Adding to the anti-Wakefield conspiracy

Edited to add: Are you a fan of science? Do you rely on scientific data in your decision making? Don't let science be the loser here. Vote in the Today Show "Moms" (why only moms? Dads? Do you not count?) poll asking if vaccines are related to autism. Why? Because as of this posting, almost 55% of respondents to this admittedly unscientific poll are answering in the affirmative. Sigh.

These items just in--surely this can't be a coincidence!

First of all, the doctor is now OUT. The General Medical Council has seen fit to strip Wakefield of the ability to practice medicine in the UK. Not that he was doing that anyway, what with all the vaccine development he was busy with and guiding other practitioners in the finer points of unnecessary colonoscopies and spinal taps for defenseless children. Oh, and undermining global public health, too. Busy fella. Probably won't miss that whole "license to practice" anyway, what with the book tour and all.

From today's GMC ruling: The panel concluded that it is the only sanction that is appropriate to protect patients and is in the wider public interest, including the maintenance of public trust and confidence in the profession, and is proportionate to the serious and wide-ranging findings made against him.

Reminder: Guilty of more than 30 charges and "serious professional misconduct."

In what is no doubt part of the global conspiracy against Herr Doktor, an association study just appeared in Pediatrics reporting two interesting outcomes. The study addressed whether or not children who had been vaccinated according to the standard vaccination schedule differed in neuropsychological outcomes from children who either were delayed in getting vaccines or received no vaccines at all. It's a great question to ask, for obvious reasons, and longitudinal (long-term) investigations like this are crucial. The authors examined 42 neuropsychological parameters and used data from the Vaccine Safety Datalink resource. Oh, yes. "People" have, in fact, been "looking" at these things all along, like, say, since about 1990?

The first interesting finding is that on-schedule infant vaccinations were not associated with adverse effects on neuropsychological outcomes 7 to 10 years later. The second interesting finding is that being fully vaccinated was, in fact, associated with better outcomes on at least two performance parameters, a finding that held up under multivariate analysis. The less-vaccinated and unvaccinated children fared better on none of the parameters.

The results of this study hammer more nails into the coffins of two already dying or dead hypotheses. First, it knocks down any association between vaccines and adverse neuropsychological outcomes. In other words, it's yet another study finding no link between getting vaccinated and having "brain problems." Second, it fails to support the idiotic and unsupportable hypothesis that vaccines need to be spread out because infant immune systems "just can't handle that much challenge," that these vaccines in such "abundance" will cause harm, specifically neurological harm. Guess not. At least, not based on these findings.

So, it's not that the scientific community has ignored the cries of a link between vaccines and autism. Far far from it. In fact, it's not Wakefield but the scientific community that has set up the database that makes information for such studies available. Have you noticed Wakefield calling for such comprehensive databases in the UK? Have you ever heard of Wakefield putting his robust shoulder to the grindstone of actual research that takes a hypothesis, formulates the best, most ethical, most objective way of addressing it, and then addresses it? Wouldn't someone as fervently engaged in this kind as research as he putatively is have been coining his high profile to call loudly for such databases worldwide, the very data--like that of the Danish registries--that could answer such questions for us. For him? Wouldn't someone so fervent in his faith in his own hypotheses be using the existing databases for this work?

What has Wakefield actually done with his high profile (and his cottage industry proceeds)? Bought him a big ol' house and done Wakefield the Martyr interviews. Oh, and he wrote that book, of course.

You probably haven't seen Wakefield put that large shoulder to that scientific grindstone or do any other of the myriad rational things a dedicated researcher with his putative interests would have done--because he hasn't. Actions may not genuinely speak louder than words, but they ought to.