were grabbing the headlines in America David Kirby was dispatched to the UK to address Parliament, no less, and give a public lecture followed by press interviews and media coverage. While the Jenny and Jim Show drew the expected response from critical thinkers in the blogosphere it was largely ignored by the mainstream media. Apart from the celebrity chasers nobody thought a rallying of the faithful to march against vaccines was particularly newsworthy.
Over in the UK poor old David Kirby managed less than that. My thanks to Kev for persuading his MP to attend the parliamentary briefing. He was the only one to turn up along with 4 peers of the realm. The media ignored the event completely. Not even the Telegraph turned up. Perhaps their previous execrable piece on vaccines and autism that the splenetic Dr Aust deals with so admirably, was a blessing in disguise. They are probably too embarrassed to let a junior hack anywhere near the story for a long time to come.
Perhaps the press had all gone to Regent Hall for his public lecture. Thanks to Rob Hinkley for going along and giving us this account. No press there either.
Kirby’s visit had been advertised partly as a chance to meet the press, but there were no press (no print, no radio, no TV, no internet, nobody) at the lecture. Kirby said that he’d been interviewed by the BBC but they’d decided not to broadcast it, and he said he’d been commissioned by the Daily Mail to write an article but then they’d decided not to publish it. One lady in the audience (I got the impression she might have been one of the organisers of the event) said she was a journalist [Sally Beck?] but hadn’t been commissioned by anyone to write about what Kirby had to say, and that although she knew all UK science journalists had been notified about the lecture “not one of them has even phoned to ask if they could come”.
Clifford Miller knew why.
“I’ve got good information that our Department of Health threatens DA-notices against the press” over vaccine stories, and “I’ve got no confirmation of this from the press but I have it on good authority from within the civil service … Is our government using a spurious security argument to protect Glaxo Smith Klein?”
Yes, Clifford. You can read Defence Advisory notices that the Department of Defence issues here. No mention of vaccines. Shame.
Perhaps the media are finally wising up to the fact that these tales of doom supported by dubious science are no longer newsworthy. I hope so.
June 8th, 2008
Posted by
Mike |
Quackery, journalism, vaccines |
2 comments
If I could be in London next week for David Kirby’s PR visit these are some of the questions I would like to ask him. You may care to add your own.
Your book, Evidence of Harm, explores the premise that a 150 per cent increase in the mercury burden in US vaccines (from 75 to 187 microgams of ethyl mercury) that began in 1987 caused the dramatic rise in recorded cases of autistic spectrum disorder in the USA. Given that exposure to ethyl mercury in vaccines in the UK remained at 75 micrograms until it was finally removed in 2004, and we experienced a similar growth in autism, what possible relevance could your book or your theories have for the UK?
Thiomersal was completely removed from US vaccines and stocks exhausted by 2002. Yet autism rates have continued to rise. Do you agree that whatever plausibility there was to the thiomersal hypothesis when you were writing your book, it is contradicted by the data and should now be rejected? Are you now prepared to state publicly that there is no evidence of harm? That vaccines do not cause autism?
In your public debate with the journalist Arthur Allen you conceded that autism rates had not declined in line with your predictions after the removal of thiomersal from vaccines but went on to invoke other environmental sources of mercury such as toxic plumes crossing the Pacific from Chinse coal powered power stations, forest fires in California and even the smoke from crematoria. The UK is not being overwhelmed by pollution either from China or the USA and our autism rates are at least as high as yours. How do you explain this?
The organizations that are sponsoring your visit have been scathing in the past about the conflict of interest of scientific researchers who have repudiated any connection between mercury and autism. Does the fact that you are sponsored by anti-vaccine groups like Safe Minds and Generation Rescue and your current journalistic output is published on the Generation Rescue blog, The Age of Autism, create any conflicts of interest for you that might affect you impartiality as a journalist or are you happy with your role as a publicist for these organizations?
In recent months you have returned to the vaccine bandwagon, this time claiming that a significant number of autism cases are down to a reaction to vaccines that triggers a pre-existing mitochondrial disorder. You base your arguments on confidential documents leaked to you by people connected to Hannah Poling whose case is in the process of being settled at the US Court of Federal Claims. It is very difficult for us to judge the situation based solely on your speculations and the public statements of the Polings. When journalist Ken Reibel asked the Polings at the Autism One conference last month if they were prepared to release Hannah’s medical records and allow her treating physicians to comment publicly his press credentials were revoked and hotel securiy were summoned to expel him from the building. Surely this one sided speculation should cease until the case is settled and the science can be freely discussed by those qualified to do so?
May 31st, 2008
Posted by
Mike |
Autism, journalism, mercury, vaccines |
14 comments
Autism in Scotland
Scotland has a population of just over 5 million people. In 2004 The Scottish Executive published the Audit of Services for Autistic People Statistical Report. This was the result of a questionnaire sent out to all local authority/National Health Service partnerships. Two areas, Borders and Western Isles failed to respond and were excluded from the subsequent ananlysis of results. As a consequence the Audit deals with a total population of approximately 4.9 million people.
The Audit found 3412 children and young people under 18 with a diagnosis of an autistic spectrum disorder. The Audit could only find 645 adults with a diagnosis of an autistic spectrum disorder. This finding has been taken as further proof of a putative autism epidemic by journalist David Kirby writing for The Age of Autism. Unfortunately for Kirby, he obviously has not read the report in question. Instead he offers
Many thanks to Clifford Miller for furnishing the Scottish audit data.
Miller also furnished this graph which Kirby faithfully reproduces.
A misleading source
It looks like a figure taken from the Audit. But this figure is not in the PDF version that Miller links to. Nor is it in the word.doc that I have read. The clue is in those weasel words at the top of the figure, “Data Source.” Yes, Miller invented the figure based upon data gleaned from the audit. This would matter less if it was an accurate representation of the data source. But it is not. If we start at the bottom with “Average age of diagnosis of autism - approx three,” Average age of diagnosis is nowhere mentioned in the Audit. Furthermore, the Audit only contains data on people aged 3 years and older. So is Miller claiming that everyone in Scotland was diagnosed around their third birthday? How does he explain Howlin and Moore [1997] who found a mean age of 5.69 years for diagnosis in Scotland?
