CDC misses target with flawed MMR/Autism Study
NAA says: Wrong question asked. Wrong children studied. Wrong conclusions reached.

            A new study to be published on September 4, 2008 in the online journal Public Library of Science (www.plos.org) validates the ability of PCR technology to detect vaccine-strain measles in the intestines of autistic children and vindicates the quality of the Unigenetics laboratory in Ireland that was the first to identify vaccine measles in autistic children in a study[1] published in 2002.  While this new study does nothing to resolve the controversy whether MMR vaccine has contributed to the autism epidemic (prevalence increased tenfold since the 1980's and now at least 1:150 children in the US), it does help to narrow the search for biomarkers, and it will help the Cedillo and Snyder cases currently pending in vaccine court.

            There are approximately 5000 cases pending in the US Court of Federal Claims (“vaccine court”) alleging that vaccines caused autism.  The Government has already conceded in at least ten cases, the most famous being the recent case of nine-year-old Hannah Poling, that vaccines can cause autism.  The Government advised the vaccine court last February that her autism was caused by “vaccine induced immune stimulation that exceeded metabolic reserves.”  The only remaining question is how many children were affected and what biomarkers or other tests should be used to determine which children are entitled to compensation.  Petitioners’ experts explained that a finding of vaccine-strain measles in the children was sufficient but not necessary evidence of causation.  The Government’s major defense to the “MMR theory” of causation was that the Unigenetics lab was of poor quality and that its results could not be trusted.  Uhlmann and colleagues reported in their 2002 paper that vaccine measles was found in the intestines in 75 of 91 autistics and in only 5 of 70 non-autistic controls relying on PCR testing performed in the Unigenetics lab.  The quality of the Unigenetics lab was confirmed in the present study because each of the three labs analyzing the same samples, including positive and negative controls, reached identical results.  The ability of the Unigenetics lab to accurately identify vaccine-strain measles vindicates the earlier findings.

            The new study, “Lack of Association Between Measles Virus Vaccine and Autism with Enteropathy: a Case-Control Study,” included some of the same authors as the original paper.  The study compared 25 autistic cases to 13 controls with GI pathology, all of whom had received the MMR plus an uncharted number of other vaccines, but only 5 of the 25 autistic cases had both regression and gut pathology following MMR.  Gut biopsies were sent to three labs, Columbia, CDC, and Unigenetics in Ireland, for PCR analysis and sequencing to determine if vaccine-strain measles was present in the gut biopsies.  One autistic case and one control were positive for vaccine strain measles.  The 2002 paper, unlike the present study, examined children in the majority of whom there was a clear temporal link between MMR exposure and regression.  Thus, all that can really be gleaned from the two studies, taken together, is that the persistence of the acute vaccine strain measles infection following MMR which may have triggered the autistic regression was of variable length.

            The present study cannot possibly support a “no association” interpretation.  The study was not designed to answer this question and the cases were not selected that were representative of the particular regressive phenotype of interest, i.e. development of GI pathology and regression following MMR.  Several reasons why this study cannot support a “no association” interpretation include:

            a.  Only five of the autistic “cases” developed GI pathology and regressive autism after MMR, the relevant phenotype of interest.  The question that should have been asked is this: Do normally developing children meeting all milestones have an MMR shot, develop GI problems and then regress into autism? Do they have evidence of measles and disease in their colons compared to NON VACCINATED age and sex matched controls?  Although one of these five children with regressive autism and GI pathology tested positive for vaccine strain measles, the study population is too small for statistically significant conclusions regarding the usefulness of this biomarker in the autistic population at large.

            b.  The time for biopsy is very long after the last MMR, ranging from 24 to 98 months (mean 15) months.  It is impossible to tell from this single snapshot whether the virus has already done its damage and been cleared from the body.  A similar example would be rheumatic fever where the infection is cleared quickly but damage to the heart and/or brain last a lifetime.

            c.  The controls all received the MMR vaccine, so it is possible that the GI pathology in controls, but not the autism, was caused by vaccine measles.  The controls would have to be free of the exposure of interest (vaccine measles), i.e. unvaccinated, in order to make a comparison relevant for purposes of causation.

            Contrary to CDC’s claim, this study does nothing to dispel the growing public concern over a vaccine-autism connection.

            While this study confirms the ability of PCR technology to detect vaccine-strain measles in autistic children and distinguish it from the wild strain, and the accuracy of the work performed in the Unigenetics lab, it does not help resolve the question of whether MMR contributes to the epidemic of autism. 

            The Government has already conceded that vaccines can cause autism.  The debate over how many cases of autism have been caused by vaccines will never be resolved until the health status of vaccinated children is compared with the health of unvaccinated children.  At least 3% of children take advantage of religious and philosophical exemptions and are not vaccinated.  This number has grown dramatically in recent years because of growing concerns over vaccine safety.  Instead of responding to legitimate concerns CDC has instead responded with a stream of propaganda and junk science, “population” level studies that were deliberately designed to avoid the real issue.  In one infamous example, CDC committed scientific fraud by altering the inclusion and exclusion criteria, the protocols, and the data analysis to hide statistically significant findings of vaccine damage, forcing its lead author to publicly withdraw a no-causation interpretation: “The bottom line is and has always been the same: an association between thimerosal and neurological outcomes could neither be confirmed nor refuted, and therefore, more study is required.”

            Vaccines can prevent many of the “routine” childhood diseases, but it is far from clear how many of the more dangerous risks from these diseases have been prevented by modern sanitation and easy access to healthcare in civilized countries. 

            Any medicine, including the vaccine schedule, must be presumed unsafe until its safety can be demonstrated in traditional double-blinded clinical trials in which the health outcomes of treated, i.e. vaccinated, children are compared to those receiving placebo (unvaccinated).  Only with such studies can we know whether the burden of chronic vaccine-caused disease is greater than the benefits from vaccine-preventable diseases.

            Proper safety studies have NEVER been done so the vaccine schedule must be regarded as an unethical mass population experiment.  Findings from an animal model were presented in May at the International Meeting for Autism Research in London.  See http://www.ageofautism.com/2008/05/sick-monkeys-st.html.  This was the first research project to examine effects of the total vaccine load received by children in the 1990s and found autism-like signs and symptoms (including GI pathology) in infant monkeys vaccinated the same way.  The most recent study using CDC data (although looking at mercury rather than MMR) found a statistically significant connection between vaccine mercury and autism and several other neurological disorders such as ADHD.  See http://usautism.org/USAAA_Newsletter/pdf/hidden_cdc_data_release_061208.pdf.  Anecdotal evidence such as data from a non-vaccinating HMO in Chicago (http://www.infowars.com/articles/science/autism_none_for_unvaccinated_amish.htm;  http://www.whale.to/a/children1.html ) and public health surveys (http://www.generationrescue.org/olmstead.html; http://generationrescue.com/survey.html) suggest that unvaccinated children do not suffer the same rate of chronic childhood disease such as autism.  These studies are part of a growing consensus in the scientific literature that vaccines are causing serious chronic illness in children, further highlighting the need for a comprehensive vaccinated vs. unvaccinated study.

            The vaccine-autism debate will not end until CDC releases data on the health of unvaccinated children or performs the safety studies required by ethics and science.  If, as the science seems to demonstrate, vaccines cause an unacceptable level of chronic diseases such as autism, then appropriate alterations or accommodations for susceptible children can be made.  Until such time, public confidence in vaccines, so vital to public health, hangs in the balance.

 

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