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In her blog, Respectful of Otters, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rivka has passed along the news that The Lancet, the prestigious British medical journal, has renounced their publication of Andrew Wakefield's study showing a link between the MMR vaccine and autism in children. The study has been heavily criticized before now on scientific grounds, and it seems that Wakefield forgot to disclose that he was being funded by lawyers hoping to represent the parents of autistic children in liability cases against manufacturers. Oops.
Well, all I've go to say is...
Amen and hallelujah. The amount of time and resources spent dealing with this study could have been better spent elsewhere on autism research. And people have latched on to this study -- even in the face of a lot of evidence which contradicts it -- and have run around screaming and encouraging people to *not* have their children immunized.
Which is a complete load of hooey. As a parent of an autistic child, until there is a clear link between vaccines and a significant increase in the probability of a child developing autism, I will -- and have -- immunized my other children and encourage others to do likewise.
We tend to think of measles, mumps, and rubella as "childhood" diseases, and not very serious. These diseases can be quite serious -- even life-threatening. And while the link between the MMR and autism may be completely speculative, the link between a woman contracting rubella in the first trimester of pregnancy and a much higher incidence of serious birth defects is not.
There is a reason we vaccinate against these diseases, not just because they are a minor annoyance. And the only way to contain diseases like this is to vaccinate on a wide scale. There will always be people who, for one reason or another, cannot take the vaccine (as a child, I could not take the MMR because of an allergy to one of the ingredients made in its manufacture -- later they changed it so that I could). But for people to not vaccinate their children because some scientifically questionable study says there may be a link to autism is, in the absence of more compelling evidence, socially irresponsible.
rivka has passed along the news that The Lancet, the prestigious British medical journal, has renounced their publication of Andrew Wakefield's study showing a link between the MMR vaccine and autism in children. The study has been heavily criticized before now on scientific grounds, and it seems that Wakefield forgot to disclose that he was being funded by lawyers hoping to represent the parents of autistic children in liability cases against manufacturers. Oops.Well, all I've go to say is...
Amen and hallelujah. The amount of time and resources spent dealing with this study could have been better spent elsewhere on autism research. And people have latched on to this study -- even in the face of a lot of evidence which contradicts it -- and have run around screaming and encouraging people to *not* have their children immunized.
Which is a complete load of hooey. As a parent of an autistic child, until there is a clear link between vaccines and a significant increase in the probability of a child developing autism, I will -- and have -- immunized my other children and encourage others to do likewise.
We tend to think of measles, mumps, and rubella as "childhood" diseases, and not very serious. These diseases can be quite serious -- even life-threatening. And while the link between the MMR and autism may be completely speculative, the link between a woman contracting rubella in the first trimester of pregnancy and a much higher incidence of serious birth defects is not.
There is a reason we vaccinate against these diseases, not just because they are a minor annoyance. And the only way to contain diseases like this is to vaccinate on a wide scale. There will always be people who, for one reason or another, cannot take the vaccine (as a child, I could not take the MMR because of an allergy to one of the ingredients made in its manufacture -- later they changed it so that I could). But for people to not vaccinate their children because some scientifically questionable study says there may be a link to autism is, in the absence of more compelling evidence, socially irresponsible.