Help me make sense of MMR - hype or theory

[felicity10]

OK, so I've been through a few pages of previous posts, I must be missing something because I can't make sense of it!

DD is 1 and I've had a letter about the vacs from the GP. I've heard about the MMR in the news few years ago and about the link to autism, but I just would really value your views.

Single vacs with no mumps or the MMR? Can anyone point me in the direction of key MMR issues?

I just don't want to get to the gp's and then feel like I am getting bullied into having the mmr - it is normally very no nonsense nurses who barely speak english, so will be unlikely to give me a clear answer as to any risks.

I am amazed that we have this lack of clarity in the UK.

Many thanks in advance!

From what I have read there are no more cases of autism per population since the MMR has been introduced but there have been cases where parents have seen a direct affect on their childs development following the vaccination.I don't think anyone can ever really know.As someone said all medical treatment comes with risk

I have been unfailingly polite. I would be grateful if you would try to do the same.

All I ask is some proper evidence to support the MMR/Autism link. I have asked for this in lots of places, and nobody has ever yet been able to give me any. However, i have read convincing evidence to the contrary.

And whenever I have pushed for such evidence, all I have ever got anywhere is personal abuse and anecdote in equal quantities.

"I thought a proper study is one which does not look at any hypothesis but which looks at the the facts."

eh?

You need a hypothesis - otherwise what are you studying?

I have not been rude. (and I would say that dismissively suggesting that parents are casting around for a hook to hang the dx on" is patronising at best, and breathtakingly rude at worst. but each to their own)

I do apologise for the . But honestly, of course a study looks at a hypothesis.

no one has suggested that mmr causes autism. it has never been said (except by hysterical media, and Wakefield detractors).

I have said I will look out the links to the global replications in a bit. sorry. wrong computer, and half term means I cannot just lock myself away in the study to find my bookmarks. but I will link them. tbh, if you search autism groups on FB you will likely find some links.

noddy - I might be misunderstanding you here, but are you realy saying that ASD dx has not risen since the 1990s? the rate in the early 90s was 1 in 10,000. it is now 1 in 64. better dx accounts for some of that, but by no means all (and tends to accoutn for more dx's at the high functioning end, not severe ASD. and there is undoubtedly more severe ASD about since 1990)

I would have thought the BMJ describing Wakefield's work as a "fraud" as it did in January of this year would count in most people's eyes as discrediting.

I don;t see why my "hook to hang a diagnosis on" could possibly be considered rude or dismiossive. When something devastating happens, people naturally look for reasons. And a coincidental MMR vaccine is a perfect piece of circumstantial evidence.

and your hook to hang a dx on is rude and dismissive because it reduces parents input, and knowledge of their child to nothing more than media-led hype.

you do realise that, from the 1998 paper, most parents did not know each other (and, remeber this was pre-media hype). they were all referred on (and there were many, many more than the 12 presented in the case series), because of hte health issues they saw in their children.

they had not read of any "supposed" link. and they had not been "swayed" by anti-vax agendas. they ahd had perfectly happy and healthy children, who all became ill post mmr, and regressed into autism.

they were referred to a bowel specialist for their health issues. clinical investigations were carried out to try to understand these health issues.

and a pattern was found.

and the pattern indicated the mmr.

It didn;t, actually. But believe what you like.

But a bit of evidence would be good.

And some evidence to support he fact that the BMJ and The Lancet, and Pediatrics are all lying - and why - would be good too.

Christ I would be pissed off if a stranger over the internet kept diagnosing my child as an anecdote. You should be ashamed of yourself Seeker. Who the hell do you think you are?

You're not desperate and asking for evidence. You're just dismissing what silver says without even understanding it or looking into it.

Sausage -- you've ignored evidence and arguments repeatedly. Not that it surprises me, but I just thought I'd point it out.

"But a bit of evidence would be good."

bollocks -- there's truckfuls but you don't want to admit it

Where have I dismissed diagnoses as anecdote?

I haven't. I have dismissed links to MMR as anecdote. And I will continue to do so until someone gives me convincing evidence to the contrary. Which nobody seems to be able to do - they just say stuff like "Oh there's loads of evidence"

Well, where is it?

And why is it arrogant to ask for scin=entific evidence?

If the evidence is there, then present it. Clearly and unhysterically. Then people will accept it.

seeker - have you actually read the Lancet paper?

