Response - MMR - The case against me boils down to smear and evasion

[Guest guest]

From " ARCH " <arch@...>

Response

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1636547,00.html

Comment

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The case against me boils down to smear and evasion

Scrutiny of evidence on the MMR vaccine is being stifled by the government

and a reckless medical establishment

Tuesday November 8, 2005

The Guardian

At the heart of the MMR vaccine controversy is an attempt to blind people

with science. Proponents of the vaccine say science has proved it is safe

and that those who deny this are scientifically illiterate. This argument

has been used to tell parents that the evidence of their own eyes is not

true. While the vast majority of children have had no problem with the MMR

vaccine, a small proportion of parents found that after vaccination their

children developed bowel problems, an allergic reaction to various foods,

and a halt to their behavioural development that produced the symptoms of

autism.

Their concerns were dismissed by the medical profession. One doctor who did

take them seriously was a gastroenterologist, Wakefield. In a Lancet

paper he said the children were suffering from a new disease, autistic

enterocolitis; at a press conference he suggested that to be safe children

should have single jabs instead of the triple MMR.

Since then the government has pointed to a succession of epidemiological

studies that, it says, prove that MMR is safe. A recent meta-study by the

Cochrane Library was likewise reported to have said that fears about the

vaccine were based on " unreliable evidence " .

But the study itself did not say this. On the contrary, it found that nine

of the most prominent epidemiology studies that are employed to attack

Wakefield's research were unreliable. Since it did not look at Wakefield's

research, it did not address the questions raised over the vaccine in the

first place. The report therefore could not bear the conclusion attributed

to it that MMR was safe.

When I pointed this out in the Daily Mail last week, I was attacked in

these pages by Dr Ben Goldacre, who said I did not understand how science

worked. On the contrary, it is Goldacre who is ignoring the evidence, and

his errors go to the essence of the MMR controversy.

Like the government, Goldacre believes clinical findings are trumped by

epidemiology, which he says is " evidence-based " medicine. But the attempt

to refute Wakefield by epidemiology is a category confusion. Epidemiology

looks at patterns of disease in a population. It cannot prove or disprove

cause and effect in individual patients.

A paper published in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons says

epidemiology " cannot establish a causal association unless other biological

evidence backs it up " , and does not meet a scientific standard of proof

since it is prone to bias - the very criticism that the Cochrane report

made of the epidemiological studies of MMR and autism.

Having accused me of misunderstanding " real " science, Goldacre then claims

that I have fallen for pseudoscience by believing evidence that has never

been peer-reviewed. Bizarrely, he asserts that I have relied upon research

that has been published only in the " in-house magazine of a rightwing US

pressure group well known for polemics on homosexuality, abortion and

vaccines " .

What on earth is he talking about? The devastating finding of measles virus

in the cerebro-spinal fluid of some autistic children who had been given

the MMR vaccine has been peer-reviewed in the Journal of American

Physicians and Surgeons.

He claims that Wakefield's term " autistic enterocolitis " has appeared in no

other studies that have endorsed it. But Wakefield's core finding of a

unique gut-brain disease has been replicated in peer-reviewed papers in the

Journal of Paediatric Neurology, Neuropsychobiology, the Journal of

Paediatrics, the Journal of Clinical Immunology and the American Journal of

Gastroenterology.

So what is this sinister " rightwing " organisation upon which I am supposed

to have relied? Alas, Goldacre does not tell us. So let us guess. Might it

be, perhaps, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, which

published the evidence of measles virus in cerebro-spinal fluid? Or might

it be the American Institute of Medicine, which said that any evidence that

symptoms worsen after booster jabs (as has been claimed with MMR) was real

evidence of a link between a vaccine and a disorder?

Goldacre's case boils down to evasiveness, ignorance, misrepresentation and

smear. Are these really the attributes of a scientific vocabulary? Is this

really " evidence-based medicine " ? Of course, it is important to vaccinate

children against dangerous diseases. But if even a small subsection of

children is badly affected - which is all that is being claimed over MMR -

the balance of risk dramatically changes.

The government and the medical establishment deny the evidence of any such

effect. They claim that science has shown there is no case to answer. But

it depends on which type of science, and whether it is being used

appropriately. The fact is that scientists are making progress in

deciphering the mysterious relationship, which Wakefield first identified,

between a new type of bowel disease and brain disorder. The connection

between this relationship and the MMR vaccine is far from proven. But

legitimate scrutiny of the real questions that have been raised are being

stifled by the government and a medical establishment that have behaved

recklessly and spinelessly, and are busy suppressing all attempts to hold

this up to the light.

· is a Daily Mail columnist

melanie@...

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Sheri Nakken, R.N., MA, Classical Homeopath

Vaccination Information & Choice Network, Nevada City CA & Wales UK

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