6 November, 2008
I have written several times on the topic of vaccinations and
autism, both in Stiletto
and in my Technocracy
column for WorldNetDaily.
I write on this topic out of personal
motivation, for I myself once adopted, by default and from exposure to
popular culture, the mistaken notion that there was a real risk of the
onset of autism based on injection of childhood vaccines.
Because
I was afraid, I spoke to pediatricians about this issue more than once.
Because I was afraid, I did considerable research on the
topic.
It was, therefore, to my relief, then my chagrin, and then
my
outrage that I discovered this alleged link is a myth,
an urban legend that persists because it is repeated, mindlessly, by
its true believers. Those believers -- whom I will refer to
herein as the vaccine
deniers
-- are not simply misguided. They are not merely willfully
ignorant. They are not simply troubled or concerned parents.
No, the vaccine deniers are a hateful mob who, for varying
personal reasons, cling to and promulgate this fictitious link between
childhood vaccines and autism regardless of any and all information to
the contrary. Each new study establishing, yet again, no link between
childhood
vaccines and autism is dismissed as somehow biased, propaganda
produced by operatives squarely in the pockets of the Big Evil
Corporations who produce the vaccines. No amount of data will
dissuade the vaccine deniers, despite the fact that their demands have
been met, again and again, by individuals interested in answering this
very question. As Ned Calogne wrote, in the Denver Post,
There now have been 16 separate, independent studies undertaken in five countries, involving millions of children, that have found no link between vaccination, vaccines or vaccine preservatives (namely, the mercury-based thimerosal) and autism. We have more data supporting this lack of association than for most other "known facts" in medicine. The sheer number of children included in these studies precludes the theory that there may be even some small but significant number of children for whom vaccination was at fault for, or contributed to, any measurable degree of autism. [emphasis added]
These studies mean nothing to the deniers, who seize on only
those
bits of research they believe prove their assertions (no matter how
questionable the methodologies of that "evidence," and no matter how
illogical the conclusions therein) and who ignore any and all subsequent
evidence to the contrary. Take, for example, studies
performed
prior to 2008 that purported to find a link between Thimerosal-spiked
vaccines administered to primates (and subsequent demonstration of
autism-like symptoms in those monkeys) or similar links purportedly
found in humans. Those who cite these studies conveniently
ignore
subsequent research that directly addresses it. Specifically,
a 2008 study in Rochester, NY found
that infants
"are able to expel thimerasol mercury much faster than thought and thus
there is '…..little chance for a progressive building up of
the
toxic metal.'" If they acknowledge such research at all, the
vaccine deniers simply posit that it must be the vaccines themselves,
not the Thimerosal, that somehow causes the problems, and thus the
superstition marches onward, unperturbed by the presentation of
inconvenient facts. It was with great interest that I discovered my WND column had
been addressed by Cynthia Cournoyer, also writing
for WND. She is the author of a book called What About Immunizations?
Exposing the Vaccine Philosophy.
Her outlook should of course be fairly easy to divine.
Her
column makes several accusations and several other assertions... none
of which, unfortunately, are logically or intellectually supportable.
Ms. Cournoyer first explains that there must be an epidemic of autism in this nation because of increased rates of diagnosis of autism -- and that this cannot be a genetic disorder because genetic disorders "do not present as epidemics." The trigger must be vaccines, apparently, at least in Ms. Cournoyer's thinking -- but we'll get to that. The first and most basic misconception in this dialogue is that increased diagnosis of autism must of necessity indicate increased occurrence. It does not. Children diagnosed with autism now are often much more mildly affected than children previously so diagnosed. Increased awareness of autism, and of an increasing number of related disorders that are similar to it, has resulted in increased diagnosis, therefore. This correlation is not causation and should not logically be construed as such. Doctor Michael Cohen said, in March of 2005, that "Experts, myself included, attribute it to better diagnosis, now that the medical profession is more aware of autism's many forms. And with better diagnosis comes reclassification of patients as autistic."
Ms. Cournoyer accuses me of presupposing that "the success of modern technology automatically extols virtue upon vaccines, as if there is no credible controversy." I make no such claim of which I am aware. I do indicate, however, that in the absence of credible evidence for a link between vaccines and autism, and given the volume of evidence directly to the contrary, it is illogical and irresponsible to continue promulgating this mythology. The damage being done is obvious; increased outbreaks of preventable childhood diseases, which arise in unvaccinated children, are the result. The purpose of vaccines is to create a "herd immunity" that creates a hostile climate for a given disease. Releasing into a vaccinated population a sub-population of unvaccinated individuals helps those diseases take root once more. Once established, they are more likely to mutate, endangering the entire community.
