the end of the MMR "myth"?

[buffytheharpsichordcarrier]

saw this reported yesterday

Cochrane Collaboration (as it used to be called) is pretty persuasive. Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin, who are equally the bees knees as far as expert review of all the evidence, also gave MMR the all clear. But I can't help still being a bit suspicious because AFAIK no-one has done any work directly investigating Wakefield's findings of vaccine-strain measles in the gut.

good article

we did our own research, and the telling factor for me was that since Japan stopped using the MMR some years past, the rates for incidents of autism in children have risen at the same rate as in those countries which use the MMR!!!

What I mean is, however distinguished and expert they are (and I do trust them), they can only review the work that has been done, not work that hasn't.

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Both my girls had the MMR and have not had any problems but it does happen so I don't know how they can say that it doesn't. How do you explain to the parent whose child was fine and then after the jab wasn't? I can't see them all being a coincidence. There is a risk I think, however small, but for me the risk of diseases outweighed the jab sp I had them done.

But, there are families who claim and have been compensated for by the government, that MMR caused their child damage. There was a lady on GMTV yesterday stating they don't ask about the cases like hers or the statistics, they still say it's safe, whereas she and unfortunately others know that it sometimes isn't.

its an interesting article. Unfortunately because Wakefield made such a fuss on so little evidence it made it more difficult for anyone to investigate what may be a risk for a few children. If I had a child who had problems with their immune system, especially if they had digestive problesm, I might still delay vaccinating them. The vaccine is much safer for the vast majority of children but that doesn't mean there aren't a very small number where more caution is needed.

Yes and the authors say that I think edam (that its a review not an expt).

Also as far as I can tell- the study's they have looked at do not test the Wakefielkd hypothesis that a small number of children are affected- the numbers affected are too small to be picked up in the studies that have been reviewed- they cannot be picked up unless you examine them directly.

Also they do not consider the role that "priming" the immune system with thimerosal has. The latest hypothesis is that some children are unable to cope with the thimerosal that was in the baby jabs and that the trigger causing regression is the live virus (in the MMR or naturally).

They also have the problem that a lot of parents have seen thier children have very big seizures within days of the MMR, then regress- they have been told by paeds that MMR was probably the trigger, but there are no studies on them so they don't exist. A recent study did show that parents are very accurate a reporting age of regression (ie they didn;t just not notice that their child was autistic as is often stated).

The cochrane report confirms what has been known for a while- MMR is safe for the majority of children. Well boogalloo and fabaroo for you. Doesn't alter the fact that I sat next to someone yesterday watching her 6 year old non-verbal son at his harvest festival- or that her son was developing normally until 24 hours after MMR when he had a massive seizure and following that regressed. Until they start looking at children like that the studies are pretty irrelevent. So there aren't many kids like him aroiund? Doesn't mean he dosn't deserve recognition.

edam I'm parping myself- keep me off this thread please.

Wakefield made a mistake initially- he thought that potentially a large number of children were being affected- which was why he suggested single vaccines. I think he was nieve about the political ramifications (after all he never said don't vaccinate- just use an alternative). He did that because he had tried to talk to the dept of health and they refused to losten to him.

At the time he was highly respected. He was one of the uk's top gastroenterologists. He obviously had no idea that his credibility would be systematically destroyed. So why did he do it? For the nobel prize? Hmm maybe. Or perhaps more likely because the word had got out that there was a sympathetic gastroeterologist out there who was willing to treat autistic children with gut problems, and so he had family after family approaching him. The children he was seeing were severely autistic and often in a lot of pain (untreated). He found that worryingly these children had certain similarities and had no idea how many others were out there. He trid official channels, got nowhere, so went public with recommending single jabs. They could have been provided there and then by the dept of health whilst clarifying research was done. The fiasco was not caused by Wakefield alone.

So what is he? Massive egomaniac who sets out to destroy the drugs company. Or politically nieve dr who listens to parents and believes what he swees with his own eyes.

PS Japan uses the MMR - it was withdrawn for a short while because the strain in use was causing meningitis.

"The design and reporting of safety outcomes in MMR vaccine studies, both pre- and post-marketing, are largely inadequate. The evidence of adverse events following immunisation with MMR cannot be separated from its role in preventing the target diseases."

This btw is the only Cochrane conclusion I can find on the MMR- it's dated 2005 but can't be the one the media is bleating about surely? very selective reporting if so- surely even in the anti-Wakefield climate the reporting couldn't be that selective?

bakabat, don't get drawn in! (is that helpful enough?)

Think your posts have been intelligent, to the point and concise as usual but you know it isn't good for you to get too involved with these threads....

HTH

edam

Interesting discussion. Bakabat - do you think the incidence of autism will drop now thiomersal removed from vaccines or are you only talking about a very small subset of children?

cheers Edam

I am interested though- I've searched the Cochrane library (like you I think it's very good) and the only MMR report I can find says that the safety studies were crap,the keeping of records/ reporting of adverse reactions is crap, but that it is undoubtably very good at preventing measles, mumps and rubella and so given that the link between autism is nor proven should on balance still be used. It also interestingly says this: "We found only limited evidence of the safety of MMR compared to its single component vaccines from studies that had a low risk of bias"

So how the F* does that report get to the mudslinging in the press?Do these people not read the report? Or do they just lie?

