Clear scientific evidence vaccines are safe, but anti-vaccine proponents not listening
The anti-vaccine movement likes to claim it has science on its side. Does it? Beacon News asked Dr. Glen Armstrong to review a scientific article anti-vaxxers claim links vaccines to autism.
Celebrity and anti-vaccination activist Jenny McCarthy.
Former Playboy centrefold and American celebrity Jenny McCarthy famously claimed vaccines caused autism in her son, sparking a wave of anti-vaccine hysteria among parents. The basis for McCarthy’s claims was a 1998 paper by now discredited British medical researcher Andrew Wakefield, whose work was later discovered to be entirely bogus. His paper was retracted by The Lancet and he was barred from practicing medicine in the UK.
Despite the utter debunking of the notion that vaccines cause autism, the idea has gained such traction in the public mind that many still believe the lie. Some claim science still supports a link between vaccines and autism, such as this paper – “Hepatitis B vaccination of male neonates and autism diagnosis, NHIS 1997-2002″ – by American researchers C.M. Gallagher and M.S. Goodman.
Dr. Glen Armstrong, Department Head Microbiology, Immunology, and Infectious Diseases, The University of Calgary.
Dr. Armstrong is the head of virology at the University of Calgary. He reviewed the paper – which was published in a reputable, peer reviewed journal – and I later interviewed him about its findings.
According to Dr. Armstrong, Gallagher and Goodman examined data for thousands of children and found a small subset (nine of 33) of white male children in two-parent households with mothers who had high school education or better and were vaccinated for Hepatitis B within the first month of life had a modest correlation with autism.
“If you looked at the statistics for children that were vaccinated [within] the first month of life then the relationship between autism and the vaccine is not statistically significant,” he said.
Dr. Armstrong points out that the Alberta Health’s vaccination schedule recommends the Hepatitis B vaccine be administered in Gr. 5, around 10 years of age.
Markham Hislop, Beacon News publisher.
Gallagher and Goodman also included a control group comprised of children vaccinated for the measles, mumps, and rubella. The control group showed no statistically significant correlation with autism at all.
“It’s actually another study sort of showing that the MMR vaccine is perfectly safe,” said Dr. Armstrong.
He also cautions against reading just the abstract of scientific papers.
“You have to be really, really careful in reading these abstracts because, of course, you have to actually go to the paper and read what they actually published in the paper. And look at the date it was published in the paper and what they actually say in the paper,” he said.
So what if a parent happened to have a male child who met the criteria of the study’s subset? Should the boy be vaccinated?
“It’s only this one [subset] where they’ve called the safety into question. And, you know, how much of a safety risk it is – in my opinion, pretty minimal. Given what the vaccine can prevent [compared to complications] the disease can cause,” says the virologist.
Symptoms of Hepatitis B include vomiting, yellow skin, feeling tired, dark urine and abdominal pain. Those with chronic Hepatitis B may develop cirrhosis or liver cancer.
The Gallagher and Goodman paper illustrates how easy it is to misinterpret the science behind vaccines and their effects. Dr. Armstrong has stated with some conviction in other Beacon interviews that there is not one scientific paper that proves vaccines are dangerous or that cause other diseases or conditions, like autism.
If only the anti-vaccine movement would trust scientists instead of former Playboy models.