In this week’s blog, I have decided to research Andrew Wakefield. Some of you may know his name and others of you may not. He has become one of the most controversial researchers in medical history. In 1998, he and his 12 colleagues published a case in The Lancet which gained a lot of following, both negative and positive. His major claim was that the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) can predispose children to forms of autism. Considering he only used a sample of 12 and there were many issues with the paper and research methods, it still received a lot of attention from the news and the general public who saw some level of accuracy and truth in his findings.
Wakefield only used 12 children in the entirety of the experiment. Age ranges between 3 and 10 years old, the mean being 6 years of age. Out of all the children he used 11 were boys, meaning there was only 1 girl. His subjects were “referred to a pediatric gastroenterology unit with a history of normal development followed by a loss of acquired skills, including language, together with diarrhea and abdominal pain”[1]. From what I have gathered from his findings, only nine of the twelve children were considered to be autistic, although he states that neurological abnormalities were not seen through MRI or EEG. Wakefield also discusses some of the issues such as the one just mentioned within the study. He discusses other biological or lifestyle choices that could have skewed the results, as the study was not random, but was a self-referred group.
Almost immediately after the publication of his very controversial study, came the inflow of many epidemiological studies that were conducted and published. The results of these studies refuted any link between the MMR vaccination and autism. Following all of the backlash between scientists on both sides of the argument, 10 out of 12 of the original authors of the study submitted a retraction to the study, stating “no causal link was established between MMR vaccine and autism as the data were insufficient”[2]
There was also much speculation that Wakefield had financial interests invested into the study. The Lancet stated that Wakefield did not make them aware that his funding for the study came from lawyers who had been engaging in lawsuits for parents against vaccine-producing companies. The Lancet completely retracted the paper, but Wakefield and the other authors were never charged of any sort of ethical or medical violations. However, Wakefield and the other authors were found guilty of picking and choosing data, doing invasive treatment on the children without proper consent, and scientific misrepresentation. [3]
Ultimately, the publication of his article has had many implications on the entire world. It first has sparked a discussion about the safety and use of vaccines. For quite some time, specifically in American culture, vaccines have been a way of life. Everyone gets vaccinated. Following the publication of this article, many started to question the purpose of vaccines and if they can cause behavioral disorders. However, on the opposite end of the spectrum, many people began to stand behind vaccination more fervently because of the many new cases of measles, mumps and rubella that had occurred because of people not vaccinating their children. These different perspectives are more thoroughly discussed in Gregory A. Poland’s article “ MMR Vaccine and Autism: Vaccine Nihilosm and Post Modern Science”
Personally, I think it goes to show how ignorant the public can be when it comes to scientific research and articles that are actually factual. Starting off reading the article, he begins to talk about his sample size and I can already tell things are veering left. Any decent study has two basic elements: there is a fairly large sample size and the sample is random, or another method of sampling that makes it as random as possible. Any introductory statistics class will tell you this. Andrew Wakefield (and colleagues ) are jackasses who fooled an even more ignorant public audience into believing there is a direct link between autism and MMR vaccine based of 12 preselected kids. This is why reading is fundamental.
[1] Wakefield AJ, Murch SH, Anthony A, Linnell J, Casson DM, Malik M, et al. Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children. Lancet. 1998;351:637–41. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
[2] Murch SH, Anthony A, Casson DH, Malik M, Berelowitz M, Dhillon AP, et al. Retraction of an interpretation. Lancet. 2004;363:750. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
[3] Anonymous. Retraction-Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, nonspecific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children. Lancet. 2010;375:445. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
Madison's Microbiology Masterpiece 