And why the smugness? What is there to be smug about? There are still children out there non-verbal smearing shit on thew walls? So what we all feel smug because actually the fact they had massive seizures within 24 hours of MMR is coincidence ( yeah right). Empathy 'aint just lacking in autistics.

And you're right Edam I'm off.

sorry, been looking for the original news report. Apparently this was an independent review of 31 studies - they began with 139 but discarded more than 100 because of the possibility of bias or error.

here

"Vittorio Demicheli, of the Servizo Sovrazonale di Epidemilogica in Allesandria, Italy, who led the review of 31 studies, said: "We conclude that all the major unintended events, such as triggering Crohn's disease or autism, were suspected on the basis of unreliable evidence. Public health decisions need to be based on sound evidence.

"If this principle had been applied in the case of the MMR dispute then we could have avoided all the fuss."

Why. Bakabat, do you get a lot of verbal for your views. I was interested in your info.

blakwidow supposedly it is dropping in California- where thimerosal began to be removed a number of years ago. Very few places keep accurate records of how many autistic children there are- which makes many studies difficult. Read the SN threads - one LEA was staggered this summer to suddenly discover there were far more severely autistic children than they were expecting wanting to start school and there were no places for them. Despite the vfact that being severely autistic these children had been diagnosed for quite some time.

Edam why is Bakabat off?

I'm sorry I have no wish to offend anyone or start a row. I just thought that this was a very interesting (and widely under-reported - haven't heard anything on the BBC for example) review of the evidence in an area of great importance to lots of parents.
I certainly didn't intend to be "smug" about it. It is just helpful to read something large scale, independent and well respected on this issue.

Noooo bakabat isn't off because of anything anyone's said on this thread - just past experience of MMR threads. They've got rather heated.

Please don't either get upset or worry that you've upset anyone else, you haven't. It's to do with the past, not the present.

And bakabat wasn't saying buffy is smug, she was applying that word to the reports and to those leaders in medicine and politics who deny any link between MMR and autism when there is still not sufficient evidence to do that (as she has explained).

Hmmm, I would still tend to believe the immunologist who told me in no uncertain terms (and off the record) that if he had Crohn's Disease (as I do) then there is no way he would allow his children to have the MMR.

Quite CD - the presence of epilepsy in the family used to be seen as a reason not to MMR children but that has now changed, not sure why. As I have epilepsy that's one thing that made me go for single jabs for ds, although I'm pretty sure my epilepsy isn't genetic.

Family history of susceptibility to certain diseases should always be taken into consideration when prescribing any medicine including vaccinations - but if docs don't recognise Crohn's or Colitis or other bowel diseases as a risk factor parents and children are stuffed basically.

Sorry to butt in, but would you include IBS in that or is it a completely different thing?

Sorry Pixel, I really don't know enough about it. But Wakefield found vaccine strain measles in the gut of a handful of autistic children. Some autistic children have gut problems. You really need to talk to someone who knows about more about this but since IBS is inflammatory, I'd want to do a lot more research myself into the link between autism and gut problems if I had IBS and my child was due MMR.

Sorry, that sounds as if I am trying to scare you, and what I'm sure about is that MMR is fine for all but a tiny group of children.

if the suspicion is that thiomersil somehow "primes" the body for regression with MMR is MMR still a risk for anyone now that thiomersil is no longer in most vaccines? And what role can probiotics play in helping gut development? The vast majority of children don't have gut problems and therefore should have MMR without the sort of worries that Wakefield generated. However if a child does have gut problems the decision is harder. Those children are even more at risk if they get measles than if they get the vaccine so it still isn't clear cut. I have seen people suggest that MMR should be delayed, presumably this allows the gut to develop further.

let me share a little story with you all.
first stating my dd did have the MMR and it totally fine and i'm not saying that the MMR doesn't cause autism or other things but listen to this.

I went into premerature labour with dd at 26 weeks but was lucky that they managed to stop the labour and she was born at 38 weeks with no problems.

However when she should have been reaching her milestone i.e sitting / crawlnig etc she wasn't so after various trips to the doctrs she was refered to the paed for an assesemnt.

At this time her MMR was due we we're told by our HV to hold off till after the appointment.

DD was diagonised with Cerebal Palsy and asked wether had the MMR explained how we decided to hold off till after this visit - and it was decided the damage was probly done when i went to labour at 26 weeks - how ever if she had have had the MMR the cause for the CP would have been noted as the MMR's fault as that seemed the obvios cause looking at it all.

SO my point is how many other children have problems before getting diagonised have the MMR and the MMR gets blamed.

fairydust- a recent research paper looked at whether parents were accurate at recording whether their autistic child had regressed, or had signs since birth, and also whether they were recording when the regression began. They were.