16 Feb 2009 Breaking News from the UK

Vaccine Choice update

Monday 16th February 2009
 

In the opening article in this strand we cited Baird (2006) as follows:

"Prevalence of autism and related ASDs is substantially greater than previously recognised."

And reported that, of 56,000 children aged 9 or 10 they surveyed in the South Thames area, 1 in 86 had autism or ASD. Since then, further doubt has been left in the air by a report in the Observer in 2007 that the Autism Research Centre in Cambridge had conducted their own studies, and found an incidence of one child in 58. All attempts to get this confirmed or denied have been unsuccessful.

We must now state that we have become aware that in response to the Observer piece, Professor Baron-Cohen, Director of the Autism Research Centre, wrote to the Observer saying:

"Your story ('New health fears over big surge in autism', last week) was a misleading report of research still being undertaken at the Cambridge University Autism Research Centre. The article linked MMR and autism. The research does not.

The research is based on a study of Cambridgeshire children, which ran for five years. It has not yet come out with a definitive figure on the prevalence of autism and it is therefore irresponsible to single out one figure.

My view is that any apparent rise is likely to be driven by better recognition, greater awareness, growth in services, a widening of the definition of autism and a shift towards viewing it as a spectrum rather than a categorical condition."

To our knowledge he, and the Centre, have not made any statement since. While this does not confirm the 1 in 58 figure, it does not refute it (indeed the figure of 1 in 86 from the Lancet, to which he refers, represents 1.16 per cent, not 1 per cent). No change here then.

On Sunday 8th February, the Sunday Times carried an extraordinary piece by Brian Deer entitled 'MMR doctor Andrew Wakefield fixed data on autism'.

Extraordinary, firstly, because it raised the possibility that Deer had breached the Data Protection Act by obtaining some of the papers that he quoted, and secondly because some of the allegations on which the article was based are frankly bizarre. We know this because the letter Deer wrote to Wakefield — “I’m directed by editors managing my investigation of the MMR matter for The Sunday Times to inform you that we intend to publish further on this topic…” — is posted on the Cry Shame website along with Wakefields responses to the allegations. 

For instance, Deer says:
"That, without justification, you omitted parental links to MMR in the case of one quarter of the children, in order to reach your unsubstantiated claim in the paper that problems came on within days."

Wakefield’s description of this as “tortuous” is too kind; “incomprehensible” or “self-defeating” might be more accurate. Read his response to Deer (link above).

">Read also the commentary  in The Huffington Post on an item about this on the Countdown show on MSNBC.  And the statement by Keith Olbermann, who criticised Wakefield on the basis of Deer’s article, that:

"The truth about the doctor's research may be in doubt here, but not Deer's vast conflict of interest nor the Times of London's journalistic malfeasance."

And then please, I urge you, seriously consider singing the online petition in support of Wakefield at:

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/wakefield