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The Age of Autism
The Age of Autism: 'The first casualty'
By DAN OLMSTED
WASHINGTON, June 27, 2006 (UPI) -- A medical doctor in the U.S. House of
Representatives delivered a harsh judgment this week on public health authorities whose
job is making sure vaccinations are as safe as humanly possible.
"Federal agencies charged with overseeing vaccine safety research have failed," said
Rep. David Weldon, R-Fla. "They have failed to provide sufficient resources for vaccine
safety research. They have failed to fund extramural research. And, they have failed to
free themselves from conflicts of interest that serve to undermine confidence in the safety
of vaccines.
"The American public deserves better, and increasingly parents and the public at large
are demanding better."
Weldon concentrated his fire on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which
recommends the childhood immunization schedule through its Advisory Committee on
Immunization Practices -- and has conducted numerous studies that find no association
between vaccines and serious health problems, particularly autism.
But Weldon said the federal government in toto has failed to do its job.
"Several issues relating to vaccine safety have persisted for years. The response from
public health authorities has been largely defensive from the outset, and the studies
plagued by conflicts of interest."
It should be noted the CDC stands behind its research and that last year it separated its
Immunization Safety Office from the National Immunization Program. Weldon says that's
simply not enough to ensure impartial, aggressive investigation.
Weldon introduced a bill -- co-sponsored by Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y. -- that would
create a new agency of vaccine safety that reports to the secretary of health and human
services; require research to be independent of any vaccine-related decisions; and
establish an 18-member advisory committee to create a vaccine research agenda. At
least one-third of the committee would be made up of people with vaccine injuries or a
vaccine-injured child.
Given the realities of the legislative calendar, Weldon told me, he's hoping to build
support and hold hearings this fall on the measure and re-introduce it in the new
Congress that convenes in January.
Weldon's approach is wide-ranging. For one thing, he's not putting all his eggs in the
mercury-equals-autism basket, so to speak -- he's not asking for more research solely to
determine whether the mercury-based preservative thimerosal triggered a huge rise in
autism diagnoses in the 1990s.
While that question has been the focus of attention -- and properly so, given the
government's own decision to phase out thimerosal from routine childhood immunizations
beginning in 1999 -- there is the prospect that other vaccine ingredients, and other side
effects, may be insidiously at work.
"There are unresolved questions about the MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) vaccine that
arose in 1998 that should be fully investigated," Weldon said.
Indeed, this column recently reported on a cluster of cases in Olympia, Wash., that
suggest a possible risk of autism from getting MMR and chickenpox shots too close
together in a susceptible subset of children.
One of the children diagnosed with autism was in a clinical trial of a new vaccine
combining all four of those live-virus vaccines, including 10 times as much chickenpox
component as the standalone chickenpox vaccine. The manufacturer, Merck & Co.,
acknowledged that case -- and another from a similar trial in Olympia involving an
experimental chickenpox vaccine given at the same time as the MMR -- was not reported
to the FDA until March.
That was the same month we first inquired about the cases -- and six months after the
new vaccine, called ProQuad, was approved by the FDA for all children 12 months to 12
years old.
Merck, like other vaccine manufacturers, mainstream medical groups and public health
authorities, says there is no association between vaccines and autism. Weldon's bill would
put that assertion to the test -- without the conflicts he says make such assurances
suspect.
Beyond autism, a range of concerns are "out there" about the childhood immunization
schedule, which has expanded greatly over the past two decades and now includes a
Hepatitis B shot on the day of birth and the prospect of more combinations and
components in coming years.
Few argue against the basic premise of mass vaccination against deadly diseases. The
legitimate public-policy question is whether the authorities have gotten the details wrong --
vaccinating too soon against too many illnesses, not all of them life-threatening or likely to
afflict children, and undertaking too little independent surveillance of possible unintended
consequences.
From that perspective, it was hard to ignore the convergence of events at the Capitol
Wednesday morning -- as Weldon spoke, members were awaiting the arrival of the Iraqi
prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, to address a joint session.
In the new book "Fiasco" about the Iraq war by Washington Post Pentagon
Correspondent Thomas E. Ricks, the failure of public officials to properly gauge the real
risks and potential rewards of the invasion are laid out in devastating detail.
"None of this was inevitable," Ricks writes. "It was made possible only through the
intellectual acrobatics of simultaneously 'worst-casing' the threat presented by Iraq and
'best-casing' the subsequent cost and difficulty of occupying the country."
That made me go back and dig out a paper titled "From Safety Last To Children First," by
Mark Blaxill of the group SafeMinds and Barbara Loe Fisher, president of the National
Vaccine Information Center. It was submitted to a CDC panel on vaccine safety in 2004.
"The obvious concern is that benefits may be overstated and that risks will be
suppressed," they wrote in terms that eerily echo Ricks'. And they made the war analogy
explicit, citing "a mission of fighting a 'war on disease' that disregards the secondary and
tertiary consequences of war and views innocent children as inevitable consequences."
"The language of conflict -- the 'war on disease,' 'combating the causes of epidemics,'
'fighting emerging infections' -- is closely connected to the language of military power and,
of course, 'Disease Control.' History teaches us that when government officials are
determined to fight a war, any war, truth can be the first casualty."
It would be ironic if the same patterns that led to a foreign policy "fiasco" were at work in
domestic health policy. Weldon's bill is a first step toward finding out -- and making sure, if
that did happen, it gets fixed before more casualties pile up.
