To think this takes not vaccinating to a whole new level

[Swanlaked]

DD has a child at school who has cancer. The school sent a letter home asking all parents to please think about giving their child the MMR if they haven't had it and also to inform them immediately if any child was in contact with chicken pox.

One of the mums at the school is still refusing to have her 3DC vaccinated. No health issues it's big pharma/poison/conspiracy theory crap

AIBU at this point to think the school should seek removal of the children and tell the bloody thicko to find another school for them?

Bearing in mind as well, that 3 of the 12 didn't have autism (under DSM-IV) so a less biased recruitment wouldn't have included 1/4 of his cases.

She should put her kids in a Steiner school where they'll be able to mingle happily with other unvaccinated children.

I cannot stand parents who choose not to vaccinate their children for anything other than health reasons. Religion does not cut the mustard, and conspiracy theories certainly do not. Don't be a shitskull: do some proper research and realise, like the rest of us, that vaccines have saved far more lives than they've taken.

I just wanted to comment on how good it is to see both sides discussing this at such a high level. I am more accustomed to vaccination threads on mumsnet being like the appalling start of this one.

no longer, what makes you say that these children weren't representative of children with chronic enterocolitis and regressive developmental disorder?

I'm not sure what your point is about less biased recruitment not including children with autism/regressive developmental disorder. Surely if you think he was deliberately selecting children to prove a link between the MMR and autism/RDD, then he wouldn't have selected any children without autism/RDD? It says in the paper that the parents of 8/12 children associated it with the MMR so again, if you think he was deliberately setting out to select children whose regression was caused by the MMR then why include any whose parents weren't claiming that?

im obviously not making myself clear. Of course his cases on children with autism and gut issues should have included children with autism and gut issues. But he was seeking to show an association between this and the MMR.

To reduce selection bias he should have recruited from a cohort who didn't already have any preconceived ideas about MMR, given the whole nature of his study was interview based - essentially - was your child developing normally before the vaccine and how soon afterwards did the regression commence?

But he didn't. He actively recruited - or the solicitor did - from some parents who had concerns about the MMR vaccine. This is selection bias and also introduces more recall bias than should have been acceptable. Recall bias is inevitable in a retrospective, interview based case report but it could have been minimised by more random selection of cases. These 12 cases weren't random, they were found for him and he only included the ones that fit with his timeline.

This is very very different to interviewing allchildren with regressive autism and enteritis who present to a paediatric autism clinic over, say, a 2 year period and ascertaining - along with review of their prior developmental history - whether there was a temporal relationship with the MMR.

And he still :

• fiddled with the timeline
• not acknowledged the other doctors who had seen some of the children prior to the MMR and had concerns about their development. As someone trained in gastro he had no business overriding the developmental concerns raised by GPs, paediatricians and a geneticist.
• couldn't reproduce his findings when given the patients and resources to do so at a later date.

And made diagnoses up - 3/12 didn't have autism at all under the criteria at the time (one had Asperger's which was a separate diagnosis at the time and certainly isn't regressive).

Morning Atenco. Yes I was very troubled earlier by the rudeness and ridicule. I think you made some comments earlier that were more balanced and 'normal'!

Nolonger, but if his plan was to associate the MMR with the developmemt of autism then why did he include any children whose parents weren't suggesting an association?

The paper itself says that not all the children had an autism diagnosis in the table showing their behavioural diagnosis.

bumbley I have no idea why he conducted his "research" the way he did. Suffice to say it's highly atypical to have cases recruited via a solicitor with a lawsuit planned in advice.

He suggested an association though on all of the children, based on the time line. I'd say it's pretty unusual to suggest an - at the time - rare association and aim to describe it where 3/4 of your cases also believed in this same rare association. And then interview them without corroborating medical information and write them up based only on their recollections.

Why do you think he ignored the prior recorded developmental concerns on nearly half of his cases? Why couldn't he reproduce the study with patients that hadn't been hand-picked for him?

Why was he preparing a lawsuit? Why did he describe the regression and enteritis before he'd even seen a single child, in the context of applying for legal aid funding?
Why did he exclude some cases in the case series and not explain why? Why was the essentially normal bowel histology in the children changed after "review" to "non specific colitis"? Why did some of the children not have diarrhoea at all but actually constipation?

