OH, JUST 2 MORE SHOCKING VAX vs. UNVAXED SURVEYS. LAD-DE-DAH.

By Dan Olmsted

The conversation about the autism rate in vaccinated versus never-vaccinated kids has gotten kind of surreal, wouldn’t you agree? Right now (see several posts on this page) we’re battling the double-reverse pseudo-scientific assertion that such studies have been done and that they prove there’s no connection between vaccination and autism.

Oh, brother. In fact, oh, Big Brother. What we’re dealing with here is positively Orwellian. Not only is it the Big Lie -- because there are no such studies and those nonexistent studies prove no such thing– but it is an abuse of language that makes you wonder if this is 1984 rather than 2008.

So let’s once again frame the issue as clearly as possible: What is the autism rate in never-vaccinated versus vaccinated children?

I’ve always been careful to use the term never-vaccinated, because that is what we’re talking about. Once someone gets a vaccine, I’m no longer interested in how they compare to someone who got any other vaccine, ever. I’m interested in how they compare to someone who never got any vaccine -- never.

Yet if there’s even a chance that a real study using really and truly never-vaccinated kids could be done, you can practically see the flopsweat trickle down the faces of the mainstream medical and scientific establishment.

One reason for that panic is because every time anyone looks, the anecdotal or informal evidence points clearly to a higher rate of autism in vaccinated kids. I’m getting repetitive stress injury – mental as well as physical – from reciting the litany: The Amish, the homeschooled, Homefirst Medical Services in Chicago. Generation Rescue did its own $200,000 phone survey and found a twice-as-high risk – statistically significant – between being vaccinated and having autism in older boys. U.S. Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney cited that – and Homefirst and the Amish – in introducing a bill to force the feds to do such a study. She called it common sense, and I’m sure George Orwell would agree.

The Dutch Association for Conscientious Vaccination – I recently wrote about them HERE. HERE -- found similar reason for concern.

Now, another pair of surveys from New Zealand have been forwarded to me. Here is the summary from New Zealand’s Immunization Awareness Society. It is not about autism – it’s about everything but, and once again it suggests that the rise in chronic childhood disorders since the early 1990s can be linked to an out-of-control early childhood immunization schedule. Ironically, the first of these two surveys is from 1992, just when that increase started in the United States. Too bad nobody at the CDC, FDA, IOM or AAP – the alphabet soup that got us into this mess – paid attention and decided to do a scientifically conclusive vaxed-vs-unvaxed study. It could have settled the issue 15 years ago, not to mention saving a lot of suffering. Just to hammer home the point, another research project turned up the same effect in New Zealand in 1999.

But make of it what you will – I’ll stop here because my repetitive stress is kicking up again.

The 1992 IAS Survey of Vaccinated and Unvaccinated Children

In 1992 IAS conducted a survey on the health and vaccination status of New Zealand children. The questionnaires were distributed through IAS members, friends and associates. Such studies normally have inherent biases. In this study almost all the children were breastfed and babies were generally breastfed for longer than the majority of New Zealand babies. Many of the families surveyed included both vaccinated and unvaccinated children, suggesting that the parents developed an awareness of vaccination issues over time. However, many of the respondents were not members of IAS and the split between vaccinated and unvaccinated children was remarkably even. A total of 245 surveys were returned, representing 245 families, with a total of 495 children surveyed. There were 226 vaccinated children and 269 unvaccinated children. The ages ranged from two weeks to 46 years. There were 273 males and 216 females. Families from throughout the country responded.

Respondents were asked to provide the year of birth, gender, vaccinations received, whether or not the child suffered from a range of chronic conditions (asthma, eczema, ear infections/glue ear, recurring tonsillitis, hyperactivity, diabetes and epilepsy) whether or not he or she had needed grommets, had had a tonsillectomy, or were slow to develop motor skills (walking, crawling, sitting-up, etc.). Parents also provided information on breastfeeding and bottle feeding and when the child was weaned if breastfed.

Eighty-one families had both vaccinated and unvaccinated children. The vast majority of these were two child families in which the elder child was vaccinated and the younger unvaccinated. There were also a large number of three and four child families in which the youngest child was unvaccinated and the older siblings were vaccinated.

