Whistleblower for lack of exhaustive research into autism

GERARD DeGroot’s article on MMR and autism last week (‘Autism is a mystery, not the result of a medical conspiracy’) sadly epitomises the misapprehensions that many now have over MMR’s increasingly clear connection with regressive autism following the recent attempt to discredit Dr Andrew Wakefield.

I am not criticising Gerard DeGroot, for, like me, he is the father of an autistic child, and will already have quite enough to contend with. Rather, I would like to introduce some hard and uncomfortable facts, in an area over-dominated by unresearched opinion and Department of Health "spin". I would also mention that I am an adviser to Action Against Autism, and gave evidence to the Scottish parliament’s expert group a couple of years ago.

The first grim fact is that autism has massively increased during the past two decades from what used to be a very rare disorder. The Commons health committee recommended in 1997 that the Department of Health should gather systematic data on autism, and monitor it. The department has continually refused to do so. But US education data confirms that the numbers of children and young people aged 6-21 in full-time education in the US, with a primary diagnosis of autism, rose from a few thousand in the 1980s to 12,222 in 1993.

By 2003, that figure was a staggering 118,602, almost a tenfold increase in just a decade. This is an epidemic. There is no other way of describing it.

The second uncomfortable fact is that such increased numbers are not just a matter of greater awareness and better diagnosis. A very detailed study in California by Dr Robert Byrd reported in November 2002 that the increases there were very real, and could not possibly be explained in any way by past misclassification, criteria changes or immigration. Another recent Californian study, by Dr Bernard Rimland, has confirmed that most of the growth in autism has been in regressive autism (once described as Heller’s Syndrome, a formerly extremely rare disorder), where children have developed normally, passed all their infant milestones, been immunised and then have slowly disintegrated over the following few months.

The annual Scottish schools census, which identifies autism (all types), has also shown a steep rise over the past five years, tending to suggest that the US increases probably apply to Scotland too.

Now, a third uncomfortable fact, the most uncomfortable of all to date. On February 9, a paper was presented to the US Institute of Medicine. The paper, by Dr Jeff Bradstreet, reported that a study had looked at the cerebrospinal fluid of 28 regressive-autism children. It had found measles virus in the fluid of no fewer than 19 of these 28 cases. The study also looked at 37 non-autistic children, who had other illnesses. In just one case, they found the virus. This is extremely strong statistical evidence of a direct measles virus/autism link.

All of these children (both autistic and non-autistic) had received MMR, and none had ever caught measles. This suggests that the virus came from the vaccine.

So why isn’t it being researched by government? Or don’t they want to go down that research road for some reason? And I am talking here about doing cutting-edge clinical research into damaged children, not a desk study of poorly-documented GP records based on chats in the surgery.

Dr Wakefield’s big error was he listened, he investigated, and he reported what he found. The longer the medical establishment resists such findings, the greater the long-term damage to government credibility - and faith in vaccines - will be.

David Thrower, adviser to the board, Action Against Autism, Glasgow

I’M sorry to hear about Gerard DeGroot’s autistic child and agree with him that not all children who have autism developed this condition because of vaccination.

I disagree, however, with his contention that Dr Wakefield’s conclusions were in any way flawed by the funding his research department (and not Wakefield himself as Gerard DeGroot stated) received from legal aid. Dr Wakefield actually did reveal this funding to The Lancet and it was published a mere three months after his initial article went to print. Why did the editor of The Lancet wait seven years to complain about this and then act like it was such a big surprise?

Gerard DeGroot seems to feel that this initial study with 12 children was the only study to link the MMR vaccine with autism. Wakefield’s original 12 children have expanded to over 190 today and other researchers have published articles in other medical journals which have both verified Wakefield’s conclusions and expanded on them with evidence of measles vaccine virus in the gut, spinal fluid and brain of autistic children. In fact, the link between vaccination (not just MMR) and autism goes way back to the 1930s when it was first described as post-vaccinal encephalitis with symptoms which are clinically indistinguishable from those of autism.

Surely if the government were so concerned about getting to the bottom of this issue once and for all, it would take some of the money it is now spending on implementation and promotion of vaccines and spend it to perform the appropriate clinical studies which were never actually done in the first place.

Anything less is a slap in the face to those thousands of British families who feel that their children’s autism (and other conditions) was caused by this and other vaccines.

Meryl W Dorey, president, Australian Vaccination Network, Bangalow