The Andrew Wakefield Story in Context

A rehash as to why nothing even in the worst version of the Wakefield scandal matters.

Sean B. Carroll’s Story: “Do vaccines cause autism? The story of the physician who raised the alarm about a link between vaccination and autism, and how that claim was tested and debunked, but affected vaccination rates across the world.”

Context: The 82 year long history of the links between vaccination and autism.

1930s

Leo Kanner of Johns Hopkins University writes a compendium of all known childhood psychological disorders called, Child Psychology.

1943

In his disorder defining paper "Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact," published in Nervous Child in 1943, Leo Kanner of Johns Hopkins University included the first report of vaccine induced autistic regression. In Kanner's case series describing the first 11 children documented to have the disorder, case number 3, “Richard M.” is reported by his mother to have begun his developmental regression following a smallpox vaccination. From the paper:

“Case 3. Richard M. was referred to the Johns Hopkins Hospital on February 5, 1941, at 3 years, 3 months of age, with the complaint of deafness because he did not talk and did not respond to questions.”

“Following smallpox vaccination at 12 months, he had an attack of diarrhea and fever, from which he recovered in somewhat less than a week.”

“In September, 1940, the mother, in commenting on Richard's failure to talk, remarked in her notes: I can't be sure just when he stopped the imitation of words sounds. It seems that he has gone backward mentally gradually for the last two years.”

The time line of Richard M, according to the paper, is thus:

November 1937 – Born

November 1938 – Vaccinated with Smallpox vaccine

September 1940 – Mother reports developmental regression beginning approximately two years previously, the autumn of 1938.

February 1941 – Referred to Hopkins for evaluation, and in 1943, becomes the third child to be described as autistic by Leo Kanner in his disorder defining paper, the first paper published on autism, 55 years before Wakefield.

Yet Wakefield et. al. Included parental reports of vaccine induced regression in their 1998 paper, “Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children” in the Lancet in 1998, and are credited (or blamed) with originating the discussion on vaccine induced autism.

1960s

In the 40s and 50s, the Freudians were in command of the narrative on childhood mental health, and maternal rejection of the child was asserted as the source of the rare disorder. This until Bernard Rimland, Ph. D. ended the supremacy of the unfounded and misogynistic theory, and began the era of medical investigation into the physical origins of, and medical treatments for, autism in the 1960s.

1976

In March of 1976, in Germany, Eggers published, “Autistic Syndrome (Kanner) and Vaccination Against Smallpox” wherein he described that:

“3-4 weeks following an otherwise uncomplicated first vaccination against smallpox a boy, then aged 15 months and last seen at the age of 5 1/2 years, gradually developed a complete Kanner syndrome. The question whether vaccination and early infantile autism might be connected is being discussed. A causal relationship is considered extremely unlikely. But vaccination is recognized as having a starter function for the onset of autism.”

1986

Congress, while giving liability protection to vaccine makers, also ordered HHS to study links between the Pertussis vaccine (the vaccine responsible for my son’s autism) and more than a dozen conditions, including autism: [emphasis mine]

H.R.5546 - National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 99th Congress (1985-1986) Bill Sponsor: Rep. Waxman, Henry A. [D-CA-24] (Introduced 09/18/1986)

“SEC. 312. RELATED STUDIES.

(a) REVIEW OF PERTUSSIS VACCINES AND RELATED ILLNESSES AND CONDITIONS.—Not later than 3 years after the effective date of this title, the Secretary of Health and Human Services shall complete a review of all relevant medical and scientific information (including information obtained from the studies required under subsection (e)) on the nature, circumstances, and extent of the relationship, if any, between vaccines containing pertussis (including whole cell, extracts, and specific antigens) and the following illnesses and conditions:

42 USC 300aa-1 note.

(1) Hemolytic anemia.

(2) Hypsarrhythmia.

(3) Infantile spasms.

(4) Reye’s syndrome.

(5) Peripheral mononeuropathy.

(6) Deaths classified as sudden infant death syndrome.

(7) Aseptic meningitis.

(8) Juvenile diabetes.

(9) Autism.

(10) Learning disabilities.

(11) Hyperactivity.

(12) Such other illnesses and conditions as the Secretary may choose to review or as the Advisory Commission on Childhood Vaccines established under section 2119 of the Public Health Service Act recommends for inclusion in such review. (Ante, p. 3771).”

1988

From the first time I heard the name “Wakefield” in the media in the early 2000s, I had always known that the story that Wakefield kicked off the suspicion that vaccines may cause autism in 1998 was bogus, because the first time I heard the theory was in an undergraduate psychology class during my 88-89 year at George Mason University. During a very short discussion on the rare childhood developmental disorder called “Autism” that Dustin Hoffman had in that movie Rainman, our professor noted that it might be cause by vaccines. I made a mental note of that and decided to look into it when I had kids someday.