The age distribution of vaccinated versus unvaccinated showed an increasing awareness of vaccination issues and reluctance to vaccinate with time. Only 9% of the people born before 1970 (1 out of 11) were unvaccinated compared to 89% of the children born since 1990 (103 out of 116). For births between 1986 and 1990 the percentage of unvaccinated children was 55. These figures suffer from what is probably the strongest bias in the survey. Parents are most concerned about the risks of vaccination when their children are young and receiving more vaccines. Membership of IAS typically lapses as children get older and the period of childhood in which the bulk of vaccinations are administered passes. As the questionnaire was distributed through current members it is logical that the members and their associates had children more recently and were at a time in parenthood in which vaccinations were of greatest concern. However, the figures can be seen to reflect a trend of increasing concern about the number of vaccines administered to children and the associated safety risks, together with an increasing refusal of parents to allow their children to be vaccinated.

The results overwhelmingly showed that unvaccinated children suffer far less from chronic childhood conditions than vaccinated children. …

The survey results showed that there was a significant difference in the incidence of asthma, eczema, and ear infections in vaccinated and unvaccinated children. While overall the incidence of grommets, tonsillitis, tonsillectomies, apnoea and hyperactivity were lower the trend is similar [including a] ten-fold increase in tonsillitis in vaccinated children and the complete lack of tonsillectomies in unvaccinated children. In the vaccinated, 73% of the cases of tonsillitis and 92% of the tonsillectomies were in children who had received the measles vaccines. As only 52% of the total vaccinated children received a measles vaccine, one would expect about 52% of the tonsillitis/tonsillectomies to occur in children to have had the vaccine suggesting that the vaccine made some children more susceptible to tonsillitis.

The role of breastfeeding

An interesting feature of the survey was the high level of breastfeeding among mothers of both vaccinated and unvaccinated children. Breastfeeding, or the lack of it, has often been associated with the incidence of chronic childhood conditions and ill health. It is important when considering the health of vaccinated versus unvaccinated children to correct for bottle-fed babies and also for the length of time that children are breastfed. However, there was essentially no difference in the distribution of age at weaning between the two groups and therefore no need to make any corrective calculations.

There were marginally more bottle fed babies in the vaccinated group (ten vaccinated and two unvaccinated). While the percentage of babies in each “age-at-weaning” group over three months was slightly greater in the unvaccinated, the distribution is comparable and both the vaccinated and unvaccinated groups showed greater percentages in each age group than the national averages. For example, 91% of vaccinated and 97% of unvaccinated children in the survey were being breastfed at three months compared to 69% in the general population; 79% of vaccinated children and 88% of unvaccinated children were still being breastfed at six months - the national average is 60%; at twelve months 50% of vaccinated and 65% of unvaccinated children were still being breastfed - the national average is 39%; and over twelve months of age 27% of vaccinated and 35% of unvaccinated were still getting breast milk while the national average had plummeted to just 6% (Plunket Society, Pers. comm., June 2001).

In an analysis of the role that breastfeeding and age-at-weaning played in the incidence of chronic childhood conditions in both the vaccinated and unvaccinated children surveyed, the data showed that there was no breastfeeding factor that could account for the difference in incidence between the two groups.

A more recent, independent survey of vaccinated and unvaccinated children

In 1999 Dr Mike Godfrey, a New Zealand specialist in preventive and environmental medicine, conducted a similar survey comparing the health of vaccinated and unvaccinated children. Dr Godfrey surveyed 864 children, 260 of whom were unvaccinated and 604 of whom were vaccinated. His results were remarkably similar. … The incidence of asthma, eczema and tonsillitis were significantly higher in vaccinated children. As with the IAS survey, although the overall incidence of the other conditions was somewhat lower, there was the same trend for the incidence to be higher in vaccinated children. The only exception was in the incidence of diabetes which was similar in the vaccinated and unvaccinated children. However, the numbers of individuals with diabetes were so small that any association with vaccination status is impossible to determine.

Dan Olmsted is Editor of Age of Autism.

Comments

[Sandy Gottstein]

As can be seen in my Out of Control column noted earlier, examining a CDC study alleging to disprove any connection between vaccines and asthma, the CDC is actively involved in conducting misleading studies. (They aren't stupid, so I can only conclude the design was deliberate.)

