OPINION:
As the proud grandfather of three beautiful grand- daughters, I have closely followed news stories about autism, a developmental disability in children that seems to have reached epidemic proportions in recent years. The claim that there is a connection between the vaccination of children and the onset of autism has troubled me, as it has my sons and their wives, the mothers of my grandkids - 7-year-old Riley, 5-year-old Kate, and Cameron, age 7 months.
I’ve read the news stories about British researcher Andrew Wakefield, who claims to have found a connection between autism and the vaccine used to immunize children from measles, mumps and rubella. The MMR vaccine, as it is often called, typically is given to children when they are 12 to 15 months old. This is the age when the frightening symptoms of autism - a loss of attention, strange repetitive behaviors and an inability to interact with others - begin to occur.
In 1998, Mr. Wakefield and his associates published a paper in the Lancet, a prestigious British medical journal. It looked at 12 children who were vaccinated and concluded that vaccination was a factor in the subsequent onset of autism. In the years since publication of the Wakefield paper, many parents of autistic children have joined groups that are lobbying Congress and federal health agencies to end or restrict childhood immunization. Those parents are understandably distressed that they may be fostering autism in their children by having them vaccinated.
Some in the media and members of Congress from both parties have overreacted irresponsibly to parental pressure and have lent their support to claims that autism is produced by vaccines. They have fed the suspicion that pharmaceutical manufacturers and health agencies are deliberately ignoring evidence of an autism-vaccine link.
The fear-induced demands of parents may be understandable, but the response of the activist groups and the politicians is totally misguided. A massive pile of evidence is accumulating that shows the Wakefield paper is a fraud.
As my colleague Martin Morse Wooster reports in the latest issue of the Capital Research Center’s Foundation Watch publication, “Dr.” Wakefield has had his license revoked by Britain’s General Medical Council, and the Lancet has formally retracted his paper. It turns out that some of the 12 children in the Wakefield study were never diagnosed as autistic while others had developmental problems before they were vaccinated. Still others exhibited symptoms of autism many months after being vaccinated - not days after vaccination, as Mr. Wakefield reported in his paper.
Even more shocking, investigative journalists discovered that Mr. Wakefield was secretly paid more than 435,000 British pounds by British trial lawyer Richard Barr, who intended to file a lawsuit against vaccine manufacturers. Mr. Barr solicited possible clients for his suit and invited them to contact Mr. Wakefield.
It’s unfortunate that too many parents are unaware that the claim that vaccines cause autism is false. Others simply refuse to accept that we don’t know what causes autism. They want autism cured now, as do we all. However, attacking drug companies and spreading distrust of vaccines is not the answer.
Doctors are right to insist that parents immunize their children against infectious diseases. If children don’t get their shots, they will risk contracting diseases that were once dreaded but that doctors thought were banished from modern civilization for good. Children are being put at risk by false assertions meant to scare mothers and fathers about disease-fighting vaccines. Even babies who are too young to be vaccinated are put in danger when they are exposed to older children who can become contagious if their frightened parents refused to have them vaccinated. These are chances that are not worth taking.
There are indications that federal regulators at the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have begun to overreact to the phony vaccine scares and the groups that promote them. Some suspect this administration, in the interest of reducing health care expenditures, may be pressuring the CDC to delay public access to vaccines despite the dangers this poses. Reducing health care costs is a commendable objective, but delaying access to vaccines is not the way to achieve it.
I thank God that Riley, Kate and Cameron show no signs of autism. I am grateful to my children that they have had my granddaughters vaccinated.
Terrence Scanlon is president of Capital Research Center and a former chairman of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.
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