Miller’s second innovation is to give us four age groups: those born up to 1954, and those born in 15 year birth cohorts: 1955 - 1970, 1971 - 1986, 1987 - 2002. These are not the age groups in the data source. The Audit does not refer to date of birth. It refers to adults over 50, adults aged 25 to 49, adults aged 18 to 24 and children aged 3 to 18. As 18 is the legal age of majority in Scotland I am going to assume they mean “up to but not including 18″ when they refer to children. Of the birth dates you can derive from these ages: up to 1954, 1955 -1979, 1980 - 1986, 1987 - 2001, only the over 50s group matches.
Miller is also dishonest when he compares adults to children in the same graph. Data for children is derived from the responses of 13 NHS boards. Only 10 NHS boards provided adult data. Those missing are
Ayrshire and Arran - population 376,000
Forth Valley - population 300,000
Greater Glasgow - population 1,200,000.
So the figures for adults are based on a population of approximately 3 million rather 5 mllion. They exclude Glasgow, the most densely populated urban area in Scotland. None of this matters to Miller. He believes there is a world epidemic of autism in children, a pandemic that is caused by “vaccines.” He does not specify which vaccines, or which components or how they might be acting to cause his pandemic. He argues that if there is no pandemic there ought to be 500,000 autistic adults requiring 24/7 care in the UK. This is plain silly. Never mind that we are talking about a spectrum of need, where most autistic adults do not require 24/7 care. If Miller were right there ought to be 133,500 autistic children requiring 24/7 care in the UK. Some do require constant care but most clearly do not.
A tenfold error
So much for Kirby’s source. What does Kirby make of this material? It turns out that he makes a complete pig’s ear of it.
Let’s look at the numbers. There are approximately 34,000 young people with autism in Scotland, born during the 16 years from 1987-2002. That is an average of 2,125 cases per birth cohort. But among older people, born during the 31 years between 1955 and 1986, there are only about 600 reported cases, or just over 19 cases a year.
If the rate of autism in Scotland had remained unchanged between 1955 and today, then there are many, many uncounted adults going without support, services, or even much recognition.
In fact, at 2,125 cases on average per year, there should be 65,875 people with autism in Scotland between the ages of 22 and 53 years alone. But only 600 have signed up for any help at all, in a country with universal healthcare, no less.
Which begs a few questions: Where are the other 65,275 people in that age group with autism? Why have 109 out of every 110 adults with autism never sought, nor received, any special attention for their particular needs? Why have they not been counted? And why is there no national outrage over the neglect of so many thousands of fellow citizens going without services that they need?
In a country the size of Maine, with a population much smaller than New York City, it seems that the government would be able to locate and help these people.
Unless, of course, some of them are not there.
These figures are hogwash. Kirby may be able to use a calculator but he cannot read a graph. The figure is 3,400 not 34,000. Incredibly this post has been up for over a week now and nobody seems to have spotted such an egregious error, neither managing editor Kim Stagliano, nor editor Dan Olmsted and certainly not Kirby himself. And none of his supporters has posted a correction in the comments section, not even Barbara Fishkin who commented,
May 11th, 2008
Posted by
Mike |
adults, autism epidemic, journalism, vaccines |
24 comments
Orac has written this open letter. Please spread it far and wide.
Dear Mr. Kirby and Mr. Olmsted:
You are both journalists. I realize that neither of you at present work for the traditional press and that both of you seem to devote yourselves mainly to blogging (Mr. Olmsted at the Age of Autism and Mr. Kirby at the Huffington Post), but I have to believe that you both still consider yourselves to be at heart journalists. That is why I am writing this to you and posting it publicly on my blog. If you’ve ever read any of my posts on this issue, you probably realize that I strongly disagree with your positions and that at times I have been quite harsh in my judgment of articles you have both written. I am, however, hoping that for this one issue, upon which (I hope) we can all agree that you will for the moment put that aside and consider what I have to say. I am appealing for your condemnation of what has been done to autism blogger Kathleen Seidel.
The letter continues at Respectful Insolence
I hope that Olmsted and Kirby respond. As Orac points out later in his letter, if a vaccine injury lawyer is allowed to silence his critics with a subpoena, government and industry lawyers will take note and journalist bloggers like Olmsted and Kirby could be next in line.
April 6th, 2008
Posted by
Mike |
Neurodiversity, journalism |
11 comments
Kathleen Seidel’s Neurodiversity blog is an example to us all. She combines meticulous research with lucid prose. Her writing is as good as or better than much that passes for investigative journalism today. Now she has had to add the skills of a lawyer to those of a journalist in response to a subpoena from Clifford Shoemaker. This subpoena is so onerous and burdensome in its demands that it beggars belief, even in an overlawyered society like America.
Kathleen is being subpoenaed to testify at the taking of a deposition in the case of Lisa Sykes et al versus the Bayer Corporation and to provide
All documentation pertaining to the set up, financing, running, research, maintaining the website: http://www.neurodiversity.com that specifically relates to Lisa Sykes, her son, her lawsuits (NVICP and civil litigation, her church position, her family in general, her associates, her attorneys, her Citizen’s petition (FDA Filings and Court Filings) and her physicians. This shall include, but not be limited to bank statements, cancelled checks, online or offline donation documents, and tax returns. This to include the names of persons helping, paying or facilitating in any fashion these endeavours.
Whoa there!
- Kathleen is not a party to the dispute between Sykes and Bayer.
- She has had no contact with any of the parties to the dispute.
- The content of her website will have no bearing on the outcome of the case which will be determined by the quality of the expert testimony brought to the case by both sides, not the sleuthing of a citizen blogger.
- Nobody pays her to maintain Neurodiversity. She puts her own time and money into it.
It is obvious what Shoemaker is after. He is on a fishing trip to see what he can learn about Neurodiversity.com. Perhaps he thinks it is a front for Big Pharma and he can turn up something that will embarrass Bayer in court. He is only in it for the money and so cannot conceive how a private citizen could put so much effort into a resource like Neurodiversity.com and have the moral rectitude to blog about the abuse of autistics by quack practitioners and their attempts to use the courts to justify their behaviour and all with no thought of personal gain for herself.