1991

The pertussis vaccine injury inquiry ordered by law in 1986 was undertaken by the National Institutes of Health, carried out by the Institute of Medicine, published by the National Academy of Sciences in 1991, and edited by none other than Harvard's Harvey Fineberg:

“Adverse Effects of Pertussis and Rubella Vaccines: A Report of the Committee to Review the Adverse Consequences of Pertussis and Rubella Vaccines.
Editors
Institute of Medicine (US) Committee to Review the Adverse Consequences of Pertussis and Rubella Vaccines; Howson CP, Howe CJ, Fineberg HV, editors.
Source
Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 1991.
The National Academies Collection: Reports funded by National Institutes of Health.

Excerpt
Parents have come to depend on vaccines to protect their children from a variety of diseases. Some evidence suggests, however, that vaccination against pertussis (whooping cough) and rubella (German measles) is, in a small number of cases, associated with increased risk of serious illness. This book examines the controversy over the evidence and offers a comprehensively documented assessment of the risk of illness following immunization with vaccines against pertussis and rubella. Based on extensive review of the evidence from epidemiologic studies, case histories, studies in animals, and other sources of information, the book examines: The relation of pertussis vaccines to a number of serious adverse events, including encephalopathy and other central nervous system disorders, sudden infant death syndrome, autism, Guillain-Barre syndrome, learning disabilities, and Reye syndrome. The relation of rubella vaccines to arthritis, various neuropathies, and thrombocytopenic purpura. The volume, which includes a description of the committee's methods for evaluating evidence and directions for future research, will be important reading for public health officials, pediatricians, researchers, and concerned parents.
Copyright © 1991 by the National Academy of Sciences.”

You can read the section on autism here, but the summary was this:

Summary

“No data were identified that address the question of a relation between vaccination with DPT or its pertussis component and autism. There are no experimental data bearing on a possible biologic mechanism.”

So in other words, we don’t know, no one has ever looked.

But since there was no data to prove a link, because there was no data, they decided to reject the hypotheses and conclude:

Conclusion

"There is no evidence to indicate a causal relation between DPT vaccine or the pertussis component of DPT vaccine and autism.”

1991

Autistic regression is placed on the new federal Vaccine Injury Table (https://www.hrsa.gov/vaccine-compensation/covered-vaccines) as a compensable vaccine adverse event for Pertussis and Measles containing vaccines, but labeled “vaccine encephalopathy”. https://gingertaylor.substack.com/p/the-corruption-in-the-us-national

1998

Andrew Wakefield, according to the Carroll story, magically erases 55 years of history and discovers the vaccine-autism causation theory for the first time and publishes Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children, where he states that, “We did not prove an association between measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine and the syndrome described.” (ASDs).

2003

My 18month old son regresses into “Autism” following the administration of 8 vaccines including Pertussis and Hepatitis B. Chandler never received the MMR.

2004-2010

Wakefield and another researcher are convicted of misconduct in the UK General and are “struck off.”

2007

The attempt in the early 2000s to make Wakefield the scapegoat worked in the media for a time, but did not stop the growing public sentiment that the vaccine-autism link was real. A round of articles published containing the claim that there was “no evidence of any link” between vaccines and autism pissed me off and also made me understand the phrase, “mockingbird media.” So I listed on my mommy blog a page with a dozen or so papers or so showing evidence of links between vaccines and autism. http://web.archive.org/web/20130520094135/http://adventuresinautism.blogspot.com/2007/06/no-evidence-of-any-link.html

2010

When I had decided to work on Vaccine Epidemic with Andy, I decided I needed to understand the MMR scandal and the attack on Andy better. This is what I found.

2010

The Age of Autism: Mercury, Medicine, and a Man-Made Epidemic is published, reviewing Kanner's first 11 cases and finding many of them had mercury exposure.

2012

One of Wakefield's colleague on the paper, convicted of misconduct with him, John Walker-Smith, appealed the UK GMC decision and was exhonerated.

“Justice Mitting called for changes in the way General Medical Council fitness to practice panel hearings are conducted in the future saying: "It would be a misfortune if this were to happen again."

“The judge said the GMC panel failed to address whether Prof Walker-Smith had been doing research or simply investigating symptoms to help treat children. There had been "inadequate and superficial reasoning and, in a number of instances, a wrong conclusion", he said.

Wakefield could not raise the funds to appeal and had moved to the US.

