January 31st 2020
My first blog post is finally here!!
I thought I would start my blog off about a topic that many of my readers might be familiar with, but not really know much about. I have decided to discuss the controversy around one former British doctor’s claims about a possible connection between the MMR vaccine and autism. Before you freak out because you have this vaccine or gave it to your child, let me discuss some of the facts around this issue so you can have a better understanding.
Andrew Wakefield was a gastrointestinal (GI) doctor and researcher from Britian. In the early 1990s he began conducting research on the possible link between the MMR vaccine, GI issues, and autism after he noticed a possible pattern with some of his patients. Based on a study of 12 patients he, along with 12 other doctors, published their findings, out of the Royal Free Hospital, in The Lancet. It is in this publication that he made the alarming claim that the MMR vaccine could predispose children to behavioral regression and pervasive developmental disorder in children. In other words, they were claiming that the vaccine could lead to autism or autistic like tendencies in children who received it. My first issue with this is the sample size of his study, which was 12 patients. If I were to make a shocking claim like this I would want to be as sure as I could be. And it is hard for you to be that sure with a study of only 12 kids. How can you be certain that this is true in all people with this vaccine when you looked at 12 kids, all in the UK??? Second, it’s hard to know wether or not the kids were already showing signs of regression or developmental disorders prior to the vaccination. However, if I were a parent in this time this might have caused quite a scare in me. I mean, I wouldn’t want to give my child a vaccine if seemingly could do more harm to them than good. But, this is why it is very important to do your own research and not trust everything you read on the web.
Now let me explain what this supposed autism-causing MMR vaccine is. This vaccine protects you against three diseases: measles, mumps, and rubella, which is where it gets its name. Children typically get their first dose between 9 to 15 months and their second dose between 15 months and 6 years of age. We have learned about these three infections in my Microbiology class at UNC and trust me you don’t want your kids or yourself contracting them. If you want more information about these three infections and the vaccine click here.
Now that you have a basic understanding of Andrew Wakefield, his paper, and the MMR vaccine, you are probably wondering what happened after this paper was released. Well, after its publication this paper got a lot of attention from the public. It caused a lot of fear and panic among parents. As a result, vaccine rates plunged in the UK and went from 92% in 1996/1997 to 80% in 2003/2004. This drop is quite alarming to me as this means millions of children, in the UK alone, were not receiving vaccines from diseases that could be lethal if contracted. Also as a (hopefully) future health care provider this is quite scary because when this happens it can lead to the outbreak of vaccine-preventable diseases. And this is exactly what happened in the UK following this drop in vaccinations. Soon after, there were outbreaks of many vaccine-preventable diseases.
With a claim and a public reaction like this the scientific community turned to investigate to see if what Wakefield at el. found is really supported by their data and if additional research could support it. Unsurprisingly, after much investigation no scientist supported this paper and its finding. They rather brought to light its inaccuracies and their fraudulent behavior. It has been found that Wakefield altered a lot of the data he used as evidence to support his claim. For example, in his study he claimed that all of the children were “normal” prior to vaccination, yet, it was uncovered that there were are developmental concerns with 5 of the children prior to their vaccination. Meaning that almost half of the children were showing autistic-like tendencies before the vaccine, which means without the vaccine they would must likely have continued to have behavioral regressions. Additionally, it was uncovered that Wakefield was funded by lawyers who were working with parents that were against anti-vaccine producing companies. This, in my opinion, probably caused Wakefield and his colleagues to manipulate and interpret the data towards the outcome that was favorable for them to make the claim they did as it also aligned with the views that their donors. It seems to explain why they were fraudulent, they did so for financial gain.
Thankfully, in 2010 The Lacent retracted the full publication and However, and quite surprising to me, many people still believe that there is a link between vaccines and autism and choose to not vaccinate their kids because of this. Wakefield and his colleagues were charged with fraud, for picking and choosing the data they wanted, and falsifying it to get the results that they wanted to support this claim. However, the damage has already been done and this is not a problem of the past Many parents still do not vaccinate their kids in fear of giving their kids autism or other issues. There are outbreaks of diseases that could be prevented with vaccines. In January of 2020 a case of mumps was noted at my university. However, I hope we are moving away from the fear surrounding vaccines and more people realize their importance in society.
I hope you all have a better understanding of this issue and realize that there does not need to be any fear around the MMR vaccine, and other vaccines in general. Rather, there should be more fear around not being vaccinated due to the possible diseases that you can contracts. If you have any further questions just write a comment and I will try to respond as soon as possible. Thanks again for reading and look out for next weeks post!
If you would like more information, here are the sources I used for research on this topic: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3136032/ https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/mmr/public/index.html#what-is-mmr https://benthamopen.com/contents/pdf/TOVACJ/TOVACJ-6-9.pdf
Anna's Microbiology Blog 