You are actually being very rude in dismissing silverfrog's child's regression as an anecdote. Do you really think she doesn't know her own child?

seeker, have you actually read the 1998 paper? in full, I mean, not just the summaries that are touted about?

the pattern that Wakefield et al saw indicated the mmr. you can say as ftne as you like that it didn't, but that is untrue. so he called for more investigations, and said (in his opinion) that singles (which were available at the time) should be used until the full facts could be established.

furhter work has been carried out on this hypothesis, and it replicates what he found.

from your posts on this thread, it seems you have read all the media reporting of the case, and the anti-Wakefield stance, but you have not read anything that Wakefield has written, or anythign which supports his hypothesis (and there is alot of work that does).

you repeat, time after time, that there is no evidence for what Wakefield says. this is not true.

if you are actually interested in this, get out htere and find the evidence. although I suspect you are not that interested, and this is just an internet ruck you are mildly interested in for today. so you cannot b bothered to find any information beyond the headlines (which themselves are inaccurate)

I would just like to add, there is no hysteria on this thread, seeker.

throwing accusations like that around are unhelpful.

Just because Wakefields research or whatever you want to call it was discredited doesn't mean it was wrong, there hasn't been a que of people wanting to take up any "real" research into the link has there ?

I also think you are fooling yourself if you have the single vaccines without knowing the origins and the storage of them until they reach the actual patient better not to vaccinate at all, at least that way you don't have a false sense of security.

if you want clear links to evidence - search Beachcombers posts on this topic. hell, search my past posts. search jimjam's posts (and her various aliases)

search Leonie's posts, and Appletrees. Bubbleymummy has posted a lot of interesting info on this too.

read the vax threads over the last few years - all the link are there.

do some research, instead of just bleating the evidence is not there.

it is htere, you just have to look for it.

I meant that the content of Wakefields research was possibly of interest, even if the methods were not credible.

"You are actually being very rude in dismissing silverfrog's child's regression as an anecdote. Do you really think she doesn't know her own child?"

Saying something is anecdotal doesn't mean you're saying it's not true. What Seeker is saying is that one incidence of something doesn't prove a causational link between the two factors.

e.g. today I had a Starbucks and then this evening I had indigestion. That doesn't mean that the Starbucks gave me indigestion

A better example is the link between peanut butter consumption and autism. The positive correlation between the two is really quite compelling but it doesn't mean that peanut butter causes autism.

No hysteria? Read rightpissedoff's contributions, then say that again!

ANd comments like "Just because Wakefield's research was discredited doesn't mean it was wrong" makes me want to scream with frustration!

the paper was not discredited.

Wakefield's opponents describe it as good science, with a valid conclusion. what part of this makes it discredited?

and no, I owuld not say RPO's posts are hysterical. heated, maybe, and frustrated. but not hysterical.

Scream all you like Seeker, my husband was a national manager for a pharmaceutical company and the governments priority for choosing one vaccine over another is certainly not what is the best drug for the job, in fact you can apply that to everything prescribed.

Seeker why don't you respond to what silverfrog is saying? She and bubbley are righ on the nose. There's plenty of evidence -- you just don't want to see it.

I'm not hysterical -- I'm just rude.

There's plenty of evidence of a link BaggedandTagged. Just because it's not proof, it doesn't mean it's not evidence.

Trying to create stupid straw man argument like I ate sausages then I crashed my car ooooooohhhh there must be a connectino well that's just facetious.

There's a known link between incidence of mumps and measles naturally and incidence of autism.

The mass of temporal and circumstantial evidence, clinical, subclinical, and then you've got the medics and researchers who agree with these poor mums -- it all merits research. The one thing we can say with clarity is that it's a lie to say "there is no evidence of a link".

I haven't read all the other posts so sorry if I'm restating anything said by anyone else. Just felt the need to contribute here.

The link between MMR and autism grew because autistic symptoms tend to appear around the same time as the MMR is given. Whether the MMR actually triggers autism is unclear. The research strongly suggests that it doesn't - I researched autism at a genetic level and it appears that classic autism is highly genetically determined. There are other types of autism which appear to be caused by other factors which haven't been identified yet. It could be that the genetic tendency towards autism is triggered by the MMR but then a large portion of my study had not been given the MMR so the question is what triggered their autism?

The issue of vaccination is a serious one. It is precisely because of vaccination that diseases like measles mumps and rubella are very rare nowadays. Because they're so rare people don't realise how serious they are. The WHO reckons that a concerted vaccination campaign from 2000 to 2008 worldwide prevented a massive 4.3 million deaths from measles. With thorough vaccination a disease can be completely eliminated. That's what happened with smallpox, a deadly disease that was one of the first to ever be vaccinated against. It now exists only in laboratories. The problem is, if even a small proportion of the population of a country stops vaccinating it allows the disease to continue to survive and can even cause a serious outbreak. I had measles as a child and it nearly killed me (I got it just before I was due to be vaccinated). If others around me had been properly vaccinated there would have been no disease to catch and so I would have been spared this illness.

Thanks to vaccination we need no longer worry about awful diseases like diphtheria, polio, TB etc. If people cease vaccinating then we can expect to start seeing reports on the news about children dying from these illnesses. I can understand people's unease about vaccines completely. However a small reaction from a jab is nothing compared to weeks of illness and possible death from measles. It's up to each parent to decide for their children, but remember that the benefits of vaccines far outweigh their risks.