To think Andrew Wakefield has blood on his hands for causing so much distrust over the MMR?

[chicaguapa]

That's it really. He's caused so much damage with his stupid little study. It was years ago, he was struck off, the study was discredited, but people still don't get the MMR because of it.

Autism is clearly defined by DSM-IV.
Research needs to be valid and reliable in order to be able to generalise the results. This research wasn't and the results cannot be generalised. The press did not understand this and reported the research as if the results proved a link when in reality no link was "proved". This caused parents to decide not to vaccinate based on erroneous infotmation. Case studies can highlight a broad theory which may challenge existing convential theory but then quantitative studies are then utilised to back up or refute the initial broad theory. The body of evidence is clear that MMR does not cause MMR.

I did read the Wakefield study at the time, and my recollection is that it was about gut problems in autistic children.

That sentence you are quoting says what parents think. So what? It is not the point of the case study. AW is not claiming in the study that MMR is the cause of autism, as far as I remember, and he can't, because it was not a randomised controlled trial with a large number of subjects where a cause for these set of conditions might conceivably be isolated.

Whoops, I'll correct myself MMR does not cause AUTISM!

Cheers (I like it and am now adopting it too!)

Cherries - Would you mind answering my question re what you mean by "properly controlled sample"?

Cote,
What I was pointing out was the utterly wrong way in which the subjects were recruited. It's not simply a case of parents knowing each other, can you not see this? Your claim that the paper had nothing to do with autism being linked to the MMR is just utterly weird, are you contradicting the quote from the actual paper?
What do you interpret that quote from the paper as saying? It seems to me that they're saying that eight of the 12 children's parents associated the onset of behavioural symptoms with the MMR vaccination. What do you think?
I'm not pulling off at a tangent.
Cheers.

Magdalen I fear that in hoping for a reasoned answer you will be waiting a long time. People like Cote have made up their minds and nothing will alter it - not even the bare scientific facts which are staring them in the face. It is weird I agree and but it's almost like a religion.

OK, you don't seem to be understanding what I'm saying. Here it is again:

AW's case study doesn't conclude that MMR has caused those kids' autism. It couldn't have, since its goal was not to find the cause of autism and it was not a trial that could have perhaps found the cause of any condition.

It was a case study of 12 kids and their gut problems. AW is a gastroenterologist.

I am not talking about whether he was a great guy, or whether MMR triggers regressive autism.

I am saying that there is a lot of confusion on this issue, because people don't realize that he didn't say "My study found that MMR causes autism", and that it wasn't a trial that had to be randomised as some on here seem to think.

Cote,
You might like to reread the paper? Just refresh your memory?
briandeer.com/mmr/lancet-paper.pdf
It's pretty legible, despite the big red letters reading "RETRACTED" stamped across it.
It ends: "In most cases, onset of symptoms was after measles mumps and rubella immunisation. Further investigations are needed to examine this syndrome and its possible relation to this vaccine."
Are you going to argue with what Andrew Wakefield et al actually wrote?
Cheers.

Cote,
Sorry, I'm not sure that link worked:
briandeer.com/mmr/lancet-paper.pdf
Cheers.

He did say mmr causes autism at the news conference when the research was published which is what the media picked up on. He did go on to say it many times. He even went on to compare the rise in autism in California and UK and claim that they followed the same path except he used completely different types of data sets. He was either being incompetent or dishonest.

The paper was about a bowel disease - entrocolitis (though I'm not sure I've spelled it correctly!). This early association between bowel disease and autism is now fairly commonly accepted. There are plenty of papers that now confirm this association. Many doctors working with children with brain injury or insult knew this association empirically or anecdotally. You correctly quote the paper: "Onset of behavioural symptoms was associated, by the parents, with measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination in eight of the 12 children" but omit to say that the paper expressly says they have made NO association between the MMR and autism. It is a shame you left this out Magdalen as it exposes the bias in your comments and your willingness to mislead the reader. The early work on autistic entrocolitis was done long Richard Barr approached the Royal Free for help. I wouldn't base all my assumptions on Brian Deer's work - he shaves the chronology to suit his purpose much like your omission of the paper's disavowal of a connection between the MMR and Autism. There has always been widespread bewilderment among the parents involved as to why they were not called to testify. Basing your entire argument about the parent's attitudes on patient 12 is errant when so many others have gone on record to express their concern. Please remember Magdalen, that NONE of the parents or patients were responsible for the GMC allegations - something that is unusual in GMC cases. Moreover, the class of people looking for vaccine damage compensation over the MMR believed that there was a temporal connection between the vaccine and autism but no one knew how that could be. The Royal Free's investigation included some of that class or group and it was a natural consequence that the lawyers should allocate funds (£50,000 I think) to the Royal Free (NOT Wakefield) so that they might hire a researcher. All patents developed by teams of researchers working in the NHS have to be asserted and assigned to the NHS/Royal Free - it is false to accuse these researchers of trying to monetarily benefit. All but one of the allegations levelled against Andrew Wakefield by the GMC were also levelled at John Walker-Smith. The high court dismissed the GMC allegations against him entirely - including those of selecting patients for anything other than clinical reasons. You should be careful in asserting this falsehood any longer. Wakefield may seem fair game to you but you are maligning other doctors whom a court has exonerated completely. The BMJ's allegation of Fraud against Wakefield - was shown to be false when other members fo the team acknowleged that they met as a committee to label the results - he did not alter them at all. The Editor of the BMJ then tried to press an allegation of institutional fraud against all the doctors - something that was plainly untrue but rather desperate. The Texas court is still to rule on the appeal that has been lodged by Wakefield there. Sorry for the long post. I was tired of seeing the same false assertions demonising a group of doctors who were trying to help a group of sick children repeated again and again. By the way, my children had the MMR.
Cheers.