And as I wrote after asking the CDC and NIH if they were going to ever do a properly designed autism epidemiolgy study in which the never-vaccinated were compared to the vaccinated, and they said it would be too difficult and the never-vaccinated might be "different": (http://www.vaccinationnews.com/Scandals/Sept_27_02/Scandal35.htm )

"1) There are more than enough never vaccinated children in the states which allow philosophical exemptions to conduct a proper study.

2) If children who have not been vaccinated are different in ways that prevent them from getting autism, wouldn't we want to know that?

Well, wouldn't we?"

What are they afraid of, as if I need to ask?

[Gatogorra]

Wow. I can't believe these are only coming to light now. I can't believe the CDC didn't know about these studies either. The more b.s. they spew, the more it seems obvious that they know what the results would be if the study were attempted here.

To paraphrase Orwell, "When there is a gap between one's real and one's declaired aims, one turns instinctively to long phrases, like a cuttlefish squirting ink".

Considering Julie Gerberding's reply to your question about vaxed/never vaxed studies, Mr. Olmsted, maybe it's not just that repeat calls for the study which cause brain fractures but the wads of drivel which get flung back:

"In this country, we have very high levels of vaccination as you probably know, and I think this year we have record immunization levels among all of our children, so to (select an unvaccinated group) that on a population basis would be representative to look at incidence in that population compared to the other population would be something that could be done.
But as we're learning, just trying to look at autism in a community the size of Atlanta, it's very, very difficult to get an effective numerator and denominator to get a reliable diagnosis.

I think those kind of studies could be done and should be done. You'd have to adjust for the strong genetic component that also distinguishes, for example, people in Amish communities who may elect not to be immunized (and) also have genetic connectivity that would make them different from populations that are in other sectors of the United States. So drawing some conclusions from them would be very difficult.

I think with reference to the timing of all of this, good science does take time, and it's part of one of the messages I feel like I've learned from the feedback that we've gotten from parents groups this summer (in) struggling with developing a more robust and a faster research agenda, is let's speed this up. Let's look for the early studies that could give us at least some hypotheses to test and evaluate and get information flowing through the research pipeline as quickly as we can.

So we are committed to doing that, and as I mentioned, in terms of just measuring the frequency of autism in the population some pretty big steps have been taken. We're careful not to jump ahead of our data, but we think we will be able to provide more accurate information in the next year or so than we've been able to do up to this point. And I know that is our responsibility.

We've also benefited from some increased investments in these areas that have allowed us to do this, and so we thank Congress and we thank the administration for supporting those investments, not just at CDC but also at NIH and FDA."

Connectivity? Effective numerator? Rit iz? Was that a yes? Ow.

[Sandy Gottstein]

There is another New Zealand study that I reported about in my one "Out of Control" column. You can read the entire column here: http://www.vaccinationnews.com/Out_of_Control/2003/Sept_9/OOC1.htm

Here's the part about the NZ study: "The authors of this (the CDC study examined in the column) study also shamelessly criticized a New Zealand study, which had found evidence for increased asthma and atopy, for its small sample of 'unvaccinated kids'. I say 'shamelessly' because the NZ study at least made an effort to include unvaccinated kids, i.e., 'never' vaccinated children, whereas the CDC study did not. Thus the New Zealand study results, although not very powerful due to the never vaccinated group's small sample size, genuinely provided some provocative evidence that at least one vaccine, DPT, might increase the incidence of asthma and atopy."

[Anne Dachel]

The main motivation of many in the autism debate is, "It just can't be true that vaccines are hurting our children. The consequences would be too great." So they dismiss the scientists who challenge their view. Call all their studies "flawed." Pretend our children aren't getting sicker and sicker and congratulate doctors for "better diagnosing." They falsely present the controversy as merely an argument over mercury use in vaccines. We don't hear about the tripling of the schedule since 1983, the other toxins in vaccines, or the questions over the MMR. All is well.

If Dan Olmsted keeps talking like this however and bringing up comparison rates of vaccinated/unvaccinated children, the CDC might be forced to make the claim by ABC's Dr. Tim Johnson come true. We can expect that the masters of the population study will come up with one---one that will show no substantial difference in health problems, especially autism, among the comparison groups.

Anne Dachel
Media editor