The MMR Vaccine and Autism

An ongoing controversy around the world has been the proposed association between the MMR vaccine and the onset of Autism. Parents, media, medical professionals, and even the government have all been at battle for years about whether the reception of the MMR vaccine is at the route of increases in Autism prevalence. Unfortunately, this contention has led to confused parents who are unsure as to what to do for their children and what is truly in their best interest. In this post I would like to share what I have learned from my own research concerning the subject and I hope that what I share will promote more people to look a little deeper into this topic.

First off, and probably most important of all, I would like to summarize where this conflict began. In 1998 an article posted by a Dr. Wakefield of the UK suggested a link between the MMR vaccine and an increase in Autism cases. The article itself states conclusive data to suggest a significant result in which it does appear that Autism is the result of the vaccination. To the dismay of many scientists, however, this article was soon found to be a fraud and wholly incorrect. I recommend anyone to investigate for themselves the many postings through medical literature concerning the fraudulent findings in Dr. Wakefield's report. Immediately following his published paper, multiple scientific groups and individuals either contacted Wakefield directly or published follow up papers that indicated Wakefield's information was incorrect. After a full investigation, a sad story was uncovered that gave purpose to Dr. Wakefield's fraudulent report. Apparently Dr. Wakefield had been contacted by anti-vaccine lobbyists (lawyers looking to sue pharmaceutical companies over vaccines for a profit) and was offered a large sum of money to alter the results of his study concerning the association between the MMR vaccine and Autism. He took the bait and published his results (now altered to show association), standing by his findings even to this day. As stated earlier, his results did not stand against scientific review and it was immediately criticized. Ultimately, 10 of the 13 original authors in Wakefield's study retracted their names from the paper and disassociated themselves from the findings. In February of 2010, The Lancet, the original publisher of Wakefield's article, retracted the publication. The month before the retraction Dr. Wakefield lost his medical license in the UK and now practices in Texas. Unfortunately, despite the actions of UK medical committees and the publishing companies, the media took Wakefield's results and spread them throughout the world. Since the publishing of the original article, MMR vaccinations have dramatically declined and instances of measles and mumps have been on a steep incline.

The question stands then: why does the MMR vaccine still remain as a proclaimed cause of Autism despite the debunking of Wakefield's original findings? First and foremost, the media plays an enormous role in the spreading of information and has always stood by the MMR claim. Unfortunately, it is less common to see medical professionals on the internet taking the time to spread their findings around as much as the media does. Sadly, the media is very good at what they do and medical professionals have a very difficult time competing. One a more scientific note, family experiences continue to pop up that reignite the MMR claim. The MMR cause states that high levels of mercury, delivered in the form of thiomersal, intoxicates the brain and leads to eventual neurological dysfunction and metal regression. It is true that high levels of mercury do cause neurological deficits. These deficits are also incredibly similar to autism but it should be understood that these deficits are not in actuality autism. Additionally, the main component of thiomersal, ethyl-mercury, cannot actually cross the blood-brain barrier while methyl-mercury can. So, while high levels of mercury (methyl-mercury) can cause neurological deficits, the mercury included in thiomersal is not the form of mercury that can reach the brain to do the neurological damage. This distinction is important because this releases MMR and thiomersal from the possibility of being the culprit for Autism causation. Finally, signs of Autism are only detectable once a child is 6 months old at the earliest. It would be more probable that a diagnosis could not occur until the age of 1 or 2. These ages coincide with vaccination schedules and it is not uncommon for parents to assume that since the MMR vaccine was given at one of these milestone ages, or whenever the schedule had been set, that the symptoms were seen soon after when in reality the child had now simply become old enough for signs and symptoms to be observable enough to be eligible for diagnosis.

