Last month, 60 Minutes reported a possible link between the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism. The story centered on Dr. Andrew Wakefield, a British gastroenterologist, who studied 17 children who came to his attention because they had bowel disorders. According to their parents, eight of the children developed normally until they were given the MMR vaccine. The developmental regression included autism which has a broad spectrum of symptoms such as loss of language skills, inability to make eye contract, and head-banging. Also interviewed were two physicians who refuted Dr. Wakefield's hypothesis, stating that autism usually appears in the second year of life-a time that happens to coincide with administration of the MMR vaccine.

For more information on this issue HealthFacts interviewed a leading advocate for parental informed consent where it concerns childhood vaccination. Barbara Loe Fisher is the president of the National Vaccine Information Center.

HealthFacts: What do you think of the 60 Minutes report?

Barbara Loe Fisher: It did a good job presenting both sides of the controversy, but there are other vaccines and combinations of vaccines which have been associated with autism. Encephalitis (brain inflammation) and autoimmunity can be serious side effects of both drug and vaccine reactions. Mental regression leading to autistic behaviors was first reported by parents whose children suffered brain inflammation following reactions to the DPT (diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus) vaccination. Two children have been awarded damages in the federal vaccine injury compensation program, who became autistic after reacting to the pertussis component of the DPT vaccine.

Autism appears to be a neuroimmune disorder involving both the immune system and brain. Autistic children almost always have gastrointestinal problems, allergies, and sometimes seizures. Depending upon whether the vaccine or combination of vaccines are composed of live viruses, like MMR, or killed bacteria, like DPT, the biological mechanisms which cause brain inflammation and autoimmunity are different. So when a child is having an adverse response to vaccination, there appear to be many factors involved, including the particular vaccine or combination of vaccines and their components; the health of the child at the time of vaccination; whether the child has had a reaction to a previous vaccine; and whether there is genetic predisposition to autoimmunity (possibly indicated by a strong family history of autoimmune disease).

Dr. Wakefield is concerned that the combination of three live viruses (measles, mumps, rubella) in one vaccine is causing some genetically vulnerable children to develop a persistent sub-clinical vaccine-strain measles virus infection in the intestines that is negatively affecting their immune and brain systems. He and his colleagues have cultured out vaccine-strain measles virus from the intestines of vaccinated autistic children but have not found the vaccine virus in vaccinated healthy children.

HF: When Dr. Wakefield was asked whether he would allow his own children to be given the MMR vaccine, he said yes-but each vaccine would be given separately. What do you think?

BLF: You can still get the vaccines separately here in the US, but not in Britain, where public health authorities have banned the single vaccines and are forcing parents to use the MMR or nothing at all. I find that strange since it could result in parents refusing to get their children vaccinated and it points out why parents should be allowed to make informed, voluntary vaccination decisions for their children. Informed consent is the heart and soul of the ethical practice of medicine and vaccination should be no exception. Dr. Wakefield suggests giving the vaccines separately one year apart. He may be right, but government health officials charge that there are no studies to prove this is a safer option and that no one has reproduced Wakefield's findings. There are no studies because government and industry, which hold the bulk of the research money, have not done them. So what we are left with is one bright, well-credential ed gastroenterologist, who stumbled upon the association between MMR vaccine and autism; published his findings in The Lancet two years ago and has been crucified ever since by the establishment for daring to explore his hypothesis. I wish that 60 Minutes had mentioned the MIND Institute at University of California at Davis, started by a group of fathers of autistic children who raised about $40 million to look at what biological factors may be involved when children regress after vaccination and become autistic, learning disabled, hyperactive, epileptic, and mentally retarded.

HF: In 1999, another British team of researchers did an analysis of 498 cases of autism that did not support Dr. Wakefield's hypothesis.

BLF: That is the Brent Taylor study, and it used a methodology which is one of the weakest in epidemiology, known as the retrospective case series analysis. When Wakefield observed that autism rates increased in Britain after the introduction of MMR in 1988, Taylor set out to prove him wrong and went back and looked at 498 medical records of autistic children born in northwest London since 1979. Taylor said he found no statistical correlation between MMR vaccination and the development of autism in individual children or a rise in autism in Britain after introduction of MMR.

You can't take this small Taylor study, which hinges on very weak epidemiology, and dismiss either the autism epidemic or what Wakefield is finding in the lab as unrelated to vaccination. The great emphasis on epidemiology is a flawed approach in the absence of good basic research into biological mechanisms of vaccine-induced brain and immune system dysfunction. It leaves us without pathological profiles of vaccine injury to definitively separate out what is and is not a vaccine-related health problem.

HF: The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is expected to explore a possible connection between autism and the MMR vaccine. Are you concerned that research funded by vaccine manufacturers or the CDC promoters of vaccinations might not be objective?

BLF: I'm concerned that sound methodology and well-focused objectives may not be employed; that closed databases operated by federal health agencies will be used in the studies and will prevent public oversight and replication of findings by independent researchers; and that principal investigators with conflicts of interest might have too much influence. Certainly, Congressman Dan Burton's oversight hearings [see below] pointed out the problems with federal vaccine-licensing or policy-making committees that rely too heavily on members with significant financial ties with industry.

I don't think it's realistic to demand that every member of these committees be totally free from past financial relationship with industry. But the CDC and the FDA should make sure there is a fair balance of committee members with significant, lesser and no ties to industry. There should be full public disclosure of all financial relationships members have with drug companies marketing vaccines the committee is being asked to license or recommend for mandatory use by all children. In the end the proof will come when vaccine safety studies are set up and we see how they are being conducted, who is conducting them, and whether the public will have access to the scientific data the CDC uses to come to its conclusions.

For More Information

Contact the National Vaccine Information Center, 512 W. Maple Avenue, #206, Vienna, VA 22190; (703) 938-0342. Go to its Web site (www.909shot.com) for a transcript of the vaccine safety hearings, held by Congressman Dan Burton whose 14-month-old grandson was left autistic after receiving nine vaccines in one day. .

This Article has been submitted by the Jeremy's Prophecy Dot Com team for informational and educational purposes. Jeremy's Prophecy Dot Com is a website dedicated to telling the story of Jeremy Jacobs, a character in the novel, Jeremy's Prophecy Dot Com.