But Shoemaker is not just fishing. It seems his intention to bully and intimidate Kathleen into silence. Because the subpoena asks for more, a lot more. Kathleen describes it thus in her motion to quash,
The subpoena commands production of “all documents pertaining to the setup, financing, running, research, maintaining the website http://www.neurodiversity.com“ – including but not limited to material mentioning the plaintiffs – and the names of all persons “helping, paying or facilitating in any fashion” my endeavors. The subpoena demands bank statements, cancelled checks, donation records, tax returns, Freedom of Information Act requests, LexisNexis® and PACER usage records. The subpoena demands copies of all of my communications concerning any issue which is included on my website, including communications with representatives of the federal government, the pharmaceutical industry, advocacy groups, non-governmental organizations, political action groups, profit or non-profit entities, journals, editorial boards, scientific boards, academic boards, medical licensing boards, any “religious groups (Muslim or otherwise), or individuals with religious affiliations,” and any other “concerned individuals.”
Could any of this be connected to the fact that 4 hours before being served with this subpoena Kathleen published a blog post The Commerce in Causation which enumerated legal costs paid to Mr Shoemaker by the National vaccine injury compensation Programe to the sum of $584,449.28.
Kathleen ends that post thus:
These nonprecedential decisions reveal only a portion of Mr. Shoemaker’s VICP income since June 2006; they pertain to fee requests to which HHS and the presiding Special Master raised few objections. In contrast, published decisions on fees and costs offer a more detailed view of controversies calling for a comprehensive judicial analysis, and of the billing practices of petitioners’ attorneys.
to be continued
Could the real purpose of this subpoena be less to do with what Shoemaker thinks Kathleen might know about Sykes versus Bayer and more to do with what he thinks she might know about him? Whatever his motives, he has managed to spread his name accross the Internet to almost universal opprobrium. Anti quackery blogs like Holford Watch, Science Bloggers, Autism Hubbers and legal blogs like the aptly named Overlawyered are all chiming in on Kathleen’s behalf. I Speak of Dreams is trying to keep a comprehensive list of them all. The total currently stands at 52.
Some voices have remained silent. Can you imagine the reaction in some quarters if the Department of Justice decided to subpoena David Kirby to discover who was leaking court documents to him in the Poling case. By his own admission
The unprecedented concession was filed on November 9, and sealed to protect the plaintiff’s identify. It was obtained through individuals unrelated to the case.
As a fellow blogger it ought to be in his interest to support Kathleen against this abuse of the legal process. How about it, David?
April 5th, 2008
Posted by
Mike |
Autism, Neurodiversity, journalism |
13 comments
“The Wakefield Witchhunt” - Melanie Phillips - The Spectator - Friday, 21st March 2008
A couple of days ago, yet another story appeared claiming that fresh research had shown that there was no link between the MMR vaccination and autism. This new research was said to have shown that, contrary to the claims made by Dr Andrew Wakefield, the surgeon at the centre of the MMR scare, there was no relationship between gut problems and autism, the core of his concerns. It also claimed that the discovery furthermore damaged the related theory that a gluten-free diet could help children with autism.
This must be a first, even when judged by the standards of accuracy previously set by newspaper columnist, Melanie Phillips. Every statement of fact in her opening paragraph is wrong! The ”fresh research” makes no mention of MMR apart from acknowledging a potential conflict of interest because one of the authors, John March “has previously acted as an expert witness for the litigants in the MMR litigation case conducted by Alexander Harris against three MMR vaccine manufacturers, which involved urinary analysis of both litigants and non-litigant controls using MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry. He has an autistic child who was not part of this legal case.”
The next sentence is very telling, “was said to have shown that…” Was said by whom? Has Ms Phillips actually read the research in question or is she relying on her feed from LexisNexis? If she had read the research paper she would know that it makes no claims regarding the purported link between gut issues and autism. Neither does it question the efficacy of the gluten and casein free diet. The authors are careful not to dismiss the diet. Instead they call for more research into it. NHS Choices gets it right.
Despite the newspaper headlines and coverage, the study did not look at the effects of the MMR jab and autism. Instead, it tested and compared the urine of autistic boys with the urine of boys without autism. The researchers conclude that there were no differences between the levels of peptides in the groups and say they have effectively disproved the ’leaky gut theory‘. However, further research is needed to establish whether a casein and gluten-free diet has other effects on autism.The researchers call for more studies into special diet as a treatment for autism, but they do not suggest that their research has any implication for the discredited MMR vaccine/autism theory.
Ms Phillips is on firmer ground when quoting directly from the press release
“Dr Hilary Cass, from Great Ormond Street, said: ‘It is very distressing to have a diagnosis of autism, a lifelong condition. Many families are driven to try out interventions which currently have no scientific basis. For example, advocates of the leaky gut hypothesis offer children a casein and gluten-free diet which as yet lacks an evidence base.’
But then she puts her foot in it by adding her own commentary
This particular observation is a telling indication that this study bears little relation to reality. For there are countless families whose autistic children’s suffering from gut problems has only been eased, and their autistic symptoms improved, by the introduction of precisely such a diet. ‘No evidence base’? Tell that to those families. It is their lived experience.
All together now, for the benefit of Ms Phillips: The plural of anecdote is not data! Testimonials from parents need to be backed up by solid data from properly conducted research. We are awaiting the outcome of a couple of studies that may provide that evidence base.
Second, despite the way this was presented in the media this is not a new piece of research at all. It is instead a recycled version of a study by Baird G. et al, published in the Archive of Diseases in Childhood on February 5 and reported in the press around that time.
Oh dear! Where on earth did she get that idea? Baird G. et al did take advantage of an earlier study [Baird G, Simonoff E, Pickles A, et al. "Prevalence of disorders of the autism spectrum in a population cohort of children in South Thames: the Special Needs and Autism Project (SNAP)" Lancet 2006; 368:210–15.] for their study of “Measles vaccination and antibody response in autism spectrum disorders.” But this has nothing to do with Dr Cass.
