Authored by Eric English, RAC

A significant contributing factor to the debate over the safety of childhood vaccines can be traced back to a recently retracted paper published by a group led by Dr. Andrew Wakefield in the British medical journal The Lancett.  Following the publication of Wakefield’s study, numerous large scale studies were performed. None of these studies were able to demonstrate a definitive link between the MMR vaccine and autism. Additionally, evidence surfaced that called into question Wakefield’s scientific and professional integrity . A large portion of Wakefield’s funding had come from a group of British trial lawyers who were mining for evidence in order to sue vaccine manufacturers. It was also discovered that data obtained within the original study which did not support his hypothesis had been disregarded. Ten of the twelve authors of the paper retracted their interpretation of the data as supporting an association between the vaccine and autism.  The Lancet fully retracted the paper on February 2, 2010. 

Another factor contributing to the debate was the FDA Modernization Act of 1997; which, in part, required a safety review of all mercury containing food and drugs. At the time, many vaccines contained thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative -although the MMR vaccine does not now, nor has it ever, contained thimerosal. As a purely precautionary measure, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommended that thimerosal be removed from vaccines as quickly as possible. Despite the fact that numerous subsequent studies failed to show any correlation between thimerosal and autism, and that autism rates have continued to rise even after the removal of thimerosal from most vaccines, thousands of lawsuits have been brought against vaccine manufacturers by parents who felt that their child’s vaccinations had caused their autism. The United States’ “Vaccine Court”, an Office of Special Masters of the US Court of Federal Claims established for litigating vaccine injury claims, has recently ruled that, based on the currently available scientific data, thimerosal containing vaccines do not cause autism.

In both instances, public panic has demonstrated that the effectiveness of vaccination programs depends on the confidence of the general public in the safety of vaccines. In the case of Wakefield’s study, the editor of The Lancet stated in 2004 that, had Wakefield’s conflicts of interest been known during the peer review process, his study never would have been published.  Despite safety assurances from many government health agencies, a small but vocal minority continues to believe that rising autism rates are the result of vaccinations. Many current studies have linked the rise in autism rates with the broadening definition of autism, and an increased awareness of autism as a possible diagnosis.