Can the MMR or other vac ever cause autism?

[StarlightMcKenzie]

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/25114790/

"And at 36 months, an exposure around that time period is just not biologically plausible to have a uh, uh, a causal association with autism. I mean autism would’ve already started by then. [I me?] I reiterate it probably starts in the womb, but even if you’re saying, you wanna call it starting by the time some behavioral features become apparent, it had started before 36 months. And then, you know, we, from, so I think from a biological argument, it’s implausible this was a causal association."

You don't find that a bit concerning?

No, I understand what he is saying. They had this result in the 3-5 year old age group to explain. Is a causal connection with MMR biologically plausible? Well, they explain in the paper why this suggestion was rejected in favour of the education programme one.

So ignoring the politics which I haven't followed what could be a plausible reason why vaccination apparently increases autism rates in this subpopulation when vaccinated at less than 36 months as oppose to less than 18 months which if I take the OR at face value it may even have a protective effect. Wouldn't you expect the reverse - more impact the younger the child is.

Infact for many of the subpopulations - age of mother, education of mother, birthweight - you see the same thing OR of below 1 at less than 24 months and OR of greater than 1 at less than 36 months.

It sounds to me like a statistical fluke and indeed more likely to be caused by coincidence (enrollment).
It's a very narrow age group and any vaccine effects should have been noticed in older groups as well.
Then, the sample is small and even with very good statistics, the error margins we are prepared to accept mean that some results that should be rejected will seem acceptable. If we accept an error of 5%, 5 in 100 results should have been discarded. Even at an error of 1%, 1 in 100 results should have been discarded.
That is why new data is important. It doesn't matter if you analyse the same data in 1000s of different ways. Researchers should get new data, from different samples to validate previous findings.

Then, and this is still important, although largely ignored in the papers and here, although there is a huge discussion about how race was ascertained, there is no bloody "race", let alone a single "black" genetic group. I'd be very weary of using any results for a disease with a strong genetic component without properly controlling for genetic effects and biases.

This result sounds to me like people finding the face of Jesus in some shadows in photos of the Moon or Mars. If you look at enough pictures you will notice a pattern that matches something you are familiar with. It still doesn't mean that the face of Jesus is indeed drawn on the surface of the Moon or Mars.

Well I have to admit the confidence limits on the data did make me smirk! To be honest the investigators should have established what difference would be considered important and what group size was required to be able to detect this difference with statistical significance as part of their study design. In reality of course experiments are driven by the resources and equipment available rather than what you would ideally do.

If Hooker only found a difference in the timing of autism diagnosis, I'm assuming he found no difference in the overall incidence of autism, then?

ie MMR vaccination made no difference to a child's overall chances of being diagnosed with autism, only the age at which the diagnosis happened?

Also, two things that occurred to me, reading the thread:

1. I’ll wager that different states’ birth certificates contain different information. If they wanted to compare birth weight/maternal education etc, in a standard way, the only way to do it is really by using the standard data available on georgia BCs.

2. Sadly, it’s pretty easy to explain why African-Americans might have more difficulty accessing healthcare in Georgia, and hence be diagnosed with autism later (unless enrolled in a vaccination program):

Poverty Rate by Race/Ethnicity
Location: Georgia
White:15%
Black: 33%
Hispanic: 36%
Other: 19%
Total: 22%

(Source: kff.org/other/state-indicator/poverty-rate-by-raceethnicity)

exactly BOB - the average income of a black family in Atlanta is a third of that of a white family (about $26000, so well under £20k).

OK noblegiraffe, I think I understand your position.

You are quite happy with CDC scientist, DeStefano, whose job here was to gather and examine epidemiological data, having decided in his head that there was no clinical possibility for one of the possible outcomes that data could have shown, and that if the data did suggest something he didn't like, he would interpret the data to say something that fitted in with his world view or what he has decided he knows about autism - a condition about which there are massive gaps in our knowledge and in which DeStefano is not an expert. Autism is not his field. Vaccines are. Or more specifically, proving that vaccines don't cause adverse reactions is his chosen field.

You are happy to ignore/explain away CDC scientist, Thompson, admitting that they dishonestly manipulated data and that they did not respect their study protocol.

You are quite happy to dismiss Hooker finding the results that Thompson said they had buried.

