Vaccines, Autism and Conflicts of Interest

The Boston Globe was far too subtle in disclosing Paul Offit's conflict of interest in a recent op-ed piece about vaccines, according to Ed Silverman, a New Jersey journalist who blogs about the pharmaceutical industry at Pharmalot. The Globe described Offit as the inventor of a particular vaccine but didn't make it crystal clear that as such, he would stand to lose financially if an upcoming lawsuit that claims a link between vaccines and autism is successful.

Fair enough. But the anti-vaccine crowd have their own conflicts of interest, which typically are never even touched on by the press. After all, if claimants think they can get their hands on some of the money in the federal vaccine compensation fund, doesn't that represent a conflict?

I'm sure there are plenty of other people besides Offit who could have argued in favor of vaccines. Trouble is, sources with financial conflicts are often also in the best position to know something about a particular topic. At any rate, the potential conflict should be made clear.

Meanwhile, the most rigorous scientific studies to date have shown no causative link between vaccines and autism.

Indeed, one of the most careful studies of all, published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine in 2005, showed that most of the increase in autism cases from the late 1980s onward in the U.S. at least, occurred as a result of a change in the definition of autism. Earlier, doctors tended to say that children exhibiting similar symptoms were "developmentally delayed" rather than suffering from autism.

For the record, I own no pharmaceutical stock and have never invented a vaccine.

Sources:

KM Madsen et al, "A Population-Based Study of Measles, Mumps, and Rubella Vaccination and Autism." New England Journal of Medicine. Volume 347:1477-1482; November 7, 2002.

WJ Barbaresi et al, "The Incidence of Autism in Olmsted County, Minnesota, 1976-1997." Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2005;159:37-44.

Autism Gene Is Found--Or Is It?

Headlines are often major sources of error. The Canadian Press just ran a story under the banner "Autism Gene Found." Trouble is, if you read the CP story, or the scientific study in Nature Genetics on which it was based, it's clear that no single gene--or even collection of genes--for autism has been found. Instead, researchers scanned genetic samples from 1,400 carefully selected families with autism and discovered suspicious patterns in their DNA that suggested where they might look for genes that could potentially predispose a person to autism.

In other words, if families with austistic members share similar DNA patterns, then it's possible those patterns might tell you something about a genetic predisposition for autism.

Notice all the caveats and hedges in these statements? Researchers use associations--like the ones found in this autism study--as ways of figuring out where to look for interesting results. That doesn't guarantee they will find anything.

Just as there's no guarantee that just because you found a few football players who wear red jackets that all football players wear red jackets.

Or, as the Canadian Press article by Sheryl Ubelacker (2/19/2007) puts it:

What’s important about the discovery, said [autism researcher Stephen] Scherer, is that it has given scientists in the field a new foundation for further research, which eventually could lead them to specific mutations on specific genes that cause — likely in combination — the spectrum of disorders that fall under the autism umbrella.