Since Wakefield's original published paper, close to hundreds of follow up studies have been conducted to decide whether there is any relation between the MMR vaccine and prevalence rates of Autism. To this day, virtually no evidence has been found to support the MMR-Autism association. In my personal research, I have found epidemiological studies to reveal the most interesting findings. These are studies that take very large groups of people or records of people (on the order of a few thousand), and look for associations between two variables. As I have searched these studies I have not found a single epidemiological study that has shown a causal relationship. One study that I found most interesting looked at Scandinavian countries and the time frame in which the MMR vaccine with thiomersal had been present and after the the thiomersal had been removed completely from the vaccine. This study monitored the prevelance rates of Autism in this time frame and compared the rates before and after the removal of thiomersal. Surprisingly, not only did the authors of the study find no decrease of Autism after the removal of the thiomersal, but they actually found a slight increase. The increase is not likely enough to be significant to any degree, but it obviously contradicts Wakefield's original results. For comparison purposes, we also have to remember that Wakefield's report, no matter whether it was fraudulent or not, only studied between 10-20 autistic children while this epidemiological study in the Scandinavian countries (most notably Denmark which has incredibly good medical records), looked at thousands of individuals both Autistic and not. A recent paper published at the end of 2012 used Japan as the country of choice for another epidemiological study comparing the association between the MMR vaccine and Autism. Again no association was found. I would recommend any concerned parent to investigate for these results for themselves. If you are interested to see the articles I have referenced to,  you may contact me via email and I will send you copies of each scientific article. Normally I would link to them in this blog post for easy access, but most of the articles require website accounts to access and purchased membership for access to the publications. Being a student at Brigham Young Unversity, I am able to have free access to most of the articles of my choice and am able to download pdf copies of each.

Ultimately I am just as concerned as many other medical professionals as to the possible consequences of the information that has been spread about the MMR vaccine and it's relation to Autism. The false stories about this vaccine has resulted in a significant plummet in vaccinations. Consequently, cases of measles and mumps have increased dramatically. These cases are completely unnecessary and are now threatening entire populations with breakouts of these diseases that we worked so hard to get under control in the first place. I ask with complete sincerity for anyone who is considering to vaccinate their child with the MMR vaccine to consider the evidence I have provided for the lack of its association with Autism and the importance that vaccine is to maintaining control over diseases that should never have shown up again.

I would like to suggest to anyone who would like to investigate the scientific evidence between the lack of an association between Autism and the MMR vaccine to visit pubmed.gov and type "MMR and Autism" (or something similar to it) in the search bar for quick results of recent scientific findings. Without membership to publication sites, you can still generally view the abstracts of articles to see results of studies and the basic information about the study as a whole. In pubmed.gov you can also alter the search to show you the most recent publications so that you can find the most accurate and up to date information out there.

In my next post, I will share some of the more scientifically substantiated findings of what may in fact cause Autism. Some of these findings include genetics, epilepsy, and some deep biology. I an very much open to a further discussion about the MMR vaccine and how it relates to Autism so feel free to continue the discussion with me outside of my blog in any way you wish. As I stated earlier, I would love to provide all of the documentation for my findings to any who are interested. As for now, you my view my brief bibliography for a few of those sources.



Bibliography:


Avery Holton , Brooke Weberling , Christopher E. Clarke & Michael J. Smith (2012): The Blame Frame:
Media Attribution of Culpability About the MMR–Autism Vaccination Scare, Health Communication, 27:7, 690-701


Wakefield AJ, Murch SH, Anthony A, et al.
Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, nonspecific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children. Lancet 1998; 351:637–41.

Megan Mormann, Carolyn Gilbertson, Gary Milavetz, Susan Vos: Dispelling Vaccine Myths: MMR and Considerations for Practicing Pharmacists, Journal of American Pharmacy Association, 2012, e282-286

Yota Uno, Tokio Uchiyama, Michiko Kurosawa, Branko Aleksic, Norio Ozaki: The combined measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines and the total number of vaccines are not associated with development of autistic spectrum disorder: The first case-control study in Asia, Vaccine, 2012, 4292-4298

(my favorite for summary of the whole issue)
Asif Joda, Wendy Roberts: Immunizations and Autism: A Review of the Literature, Canadian Journal of Neurological Sciences, 2006, 341-346