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Original poster

"MMR-Autism link is dismissed - again"

89 replies

CoteDAzur · 05/02/2008 22:15

That is the title of the article anyway.

If there are any doctors among us, could they explain why the study was looking for a "raised concentration of measles antibodies"? What was that supposed to show?

And how come none of the autistic children in the test group had any 'bowel symptoms'?

OP posts:
Original poster
CoteDAzur · 06/02/2008 18:26

My understanding of Wakefield's study is limited to what I saw in the film on his study of the autistic kids that was on by coincidence as I was vegetating resting after the amnio.

Even I can tell you that Wakefield's hypothesis was about kids with gut problems.

Re this latest study, I agree with yurt, there IS idiocy in there somewhere. If not with the scientists who originally formulated the hypothesis to be tested and selected a group of autist kids NONE of whom had gut problems, then with the newspapers that present it as proof that "MMR-Autism link dismissed".

OP posts:
yurt1 · 06/02/2008 18:36

The study hasn't been published yet which is why I can't find the authors. And why I half suspect Elizabeth Miller is involved. All her studies are like this - they forget to look at the correct group- and they're all 'pre-released' with headlines like the one in the link.

I probably shouldn't call these people idiots, but I honestly can't believe that they don't understand Wakefield's hypothesis. So I just don't understand why this sort of research (and it's study after study) gets done. What is the point of it, what is it actually telling us? And why is it being 'marketed' as proving that MMR doesn't trigger autism when it hasn't remotely addressed the question.

Honestly I don't know whether MMR causes autism. I must admit I strongly suspect that is acts as a trigger in a small number of cases. I would love to see scientists at the health protection agency doing sensible research in this area as it would show they were taking the concerns seriously, but I don't understand why they're doing this. It does suggest that they don't understand the hypothesis. Which I do find frightening.

Anyway I look forward to reading it when it's finally published.

pagwatch · 06/02/2008 18:36

My son was in that. actually they both were. But one was acting as autistic and the other is autistic.

yurt1 · 06/02/2008 18:38

My friend's son was in that as well pagwatch.....! Her 2 sons.....

yurt1 · 06/02/2008 18:38

Was your non-autistic son the main character? He was very good.

pagwatch · 06/02/2008 18:44

noo. He wasn'tthe main character. He was fantastic wasn't he !
No DS1 was the first boy introduced to Wakefield.

God - don't you just love it when you find that you know all the same people and mix in similar circles }. ASd as the social clique.
You friend isn't a fantastic ballsy writer of cook books is she?

yurt1 · 06/02/2008 18:48

Oh he was good too! Sniffing books? ds1 does exactly that!

yes indeedy!!! Online friend really, but have 'known' her for years (from pre-diagnosis- a great bunch of people including her and OnlyJoking who made the whole process much easier)

hecticmum · 06/02/2008 18:48

Out of interest, seeing as the main crux of the argument about there being no link seems to boil down to autism showing at the same time as the MMR jab anyway.... has anyone anywhere bothered to do a study to find out about all the children who either had the jabs far later than they were due or haven't had them at all and the incidence (and type) of autism in those children? That wouldn't be conclusive either way but it would certainly be interesting.

pagwatch · 06/02/2008 18:54

Oh we love her!!!
She and I meet up once or twice a year. Her DS2 gets on well with my eldest and DS1 is in love with my DD. Has a picture of her by his bed .

She is fantastic and her help in the early days pulled me through.
....must call her.

DS1 did about ten takes of that sniffing scene and Ihad to ask the director to stop because he was getting more 'into it' each take. The sniffing was his idea as well. He wanted to get it right.
Made me disproportionately happy that you know her ! how bizarre I am !

SenoraPancake · 06/02/2008 18:57

hecticmum - the argument for no link isn't centered around the time of the jab, but on the results of several large epidemiological studies which analysed the incidence of autism in mmr'd and un-mmr'd children. as far as I know, none has yet found any evidence of a greater incidence of autism in children who have received mmr.

pagwatch · 06/02/2008 18:57

hecticmum
but it isn't just a coincidence of timing! My son had his at 18 months and lost nearly all his gained developmental skills. He regressed and developed bowel problems exactly in tandem with that regression.

And in spite of being one of the regressive kids whose Dr noted him as NT before jab and altered after no one has ever asked me for any information .

yurt1 · 06/02/2008 19:07

It is a small community pagwatch. I was at my friend's house a few months ago and someone rang and they chatted for a while- they live hundreds of miles apart. When she out the phone down we discovered I knew the person she was talking to as well (she's visited me etc).

