Editor:
I welcome the opportunity to respond to the March 22 letter from Ms. Fletcher (“Op-ed’s claims challenged”). I appreciate the dilemma faced by parents who face difficult decisions about immunization when there is so much negative information about risks of vaccination on social media. I acknowledge the pain and confusion faced by Ms. Fletcher in having a child with central blindness, which she associates with DPT immunization. In a comprehensive search of the world literature since 1960, I found only a single case (in 1963) of an “association” between immunization with DPT and blindness (not central blindness). There was indeed a legitimate concern about the previously employed DPT (it was the “P” for pertussis that was the culprit) and some neurological entities. It is possible that her child was one of the rare casualties of that era. It is also possible that there is no causal link between receiving DPT and central blindness. Association is not causality, and it is impossible to prove causality in the face of such a small number of cases.
It is important to use the term “research” properly. Looking at the Internet and dialoguing with others with a similar point of view is not “research.” It is a conversation among believers. Ms. Fletcher again cites and utilizes the infamous Wakefield study retracted by the journal Lancet as if it still has validity. It was long ago discredited because it reported on only 12 children, who when studied in detail, did not have the claimed bowel disorders and some did not even have autism. Moreover, they were recruited by Wakefield for work that he was doing on the development of his own measles-only vaccine. Because of his conflict of interest and a careful analysis of his patients’ health, his work was deemed fraudulent, and called “dishonest, unethical and callous” by the British Medical Council, such that he lost his licence to practise medicine. His related paper on childhood bowel disease was also retracted for similar reasons.
Regarding Dr. Shaw’s work, often cited by vaccine deniers, Ms. Fletcher complains that I only brought attention to one of his retracted papers linking aluminum to neurological problems “in mice” and not the ones not retracted. Not one, but three, of his nine papers were retracted.
Ms. Fletcher states that I wrote that mercury used as a stabilizer and bacterial inhibitor was removed from “all” vaccines. She points out that there is mercury in the multi-dose vial of one of the influenza vaccines. She is correct and I apologize for the confusion. I was speaking of the vaccines that are part of the usual childhood immunization series. Mercury has not been present in any childhood vaccines since 2001. Mercury in minuscule amounts is present in the multi-dose vials of flu vaccines because when a needle is repeatedly entered into the vial, the chances of contamination increase. It is not present in single-dose vials. Normally, practitioners use single-dose vials. The multi-dose vials are used in measles eradication campaigns, mostly in Third World countries where many children are dying of measles. Multiple studies have shown that the aluminum and mercury in vaccines has not been associated with autism or other neurological diseases.
Finally, on March 5, 2019 the Annals of Internal Medicine reported on the largest and most definitive study to date showing no link between autism and MMR, even for those at highest risk of neurological disease. They studied virtually all 657,461 children born in Denmark between 1999 and 2010, with follow-up from one year of age through August 2013. Autism was diagnosed in 6,517 of them (rate 107 per 100,000 person years). They found no association between MMR and autism. In fact kids who did not receive MMR were 17 per cent more likely to be autistic than those who got the MMR. Autistic children with an autistic sibling were seven times more likely to be autistic than those without a family history.
We can only feel great empathy for families struggling to care for their autistic or neurologically impaired child in a society that provides few supports to help with the complex and expensive task of raising such a needy child. We do not know what causes autism, which makes the parental role even more difficult.
Dr. Michael C. Klein, Roberts Creek