By DAN OLMSTED
WASHINGTON, June 27, 2006 (UPI) -- A medical doctor in the U.S. House of
Representatives delivered a harsh judgment this week on public health authorities whose
job is making sure vaccinations are as safe as humanly possible.
"Federal agencies charged with overseeing vaccine safety research have failed," said
Rep. David Weldon, R-Fla. "They have failed to provide sufficient resources for vaccine
safety research. They have failed to fund extramural research. And, they have failed to
free themselves from conflicts of interest that serve to undermine confidence in the safety
of vaccines.
"The American public deserves better, and increasingly parents and the public at large
are demanding better."
Weldon concentrated his fire on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which
recommends the childhood immunization schedule through its Advisory Committee on
Immunization Practices -- and has conducted numerous studies that find no association
between vaccines and serious health problems, particularly autism.
But Weldon said the federal government in toto has failed to do its job.
"Several issues relating to vaccine safety have persisted for years. The response from
public health authorities has been largely defensive from the outset, and the studies
plagued by conflicts of interest."
It should be noted the CDC stands behind its research and that last year it separated its
Immunization Safety Office from the National Immunization Program. Weldon says that's
simply not enough to ensure impartial, aggressive investigation.
Weldon introduced a bill -- co-sponsored by Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y. -- that would
create a new agency of vaccine safety that reports to the secretary of health and human
services; require research to be independent of any vaccine-related decisions; and
establish an 18-member advisory committee to create a vaccine research agenda. At
least one-third of the committee would be made up of people with vaccine injuries or a
vaccine-injured child.
Given the realities of the legislative calendar, Weldon told me, he's hoping to build
support and hold hearings this fall on the measure and re-introduce it in the new
Congress that convenes in January.
Weldon's approach is wide-ranging. For one thing, he's not putting all his eggs in the
mercury-equals-autism basket, so to speak -- he's not asking for more research solely to
determine whether the mercury-based preservative thimerosal triggered a huge rise in
autism diagnoses in the 1990s.
While that question has been the focus of attention -- and properly so, given the
government's own decision to phase out thimerosal from routine childhood immunizations
beginning in 1999 -- there is the prospect that other vaccine ingredients, and other side
effects, may be insidiously at work.
"There are unresolved questions about the MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) vaccine that
arose in 1998 that should be fully investigated," Weldon said.
Indeed, this column recently reported on a cluster of cases in Olympia, Wash., that
suggest a possible risk of autism from getting MMR and chickenpox shots too close
together in a susceptible subset of children.
One of the children diagnosed with autism was in a clinical trial of a new vaccine
combining all four of those live-virus vaccines, including 10 times as much chickenpox
component as the standalone chickenpox vaccine. The manufacturer, Merck & Co.,
acknowledged that case -- and another from a similar trial in Olympia involving an
experimental chickenpox vaccine given at the same time as the MMR -- was not reported
to the FDA until March.
That was the same month we first inquired about the cases -- and six months after the
new vaccine, called ProQuad, was approved by the FDA for all children 12 months to 12
years old.
Merck, like other vaccine manufacturers, mainstream medical groups and public health
authorities, says there is no association between vaccines and autism. Weldon's bill would
put that assertion to the test -- without the conflicts he says make such assurances
suspect.
Beyond autism, a range of concerns are "out there" about the childhood immunization
schedule, which has expanded greatly over the past two decades and now includes a
Hepatitis B shot on the day of birth and the prospect of more combinations and
components in coming years.
Few argue against the basic premise of mass vaccination against deadly diseases. The
legitimate public-policy question is whether the authorities have gotten the details wrong --
vaccinating too soon against too many illnesses, not all of them life-threatening or likely to
afflict children, and undertaking too little independent surveillance of possible unintended
consequences.
From that perspective, it was hard to ignore the convergence of events at the Capitol
Wednesday morning -- as Weldon spoke, members were awaiting the arrival of the Iraqi
prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, to address a joint session.
In the new book "Fiasco" about the Iraq war by Washington Post Pentagon
Correspondent Thomas E. Ricks, the failure of public officials to properly gauge the real
risks and potential rewards of the invasion are laid out in devastating detail.
"None of this was inevitable," Ricks writes. "It was made possible only through the
intellectual acrobatics of simultaneously 'worst-casing' the threat presented by Iraq and
'best-casing' the subsequent cost and difficulty of occupying the country."
That made me go back and dig out a paper titled "From Safety Last To Children First," by
Mark Blaxill of the group SafeMinds and Barbara Loe Fisher, president of the National
Vaccine Information Center. It was submitted to a CDC panel on vaccine safety in 2004.
"The obvious concern is that benefits may be overstated and that risks will be
suppressed," they wrote in terms that eerily echo Ricks'. And they made the war analogy
explicit, citing "a mission of fighting a 'war on disease' that disregards the secondary and
tertiary consequences of war and views innocent children as inevitable consequences."
"The language of conflict -- the 'war on disease,' 'combating the causes of epidemics,'
'fighting emerging infections' -- is closely connected to the language of military power and,
of course, 'Disease Control.' History teaches us that when government officials are
determined to fight a war, any war, truth can be the first casualty."
It would be ironic if the same patterns that led to a foreign policy "fiasco" were at work in
domestic health policy. Weldon's bill is a first step toward finding out -- and making sure, if
that did happen, it gets fixed before more casualties pile up.