I agree that the crappy, biased, unethical research engenders a number of questions.

Nolonger, but if his plan was to associate the MMR with the developmemt of autism then why did he include any children whose parents weren't suggesting an association?

Because he was also seeking to link bowel disorders to the MMR.

Museum, that was in response to nolonger's previous post: "But he was seeking to show an association between this and the MMR."

Nolonger, I'm not ignoring you. I just have a really busy day today and I want to reread a few things about the whole Wakefield case. As I said, it's been a while! Thanks for replying and I'll try to come back to you later. :)

museum I'm more than happy for you to answer! I'm in no way an expert on Wakefield but can recognise biased, sloppy research when I see it.

When you read a medical paper and it discusses up it conflicts of interest - and this is an open question - did Wakefield disclose that he was planning to financially benefit from the lawsuit against the MMR manufacturers?

nolonger, just to be clear about your posts re Wakefield, your information has all come from the Brian Deer articles that you linked to upthread?

The information about Wakefield is largely confirmed by the GMC findings.

No, not at all. But I like the articles. I've been reading papers about MMR, autism and Wakefield for years. If you do a pubmed search medical journals have been all over Wakefield and the autism allegations since his original publication, and I started working around the same time so I've been interested from the onset. (Along with other papers on other stuff, I'm not fixated on vaccination, although I do think it's a really good thing). Ironically, Wakefield's probably done more to establish the safety of the MMR vaccine by claiming otherwise, due to the subsequent studies his claims have engendered.

And, in response to the Comments on the first page - don't ban non vaccinated kids from school! My siblings and I we're not vaccinated. My mother is a good example as someone who is educated beyond her intellect. She presents as smart but latches onto pseudoscience and conspiracy theories and is scientifically illiterate. She is horrified that our DC are vaccinated.

Just diving in and not sure how we got to Wakefield, who has been universally discredited. (I'll dig the links out in the morning). But anti-vaxers need to get out of town if there are immuno-compromised kids around. No way this is excusable.

Could someone explain to me how an immuno compromised child can be in school at all? I ask because my experience of chemo is that you're house bound pretty much, because someone somewhere always has a cold.

crisp I agree in theory and am personally involved in promoting vaccination now. But-if no vax = no school I wouldn't have gone to school and learnt about science and stuff. Just because my mother believed in naturopathic woo doesn't mean I shouldn't have been educated.

(Actually, my mother sort of picks and chooses with medical stuff. She was aghast that a family friend wasn't "insisting" on chemo for a non chemo responsive, high grade tumour. "I'd have sat down in that ward and not left until they gave me the right treatment").

Although if I had an immunocompromised child I'd feel the same as the OP. Complicated!

Ok. I just noticed that quite a few of his citations were links to his own articles or newspapers and some of the things he said don't tie in with other papers or the GMC transcripts.

Still reading! I think it's time for bed though...

gone treatment for the most common form of childhood leukaemia treatment can be for 3 years, but you're only profoundly immunosuppressed for some of it. At other times your white cells etc might not be dangerously low but you're still at increased risk from every day infections.

So would children in that class have to stay at home if they have a sniffle over the period of years?

No, of course not. There's no "have to" about it, as I'm sure you're aware. But I'd personally hope that it would factor into parental decision making if it was a more florid viral infection. At our school eggs are discouraged because one child has egg anaphylaxis, but not banned. Some kids still take boiled eggs but most don't.

Essentially, some parents are more considerate of the wider school community than others.

Essentially, some parents are more considerate of the wider school community than others.

Considering the severe penalties in place for missing too much school, I would think that the school's letter asking for the MMR vaccination should have also included its permission for parents to err on the side of caution as regards any infection their child might have.

I am quite interested in the numbers of children who have anaphylactic allergies Atenco. It seems fortunate we know that although the cause is not known for the stupendous rise in atopic disorders, indeed it's a great mystery, we can be assured it's not the greatest single impact/trauma to the infant/child developing immune system, vaccination. Such a relief.