Can the MMR or other vac ever cause autism?

[StarlightMcKenzie]

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

Beachcomber, you're right, it could be serious. But, I've read the Hooker paper. As I mentioned upthread, my first question was 'what were the sample sizes?'.

What is completely inexplicable is the complete absence of sample sizes in the analysis. (Unless someone can tell me where they are?) Why would they not include this? The original paper (of which I've only been able to access the abstract) was quite clear about the number of children in each cohort. It's a fairly standard thing to state. It reassures people that any statistical analysis you are about to complete is on a large enough sample to draw valid conclusions. The only time sample size seems to be mentioned in the paper is to mention that analysis couldn't be completed at some points due to fewer than five children in a particular group. This does not boost confidence.

It is reasonable to be concerned that if you take a reasonably sized sample of children and then reduce it to not just African American children, but male African American children that you might have lost a large enough number to render analysis inaccurate.

The only accusations I could find about 'losing data' was restricting some analysis to those children with a Georgia birth certificate (with given reasons), but the abstract seemed to also give results for the whole sample so I'm not sure what the problem was.

I can also understand that scientists might disagree about whether to include a comment about African American boys in their write up, if sample size (as I suspect) was an issue.

I would be interested to see what an independent statistician (who does this sort of thing for a living) makes of the data. However, I am disappointed that Hooker, who has clear conflicts of interest and is not a statistician chose to do the analysis himself.

Oh, and the comment upthread about how if you go fishing about in any data set long enough you'll be able to find a subgroup with non-average results is also a damning point regarding this analysis.

Noble, the point is that the numbers being talked about originally are very small. Iirc, Wakefield was talking about potentially 7% of regressive autism - a tiny number when compared with the total number of autism cases.

There is more than one route into autism. Some of the subgroups are tiny! by definition.

This has never been about all autisms (which is how so many so called follow up studies were able to confidently declare 'nope, not happening', because they were looking in the wrong place, and were able to do this easily, as the 'right' place is quite narrowly defined)

Panda, if you take any population and fish about in it, you'll find small subgroups who present as higher or lower than any given average. That's not exciting, that's just how averages work.

Oh, well, that must be ok then.

A small number of people possibly react in an adverse way to a (in part) unnecessary vaccination (unnecessary because other solutions are possible). But that's ok because there will always be a small group who react in an adverse way. So we shouldn't investigate it, or try to find a way around it, or even fucking acknowledge it because - it's not exciting.

Could you try any harder to sweep it under the carpet?

No one (well, no one whose opinion is worth anything) has ever said this is about huge numbers of children. That doesn't mean it a) doesn't exist or b) isn't worth investigating.

That is NOT the same thing as looking and looking and looking until you find something (anything!) to hang your hat on.

Do you even know how Wakefield came across the subgroup he originally wrote about? He didn't go searching - they searched for him. Because he was the only person who would even try to help their children. And because he tried to help, word spread. And he had more parents seeking him out, searching for a clue as to what happened to their children, desperate to try to help them.

And then he noticed similarities in cases. Cases which were brought to him. He didn't need to ignore subgroups and populations - he had it all I front of him. And the deeper he looked, the more similarities he found, still not in huge numbers, but since when did it become necessary to have huge numbers affected by something before it is investigated?

Shrugging your shoulders and arguing that it is only a few children affected - of course you'll find a few if you look hard enough, etc - is dangerously close to suggesting that collateral damage is ok.

Btw, unless you have take a. Child to a doctor - ill and in pain, and been turned away because 'well, that's autism, isn't it?' (Err, no. No diagnostic criteria for severe pain and illness in the commonly accepted Triad) then please don't even begin to posture on how/why those parents sought out Wakefield.

