By Dave Anderson:
My 13 month old daughter is trying to feed herself yogurt and raspberries with a spoon. She is doing better today than she was yesterday; maybe 80% of the food is landing in her mouth. She is having fun, and I am having ten minutes to write and enjoy a cup of tea. I like mornings like this one as a stay at home dad.
We'll be going to a play-group in an hour where the big item of discussion will be one year and fifteen month check-ups. Height, weight and head measurements will be batted around, as will questions about food restrictions and milestones, but vaccinations will suck up a decent chunk of the conversation. The parents at this play-group are split down the middle between the vaccinate them all and the vaccinations are scary and disease causing (including autism). The parents are a lot like me, in their late 20s, early 30s, well educated, familiar and comfortable with science, but not necessarily daily science practitioners; we are the interested amateurs who read the Health and Science section of the paper and then order Discover or Scientific America for amusement.
The Lancet autism-vaccination study has carried significant weight among the parents who are reluctant to vaccinate, it is an anchor of confirmation for their fears. However that study is being retracted as Bloomberg reports:
�It has become clear that several elements of the 1998 paper by Wakefield et al are incorrect, contrary to the findings of an earlier investigation,� the editors of the Lancet wrote in a statement today. �In particular, the claims in the original paper that children were �consecutively referred� and that the investigations were �approved� by the local ethics committee have proven to be false,� they said.
In a fully rational world, this would seriously deflate the anti-vaccine advocates, but I doubt it.
re: well educated, familiar and comfortable with science
ReplyDeleteAs a former chem prof, I have to say that I have not met that many well educated people who are comfortable with science. Most folks wouldn't take any science after high school if they were in charge.
re: the Health and Science section of the paper
My local paper has piss poor science articles. But I'm certain that in 1998 a short and meaningless "summary" of the original autism paper appeared in it. Just like today when "sexy" headlines are used for science articles that have VERY little actual science content. Instead they are like science gossip or fear-mongering: did you hear that there might be some relationship between vaccines and autism? As in most modern science, the devil is ALL in the details but there are NO details in most newspaper science reports.
The NYT occasionally publishes good science articles. However IIRC when the big hormone replacement therapy study was published several years ago, the main, very long NYT piece never mentioned the key stat: chance of breast cancer increased from 4 per 10000 to 8 per 10000. Instead, lots of words to the effect of: taking estrogen? be afraid.
re: order Discover or Scientific America for amusement
Discover may be amusing; SA is technically edifying. The number of SA articles that I have been able to finish AND comprehend is < 30. SA contains hardcore science; Discover does not.
Another post here by Naomi Freundlich at Maggie Mahar's blog with commentary and supporting links.
ReplyDeleteAutism and the MMR: Finally a Retraction
On January 30, Britain�s General Medical Council ruled that Andrew Wakefield, a gastroenterologist, had acted �dishonestly and irresponsibly� in conducting his research that established a link between autism and the MMR [measles, mumps, rubella] vaccine. And yesterday, the British medical journal Lancet finally retracted the resulting 1998 study authored by Wakefield that helped drive MMR vaccination rates in the U.K. down to the point where in 2008, measles was officially declared �endemic� in the country.
As the saying goes, a lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes. In this case the lie had over a decade's head start.