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-17283751

2013

When the scapegoating of Wakefield failed to kill autism-vaccine suspicions, and the public outcry for research on the autism rates between vaccinated and unvaccinated children reached critical mass, it was clear that such was needed before health officials could even begin to rule out that their vaccine program as contributing to the autism epidemic.

In 2013 the institute was forced to admit that the oft repeated media lie that vaxxed v. unvaxxed research had been done.

The 2013 IOM Report: The Childhood Immunization Schedule and Safety: Stakeholder Concerns, Scientific Evidence, and Future Studies

From page 19 of the pdf:

"The committee’s literature searches and review were intended to identify health outcomes associated with some aspect of the childhood immunization schedule. Allergy and asthma, autoimmunity, autism, other neurodevelopmental disorders (e.g., learning disabilities, tics, behavioral disorders, and intellectual disabilities), seizures, and epilepsy were included as search terms. Furthermore, the committee reviewed papers on immunization and premature infants.

In summary, few studies have comprehensively assessed the association between the entire immunization schedule or variations in the overall schedule and categories of health outcomes, and no study has directly examined health outcomes and stakeholder concerns in precisely the way that the committee was charged to address in its statement of task. No studies have compared the differences in health outcomes that some stakeholders questioned between entirely unimmunized populations of children and fully immunized children. Experts who addressed the committee pointed not to a body of evidence that had been overlooked but rather to the fact that existing research has not been designed to test the entire immunization schedule."

The report says that IOM had evaluated doing such studies, that they would be doable, useful, but expensive, time consuming and difficult, so they don't recommend them. Here is their full statement on vaxed v. uvaxed studies.

"Initiation of New Prospective Observational Studies

Observational studies are another form of clinical research that can provide useful insights and information that may be used to answer research questions. The committee reviewed opportunities to study groups that choose not to vaccinate using a prospective cohort study design. However, such a study would not conclusively reveal differences in health outcomes between unimmunized and fully immunized children for two main reasons. First, to be informative, cohort studies require sufficiently large numbers of participants in each study group and the sample populations often suggested for use in a comparison of vaccinated and unvaccinated children (such as some religious groups) are too small to adequately power a comparative analysis, particularly in the case of rare adverse health outcomes. Because meaningful comparisons require thousands of participants in each study group and less than 1 percent of the U.S. population refuses all immunizations, the detection of enough unvaccinated children would be prohibitively time-consuming and difficult.

Such a study would also need to account for the many confounding variables that separate some populations from the average U.S. child, including lifestyle factors and genetic variables. To be useful, a comparison would require children matched by age; sex; geographic location; rural, urban, or suburban setting; socioeconomic group; and race/ethnicity.

The committee acknowledges that large-scale, long-term studies of infants through adulthood would be informative for evaluating health outcomes associated with immunization. A new research initiative, the National Children’s Study, is a multicenter, congressionally funded effort that meets these criteria. Although such studies would be the optimal design for evaluating long-term health outcomes associated with the childhood immunization schedule, they would require considerable time and funding, and the committee did not find adequate epidemiological evidence to recommend investment in this type of research at this time."

Skimming through the report, one can find weak excuses on why the research is not recommended like: "The committee identified concerns among some parents about the number, frequency, and timing of immunizations in the overall immunization schedule. These concerns were not expressed by clinicians, public health personnel, or policy makers in the committee’s review."

IOM admitted the customers are not buying because they don't trust the product, but since the the salesmen are fine with the product, no need to respond to the reasonable demands of the customers.

2020

The Covoid began to expose the fraud in the vaccine program to a wide spread audience.

Last Week

Biden pardoned Fauci.

Tuesday

“The 99th Congress That Called Vaccines “Unavoidably Unsafe”

https://brownstone.org/articles/the-99th-congress-that-called-vaccines-unavoidably-unsafe/

Yesterday/Today

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s hearings for confirmation to become Secretary of HHS before the Senate.

Current

The scientific record on vaccine autism causation began with the scientific record on autism, and extends to today. More than 200 papers showing multiple vaccine-autism links exist and can be reviewed at

https://howdovaccinescauseautism.org/

One can take their child with autism to Timothy Buie MD, Co-Director, GI-Autism Clinic; Senior Physician, Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition, and Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School in Boston to have them evaluated for and diagnosed with Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, the condition Wakefield et. al. Discovered and published on in 1998.

QUESTIONS:

1. Did Carroll's story of “the physician who raised the alarm about a link between vaccination and autism” bear up under scrutiny once placed in context?

2. Is Carroll's claim that the vaccine-autism connection “tested and debunked” legitimate?

3. Is Carroll's claim that Andrew Wakefield is responsible for falling “vaccination rates across the world” true?

4. Can vaccines cause autism?