I have. I have take an ill child, in severe pain, to a doctor, and been told to accept the symptoms because 'lots of children with autism suffer similar'

Righto. No need to look into that then, is there ( the reason it wasn't being looked into was because the results of those medical investigations might start to add evidence to what Wakefield found and wrote about originally - far better to leave the children in extreme pain, because that way, Wakefield,continued to be the discredited doctor. The maverick, who talked nonsense, and invented symptoms and magicked up illnesses so he could medically experiment on children )

This whole mess is so rotten you could smell it from the moon. But oh no. It's all fine, because the law of averages says that of course a few children will be affected - be need to try to cut those numbers down at all, because statistically they should exist - how fucked up is that?

NobleGiraffe - about 22 autistic black boys according to Matt Carey's analysis on LBRB - I have read the Hooker paper and it is piss poor in terms of details. I have also read the original study and it does discuss the increased risk in black kids and the potential confounders.

And Pandas - the first parents sought out Wakefield because their lawyer told them so.

That's not what I said at all. I didn't say anything about a small group of children being adversely affected being fine.

What I meant was if you have a large population of people, and a bunch of them have autism, and you go fishing around in that group you will find subgroups of that total population with more people in the autism group than you would expect. So say 20% of the population is autistic. You look at people whose name starts with the letter J and find that 20% of the people whose name starts with the letter J have autism. Fine. Then you look at people whose name starts with the letter X and you find 50% of them have autism. Shit, it looks like you've got a higher risk of autism if your name starts with an X. You could then do a massive study of people whose name starts with an X and try to find out why they have a higher risk of autism. Is it a social class thing?
Another scientist could look at the same data and say 'well, there were only 4 people whose name started with X, and only 2 of them had autism, so it's just random fluctuations in the data, as you might expect when you are dealing with such small samples, that's not worthy of further investigation and in fact it's not even worthy of note.'

The second scientist is certainly not guilty of covering up the truth about people whose name starts with an X and autism. The first scientist might get flustered about the social class thing and really wish it had been mentioned and investigated further. But the data doesn't warrant the fuss.

That's why I'm failing to be outraged. I'm not saying that's what's happened here, I certainly don't have enough information. But there do seem to be concerns about the validity of Hooker's analysis so I don't think you can leap to conclusions of cover-up, fraud and dishonesty just yet.

Noble, the original paper's author has said he was complicit in suppressing the data which was inconvenient to them (ie the data which suggested a link).

How much more proof do you need that there was fraud and dishonesty?!

A Dr who authored a paper has stepped up and said that he helped cover up the real findings. Um, that seems to suggest a cover-up to me.

Catherina - really? You are saying that Wakefield didn't see patients because of his reputation as a gastrointestinal doctor? You are seriously misinformed.

Noble explains it very well.

22 kids? Bloody hell, no wonder he didn't mention that in his report.

Panda, the paper examined both the total sample and the birth certificate subset. I don't understand how you can cover something up and suppress data, while simultaneously analysing it and presenting it in your research.

Panda, it's entirely possible that Thompson is just rubbish at statistics and doesn't understand how to correctly analyse data. He might think this, that and the other about how they dealt with the data but just be wrong.

Scientists being crap at analysing their own data isn't uncommon.

Talking about scientists being crap at statistics and data analysis, if Hooker really did take a group of 22, split it down further into subgroups based on age of MMR and then draw sensational conclusions from this about what causes autism, he'd definitely fall into that category.

yep, noble. Far more likely that Thompson is crap at statistics, and completely misunderstood a) what he was putting his name to originally and b) what he is now saying, than he is now speaking the truth.

As for not understanding the cover up - and yet you are suggesting it is thompson who has a weak grasp on handling and manipulating data?

And once more (is there anyone who can actually read this - it always seems to appear in the invisible ink that Beach's posts also appear in ) no one has ever said (apart form those denying it is possible) that MMR causes autism. The hard of reading would do well to understand that first of all, before trying to understand the slightly more complex stuff.

Zippey that waz quite offensive and unnecessary if in return to my post.

