In true procrastinator fashion, I am finally submitting a post. This topic is near and dear to my heart, as I’ve spent the last year working in vaccine formulations and prior to that, spent a year and a half working at a group home for autistic adults…
This year experienced a resurgence in the vaccine/autism debate, as Hannah Poling – the now 10-year-old daughter of Dr. Jon Poling, a neurologist, won their lawsuit against the Department of Health and Human Services. As a seemingly normal 18-month-old baby, Hannah, was taken in for her well-baby checkup and administered several routine vaccines. Two days after inoculation, Hannah developed a high fever, ceased responding to verbal stimuli, and for a short period – refused to walk. If you are interested in the case, the CNN News Report is a fairly unbiased source of general information on the case… http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/conditions/03/06/vaccines.autism/index.html however, since this IS an immunology course, I am not going to leave you thinking that Hannah’s vaccines were in fact responsible for her condition.
Dr. Paul Offit, chief of infectious disease, at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia scientifically responded to the court’s ruling in an article in a May issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. Dr. Offit highlights that Hannah was special case. Born with a genetic mitochondrial enzyme deficiency, Hannah was succeptible to infection and while natural infection has been shown to aggrevate encephalopathy in these patients – vaccines HAVE NOT and are in fact recommended for these children.
Is it possible we can overwhelm the immune system? While I am sure there exists some case that demonstrates this, a typical child will have no problems (apart from slight discomfort) with the administration of the 14 recommended childhood vaccines which contain in total approximately 150 immunological components (vs. the 200+ immunological components of the smallpox vaccine formulation used 100 years ago).
Well, what is the harm in spreading the immunizations out over a course of time? The distribution of vaccines over a course of time provides a window for a not-yet-vaccinated-against infection to occur, which will compromise the immune system of the child and result in a higher risk of vaccine ‘injury’ (perhaps a rash, swelling, ect.).
Back to Hannah… if vaccinations for children with this genetic deficiency carry with them the risk of exacerbated encephalopathy, what should our strategy be for reducing this incidence – and when it does occur, who is to blame? As the role of genomics increases in medicine, will we find the answers?
Sadly and somewhat ignorantly, the resurgence of this heated debate has had an effect on U.S. vaccinations. This year, we have witnessed isolated outbreaks of measles resulting in the most cases we’ve seen in 12 years.
Let’s keep in mind that the incidence of autism is increasing – if vaccines were really the agent, wouldn’t we expect the incidence to decrease as our methods become more refined?
With all of this said, please speak with you pediatrician about any concerns you might have and don’t be too quick to dismiss the largest medical advance in the history of medicine (ok, so I may be a little bias – but it is with good intentions).
Offit, PA. N Engl J Med. 2008 May 15;358(20):2089-91.
http://www.immunize.org/catg.d/p2065.htm
http://www.chop.edu/consumer/jsp/division/generic.jsp?id=75807
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4 comments:
Great post! We spent a fair amount of time in my advanced epidemiology course last year looking at vaccine research and autism.
It is staggering to see how much BAD research is out there, and that in reality, there is no good data to support any link between vaccination and autism. I know that there are a lot of terrified parents out there who only read about what happened to this little girl, or who hear people like Jennie McCarthy.
Equally important as talking to our physicians about vaccinations, it is important that we as the scientific/medical community make sure that we get a good spokeperson who can talk to the public in a clear understandable way about why it is important to vaccinate your child.
(okay, I might also be a little biased)
I wonder why the details of the case are not allowed to be made public? It seems a lack of information leads to controversy among parents about whether to vaccinate and not allowing details of a case to be released only leads to more fear and confusion.
This is a very interesting post! I know there is a lot of debate about vaccinating children. Parents are really scared that if they vaccinate their kids they might get autism! There are risks with everything and this is just another example of that. Things can always go wrong, but how often does it really happen? Parents should be well informed and have all the facts before making such a big decision not to vaccinate. I also read that autism could be on the rise because women are having their babies at much older ages.
I just listened to a story about this on NPR yesterday.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97940354
It is a big controversy and it's because parents are not being informed correctly. Parents aren't always getting the information from the right source like doctors or scientist. Instead, some parents are finding the information from media or from unreliable sources.
I do believe that there still needs to be further research to determine the who might be susceptible to autism when vaccinated. Listen or read the link above.
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