In the UK, a misconduct hearing is continuing for doctor Andrew Wakefield, who many hold responsible for the panic over the MMR vaccine and spurious links to autism. The hearing started last year and will continue until August.
Our government recently released a rather dull report on immunisation, which did however hold the interesting news that parents were slowly being convinced by the safety of MMR.
David Salisbury, the UK’s Director of Immunisation, noted: “it is imperative that we continue to do all we can to encourage take up of vaccines – particularly MMR. … The evidence on MMR is clear. Population studies and studies in individual children show no link between the vaccine and autism.”
Sadly the message is not getting through in the United States. On Monday Barack Obama gave up his status as the last remaining heavyweight US presidential candidate who hadn’t spouted dangerous nonsense on the topic.
At a rally in Pennsylvania he said: “We’ve seen just a skyrocketing autism rate. Some people are suspicious that it’s connected to the vaccines. This person included. The science right now is inconclusive, but we have to research it.”
He was apparently referring to someone in the audience when saying “This person included.” This doesn’t make that final sentence any less wrong.
“Obama’s statement, even if the interpretation that his saying ‘this person included’ was referring to someone in the crowd and not referring to himself, is nonetheless particularly ignorant and egregious,” says doctor and blogger Orac. “The science is quite conclusive thus far that vaccines do not cause autism and becomes more convincing every year.”
As the Washington Post notes in their nice piece taking Obama to task over this, John McCain has previously got his science wrong in a similar fashion.
“It’s indisputable that (autism) is on the rise among children, the question is what’s causing it. And we go back and forth and there’s strong evidence that indicates it’s got to do with a preservative in vaccines,” he said in February.
And Clinton hasn’t been immune from fuelling the fires of ignorance. Her campaign previously stated “We don’t know what, if any, kind of link there is between vaccines and autism – but we should find out.”
Let’s hope whoever gets elected appoints a medical advisor who actually reads the research before talking on a topic…
Image: Alamy