Panda, why do you think Hooker failed to mention the size of the sample in his analysis? Something which is vital when doing statistical analysis?

actually Hooker's sycophants are in hysterics that here is the "final proof" that MMR causes autism - the "thinking" moms tweeted pictures of their (lily white) children "before" and "after"... this whole thing is travesty and it will turn out that Xavier and Xander's mommies were poor and didn't have the money to enrol their boys into kindy, they didn't have health insurance, hence Xavier and Xander did not get the MMR and were not diagnosed with autism, while Xerxes and Xylon's mommy were older, had higher education (we know that from the original paper), therefore were working, had health insurance, got their boys the MMR on time and their autism was diagnosed because they attended a preschool programme with caregivers recognising the signs of developmental disability. The original paper should have followed this "blip" up, I agree about that btw, but there is no scandal here, apart from the scandal of unequal health care access in the US.

no one has ever said (apart form those denying it is possible) that MMR causes autism. The hard of reading would do well to understand that first of all, before trying to understand the slightly more complex stuff.

I just watched a video where Hooker said:
He [Thompson] knows that he is culpable of the permanent damage of a significant proportion of the population of the United States.

No pussy-footing around what he really thinks there, eh?

Catherina, I don't understand the point you are making about health insurance. Vaccines are provided free of charge to children who are not covered by health insurance under the VFC program.

I just googled the VFC programme.

"Your State or Territory Health Department is responsible for managing the VFC Program where you reside. Each State or Territory has a VFC Program Coordinator that is responsible for enrolling providers and monitoring the provider's participation in the program. For help with locating a VFC enrolled provider near your home, please consult the complete list of State/Territory VFC Coordinators and contact your State/Territory VFC Coordinator.
Top of Page
Q: Do I have to pay anything?
A: If your child meets one of the VFC eligibility criteria listed above, the vaccine must always be provided free of charge.
Free of charge means just that. The vaccines have already been paid for with federal tax dollars. This means that no one can charge a fee for the vaccine itself.
However, each state immunization provider has been granted (by law) the ability to charge what is called an "administrative fee." An administrative fee is similar to a patient's co-pay, in that it helps providers offset their costs of doing business.
The amount of the administrative fee differs from state to state, based on a regional scale determined by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).
These regional administrative charges are maximum fees that providers may ask patients to pay. That means that if a state's administrative fee is $15.00, a provider may charge a patient any amount up to, but not exceeding that $15.00 charge, for each vaccine administered. There is no lower limit, so providers have the option to charge what they feel is fair, including no charge at all."

So not necessarily free, and certainly sounds quite complicated to find out where you can get the vaccines done. All barriers to the poorer families.

You know what makes me sick about this whole thing? It is that when data is declared to be able to dismiss any safety concerns about MMR that data is unquestionably accepted and embraced and touted and lauded. When the same fucking data is considered to suggest a potential safety issue for a population subgroup, suddenly the data is insignificant and the cohort is too small.

The intellectual hypocrisy makes me sick. People lap up the DeStefano study with its small numbers which are declared as meaning MMR is safe for all. But when the same numbers are analysed and the result is not what people want to hear and believe, suddenly the numbers are too small and insignificant.

Those of you saying that the numbers in Dr Hooker's paper are too small, well, I hope you have always rejected the DeStefano paper on the same basis. Otherwise you are dishonest hypocrites because the data is the same (except it is actually not because DeStefano reduced their numbers by 41% in order to dilute their findings). If you reject Hooker for small numbers, you must in all honesty reject DeStefano too. And that has serious implications for the conclusions of the Omnibus Proceedings...Think about it.

What are you on about? The original paper had a sample of hundreds of kids. Hooker was only looking at the ones out of the hundreds who were black boys, which, if the figures upthread are true was in the twenties. Massive difference in sample size.

Noble, if they want a high level of coverage then it's in their best interest to ensure that the vaccines are obtainable. That was the purpose of the program and it has been effective.