Vaccines and Autism

I just finished reading an article in which John McCain has jumped on the "vaccines cause autism" bandwagon, and I now have yet another reason to think that he is unfit to be president. Not that I needed another reason, it just helps in arguments with people who think it would be nice to have a republican in office for the next 4 years, despite the state our country is in after 8 years of republican control.

Anyway, as everyone knows, if you are a parent, the most precious things in your life are your children. You would quite literally lay down your life to ensure that these little tykes are never seriously harmed. A little semi-serious harm is probably going to happen sometime in their lives: broken bones, broken hearts, etc. These you can deal with.

It is slightly more difficult to deal with a child that has come down with a potentially life threatening disease. Measles, polio, hepatitis, chicken pox – these are all diseases that are avoidable if you take the time to simply allow your doctor to do something that he/she is probably going to do anyway: vaccinate your children.

For those who don’t know, a vaccine is a solution administered either through injection or orally which contains bits and pieces of viruses. A little example of how infections work might be in order.

If a virus tries to get into your body, a variety of things happen. First, your body notices that something is wrong and attempts to rectify the situation by destroying the invader. This will take a while because your body’s defenses – antibodies and white cells – have just learned of this invasion, and with no prior warnings, it does what it can to cope. It begins by churning out antibodies and white cells specifically designed to hunt and kill that particular invader. This process can take several days, during which time you get sick. Once enough of the antibody/white cells have been produced, your body can fight the infection properly and you will begin to feel better. The nice thing is that if you survive this attack, you will probably not get sick from that virus again. It works this way for most viruses and bacteria.

Fortunately, for many viral infections we don’t have to go through this initial attack/sickness phase. Edward Jenner is often credited with the invention of the term “vaccination” because in 1796 he created one of the world’s first vaccines against smallpox. In this process of vaccination, bits and pieces of viruses are administered which act to stimulate your immune systems production of antibodies. You can think of the “bits o’virus” as “Wanted” posters which alert your body’s defenses to the possibility of infection. Once your body is made aware of the possibility of infection by these microscopic terrorists, it will ready its police force (antibodies) to be on the lookout for these infectious agents. This way, when your body actually comes in contact with the hepatitis virus, it already has a plan for how to deal with it. The execution of this plan goes almost unnoticed by you, but the results are amazing in that you don’t get sick.

Today vaccinations exist for many of the worst viruses, including polio, which was all but wiped out when Jonas Salk developed the vaccine against it in 1952. Based on the success of the vaccination program, it would seem that a person would have to be something of a loony to determine that they don’t want to vaccinate their children. (“Protect my child from deadly disease? I think not!”) However, there is an increasingly vocal group of people who not only want to stop vaccinating their own children, they want to stop you from vaccinating yours.

These people are affectionately termed “Anti-vaccination nut jobs” and they are becoming increasingly vocal due to the alleged link between childhood vaccinations and autism. Jenny McCarthy has written a book and went on the Oprah show to help spread this lunacy to as many people as she could. These groups take out full page ads in newspapers listing the allegedly toxic ingredients in the vaccines we administer to our children. They have convinced thousands of people to stop vaccinating. Cases of measles have been on the rise since these anti-vax wingnuts have become more vocal, and England had 971 cases in 2007, up from 740 in 2006.

Considering their case is based almost entirely on distortions, lies, and half-truths, one might imagine that the shelf life of an anti-vaccination group might be fairly short. One also might assume that once these distortions, lies and half-truths are exposed for what they are, these anti-vaccinationists would stop their bitching and go away. Unfortunately, one might just as easily assume that monkeys will fly out of my butt sometime in the next 20 to 30 seconds. We can wait around to see if that happens.

Nope. No flying monkeys.

So why is their message so well received? As I mentioned in an earlier post, this country (and others) suffers from a raging case of scientific illiteracy for which there appears to be no vaccination. Throw the words “vaccines”, “cause”, and “autism” in a sentence, and you get a few peoples attention. Get a pseudo-celebrity to go on Oprah to talk about those three words and you get the attention of millions of people.

So do vaccines cause autism?

In a word – “no”.

In several words, the answer is still the same, but the explanation is a little more detailed. Basically the anti-vax argument goes something like this:

1. Mercury poisoning is bad. So is Autism.
2. Vaccines contain mercury in the form of preservatives like Thimerosol.
3. Vaccines are injected into my baby
4. Too much mercury causes mercury poisoning.
5. Mercury poisoning causes Autism.
6. Repeat A-E again, only louder.

Simple, direct, and to the point. Not correct, but catchy nonetheless. Several problems with this argument jump out immediately.

The main problem is the assumption that vaccines contain mercury. As of 2002, almost all the vaccines used in the United States contain no Thimerosol. Additionally, recent studies have shown that even when Thimerosol was present in the vaccines, the small amount of mercury injected is removed from the body very rapidly (less than 24 hours for most people.)

So given that there is little to no mercury present in vaccines, it seems unlikely that any of the other steps in the argument for “Vaccines = Autism” will hold up, and indeed it is the case. No mercury in the vaccines means no mercury poisoning. Ergo, mercury poisoning is not the cause of Autism.

This seems like a really simple thing, and yet anti-vaccinationists still repeat the same tired argument over and over like the act of repetition will make it true. They then suggest that it is the vaccines themselves that are the cause of Autism, not just the mercury in them. No study to date links any vaccination schedule with the onset of any of the autism spectrum disorders.

So why are diagnoses of Autism on the rise? While there is no one good answer to this, it appears to be linked to special education laws and potentially to the funding of special education programs. A study done by Paul Shattuck in 2006 sheds some light on this phenomenon. . Orac does a great job of summarizing this article and is, in general, a fountain of knowledge on the subject if you are interested in keeping up to date. Autism became a certified diagnostic category for special education in 1990 with the reauthorization of IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act). Prior to 1990, autism was not a recognized category of learning disability. So prior to 1990, there is no good data on how many autistic children there were in the education system. From 1994 to 2003 the rates of autism rose from 0.6 to 3.1 per 1000 students, while those labeled mentally retarded declined, which indicates that the “increase” in autism rates might be nothing more than a relabeling of students. Those that had been mislabeled “mentally retarded” were now being properly labeled “autistic”. As an example of how this can affect the numbers, we can look to Wisconsin. In 1992, only 18 children in the entire state were listed as being autistic, but in 2002, the number had risen to 2,739. Again, this jump is most likely due to placing children into different categories, not an actual increase in autism rates.

So why don’t they simply accept the fact that vaccines are not harming our children and have, in fact, been responsible for removing several of the greatest threats found in childhood? I think it is that they need a reason for what has happened to their children, and what better reason than vaccines? They are ubiquitous, and chock full of “toxins” according to anti-vaccinationists. It doesn’t matter that these “toxins” are not toxic at the levels they are being administered at. (At the proper concentration, anything is toxic.)

This brings us back to the concept of scientific illiteracy. The more scientifically illiterate a person is, the more likely that they will buy into one of the many fallacious arguments foisted upon the public by the anti-vax crowd. The more they buy into these arguments, the more likely it is that they will push not to have their children vaccinated. Not only that, but some of these groups are out to stop EVERY child from being vaccinated, which could have huge consequences for the health of everyone.