Aww that's sweet about your dd

The sniffing was spot on!

yurt1 · 06/02/2008 19:08

But SenoraPancake- you wouldn't expect to find a greater incidence when such a small subgroup is affected. That's the problem with epidemiological studies. All they tell us is that MMR is safe for most children.

hecticmum · 06/02/2008 19:15

pagwatch, I'm not saying it is the timing, but a lot of people do pass it off as that. The problem that a lot of people have is that even in un-mmr'd children, autism seems to surface at around the same times as the mmr jab is normally given, making it hard for them to believe the parents who state that their children changed after the mmr jab, rather than that being a coincidence.

However, if children who'd had the jab much later were studied in detail, that would discount the 'coincidence' theory and if it showed a higher incidence of autism at the age where it wasn't likely to show anyway, that could make a stronger point towards the jab.

stuffitall · 06/02/2008 19:19

I think one of the problems is that the new type of "regressive" autism, which I think pagwatch is talking about, (hi pagwatch) is also said to be coincidental with the jab. But the coincidence always happens after the jab and not before.

yurt1 · 06/02/2008 19:21

A child who regressed after a late vaccination wouldn't be diagnosed with autism though as by definition it arises within a certain time frame. Catastrophic regressions in older children are generally diagnosed as childhood disintegrative disorder. Also the numbers affected are tiny. So there will be very few children to look at in a epidemiological study. And you need accurate records (which is tricky),.

hecticmum · 06/02/2008 19:22

So if they looked into enough children who, for whatever reason, had the jab much later, eg missed the first one and only had it at 4 or something, then that could prove to be telling, either if they found no children (in that 'late' group) with that type of autism or if they found the same incidence as the ones who'd had the jab at the 'normal' time.

yurt1 · 06/02/2008 19:23

The medics talk about autism not being idenitifiable before 18 months- which having watched 2 children hawk like I would agree to an extent. But a regression is easy to spot. A child loses words for example, hey they're talking oh now they're not. The child I know who had a big regression following MMR had massive seizures as well. It's different from not really knowing for sure when they're little.

yurt1 · 06/02/2008 19:24

But a child regressing to become non-verbal for example at 4 wouldn't be diagnosed with autism

hecticmum · 06/02/2008 19:25

crossed posts yurt, I didn't realise that about how the diagnoses were interpreted, sorry.

stuffitall · 06/02/2008 19:27

Yurt that's interesting. One epidemiological study I read, which dismissed a link, studied children immunised from about 1991 to 1999. They then counted the cases of autism diagnoses in vaccinated and unvaccinated and found more or less no difference.

But the study shows how easily statistics can be manipulated. The average age of immunisation was about 18-20 months and the average age of diagnosis was about 4.9 (I guess entering formal schooling). So there was a tranche of children in the last roughly three years of the study who had been vaccinated but not diagnosed.

But it takes time and interest to do that kind of analysis, and it would have been released to the press and reported "clean" in the media -- "New study of x thousand children shows no link".

This is why I find it very difficult to trust the studies like the one in the OP. I don't know enough about it, but I feel I know that the questions have not been answered.

SenoraPancake · 06/02/2008 19:28

no, all epidemiological studies look for tiny, but statistically significant differences. A study of a decent size should find a link where one exists, even if the additional liklihood of developing autism is a fraction of a percentage point.

stuffitall · 06/02/2008 19:29

senora are you responding to my post? not sure

SenoraPancake · 06/02/2008 19:30

no, the previous post.

yurt1 · 06/02/2008 19:44

TBut they don't have sufficient power to detect a 7% subgroup. Even Taylor's paper (the North London one) actually says in its conclusions that they can't rule out the possibility of a rare idiosyncratic response to the MMR, and if MMR is triggering 7% of cases of autism then that's exactly what it is.

Asides from that every epidemiological study published has problems. I'm not going to go through every epidemiological study because that's dull and boring even for me (and anyway I don't have time) but take the often cited Danish paper. Before adjustments for things like birthweight, mother's education etc the rate of autism was actually 45% higher in the MMR'd versus the none MMR'd children (after adjustments it was non significantly lower in the MMRd children). The average age of diagnosis in Denmark is 5 but the study included children who were not yet 2. The lead researcher on the Danish study has said 'MMR is not one of the common causes of autism. BUt we cannot prove anything'. I totally agree with him.

None of the studies has looked at the main hypothesis- that autism is triggered by MMR in a small specific subgroup- they've all looked random selections of children.

Epidemiological studies do not hold the answer. One group was planning to look at the subgroup and then for some reason couldn't (I'm not sure why) so the work just hasn';t been done. It's not a good way to answer such a question with such a variable diagnosis anyway.