Dr Cass recruited children “from two tertiary referral centres specialising in autistic spectrum disorders whilst controls were recruited from and mainstream primary and secondary schools in the same geographical area. 65 boys with autism mean age 7:4 years (5-11) and 158 control boys mean age 7:8 years (4:2-11)”
Dr Baird used “A community sample of vaccinated children aged 10–12 years in the UK with ASD (n=98) and two control groups of similar age, one with special educational needs but no ASD (n=52) and one typically developing group (n=90), were tested for measles virus and antibody response to measles in the serum.”
So Dr Cass “recycled” this study using different researchers, different children, different research aims and methods, and different funding bodies. The two studies are totally unrelated. Nevertheless Ms Phillips goes on to cite Wakefield’s response to Baird et al and a letter by John Stone in response to Baird et al as if they apply to Cass et al! Not that this mattters to Ms Phillips. Nowhere does she discuss the content of either Baird’s or Cass’s research or evaluate the hefty quotations from Wakefield and Stone. (They total 1100 words in an article of 2000 words. I wonder if she is paid per column inch.) No. This is just another way to reiterate the myth of the martyrdom of Andrew Wakefield at the GMC.
No stone is being left unturned by the medico-political establishment and its creatures in the media to ensure that this doctor is destroyed.
Ms Phillips, like David Kirby, has pretensions of impartiality.
As I have repeatedly said, I have no idea whether Wakefield is correct or not in his concerns about the possible adverse effects of the MMR vaccine on a small sub-set of vaccinated children. Nor do I know whether any of the charges being levelled against him at the GMC has any legs. But I do believe — as I wrote in my series of articles on the subject for the Daily Mail in 2003 here, here and here — that many of the statements made by the Department of Health and medical establishment about the ‘proof’ of the vaccine’s unchallengeable safety are deeply misleading.
Wow! She has no idea about MMR and autism. She has no opinion on Wakefield’s culpability. But she does have an opinion on the stated opinions of the Department of Health and the medical establishment on these very matters. Furthermore, her opinion of the opinions of others on matters on which she has no opinion is the same opinion she had 5 years ago and we can read it “here, here and here.” Meanwhile, back to the present and a few more gems from Ms Phillips.
No-one has ever suggested that the MMR vaccine causes all or most of the incidence of autism. If Wakefield is correct, it is only a small proportion of children whose immune systems may be unable to cope, for whatever reason, which makes them particularly vulnerable to such ill-effects.
No-one? How about the presenter of “Origins of the Autism Epidemic,” Andrew Wakefield. And how small is a small proportion? Researchers like Cass and Baird provide us with data. According to Wakefield:
“We have over the last 10 years evaluated several thousand children on the autistic spectrum who have significant gastrointestinal symptoms. Upper and lower endoscopy and surgical histology have identified mucosal inflammation in excess of 80% of these children.”
“Several thousand children?” We know he had examined 12 children by 1998 There were around 1300 children in the UK class action against MMR that failed. Perhaps he examined them all. Then Wakefield went to work for Jeff Bradstreet, an exorcist in Florida before setting up Thoughtful House in 2005 where Arthur Krigsman scopes every child that walks through the door. If we average it out and say 2 children a day every day, not counting weekends and holidays for 10 years that gives us around 5000 kids with and endoscopic investigation and 4000 turned up positive for enterocolitis and autism. Yeah, whatever. Perhaps Wakefield will publish his data one day and end all the guesswork.
And contrary to the message being pumped out by the medical establishment that the vaccine has been proved to be safe — by studies which are all either flawed, inadequate or irrelevant — the fairest and most accurate thing to say is that the jury is still out.
Vaccines will never be “proved safe” if by this you mean that they will be absolved of all risk. But they are safer than the diseases they protect against. How about it Ms Phillips? Would you like polio or the polio vaccine?
One of the most reprehensible weapons being wielded in the witch-hunt against Wakefield is the claim that anyone who gives any credence whatever to his concerns is responsible for the incidence of measles amongst children whose parents are as a result too frightened to give them the MMR vaccination. There are two obvious points to make in response to this piece of moral blackmail: 1) the whole panic could have been avoided by offering single measles, mumps and rubella jabs rather than the triple MMR, and 2) it is surely just as important as avoiding cases of measles mumps and rubella to avoid causing the kind of catastrophic damage to the brain and gut displayed by the children at the heart of this controversy.
Wrong again! Offering single vaccines is tantamount to admitting that MMR is dangerous. It would have destroyed public confidence in the whole vaccine schedule and take up of the three shots would have been significantly less than the triple shot, always assuming we could source three separate vaccines that had been adequately tested for safety. And regarding point 2), hang on! How do you know that single vaccines would avoid this “kind of catastrophic damage” unless you already had an opinion about the effects of the MMR? Remember? The opinion that Ms Phillips claims not to have?
And there is a further and quite appalling point to note. This whole saga started because parents of such children found that their family doctors were dismissing out of hand their children’s gut and brain problems, accordingly refusing to alleviate their suffering. Now, as a direct result of the animosity towards Wakefield that has been whipped up — and the fear that any doctor who suggests he might be right will similarly find him or herself at the receiving end of the medical establishment’s fist — children exhibiting this combination of gut and brain damage are finding it difficult to obtain treatment.
Yes! Because quacks like Wakefield and their silly media acolytes have made it next to impossible for a doctor to diagnose and treat GI disorders in autistic children without being tarred with the same brush! Thank you Dr. Wakefield. Thank you Ms Phillips.
As the resumption of the GMC hearing draws nearer, one has to ask whether this will serve the cause of truth and justice and the relief of suffering — or is it instead merely a show trial which will bring about the precise opposite?
I hope that Wakefield is severely chastised and that we can move on to addressing the real needs of autistic children and adults free from the need to constantly address spurious scare stories about vaccines.
Melanie Phillips writes for the Spectator. It’s editor used to be Boris Johnson, who masked his intellectual prowess with the appearance of dimwitted buffoonery. Ms Phillips is just the opposite.