And you are quite happy with this, despite the topic being studied being the major medical controversy of our time.

As I said, upthread, that isn't good enough for me. I think what Thompson has said and what Hooker says he has found, need investigated.

And now, according to you, Sharyl Attkisson is dishonest too

She provides the interview transcript and recording here. DeStefano's answer about autism starting in the womb is part of a long response to her saying the following (which for some reason you didn't provide, nor did you link to your source);

Attkisson: Ok. Does is it a valid way of you know, you guys, scientists decide things before papers are published, of course, you use your own judgment on things, but isn’t there a way, is there a valid way to look at it the way Thompson is, where he thinks, apparently, that the larger group without the birth certificates was reason for concern and something that should have been reported? To me, as just as a layperson, I would like to know that– even if, even if it culled out when you, when you got the group down through the birth certificates, I would, I still think it would be pretty important to know…

Someone needs to tell DeStefano to put a sock in it. The more he says the worse it gets.

This for example;

DeStefano: I’m, I’m not aware of any data would, that would s–, you know, that would say that, uh, you would have, um, onset of autism after 36 months.

(It's called regressive autism. A CDC vaccine expert should have heard of it. Especially if he is going to 'interpret' data according to his knowledge of autism.)

BoulevardOfBrokenSleep where are you getting this from?

If Hooker only found a difference in the timing of autism diagnosis, I'm assuming he found no difference in the overall incidence of autism, then?

Hooker was using the DeStefano data. They didn't have solid information on the timing of diagnosis and they didn't examine that. They say so in their paper.

I think you should read both the papers before making assumptions. Both Hooker and DeStefano looked at timing of MMR and incidence of autism, not timing of autism diagnosis.

Beachcomber, have you read this?

leftbrainrightbrain.co.uk/2014/09/01/if-this-is-what-keeps-a-cdc-researcher-up-at-night-how-would-they-ever-keep-a-huge-conspiracy-going/

Hooker was using the DeStefano data. They didn't have solid information on the timing of diagnosis and they didn't examine that. They say so in their paper.

I think you should read both the papers before making assumptions. Both Hooker and DeStefano looked at timing of MMR and incidence of autism, not timing of autism diagnosis.

And that is another major flaw if we want to look at vaccines as possible causes of autism.

Criteria for cause and effect (from Koch's postulates and there after) state that the cause must pre-date the effect.

This was a tiny link, in a very small age range, for a small population size and the age at MMR is too wide, IMO.
So, what they have shown is that there is association, for this, but association does not mean cause in any way.

I've read it now CatherinaJTV.

It's some blogger's opinion. And......????

thank you for reading - that is really all I can ask for. Matt Carey is giving his educated opinion, as a very well published scientist and father of a mixed race, profoundly disabled autistic child. I felt his post further illustrated the absurdity and level of insult of Hooker's claims.

Yeah, I know who Matt Carey is. He commented for years on LBRB under the name 'Sullivan'. I believe he is also a member of the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee.

The blog post from him that you link to is just an opinion piece - and one that doesn't surprise me in the least coming from Carey. I read it because I follow links and read them - I thought it might actually contain some information or a news update on the situation.

You are quite happy with CDC scientist, DeStefano, whose job here was to gather and examine epidemiological data, having decided in his head that there was no clinical possibility for one of the possible outcomes that data could have shown, and that if the data did suggest something he didn't like, he would interpret the data to say something that fitted in with his world view

Having read the paper and seen the findings, which related to children who were aged 3-5 but not 6-10, and who received the vaccine before 36 months but after 24 months I think it was reasonable for Destefano and his team to state that they thought this was more likely due to children with autism in that age category having to enrol in pre-school programmes which required vaccination - the autism causing the vaccination, if you will.
If, on the other hand, you wanted to go for the vaccines causing the autism hypothesis that you seem to favour, you would need to explain why the association was seen in one age group but not the other, and why the vaccine only caused autism in children if they were vaccinated after 24 months, rather than before 24 months. How would you explain that, with biological reasoning?

And now, according to you, Sharyl Attkisson is dishonest too

At the least she was very misleading in how she put her article together.

And with onset of autism after 36 months, it says in the DeStefano paper, the DSM IV states that symptoms must be observed before the age of 3 for a diagnosis of autism.

