Then there is my nutritionist saying a lot of things contrary to the established Medical and Food Industries. The scientific evidence behind her appears to me to be pretty solid but the scientific community hasn't yet discredited any of the research that says a low fat diet is best.
The validity of research was on my mind with the current measles outbreak in the news and along with that stories of parents refusing to get their kids vaccinated because of a link to autism. We've been told that link has been disproven. If so, I'm skeptical and need details.
Misty of Shakesville in a post from four years ago provides those details.
The source of that vaccine-autism link came from Dr. Andrew Wakefield. He studied 12 children, 10 of whom were autistic. He found a pattern of intestinal inflammation. The parents of 8 of those autistic kids said autism began to show right after the measles, mumps, rubella vaccine. Wakefield went to the press about a link between the vaccine and autism. His errors:
* Extremely small sample size.
* No research to show comparative rates of intestinal inflammation in autistic and normal children.
* No research to show rates of autism from those who got the vaccine and those who did not or whether the autism symptoms actually appeared before the vaccine.
* No research to show a link between the vaccine and intestinal inflammation.
* Wakefield proposed vaccines for the three diseases given widely spaced would not cause the problems of the three given together, which makes no sense.
And then the ethics issues piled up:
* Wakefield had been paid by a lawyer representing families with autistic children looking for a way to sue the vaccine makers. He didn't disclose the conflict of interest.
* 11 of the 12 children in the study were from those families.
* Wakefield had developed his own measles vaccine and had not disclosed that conflict of interest, either.
* Wakefield's research had not been approved by the hospital's ethics committee because the children would be subjected to harmful procedures not appropriate to their medical history. One child suffered multiple bowel perforations (apparently the colonoscopy was botched). He claimed he didn't need approval.
* Other people looked over this research and found several kids had shown autism symptoms before receiving the vaccine. His reports of intestinal inflammation were reviewed by other doctors and declared to be normal – meaning he falsified data.
So, yes, this was bad science. Wakefield was stripped of credentials. And, no, there is no link between vaccines and autism.
Blogger Terrence Heath looks at the measles outbreak what conservatives are saying about it. And what they're saying is a lot about about personal rights and responsibility. Heath summarizes the anti-vaccine movement, and a good deal of conservatism, in his second sentence:
That anti-science, anti-social position is in light with conservatism’s rejection of responsibility to the greater community.
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