Opinion

THE DEADLY TOLL OF VACCINE HYSTERIA

THE idea that a preservative once used in vaccines is to blame for rising autism rates has just been authoritatively debunked – again. Indeed, some of the key early “evidence” now stands exposed as fake.

Sadly, none of this will kill this myth – because it was never based on good science.

When the claims first gained traction in the 1990s, the government undertook a series of massive studies – and convened an independent panel of experts – to probe the potential correlation between “autism spectrum disorders” and the chemical, called thimerosal.

This week, a federal court reached one of the most definitive conclusions on that collected science, debunking the alleged links.

On Thursday, special masters serving on the US Court of Customs who’d reviewed 5,500-plus cases filed by families alleging their children developed autism as a result of vaccines found that the claims were “speculative and unpersuasive.”

Organized by a group of trial lawyers, the parents sought compensation via the federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, which was designed to bring reason to the lawsuit culture surrounding vaccines when that litigation threatened to dismantle the vaccine industry.

Fears about autism have been a growing impediment to higher vaccination rates – and thus a growing public-health danger. One root of the fear is skepticism of modern drugs, along with the simple fact that even modern science has only a limited understanding of the brain.The truly bizarre aspect of the issue, though, is that vaccines are some of the most tightly (and best) regulated medical products on the market.

Our system for monitoring vaccine safety after Food and Drug Administration approval (the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) is arguably the most advanced post-market surveillance program in place for any medical product. (Indeed, it’s a model for what we should be doing when it comes to all drugs.)

Even before the FDA approves a vaccine, it undergoes some of the most rigorous premarket testing of any medical product – precisely because vaccines are widely used by otherwise healthy people, and can cause a lot of harm if unsafe.

If only the same level of scrutiny were routinely applied to the data suggesting that vaccines are dangerous.

The Sunday Times in London reported last week on confidential medical documents and interviews establishing that British researcher Andrew Wakefield had manipulated his data linking vaccines to episodes of autism. His original research on this issue was already controversial – 10 of the 13 authors retracted some of the findings in 2004, but Wakefield, its lead author, has not. The Times reported that he allegedly altered clinical findings on eight of 12 children in the study – a charge he denies.

Why do concerns about vaccines persist despite so much scientific evidence to the contrary? We seem to harbor a cultural bent toward believing random theories on how science – and medicine – will somehow be the source of our own unraveling. Witness all the movies of recent years that blame science (and vaccines especially) for everything from ending the human race (“I Am Legend”) to curtailing our ability to reproduce (“Children of Men”).

As for Wakefield’s alleged fraud, the damage is already done. After the publication of his research, rates of inoculation in Britain fell from 92 percent to below 80 percent.

It is well-accepted that vaccines save lives – but they only have their maximal benefit when a high percentage of people have the confidence to seek vaccination. The “herd immunity” that ensues means that diseases can’t spread person-to-person. Even small numbers of people refusing vaccines can have dire public-health consequences.

But it seems no amount of science or regulation will dispel the suspicions. So around the same time that actress Jenny McCarthy was taking the airwaves to propagate her latest theories on vaccines and autism, newly released figures showed that there were 1,348 confirmed cases of measles in England and Wales last year – and two deaths. That compares with 56 cases in 1998, before Wakefield’s paper spawned a cottage industry in fear.

Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, was a dep uty commissioner at the FDA from 2005 to 2007. He is a partner of an asset manager who invests in health-care companies.