The sample consisted of people who all attributed symptoms of Autism developing after having had the MMR jab. Then he said that MMR products were present in the gut of those children so therefore MMR is linked to Autism. The people in the sample were seeking compensation via legal means.

If you, your neighbour and four friends went to have a flu jab then all had a red rash four days later you may decide it was the flu jab that caused the rash but you may all have been exposed to other things that might have caused the rash. Your GP could write a paper linking red rash and flu jab. Larger research studies could then choose people at random and ask "did you get a red rash after having the flu jab? ".

If the results showed that there was no statistical relationship between red rash and flu jab then it would be likely that the red rash was caused by some other agent rather than your theory that the flu jab caused it! Does that make sense?

He did not say the mmr causes autism at the press conference either! Stop saying this Bruffin it is not true - he said he would give his children single vaccinations until further research was done. I think that he may have developed the view of a connection later although I cannot tell you exactly when.

Sorry - forgot to add...
Cheers.

Wadham i can give you the transcript. Why say give single vaccines at the press conference if the research paper was not trying to connect mmr with autism., Why give a press conference at all based on 12 chldren in the first place.

You could go onto forums and swear that the rash WAS caused by the flu jabs and that you know other people who think that too. You could say that your GP definitely thinks so and that it is only a matter of years before the truth cones out! You say that your GP is a lovely man and therefore he must be right! But the wider body of research, unbiased, valid, reliable research clearly disproves your belief so you would be utterly wrong to carry on spouting you flawed theory especially if if meant that people stopped having the Flu jab and as a result people became seriously ill and died!

Wadham,
As I wrote above the paper ends:
"In most cases, onset of symptoms was after measles mumps and rubella immunisation. Further investigations are needed to examine this syndrome and its possible relation to this vaccine."
I was pointing out that Cote's assertion that the paper had nothing to do with MMR and autism. Which you surely must agree is complete bollocks. I mean if it's got nothing to do with MMR and autism why end it with the quote above? I love this idea that I am somehow misrepresenting the paper.
Are you, like Cote, interpreting this is a completely different way?
Cheers.
PS

Or you could bully anyone else who dared say they had a rash, convince them it must have been there before, ignore them, bury their experiences and refuse to investigate any further. Instead you could set up compensation for people with the rash, to try to keep them quiet, and hope that it is a small enough percentage of the population that it happens to that it will never appear statistically significant.

PS I like the way it becomes "In most cases, onset of symptoms was after...", no mention of this being a parental association?

"And I have to say that there is sufficient anxiety in my own mind of the safety, the long term safety of the polyvalent, that is the MMR vaccination in combination, that I think that it should be suspended in favour of the single vaccines, that is continued use of the individual measles, mumps and rubella component"

quote from press conference.

Srange he had the patent for a single vaccine in the pipeline isn't it.

cote of course there are medical case studies but they are not to be confused with a clinical trial.

A clinical trial will typically be placebo controlled, double blind, randomised and probably multi centred. For example I am on a clinical trial at the moment, I will share a little of the detail if if helps explain the process for those who aren't interested look away now this could get dull

I am on the Promise trial which is for women who have suffered recurrent miscarriage. The aim of the trial is to determine whether or not giving women progesterone in early pregnancy reduces the risk of mc.

The trial is multi centred. So there are many hospitals across the uk and possibly across Europe enrolling women onto the trial. It needs to be multi centred as huge numbers of women are needed to enter the trial.

The trial has entery criteria (all trials do). For me to be accepted I needed to have experienced at least 3 mc, be actively ttc and have had investigations into mc that failed to find a cause (unexplained mc).

I needed to provide informed consent to enter the trial, basically they tell me all the info I'm telling you.

I am entered into the trial and randomised. All trials are (should be) placebo controlled at random. This means that I have been provided with pessaries from the lead investigating hospital (London hosp I forget which one). What is important is that the placebo and the active progesterone pessaries look identical. Neither I nor the medical team know if I am on the placebo or the active drug (really important to remove patient and investigator bias, this is called double blind).

I take the pessaries until week 12 of pregnancy and hopefully carry my baby to term.

My outcome (alive baby, miscarriage or still birth) is recorded.

At the end of the trial period all the women's data is reviewed. What the team are hoping to find is fewer mc in the progesterone arm than the placebo arm. rate of mc of 12% progesterone vs 20% placebo would be a really good result

so that's a basic clinical trial

A case study is a very different beast. Typically case studies are used between medical professionals to highlight interesting cases so other professionals may learn from them. For example a drug could be administered that caused a huge allergic reaction in one of a consultants patients. She would present this to her colleagues and could also publish so that others can learn from the experience.

Consultants will also provide a retrospective analysis of a small group of patients who have undergone a particular treatment. This is used by other professionals as a guide towards improving patient care and could be a move towards a new treatment method.

Purely on AWs selection of patients his case study / trial / research was hugely unethical and flawed.

If anyone is still reading all this sincere thanks for your time.

Vaccine compensation programmes were not set up to keep parents quiet. There is a minute risk from vaccine its not a secret. Governments were worred that companies would pull out of manufacturing vaccines if they had were being sued for vaccine damage. It was better to have a compensation programe than no vaccines at all.

WhenSheWasBad,
Thanks for your post, and I wish you every luck in the future.
Cheers.

Cheers magdalen

Good luck with trying for a baby. I hope you succeed and hold onto your baby whichever arm of the trial you are on!