Ms. Cournoyer claims that I somehow forget that complicated technology is not infallible -- yet in making this claim she conveniently ignores the statements with which I begin my concluding paragraph in the presumably offending column: "Technology must never be accepted blindly. It must always be examined critically." Clearly, then, there is something more at work here than an earnest desire to correct what one supposes Ms. Cournoyer believes my misconceptions to be.
Ms. Cournoyer correctly points out that what she calls the "controversy" over vaccines (and what I call the superstition regarding them) is "gaining strength and credibility." While I will freely admit that it is indeed gaining strength, it gains strength specifically because of people like Ms. Cournoyer, who use junk science and illogic to prey on the fears of anxious parents. It most certainly is not gaining credibility, for each attempt to establish this link between vaccines and autism is subsequently refuted (such as in the case of the debate about mercury toxicity and the Rochester study I cited previously). Ms. Cournoyer also asserts, without evidence, that "credible evidence showing an association between vaccines and harmful effects is regularly suppresed and ignored." This is the kind of conspiracy theorizing that robs the vaccine deniers of credibility from the outset, for if the evidence is being suppressed and ignored, how is it that the deniers themselves find it -- or that it is published in medical journals prior to its subsequent refutation? We are asked to believe that a mighty and vast Medical Industrial Complex exists, whose operatives regularly maim, disable, and kill children out of some unnamed desire to make vague amounts of money from the practice, all while, one presumes, shouting "Hail, Evil!" and kicking puppies. The real world simply does not work that way; it is both more boring and much more complex than any conspiracy theory can encompass.
Ms. Cournoyer informs me (and you) that her fellow vaccine deniers who refuse to vaccinate their children do so after conducting copious research. The problem with this assertion is that it presumes only the deniers are capable of research, and that no parents who do vaccinate their children conduct similar explorations of the available data (which I can say with finality is obviously false). The other problem is that the deniers cherry-pick the research that supports their position, conveniently ignoring any and all contradictory studies (especially those that address previous studies specifically or in general).
Ms. Cournoyer cites, as support for her argument, the Hannah Poling case, which she erroneously claims constitutes "a landmark admission of vaccine-caused injury." The case constitutes no such admission, and it supports my argument, not Ms. Cournoyer's.* Far from being an admission of vaccine-caused injury, the Poling case represents a failure to apply basic standards of logic and the preponderance of evidence to the issue. As such it has proven remarkably damaging to children nationwide, for it furthers the cause of the vaccine deniers in activating and upholding their mythology without evidence and in the face of basic medical science. Note also that Ms. Cournoyer cannot claim that the Poling case represents proof of Thimerosal-caused autism, for that was not the argument; rather, the argument offered (without supporting evidence) was that a very rare pre-existing condition contributed to some form of "overloading" of Hannah Poling's immune system. This is clearly not the case in the majority of American children, considering only that the disorder in question is rare.
Ms. Cournoyer states the rather impressive monetary sum awarded to what she calls "vaccine victims" through the "National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act." Unfortunately, the existence of this award does not constitute medical evidence of a link between vaccines and autism. It only implies that, yes, vaccines have risks (no one has denied this fact, and every pediatrician who administers a vaccine informs that child's parents or guardians of the symptoms to watch for in the event of an adverse reaction). We can refer again to the Poling case to separate the legal implications from the medical evidence.
Ms. Cournoyer asserts that there exist no studies examining multiple doses of vaccines, or "vigorous" vaccination schedules. If we accept her at her word, we must also conclude that there exist no studies concluding such dosing schedules are harmful. Given that the majority of children given these childhood vaccines are not experiencing the sudden onset of vaccine-caused autism, which is the more logical position -- that vaccines somehow, mysteriously, without evidence, cause this problem, or that in the absence of any such evidence we should rest assured that there is no credible link?
Ms. Cournoyer claims that 'my' interpretation of "medical technology" is somehow "responsible for recommending more and more vaccines simply on the belief that all vaccines are safe and good." This ludicrous assertion is belied, not merely by the words of my original column (which apparently have been ignored), but by the fact that vaccines are studied to determine if they are safe prior to their introduction, and often, such vaccines are questioned both within and without the medical establishment. Take, for example, the controversy over attempts to lobby for and establish mandating the HPV vaccine Gardasil. The controversy is precisely the sort of critical examination of new medical technology that I advocate in my original column. Now, imagine that an advocacy group were to take to the Internet claiming that Gardasil causes manic depression in teenagers, because a flawed and subsequently retracted "study" published in a certain medical journal claimed that this was so. Would the logical position be to accept and promulgate this theory, in the absence of any credible research establishing this? Yet the entire vaccines-autism controversy begins with a single, flawed study in the medical journal Lancet ten years ago, which claimed to establish such a link. That study was so deeply flawed that it was disclaimed at the time it was published. It has subsequently been thoroughly discredited.