March 23rd, 2008
Posted by
Mike |
Andrew Wakefield, Autism, MMR, journalism, parents, politics, vaccines |
13 comments
Sunday’s Observer featured one parent’s account of the joy and the difficulty that comes with raising a severely autistic child. “Our struggle to understand David’s secret autistic world” Christopher Stevens and his wife, Nicola have also written a book about their son, A Real Boy, which received this endorsement from NAS president, Jane Asher,
This wonderfully honest book tells us a great deal, not only about autism, but also about the extraordinary tolerance and unselfishness that is born out of unequivocal love. At the same time, it reveals some uncomfortable truths about the struggle it takes to access the rights of those with disabilities in our so-called civilized society.
Today I want to leave aside the family’s personal story in order to respond to Christopher Stevens’ argument that
- Prior to 1944 autism was virtually unknown.
- Autism was still very rare when he was born in 1964. But it has spread rapidly since then.
- The most rapid growth has been in those severely affected, like his son.
- Autism is so distinctive that it is unfeasible to suggest that it was somehow missed by everybody before Kanner. Kanner noticed something new.
- Autism is a twentieth century phenomenon that has grown to epidemic proportions in the 21st century.
HISTORY
Stevens seems unaware of a long history of autism that fills the void between Victor and Kanner when he writes:
Children like David were almost unheard of before Kanner. There’s one account, from Napoleonic France, of a boy found living wild in woods near Toulouse. Like our son, he treated people as tools. When he wanted to ride in a wheelbarrow, he would grab his doctor by the wrist, drag him across the garden, press his fingers around the handles and then climb into the barrow. And there’s a brilliant, beautiful report from 1869 by Mark Twain – he describes a piano recital in San Francisco by Blind Tom, an apparently autistic savant who could barely talk, yet who could imitate any sound, learn three melodies simultaneously and reproduce duets note for note at a single hearing.
Perhaps he is not aware of the paper by Shattock and Waltz who found evidence for autistic disorder in 19th century London based on “case histories from the notes of Dr. William Howship Dickinson at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children.” Darrold Treffert has also paid tribute to Langdon Downs for identifying autistic children in 1887.
Autistic Disorder, while not named such until 1943, has existed for the same long time as other forms of developmental disorder and mental retardation. It is not a new disorder. In his writings in 1887 Dr. J. Langdon Down did not separate out autistic Disorder from mental retardation, but there was group of patients sufficiently different from his ‘congenital’ and ‘accidental’ forms of mental retardation that he felt compelled to set us a new category-’developmental’ — to describe a group of patients “impossible to include” in his two other categories of mental retardation. As he describes some of the traits and behaviors of some of these persons — “world of their own,” talking in the “third person,” being in a “dreamland,”"echolalia,”"self-contained and self-absorbed,” “automatic and rhythmical movements,” a countenance and “repose of brightness and intelligence,” lack of “physical features” of retardation, “no response in words,” and indeed elements of savant syndrome itself in this special group of persons — those point in the direction of what is now called autistic disorder as being the appropriate classification for some of these individuals whom Dr. Down had classified as mentally retarded.
Stevens also suggests that Kanner coined the term “autistic,” when he writes that:
The idea that one in 100 British children is affected by a mental disability that was almost unknown a generation ago is shocking and many people try to fend it off. ‘Isn’t this all down to better diagnosis?’ they suggest. If they could see my son, blind to danger and deaf to our pleas, they’d realise it wouldn’t take Sigmund Freud to spot there was something odd about this boy. Freud wouldn’t have said David was autistic, though – he was dead by the time the word was coined in the early 1940s.
In fact the term was coined by Eugen Bleuler, in 1910 when writing about Schizophrenic negativism.
“… schizophrenics who have no more contact with the outside world live in a world of their own. They have encased themselves with their desires and wishes [...]; they have cut themselves off as much as possible from any contact with the external world. This detachment from reality with the relative and absolute predominance of the inner life, we term autism,”
Bleuler was a contemporary of Freud. Together with Jung they had founded the journal Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschungen in 1908. Bleuler also gave us “schizophrenia” to describe the condition then known as dementia praecox. He did not believe it was a dementia. Nor did he believe that it was necessarily a disorder of childhood. The irony is that following Kanner’s discovery of “autism” the confusion about the relationship of autism to schizophrenia persisted at least until 1979 when the prestigious Journal of Autism and Childhood Schizophrenia changed its name to The Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.
I find it significant that Kanner, publishing in the USA in 1943, and Asperger, publishing in Austria in 1944, independently presented very similar case studies that described their subjects as autistic. Is this really because autism suddenly emerged from nowhere in the middle of the last century? Or was something else happening here?
We have the evidence that autism was identified in the 19th century by Langdon Down, who called it developmental mental retardation. Bleuler coined the term autism in 1910. (It is interesting to note that while Asperger acknowledged Bleuler in his writings Kanner never did, even though he must have been familiar with Bleuler’s work.)
Edit: This is not true. Thank you to Raj for this reference where Kanner does discuss Bleuler’s use of the word, “autism.”
Why the long wait until autism as a developmental disorder of childhood entered the literature?
The twentieth century was also remarkable for another phenomenon. Institutional care, or incarceration, depending on your reading of history, of people with mental health problems grew massively in the first half of the century and then went into an even more dramatic decline. In Unstrange Minds Grinker reports that
Most of these institutions were less than thirty years old, but by 1904, 2 in every thousand Americans lived in one. By mid-century, more than 500,000 Americans lived in mental institutions, more than 3 in every 1,000. [page 37]
Today there are only 2 in 10000 Americans occupying long term mental health care beds. It is not too fanciful to suggest that many of those Americans in the past probably had an autistic spectrum disorder. The UK experience mirrors that of the USA. In 1999, after a significant downsizing of long term hospitals in favour of care in the community, the NAS published research that showed a 2.4% prevalence of confirmed autistic spectrum disorder amongst inmates of secure psychiatric hospitals. The proportion was probably much higher in the past when institutional care was the norm.
