Vaccines & autism

[Excepts from abclocal.go.com] British medical journal The Lancet says it has retracted a flawed study linking the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine to autism and bowel disease.

The Lancet published the controversial paper by Andrew Wakefield and colleagues in 1998.

The United Kingdom's General Medical Council (GMC) concluded last week that Wakefield participated in "dishonesty and misleading conduct" while he conducted the 1998 research.

In Britain, the number of children who were not vaccinated tripled after the report.

A similar dropoff was recorded in the United States. Although the United States officially reported no measles in 2000, the decline in vaccinations exposed more children, and resulted in an outbreak in 2008.

[Excepts from cnn.com] The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention praised The Lancet's retraction, saying, "It builds on the overwhelming body of research by the world's leading scientists that concludes there is no link between MMR vaccine and autism. We want to remind parents that vaccines are very safe and effective and they save lives. Parents who have questions about the safety of vaccines should talk to their pediatrician or their child's health care provider."

Wakefield theorized that the measles vaccine caused gastrointestinal problems and that those GI problems led to autism. In his view, the virus used in the vaccine grew in the intestinal tract, leading the bowel to become porous because of inflammation. Then material seeped from the bowel into the blood, Wakefield's theory said, affecting the nervous system and causing autism.

But subsequent research has been unable to duplicate Wakefield's findings.

The retraction did little to change the opinion of Rebecca Estepp, a spokeswoman for Talk About Curing Autism.

Estepp said her son has autism and bowel problems. She said she remains convinced that he had a vaccine reaction and that Wakefield's research helped doctors identify how to help her son.
[Excepts from abclocal.go.com] Despite dozens of studies saying vaccines don't cause autism, dozens of parents, and parent-groups disagree. Now a doctor at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia has written a book trying to convince parents and society that vaccines have nothing to do with the disorder. But the controversy is far from over.

[Dr. Allan Magaziner of the Magaziner Center for Wellness in Cherry Hill, New Jersey] thinks vaccines may be one of many environmental triggers that can cause autism in genetically pre-disposed kids. As for studies citing the safety of vaccines, he said, "When pharmaceutical companies test, they only test one vaccine at a time, but what happens when were putting five, six, seven vaccines in a child at one time." He said those studies are lacking. He won't call vaccines harmful but says they could be for some kids. He believes children should be treated more individually instead of all sticking to the same schedule.