Sharyl Attkisson is a known anti-vaccine supporter - she is also lazy as hell. That interview with DeStefano was the first original thing she posted in a while, previous contributions lifted more or less straight from Age of Autism.

Is she now? Well now her misleading approach makes sense.

Sorry, Beachcomber, i misread their rather oddly-phrased conclusion, '....African American males receiving the MMR vaccine prior to 24 months of age or 36 months of age are more likely to receive an autism diagnosis.'

Also, I'm not an expert, but are you really sure that regressive autism can start as late as age 3?

noblegiraffe scienceblogs.com/insolence/2014/05/27/antivaccine-journalist-sharyl-attkisson-tries-once-again-to-convince-us-that-vaccines-cause-autism/

Multiple Emmy award winner, Sharyl Attkisson is 'lazy as hell'. Yes, of course she is.

The DSM used to specify age 3 as the limit for an autism diagnosis. There is no actual specified cut off point now and it is accepted that regression can start later than 36 months. They changed the 36 month cut off because we see children who clearly have autism but whose onset was after 36 months - there was no valid reason for not giving them an autism diagnosis. DeStefano should know that. To be fair to him, effectively, at the time of the paper, the DSM cut off was 36 months. We are constantly learning things about autism - which is why it is better for scientists to present their data and findings without leaving stuff out that doesn't fit in with what we think we know or what we expect. It is also the reason why it is better for scientists to not base the conclusions of scientific papers on unfounded 'interpretations' that are not supported by the data and which lead to them leaving out data that could be important or lead to better understanding of a condition - especially one as complicated and little understood as autism...

of late, she has been, or why would she regurgitate the "the Amish have no autism" fairytale of Dan Olmsted?

I think it was reasonable for Destefano and his team to state that they thought this was more likely due to children with autism in that age category having to enrol in pre-school programmes which required vaccination - the autism causing the vaccination, if you will.

I don't entirely disagree with you - the problem I have is that as Hooker says;

it is highly unlikely that this type of behavior would be seen exclusively in African American males and thus, alternative hypotheses must be explored, including the possibility that the MMR vaccine may be causally linked to autism in African American males.

If the affect they had seen had been in all racial categories then their assumption about the autism causing the vaccination, although not entirely scientific, would have been reasonable enough (although perhaps lacking in rigor and scientific curiosity).

Which is why their conclusion and interpretation of the data only works once they got rid of the non birth certificate group - which is what Thompson said they did. As I said earlier if they had left the full group in, detected an effect in African American males, but in no-one else, and then tried to conclude that this was simply down to pre-school vaccine requirements, any sensible reader of their paper would be making a face like this

BTW, they did have fairly complete information on race for nearly all the children who didn't have Georgia birth certificates (they state in the paper that they obtained information on race, gender, etc from school registration forms for children who didn't have Georgia birth certificates). Maternal age, Maternal education, Birth weight, Multiplicity and Parity are the categories of info specified by them as to have come from birth certificates.

If they knew that they were going to exclude children who didn't have Georgia birth certificates from aspects of the study, why did they bother to enroll them in the first place? I hope it was in their protocol that they were going to enroll them and then exclude them. They were only missing data on race from 21 children - why not just exclude those 21 from the racial subgroup analysis, I mean, rather than exclude ALL the non Georgia birth certificate group? Why bother to enroll children, have the info you need about them but then exclude them??

You have misread the table. They were missing race data for 21 autistic children, and 96 control children. So 117 children were missing race data, which, as they said in the paper, was an appreciable amount.

You have also missed the point that the finding for 3-5 year olds vaccinated between 24 and 36 months was found in the data for the whole cohort, and for the birth cert sample, which was adjusted to account for other factors, The finding for black children found in the whole cohort (which was missing over 100 records of race data) disappeared in the birth cert sample, when adjusted for other factors.

Why would one finding disappear when adjusted for other factors and the other finding persist despite being controlled for other factors?

I would suggest it was because one of the findings actually flagged a relationship between the age of MMR being administered and autism - the relationship between having a diagnosis, being enrolled in a pre-school program for children with autism, and being required to be vaccinated to do so.
The other finding disappeared because the adjusted birth cert data which accounted for other effects and wasn't missing any race data, because it didn't flag a link (when other factors were taken into account) between age of MMR and autism.