Kanner stressed the professional status and educational attainments of the parents in his case studies. Asperger made similar observations. This is hardly surprising. Given the limited availability and the expense of social care at that time, only wealthy, educated people would be in a position to seek out an eminent child psychiatrist like Kanner rather than place their child in a state institution.
The remarkable thing is not that Kanner was seeing so many autistic children where none had existed before, but that he had the insight to grasp the common feature that united these apparently diverse individuals. Just as Down had viewed similar children through the paradigm of his time as developmentaly retarded, by the mid 1940s the time was right for an exceptional mind like Kanner’s to bring new insight to the questions these children raised.
EPIDEMIOLOGY
There are more difficulties when Stevens tackles the thorny issue of epidemiology.
Autism has spread so rapidly during my lifetime that many people are sceptical about the scale of the problem. In 1964, the year I was born, the Society for Autistic Children (now the National Autistic Society) issued an appeal through the Guardian : research suggested that there should be 5,000 people with autism in a British population of 50 million… and it could only find 2,000. Ten years later, it still hadn’t found the full 5,000.
This is a delightful story but it actually undermines Stevens’ argument. If it was so hard to find these very distinctive children 40 years ago are we supposed to believe that they did not exist; that there were actually less than one in 50,000 autistic children between 1964 and 1974? But never mind what research suggested in 1964. In 1966 Lotter carried out definitive research with the first ever epidemiological study of autism (in the English county of Middlesex). Using narrowly defined diagnostic criteria based on Kanner’s case studies, Lotter recorded a prevalence of 4.5 in 10,000. In my opinion, David Stevens would probably have met those criteria, based solely on Christopher Stevens written accounts of his son.
Lotter’s research showed that there should have been 22,500 people like David in 1964, not 5,000. And the NAS, who were probably best equipped to find autistic people, could not find a fraction of them, even after ten years of searching. I can believe that. Autism is not that obvious if you do not know what you are looking for. And it is easily misdiagnosed if you are looking for something else.
In Cumbria, where I teach, there were no known cases of autism in the entire county in 1983. Yet I can think of at least 5 children in the special school where I taught in 1983, who would have met the criteria if they had been tested. The NAS has a new campaign about autistic adults called I exist. It reports that in Cumbria the number of autistic adults known to the authorities increased by 60% between 2003 and 2006. It is reasonable to expect that a lot of these adults would have been undiagnosed children back in 1983.
Stevens goes on to argue:
Today, the society estimates there are 525,000 people with autism. American figures suggest that, among the autistic population, the proportion of severely affected people, such as my son, is four times higher than it was 20 years ago. In other words, autism is spreading like an epidemic and the worst cases are multiplying even faster.
It is important to remember that those 525,000 people are not all like David. They are not the children that Lotter was finding in 1966. In 1978 Lorna Wing, a psychiatrist who was also the mother of an autistic child and a founding member of the NAS, along with a psychologist called Judith Gould, (who, 20 years later, was to diagnose my 12 year old son with Aspergers Syndrome) went looking for Lotter’s 22,500. If we are to be strictly accurate they actually went looking for the proportion of those 22,500 in special education in Camberwell in Middlesex and found them all. But for every Kanner autistic child they found there were another 3 who were clearly autistic but did not fit the precise criteria devised by Lotter. These other children all had what Wing and Gould described as “the triad of impairments.”
When Wing and Gould published their research in 1979 autism was not even included in the diagnostic manuals of the time. Kanner’s autism was included in 1980 (DSM III). Wing’s autism (the triad of impairments) had to wait until 1987 (DSM III revised). In 1994 DSM IV finally included Aspergers Syndrome. Again, it was Wing who introduced this to the English speaking world.
CONCLUSION
- Autistics like David have been recognized since Kanner’s seminal paper in 1944. Acording to Lotter in 1966 they number between 4 and 5 in 10,000. They were clearly around in Victorian times when they were seen as a subset of the mentally retarded and not as a distinct diagnostic entity.
- In 1979 Wing and Gould confirmed Lotter’s finding and added another 16 in 10,000 who were clearly autistic but did not match the precise criteria used by Lotter.
- Subsequently Wing expanded the autistic spectrum by incorporating high functioning individuals of the Asperger type. Along with less specific diagnostic categories like atypical autism and pervasive developmental disorder - not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS) this added to the numbers by another 80 in 10,000 to give us the current 1% with an autistic spectrum disorder.
So Stevens is mistaken when he argues that:
Better diagnosis is simply a side-effect of the autism epidemic: we recognise it more easily now, because there’s so much more of it about.
The four fold increase in severe autism that happened in the UK thirty years ago (not the USA twenty years ago as Stevens stated) was the result of redefining our ideas about the nature of autism. It is not better diagnosis. It is different diagnosis.
I am aware that this blog post may seem a disproportionate response to another parent who was just expressing a personal opinion in the course of a newspaper article. But the Observer is widely regarded as a quality national newspaper in the UK. The last time they published a feaure on autism it had to be withdrawn on legal advice on account of the inaccuracies and misrepresentations it contained. Nevertheless the most pernicious of these inaccuracies - that leading UK researchers had found that there were now one in 58 children with autism - continues to circulate on the internet as a statement of fact. I offer this as an explanation and not an apology for my reasons for taking another autism dad to task in such detail. Christopher Stevens has written an insightful and honest account of raising David that deserves wide circulation. But his misleading ideas about the history and epidemiology of autism deserve to be challenged in equal measure.
March 21st, 2008
Posted by
Mike |
Autism, Autism epidemiology, National Autistic Society, Uncategorized, autism parents, journalism |
24 comments
The Sunday Times has published a thoughtful piece on autism by Mark Henderson, entitled ‘We ask ourselves, can we separate Alex and autism?’
Alex is 12 years old and described as being “at the less extreme end of the autistic spectrum.” This was not always the case. He regressed when he was 14 months old, losing speech and becoming so withdrawn that nursery staff thought he was deaf. Reading his mother’s description of his early years Alex’s autism is plain to see. But he had to wait til he was 5 to get a diagnosis. Julia, his mum, would welcome improvements in genetic screening if it meant that children like Alex did not have to wait so long for a diagnosis but some of her worries chime with those raised by Dr Russell that are discussed on my previous blog.
“It took an age to get Alex the help he needed,” she said. “The earlier you know, the better, and if this could help us identify autism as young as possible it would be wonderful.
“But I would not want a situation like Down’s syndrome, where you tell parents while the child’s in the womb and you have to make a decision.
“We also ask ourselves how much of Alex’s personality is Alex, and how much is the autism. Can we even separate the two?
“If you asked us could we have prevented it, we would have to think. Obviously in some ways it would be better for him, but he is happy in himself.”
Questions like these are bound to come up more often as advances in genetic research offer the prospect of earlier diagnosis and even the possibility of prevention or cure. Whether or not these possibilities ever materialize is not the point. But they are undoubtedly powerful levers for releasing the massive funds that genetic research consumes.
[NB. research costs may be massive in relation to the biological sciences. But they are still small by comparison to the costs incurred in particle physics. The Large Hadron Collider at Cern is costing in excess of 4 thousand million USD. Michael Wigler at Cold Springs Harbor has a budget of 14 million USD for his research programme into autism.]
The hype that surrounds genetic research is often encouraged by scientists eager to claim their portion of the research pie. This makes it even more important that journalists approach the topic dispassionately and are sensible to the dangers that Dr Russell raised in her article for Communication.
So it was a pity to read Mark Henderson’s latest offering in the Times, Hunting the gene that traps children in their own world which proclaims that
Parents and scientists are hoping that a new detailed analysis based on human genome will bring a big breakthrough within a year.
in the space of 4 paragraphs we get the following [emphasis added]
one of the most controversial and feared medical diagnoses of modern times
but it prompted thousands of parents to agonise over the cruel condition that seems to leave children walled off in a social and emotional world of their own, apparently beyond their love.
A disorder that was once rare has become alarmingly common,
the condition retains a brutal mystery.
This is exactly the sort of language that fuels fears about autism. It suggests that research into the prevention and cure of autism is almost an obligation. Those of us who argue for autism acceptance are accused of wishing a nightmare disorder on children. But children like Alex know happiness. They are not beyond love. They have a future. Or at least they might have a future if they are seen as people who can prosper with help and understanding, rather than the victims of a brutal mystery, at best to pitied, at worst to be feared.
All this is merely the preamble to a story about some research that is not even finished yet!
Within the next year a new study is expected to identify many of the genes that underlie autism for the first time.
I am always suspicious of claims made for a study that is still in progress. This is hype. And we have heard it many times before. My thanks to Michelle Dawson for reminding me that in February, 2004 Thomas Insel of the NIMH said this about autism in the New York Times
“My sense is that we are close to the tipping point in this illness, and that over the next couple of years we will have, not all of the genes, but many of the genes that contribute.”
Funnily enough, we are at the same tipping point three and a half years later.
The medics tell me we are at a tipping point,” said Dame Stephanie Shirley, the millionaire computer entrepreneur and philanthropist, who is the chairman of the research charity Autism Speaks and the mother of an autistic son.
My guess is that researchers always feel as though they are on the brink of a fantastic new discovery. That is what sustains them through the painstaking daily grind at the lab bench or crunching data in front of a computer screen. But the rest of us would rather wait for the results before we get too excited.
The article ends with another quote from Dame Shirley.
“It is quite possible that in five to ten years, we will have a real understanding of this disorder,” she said. “That’s a timescale that means today’s children may be helped.”
I am sure that Dame Shirley is already doing a lot to help her autistic son. But genetics is the science de jour. There is a popular belief that all behaviour is the product of specific brain areas that in turn are the product of the DNA code carried in our genes. Unlock the genetic code that governs our brains and we can manage our minds. We have been here before.
Once upon a time psychoanalysis was supposed to have all the answers. It gave way to behavioural science. New brain scanning technology marked the rise of cognitive neuroscience. Genetics is currently in the ascendency. Will it prove more productive than previous paradigms or do we need a new way of trying to grasp the reality of what it means to be human, maybe one that includes autism rather than trying to eliminate it? It is significant that all the genetic research so far has tried to identify genes associated with the deficits and impairments associated with autism. Nobody to my knowledge is trying to identify the genes responsible for the autistic strengths identified by researchers like Mottron and Gernsbacher.
I do not have a crystal ball. For what it is worth, in my opinion genetic research will expand our knowledge and our understanding. But it will not lead to any sort of a cure or an end to autism. Given our current level of knowledge that is probably for the best.
August 29th, 2007
Posted by
Mike |
Autism, Neurodiversity, autism acceptance, genetic research, journalism, language |
2 comments
The Observer’s recent scare story on autism has at least two good points.
- They have taken such a beating that it is unlikely that they will publish another PR story for Wakefield for a long time to come.
- I have discovered a lot of interesting blogs which support rational discourse and look forward to reading them on a regular basis.
Then there are the bad points. Most of the press ran with the story without questioning its veracity. Very few have picked up on the faults in the Observer story. This is the best I could find when doing a google news search on the terms Observer and Autism.
Press Round Up on the Observer, Wakefield, MMR and Autism
The Observer’s 8 July front page, featuring the claim of a one-in-58 risk of autism from the MMR jab, has prompted its sister paper, ‘The Guardian’, to run a meticulous debunking of the story in its Bad Science column. Its author, Goldacre, suggests the media that peddle such untruths should be “in the dock, alongside [Dr Andrew] Wakefield”. Despite the kicking, morale remains high at ‘The Observer’. Many of its own journalists thought the story deserved a good trashing.
The Independent July 22nd 2007
Whatever you think about Andrew Wakefield, the real villains of the MMR scandal are the media. Just one week before his GMC hearing, yet another factless “MMR causes autism” news story appeared: and even though it ran on the front page of our very own Observer, I am dismantling it on this page. We’re all grown-ups around here.
[...]
Nothing has changed, and this scare will never be allowed to die. If we had the right regulatory structures, almost every section of the media would be in the dock, alongside Wakefield.
