The "debate" after the programme rammed this point home. The politicians and scientists supporting the MMR howled down any attempt to explain what was going on, claiming that the debate is over and science "proves" that the MMR is safe, quoting some very dodgy and long-discredited studies. One buffoon even claimed that the MMR reduced the risk of autism ! They really do want us to be silent, but it's no surprise that more and more parents don't believe them.
The drug companies have their acolytes in the media too. One such is Ben Goldacre, the aptly self-styled Mr Bad Science, who wrote a 2-page article in the Guardian against the programme, most of which was a rant about the personality of Dr Wakefield which even if true (which I very much doubt) is completely beside the point. He also quoted the same dodgy studies, and claimed to give references to them, but following the links just led to the government MMR propaganda websites. I wrote a couple of letters to the Guardian on the subject, but they didn't publish them (or any others which addressed this point).
Ben Goldacre is a leading proponent of the bad science he purports to criticise. The studies he quotes allegedly disproving the link between autism and MMR do nothing of the sort. Among many other errors and omissions:
- The Danish study is systematically biased in favour of the "no impact of MMR" hypothesis, among other things by including children under 3 in the "successfully vaccinated" totals, even though autism is not usually diagnosed until the child is older.
- He quotes 3 million MMR cases in the Finnish study. However, fewer than 200 individuals, who developed acute reactions within 3 weeks of vaccination, were followed up - a rather smaller number. As the study's author admits, it wasn't designed to look for autism, and wouldn't have found it.
- Taylor's (Wakefield's boss at the Royal Free) study of 500 children with autism in North London is riddled with statistical howlers and was sharply criticised by the Royal Statistical Society. The data is poorly presented in summary form only and he has refused to make the raw data available. However, the one thing it does show is that the incidence of autism in this one area rose from 2 (or 3?) for children born in 1979 to 50-something in 1992.
This truly phenomenal increase is surely worthy of further investigation. Autism is a disease which was almost unheard of 20 years ago, but now has been estimated to affect 1 in 250 children (amazingly these figures aren't collated on a national basis). This increase is massive and real and can't be explained away as being due to better diagnosis - these kids aren't easy to miss.
I welcome Channel Five's brave production of "Hear The Silence". I hope it leads to more real research into the causes of and cures for autism, and better support and treatment for those suffering from this shattering disease.
Contrary to the views you quote of 11 child health professionals and your own Mr Bad Science, Ben Goldacre, I don't think Channel 5's harrowing drama "Hear The Silence" about the link between MMR and autism was at all unbalanced. It accurately reflected the ignorance, complacency and even hostility of many health professionals encountered by parents of children with autism as they try to understand what happened to them and what if anything can now be done to help them.
I'm not surprised that various scientists didn't turn up to the discussion afterwards. They ran the risk of having the studies they quote as disproving the MMR/autism link being exposed as showing nothing of the sort. I am amazed that the Finnish study is still being quoted - its own author is on record as saying that it wasn't looking for autism and wouldn't have found it. The Danish study has also been thoroughly discredited, yet one of the "experts" in the discussion claimed that if anything it proved that MMR reduced the incidence of autism!
These and other studies purportedly disproving the MMR/autism link are fundamentally flawed and demonstrably biased in the statistical sense. As some of the errors are so elementary and the bias is always in the same direction, I for one doubt that it is unintentional. This is bad science on an industrial scale, and I look forward to your exposure of it in a future issue.