Ms. Cournoyer invokes the tragic picture of parents whose children suffer from autism as "front-row witnesses to the regression of their previously healthy children." While I sympathize with any parent whose child suffers from any disorder or disease, this is an emotional argument and an anecdotal one. It does not represent any credible scientific evidence establishing causality in the matter of vaccines and autism. Given that symptoms of autism generally manifest themselves in any afflicted child during the same time period when childhood vaccines would be administered if they are, this is again a case of correlation only. It is akin to saying that crime increases as churches are built -- because larger populations, which tend to have more crime, also tend to have more churches.
Ms. Cournoyer attempts to assert that none of the studies failing to find a link between Thimerosal in vaccines and the onset of autism included unvaccinated control groups. They are therefore part of the vast conspiracy in which she apparently believes. She repeats the falsehood that the Amish, whose children are unvaccinated, have no autism. This is based on the assertions of UPI reporter Dan Olmsted, who in 2005 wrote that there was little or no autism among the Amish of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. "Olmsted's anecdotal evidence is cited ad nauseam as evidence that Thimerosal causes autism," writes Ken Reibel. "The case rests on twin assumptions: that the Amish don't vaccinate, and that they don't have autism. But Olmsted never visted the cryptically-named Clinic for Special Children in Strasburg, where doctors treat children who exhibit autistics behavior." As it turns out, the Amish do vaccinate, and there are children among them who do exhibit symptoms of autism. To accept the existence of the "Amish anomaly," we are also expected to accept the absurd notion that members of a population that shuns technology and most of the modern world would run right out and report high-functioning (or the easier to diagnose low-functioning) autism, after first being just as willing and able to diagnose this disorder as are their modern-world counterparts ("Autism isn't a diagnosis," Reibel quotes Doctor Kevin Strauss, "it's a description of behavior.")
Ms. Cournoyer claims that "real studies have been carried out and duplicated" that link the MMR vaccine to autism. To accept this, we must ignore the existence of the most recent study that finds no link between the MMR and autism, the fact that "no scientific data link thimerosal used as a preservative in vaccines with any pediatric neurologic disorder, including autism," and the fact that the removal of Thimerosal from vaccines has not resulted in any measurable decrease in diagnosis of autism (the rate continues to increase as we become better able to diagnose the disorder). The vaccine deniers, like Ms. Cournoyer, react to these inconvenient truths by making the topic a moving target. Depending on which fact they attempt to refute, autism is caused either by Thimerosal or by some other quality of some specific vaccine, by the vaccination schedule and the cumulative effect of the vaccinations (but not the individual vaccines), or by some other undefined but otherwise suppressed and known quality of vaccines that is even now being covered up by a shadowy industrial conspiracy whose members have no agenda save financial gain on the bodies of dead and mentally damaged children.
Using simplistic logic, Ms. Cournoyer points to the "potentially harmful ingredients" contained in vaccines. The toxins within vaccines are a frequent object of the vaccine deniers' outrage. To point to this as if we are intentionally (or through some omission, caused by greed, ignorance, laziness, blind trust, or some other negative quality) poisoning our children is to ignore some the most basic facts of medicine. Substances that are, in certain quantities, harmful to the individual can, in measured doses, be used to benefit. Thimerosal, for example, is a very effective preservative, and that is why it was used. Can you safely go to your medicine cabinet and consume large quantities of anything you find inside without experiencing harmful effects? Obviously, you cannot. By the illogic of the vaccine deniers, almost every medicine you take for a variety of ills, prescribed by your physician, is a deadly toxin because taking too much of it will harm you. The very concept of a vaccine is based on this counterintuitive truth. By injecting a very small amount of something harmful (or, as is now done, some component of the disease), the body's immune system develops a defense against the more harmful and uncontrolled manifestation of that disease.
For daring to stand up for established medical science and against superstition and willful ignorance, I have been subjected to a tremendous amount of personally insulting abuse by the "angry mob" of vaccine deniers to whom celebrity spokesperson Jenny McCarthy referred. I quoted McCarthy in my original column because she unwittingly betrayed the attitudes and the agenda of these people. Anyone who dares to dissent, who presumes to speak against them, is reviled and villified, shouted down for heresy in the face of their impenetrable dogma. Allow me to quote just a few of the many e-mails I received when one vaccine denier posted a public call to "bombard" my e-mail address:
Your column on vaccines is undoubtedly one of the most revolting I have read in some time. To call those of us who have thoroughly researched the matter "willfully ignorant Americans" is truly arrogant beyond hope. What hypocrisy for you to accuse McCarthy of arrogance, when you are the master of it.