Dr Ben Goldacre in The Guardian July 18 2007
New fears over big surge in autism’; ‘I told the truth all along, says doctor at the heart of autism row’. Headlines in last week’s Observer (8 July) provide a media boost for Dr Andrew Wakefield as he faces charges of professional misconduct at the UK General Medical Council (GMC) over the conduct of the research that first suggested a link between the MMR vaccine and autism in 1998. [read on]
Dr Michael Fitzpatrick in Spiked Online July 17th 2007
What the Blogs say about the Observer and Autism
These are the most recent blogs (last seven days) courtesy of Google that add something new to the debate. Lots of others either linked to or repeated Ben Goldacre’s excellent rebuttals in his badscience blog or to Mike Fitzpatrick’s equally trenchant piece in Spiked Online.
A couple of weeks ago The Observer (UK ‘quality’ Sunday paper) printed an article claiming an as yet unpublished study shows a dramatic rise in the prevalence of autism. They also managed to crowbar in the MMR vaccine as well just to raise the general levels of hysteria. [ read on ]
This Sunday The Observer nearly apologizes for its disgraceful front page report on Autism a fortnight ago. But they still don’t get it. [ read on ] I wrote this one 
The Observer deserves sackcloth and ashes for its autism, MMR coverage. The British Medical Journal (BMJ) embarrassed itself by uncritically reproducing that 1 in 58 figure but at least it had the good grace to take a piece by Dr Ben Goldacre that criticised the media coverage of this issue. [ read on ]
It’s one thing to get a story wrong. Everyone does that - I’ve certainly done a couple of howlers in my time. It’s quite another to, on being informed of your howler, try and cover it up. And, it appears, this is exactly what The Observer is doing after it’s truly appaling MMR/autism front story from last weekend. [ read on ]
This article and its subsequent coverage in the other press has set back public understanding of this subject by several years and unreasonably made the public question science even more, ironically when it is proper science that is the only way to truth in this, rather than the mumbo-jumbo “science” practised by Wakefield. [ read on ]
The main issue is that the Observer misinterpreted the results of this unpublished research. The paper claimed the research showed an increase in the prevalence of autism. Based on this misinterpretation it then blamed the supposed increase on the MMR vaccination, saying that two of the seven authors of the report privately thought the MMR jab might be partly to blame for the alleged rise in autism. [read on ]
Last week I blogged about the, now infamous, MMR piece by Dennis Campbell in the Observer. Campbell’s piece contained this.
“the MMR jab which babies receive at 12 to 15 months, might be partly to blame. Dr. Fiona Scott and Dr. Carol Stott both say it could be a factor in small numbers of children.”
Dr Scott subsequently e-mailed Ben Goldacre. The e-mail contained the serious allegation that some of the stuff in the Observer piece had been “fabricated”. [read on]
A short break from your usual Patrick Holford coverage - courtesy of some more awful mainstream media MMR reporting. It was disappointing to see the Observer running such god-awful autism/MMR stories, but to see the BMJ pick up the Observer’s inaccurate figures (the claim that 1 in 58 children is on the autistic spectrum) is even more disturbing. [read on ]
In the aftermath of the Observer debacle, one of those described in the original piece as being an MMR believer responded in the comment thread of The Guardian readers editor page. Her words are very telling and show, once more, what a shoddy and deliberately misleading piece of work this was. [ read on ]
Speaking of Bad Science and bad reporting and how the two seem to go together so frequently, Ben Goldacre goes after The Observer big time in yesterday’s Bad Science column. The Observer, of course, continued to do its bit on behalf of scientific illiteracy with scare story on 9 July over yet another purported link between the MMR vaccine and the apparent rise in autism in the UK [read on ]
I’m annoyed with the Observer. I had a nice Holford Watch post mostly written - looking at some particularly odd claims for vitamin C - and was planning on spending the rest of the day relaxing with a newspaper. Then I saw the Observer’s truly dismal (2nd) attempt at an apology for their terrible MMR/Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) coverage. Now I can’t buy myself an Observer, and feel obliged to insert a break in your usual Patrick Holford coverage to write another post on the Observer. [ read on ]
Most significant of all is Fiona Fox’s contribution. Fiona Fox is director of the Science Media Centre and according to her blog, after sending a note to Denis Campbell warning him that she could not defend his piece to angry scientists.
The result was an invitation to meet with him, the readers’ editor and a variety of other Observer news editors at their offices. So, with two leading MMR experts at my side, I went to highlight the concerns.
According to their website
The Science Media Centre is first and foremost a press office for science when science hits the headlines. We provide journalists with what they need in the form and time-frame they need it when science is in the news - whether this be accurate information, a scientist to interview or a feature article.
If you read Fiona Fox’s blog she makes quite plain the help and advice that the SMC offered to the Observer in the aftermath of their diasterous front page story. Judging by their continued weaseling in today’s edition, The Observer is still clinging to the wreckage of its original story despite the advice of the SMC.
As an added irony, when I looked up who funds the SMC I found the Associated Press (Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, Evening Standard) DailyExpress, Trinity Mirror (Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror, Daily Record, the People etc.) and News International (Times, Sunday Times, Sun) all represented. In fact, apart from the Telegraph and the Independent, nearly every national newspaper in the UK supports the SMC except the owners of the Guardian and the Observer.
There has been a lot of discussion recently about how bloggers cannot meet the standards of professional journalists. Judging from this incident I am not sure that I aspire to the standards of journalists like Denis Campbell. I will end with a modest proposal from Brian Deer in the comments section of Kev’s blog.
My suggestion is that people should write to the Observer and suggest that, since there is still so much confusion about the duty of reporters, and what – on this matter of grave public interest, affecting the safety of children – are a newspaper’s reasonable duties to accuracy, the Observer should join with the complaining readers and refer the matter – jointly and with agreement – to the Press Complaints Commission for adjudication.
See what they say to that!
My letter is in the post. I even put a stamp on the envelope. If I get a response I will let you know next week.
July 22nd, 2007
Posted by
Mike |
Andrew Wakefield, Autism, MMR, journalism |
13 comments
