Autism's False Prophets
ksharpe | October 10, 2008This brings us to the end of our ScienceBlogs Book Club discussion of Autism's False Prophets.
Thanks to everyone for their participation.
The next Book Club discussion will start in mid-November, and we'll announce the title as soon as we can.
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kevleitch | October 9, 2008Dr. Offit has never been shy about coming out with his opinions about vaccines and their lack of association to autism. Good. I genuinely thank him for doing so. He has been willing to put himself in the line of fire for what he believes is the right thing to do. In the course of doing this he - and his children - have been subjected to threats and abuse.
He knows that this can be the price you pay for becoming entangled with anti-vaccinationists. But he also knows that this is a subject that must be tackled.
He knows that this is not just a local issue. It is international. Non-vaccinators…
autismvox | October 9, 2008On the last day of the Science Blogs Book Club discussion about Dr. Paul A. Offit's recently published Autism's False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure, I'll start by quoting the last paragraph of the book:
The science is largely complete. Ten epidemiological studies have shown MMR vaccine doesn't cause autism; six have shown thimerosal doesn't cause autism; three have shown thimerosal doesn't cause subtle neurological problems; a growing body of evidence now points to the genes that are linked to autism; and despite the removal of thimerosal from vaccines in…
pauloffit | October 7, 2008I want to thank all of those who have commented on this blog for their thoughtfulness and reason. In answer to some of your questions:
Regarding the scope of the book: One commenter asked if I had considered including material in the book that was not directly related to the vaccine-autism debate. Yes. The one area that I didn't address was the history, scope, and impact of the anti-vaccine movement in the United States. There is probably no more powerful influence on how many parents make decisions about vaccines than that of the cynically named National Vaccine Information Center. This…
autismvox | October 7, 2008
I'm teaching a course on Greek and Roman mythology this semester and last week we tackled this question:
Did the Greeks believe their myths?
That is indeed the title of a 1988 book by French historian Paul Veyne. He writes in his Introduction:
Did the Greeks believe in their mythology? The answer is difficult, for "believe" means so many things. Not everyone believed that Minos, after his death, continued being a judge in Hell or that Theseus fought the MInotaur, and they knew that poets "lie." However, their way of not believing these things is disturbing to us. For in the minds of the…
oracknows | October 7, 2008On Friday, while discussing what is perhaps the aspect of Autism's False Prophets that is at the same time the most important set of observations (namely, how the media and government miscommunicate science and how the public seems hardwired to misunderstand science) and its most glaring omission (namely, suggestions how to overcome this problem), I talked about "framing" or how we could potentially represent the current science on vaccines in a compelling way that will be persuasive to the bulk of concerned parents. We know that hard core antivaccinationist parents will not be persuaded by…
autismvox | October 6, 2008I apologize that this post is not really a review of Dr. Offit's book (I don't know how your Monday has been going but mine has included a boy with a bad cold who had to stay home resulting in immediate rearrangement of my schedule of classes etc., and my needing to meet the deadline for an important document). Much of the exchange here at the Science Blogs Book Club has been about science, vaccines, and the media's role in keeping public discussions of autism overly focused on vaccines. Dr. Offit also devotes a chapter of Autism's False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search…
pauloffit | October 6, 2008Thanks again for all of your comments. I'll try to address a few of your excellent suggestions and criticisms.
Regarding my characterization of children with autism: I think one of my limitations in writing this book is that I'm not a neurologist, psychologist, or developmentalist. I'm an infectious diseases specialist with an expertise in vaccines. So I don't come in contact with many children with autism. As a consequence, my characterization of children with autism in AUTISM'S FALSE PROPHETS came exclusively from what I read in newspapers, which no doubt slants descriptions to more extreme…
autismvox | October 4, 2008Orac wrote about the need to devise frames that can "combat the likes of Jenny McCarthy" and to counter the highly misleading frames that are out there about vaccines, namely:
1) Autism as vaccine injury.
2) Vaccination as an assault on personal freedom.
3) "Green Our Vaccines" and its variant, "We are not 'antivaccine'; we're pro-safe vaccine."
4) Too many too soon.
As the parent of an autistic son, and as someone who communicates regularly with lots of parents of autistic children and with lots of parents period, these are some reasons why people these days seem drawn to such misinformation…
pauloffit | October 3, 2008I'll try to address some of the excellent questions that were asked and points that were raised.
Regarding Jennifer's comment that the stated previous incidence of autism of 1 in 10,000 children is inaccurate: You're right. I'll make sure not to use that statistic in the future. Thanks for pointing that out. As you note, the incidence is closer to 1 in 2,500.
Regarding the financial impact of vaccines: The CDC always performs a cost-benefit analysis to determine whether the anticipated savings in healthcare costs and indirect costs (i.e., lost time from work) justifies the price of a vaccine…
pauloffit | October 3, 2008As the hypotheses shift...
It's now been about ten years since vaccines were first blamed to be the cause of autism. First, it was the MMR vaccine. The mechanism by which this vaccine was supposed to cause autism was ill conceived. Measles vaccine virus was proposed to replicate in the intestine causing chronic inflammation and loss of intestinal barrier function allowing for entrance into the bloodstream of encephalopathic proteins causing autism. However, there was no evidence that attenuated measles virus damaged the intestine and no evidence that specific encephalopathic proteins caused…
autismvox | October 2, 2008Orac in his first post about Autism's False Prophets by Dr. Paul Offit wondered at the book's chapter 5. Chapter 5 is entitled "Mercury Rising" and is (quoting Orac) a '"straightforward and relatively uncritical recitation of the 'science' used by antivaccinationists to show that mercury causes autism." Noting that he has "read and analyzed many of these studies and knowing that they are at best irrelevant and at worst rank pseudoscience" and that he found the chapter, with its uneditoralizing descriptions of studies by the likes of Mark and David Geier, Orac suggests that Offit's…
kevleitch | October 2, 2008In his entry today, Orac asks the question "How can we physicians and scientists deal with antivaccinationism? What "frames" can we use to combat the likes of Jenny McCarthy?".
This is an excellent question. I understand exactly why Dr. Offit did not cover this in his book: I think he had a very specific remit in mind and such a question went beyond that remit. Maybe he will do a an AFP 2 or maybe he is hoping another big name in the field of vaccines or autism will step up to the plate the way he has and tackle that. I hope they do too.
My field (I am a Web developer) is that of…
oracknows | October 2, 2008Note: The central idea for this post is the same as that of a post I did a few months ago. However, given some of the assertions and comments made by Dr. Offit in Autism's False Prophets, I thought they were worth discussing again, especially given how many readers are around who aren't regular readers of mine.
One of the major points made by Dr. Offit in Autism's False Prophets is how badly the media deals with scientific issues and stories in which science is a major component. Indeed, he devotes two full chapters, Science and the Media and Science and Society, to a lament that…
kevleitch | October 2, 2008In his post today, Dr. Offit raises the point that is at the heart of the matter for me.
A couple of bloggers praised the book for its tone, that I never appeared to get angry at the false prophets described in the book. The reason for that is that I'm not the father of a child with autism. If I were, I would have been quite angry. Angry because I think that the anti-vaccine forces have taken the autism story hostage.
I'm angry. I'm damn angry. I don't want to blog about vaccines. I don't want to blog about the frighteningly casual way serious medical interventions are tested on autistic…
pauloffit | October 1, 2008 I want to thank all of you who took the time to read the book and comment. Many of you had kind things to say about the writing and content, clearly understanding what I was trying to do and why I did it. I'll try and answer as many questions that were directed at me as I can, writing a blog entry every morning.
I'll start with the easier questions.
We tried to get companies that publish audio books interested in this book, but were unsuccessful.
All of my royalties from the sale of this book will be donated to the Center for Autism Research at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. I have…
autismvox | October 1, 2008Deconstructing David Kirby.
This is the title of one of two follow-up posts that Dr. Rahul Parikh wrote after reviewing Dr. Paul Offit's Autism's False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure and getting the usual treatment by the usual "anti-vaccine/pro-vaccine-safety/mercury militia" suspects: A smackdown by the likes of David Kirby himself, Kirby being the author of the book Evidence of Harm, whose very subtitle proclaims that mercury in vaccines has something to do with a supposed "autism epidemic," and that this is a "medical controversy." Since its publication…
oracknows | October 1, 2008Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth and taste...
Well, not really. I might have one of the two. Or not.
Be that as it may, I'm Orac, and I blog regularly at Respectful Insolence. In the more than two and a half years I've been with ScienceBlogs (not to mention the more than a year before that on my own), I've become known as its resident "vaccine blogger." True, others around here sometimes do posts about vaccines, antivaccine lunacy, and the discredited idea that vaccines somehow cause autism, but with nowhere near the frequency and intensity that I do. Without a doubt,…
kevleitch | October 1, 2008In June of 2003, I opened my blog with these words:
Megan was born on 17-02-00 weighing slightly more than usual. The first few months of her life were totally normal- we didn't feel concerned about her health or well-being at all. That changed however when she had her DTP jab.
I know there's been a lot about the jabs (particularly the combined MMR jab) in the news but we (or rather I, Naomi was a lot more dubious than me but I managed to convince her) decided to go ahead with it and on the night of her first lot of jabs Megan began projectile vomiting and developed a temperature that peaked…
pauloffit | September 30, 2008My name is Paul Offit. I'm the chief of the division of infectious diseases at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and my published expertise is in the area of vaccine safety and rotavirus-specific immune responses. (I'm the co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine, RotaTeq). I've written a book about the vaccine-autism controversy titled AUTISM'S FALSE PROPHETS: BAD SCIENCE, RISKY MEDICINE, AND THE SEARCH FOR A CURE. First: a little background on autism and the birth of the controversy.
There is no known cause or cure for autism. But in the late 1990s two hypotheses garnered a great deal of…