25 years after the MMR vaccine autism scam, we’re still dealing with the aftermath

We have reached a very shameful anniversary. Today, the infamous study claiming the MMR vaccine is linked to autism has been published in a prestigious medical journal. Lancet in 1998 it was exactly 25 years old.

The study, conducted by British physician Andrew Wakefield, involved 12 children aged between 3 and 10 years old who showed deterioration in social and language skills – signs of autism. Eight of them appeared to develop these symptoms shortly after receiving the MMR vaccine against measles, mumps and rubella. The children also had all sorts of intestinal problems. Wakefield’s theory was that a new condition called “autistic enterocolitis” had arisen: the MMR vaccine caused intestinal disorders that were toxic to the developing brain.

But the study was fraudulent. An investigation by journalist Brian Dear found that Wakefield misjudged the medical histories of some children who showed symptoms before or long after the MMR vaccination (“no case was free of false reports or alterations,” Hurt noted). In addition, Wakefield subjected children to invasive medical procedures for no good reason and had a serious conflict of interest because he was paid by lawyers preparing a case against vaccine manufacturers.

Between the publication of the study and its eventual completion – it was only withdrawn from the scientific literature in 2010 – public confidence in the vaccine was severely damaged. Regarded as one of the most horrific and devastating cases of scientific fraud in recent history, the Wakefield case is a stern indictment of our scientific, medical institutions and media.

What have we learned in 25 years?

Fraud in Wakefield

It is not true that Wakefield’s study started vaccine fears, or even vaccine and autism concerns. Vaccine protection has been around for as long as vaccination itself, and concerns arose in the 1990s about the preservative used in vaccines, mercury-containing thimerosal.

But the 1998 study, accompanied by a stormy press conference at the Royal Free Hospital a few days before publication, caused a media frenzy. Reports of side effects, a useful indicator of public concern about a vaccine, are on the rise. MMR rates in the UK dropped to nearly 80 percent immediately after the study was published – a far cry from the 95 percent required for “herd immunity”, with vaccination coverage high enough that even those who don’t receive it, whether or not they take it. being able to be vaccinated are still protected.

Over the years, we have seen the inevitable outbreaks of measles – fortunately in the UK they resulted in a small number of deaths, but other countries were less fortunate (not to mention deaths, measles can have serious complications, including deafness and mental retardation). . Problems). Disability). 2019 also saw an unusually high rate of mumps infection, often among college students and other young adults — perhaps because they were the right age to skip MMR during the panic.

And for what? Was there something behind the fears? Aside from Wakefield’s fraudulent study, is there really evidence that the MMR vaccine causes autism?

The MMR Vaccine and Autism

Programmer Alberto Brandolini invented “Brandolini’s Law”: how much energy does it take to refute nonsense [he used a harsher term] an order of magnitude more than is necessary for its production. It is very easy to panic people with incorrect information; This panic is much more difficult to contain with balanced and qualitative research.

There has never been conclusive evidence linking Wakefield to autism. But now, a quarter of a century later, we can be sure, like any medical problem, that there is no connection between them. As the panic set in, researchers began conducting various studies to test the link between autism symptoms and the vaccine. A 2002 Danish study looked at vaccinated and unvaccinated children and tested whether autism rates were higher in both groups. They were about the same. A 2004 British study found the opposite, taking children with and without autism and testing whether the group was more likely to have been vaccinated with MMR. Again, there were no significant differences.

You might think it has something to do with heredity. It’s possible that giving someone the MMR vaccine won’t cause autism, but it could be for people with a higher familial risk. That’s not true: A 2015 study compared children with older siblings with and without autism — MMR was not associated with autism in either group. And an even larger 2019 study of more than 650,000 children confirmed this result.

What about Wakefield’s proposed link between autism and intestinal disease? In fact, there is some evidence for this: people with autism are more likely to suffer from inflammatory bowel disease, ulcerative colitis, and Crohn’s disease (according to a 2021 review of eight studies). But there are two important things to note: first, this is just a correlation, and we don’t know why intestinal disorders are associated with autism; and second, given all the evidence we’ve seen above, it’s extremely unlikely that this has anything to do with the MMR vaccine.

Lesson learned?

There is good news. MMR rates have risen again to high levels in the UK – evidence consistent with the public’s confidence in overwhelming evidence that there is no link between vaccine and developmental disabilities. And Wakefield himself, unlike many scientific swindlers, was punished: in 2010 he was delisted by the General Medical Council, which means that he can no longer practice medicine in the UK (Wakefield himself still supports his research).

Of course, he’s still here: during the Covid-19 pandemic, he continued his anti-vaccination stance, falsely claiming on social media that vaccines change the DNA of those who take them. But he lived his day: he was eclipsed by a bunch of new vaccine opponents.

One of the objective lessons of the Wakefield case was that even eloquent, highly qualified experts writing in reputable peer-reviewed scientific journals can lie. Just because something was published in it Lancet doesn’t make it true – or even worthy of discussion. And while many mainstream media outlets have learned to be more careful about vaccine claims, the “alternative” media is a different story. Popular podcasters and YouTubers, often with millions of listeners and subscribers, have been trapped during the pandemic by a host of scammers and fabulists — today’s Wakefields — who promote provably false claims about the dangers of vaccines to their vast audience.

Lancet, also suffered scientific fraud several times after Wakefield. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the journal had to withdraw the Harvard study two weeks later after the authors admitted they “can no longer vouch for the accuracy of the raw data.” Two weeks is much shorter than the 12 long years it took for Wakefield’s article to be retracted, which is a step forward. But the fact that the article was published at all (another article by the same authors appeared, and then it was also removed from the respected New England Journal of Medicine) speaks to serious remaining shortcomings in our system of scientific reviews.

Vaccines are different.

The great tragedy of vaccination, one of the greatest inventions in the history of medicine, is that there is always something going on that frightens part of the population. Maybe it’s because of the invasive nature of the needle; maybe it’s because the vaccine contains part of the disease it’s trying to prevent; perhaps it is that we must decide whether to vaccinate our young and vulnerable children.

Whatever it is, something makes vaccines especially vulnerable to excessive fears. The main lesson of Andrew Wakefield’s fraud research saga is that the idea of ​​vaccination is such a powder keg that even the slightest spark is a study of a sample of twelve, with scant details and the most vague of theories to nail down. the sting of autism — and provoke a massive surge in false and dangerous claims.

But this only works if you give it oxygen to burn. LancetThe Royal Free Hospital and countless journalists made big mistakes in giving Wakefield the publicity he craved.

history repeats itself. Since COVID-19, the anti-vaccination movement is experiencing a resurgence of sorts, with wildly misleading claims about mRNA vaccines, often based on highly dubious research, being repeated by the media, politicians and celebrities. Unfortunately, there is some evidence that the general vaccination climate that has developed during the pandemic has heightened concerns about MMR. The twenty-fifth anniversary of one of the worst scientific frauds of modern times gives us an opportunity to reflect on where things went wrong and try not to repeat the same mistakes again.