Autism is not the only danger and you know it... I've HAD measles, mumps, whooping cough - and more. NO - I didn't die! Your assertion is over-generalized. Who's scaring who, now? ...you're gonna be in hog heaven in the new Obama regime [sic]
I'm sorry but your article is pure BS. Jenny McCarthy is not the only one speaking out against vaccines...
Thanks for nothing; a totally thoughtless piece of advocacy in an area about which you know nothing... You have a lot of homework to do before you can ever write on this subject again; or else confirm again your cluelessness.
I pray that you never have to experience autism first hand. That would be some "credible evidence" you could not choose to ignore.
I'm not writing to argue or reason with you, because neither is possible.
I AM writing, however, to state that neither of my two children have been vaccinated and they do not have ear infections, cancer, autism, arthritis, allergies, leukemia, asthma, SIDS, SBS, or any OTHER diseases/ailments of which vaccines ARE causing epidemics.
You can take the studies you cited which are rife with conflicts-of-interest and shove them in your ear.
There are thousands of doctors who are fully AGAINST vaccination, in case you didn't know. They aren't "superstitious" or "ignorant". They have hundreds-of-years of history on their side which also includes instances that happen OUTside the laboratory.
Vaccines have NEVER prevented any disease - they've only CAUSED disease.
This is a group driven, not by reason, not by logic, and not by fact, but by ideology. Further, as is obvious, they react with hostility and even open hatred, not to mention irrational conviction to their dogma, whenever confronted by medical truths that fly in the face of their advocacy and activism. While I understand the emotions a parent must feel when dealing with a child who suffers from any disease or disorder, and I do sympathize, it does a great disservice to the entire nation to promulgate anti-vaccine mythology as a means of coping with this. There is a quack science industry that preys on such parents, and I blame this industry as much as anyone for exploiting people who really do just want to care for their children.
I am honored that Ms. Cournoyer considered my column noteworthy enough to attempt to rebut it. I wish more of her supporters had attempted to write a rebuttal as she has done, rather than sending largely anonymous invective to my inbox. While I'm willing to be tolerant, I cannot in good conscience ignore the continued willful ignorance and intellectual dishonesty exhibited by such activists. As I have demonstrated here, their arguments are neither logical nor otherwise supportable. They are not based in fact. They are simply wishful thinking, coupled with and facilitated by a variety of very routine logical fallacies and failures of reason. >>
* As Paul Offit wrote in the New York Times,
ON March 6, Terry and Jon Poling stood outside a federal courthouse in Atlanta, Ga., with their 9-year-old daughter Hannah and announced that the federal government had admitted that vaccines had contributed to her autism. The news was shocking. Health officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and at the American Academy of Pediatrics have steadfastly assured the public that vaccines do not cause autism. Now, in a special vaccine claims court, the federal government appeared to have said exactly the opposite. What happened?
The answer is wrapped up in the nature of the unusual court where the Poling case was heard. In 1986, after a flood of lawsuits against vaccine makers threatened the manufacture of vaccines for children, Congress created the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, financed by a tax on every dose of vaccine.
...The system worked fine until a few years ago, when vaccine court judges turned their back on science by dropping preponderance of evidence as a standard. Now, petitioners need merely propose a biologically plausible mechanism by which a vaccine might cause harm — even if their explanation contradicts published studies.
...In 2000, when Hannah [Poling] was 19 months old, she received five shots against nine infectious diseases. Over the next several months, she developed symptoms of autism. Subsequent tests showed that Hannah has a mitochondrial disorder — her cells are unable to adequately process nutrients — and this contributed to her autism. An expert who [filed an affidavit] in court on the Polings’ behalf claimed that the five vaccines had stressed Hannah’s already weakened cells, worsening her disorder. Without holding a hearing on the matter, the court conceded that the claim was biologically plausible.
On its face, the expert’s opinion makes no sense. Even five vaccines at once would not place an unusually high burden on a child’s immune system. The Institute of Medicine has found that multiple vaccines do not overwhelm or weaken the immune system. And although natural infections can worsen symptoms of chronic neurological illnesses in children, vaccines are not known to.
...The vaccine court should return to the preponderance-of-evidence standard. But much damage has already been done by the Poling decision. Parents may now worry about vaccinating their children, more autism research money may be steered toward vaccines and away from more promising leads and, if similar awards are made in state courts, pharmaceutical companies may abandon vaccines for American children. In the name of trying to help children with autism, the Poling decision has only hurt them.
For more on the vaccine deniers and refutations of their reasoning, The Martialist recommends Paul A. Offit's Autism's False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure.