It is time to lay to rest the misguided hypothesis that infant vaccines cause autism and instead focus on autism’s actual possible causes, provide more early childhood intervention and give families of individuals with autism sufficient funding for programming and help within the home.
The news out of the United States last week — that three individual lawsuits filed against pharmaceutical makers for using a preservative parents claim is linked with autism had been thrown out — should be the final nail in the coffin of this repeatedly debunked theory. Yet it offers little comfort to parents and families of individuals with autism who are searching for a reason why their children can’t love them or interact as other children do. Poor science offers desperate parents a possible explanation and target on which they can vent their anger, even if it turns out to be wrong.
Last month The Lancet, one of the most respected medical journals in the world, took the rare step of retracting from its published record the 1998 study by Andrew Wakefield that lent credence to the autism/MMR vaccine argument. The study had claimed the vaccine caused colitis, which led to developmental problems such as autism. While the fact Wakefield paid kids at a birthday party for blood samples is bad methodology and unethical, more telling is that no other study has been able to replicate his findings, and that 10 of 13 co-authors on the study have withdrawn their names from it.
The study has also turned out to be dangerous. Besides blaming vaccinations for autism, other parents have refused to vaccinate their children entirely. The results have led to increases in the prevalence of childhood illness these vaccines were designed to fight — in 2007 more than 1,000 cases of measles were diagnosed, starting in the Atlantic provinces and moving westward across Canada. The H1N1 pandemic featured vitriolic debate about whether or not the vaccine against the flu strain was safe.
The rulings in the United States came from three separate cases before the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, which resoundingly rejected the arguments of three families trying to sue pharmaceutical companies for using the mercury-derived preservative thimerosal in vaccines, claiming it caused autism in their children. In all three cases, the Special Masters ruled the evidence in support of their claim failed to support their argument. “Petitioner’s theory of vaccine-related causation is scientifically unsupportable,” one master wrote in his ruling. Another wrote, “the evidence advanced … has fallen far short of demonstrating such a link.”
Those who refuse to believe it claim the government would never let a pharmaceutical company lose when billions are at stake. But as questionable as their actions might be at times, pharmaceutical companies do act in the public interest when their products cause harm. In 2004 Merck & Co. voluntarily recalled Vioxx, a leading nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug because an independent study found a significantly increased risk of heart attack and stroke in those taking it. Before withdrawal, it had brought in $2.5 billion in sales revenue.
Lingering on a cause that has been scientifically disproven does no one any favours, especially those diagnosed with autism. It is time to stop wasting court time, government and private funding on this washed-up theory and start investing in new research to explore other potential causes for autism. It is time for health care practitioners to educate parents about warning signs at a young age so that intervention can begin as early as possible and for government to make more funding for intervention available. It is also time to deal with the here and now; cutting Persons with Developmental Disabilities funding only creates more stress for families with children with autism. Let’s create alternatives instead of excuses. Let’s accept we can’t always know the why of mental illness and rather focus on what is at hand.
