Autism Vaccine War: Is Scientific Inquiry Being Suppressed?

Dr. Beatrice Golomb's presentation This Is Your Brain On Politics pulls no punches in its critique of conflicts of interest, bias, censorship and intimidation involving pharmaceutical companies, health authorities and academic institutions and publications.  Professor Golomb's presentation includes commentary on pressure tactics, including intimidation, used by some pharmaceutical industry representatives to silence criticism of their products and the research that accompanies them.

Professor Golomb's presentation provides an interesting framework with which to consider the continued pressures exerted on Dr. Andrew Wakefield over an article he wrote in 1998 for which, in 2011, he was denounced, by journalistic decree,  as being guilty of fraud.  A refutation of the Wakefield fraud allegations by research microbiologist David Lewis was published in the BMJ  but has not received the major US or world media attention that the original fraud allegations attracted.

An even more recent  demonstration of pressure on those who question or study issues pertaining to vaccine safety has arisen in response to an article on vaccine adjuvants published by two UBC Ph.D.'s.  In Tom Sandborn's article in the Vancouver Courier Responses to UBC vaccine paper a problem for free scientific inquiry and expression UBC researchers raise questions, experience backlash Sandborn describes what appears to be an effort to suppress publication of peer reviewed journal articles which raise potential vaccine health issues. None other than Dr. Paul Offit is reported to have weighed in with comments which appear to suggest that studies or articles criticizing vaccine safety in any way should not be published:

"Shaw, who is on faculty at UBC with the Departments of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences and Experimental Medicine and the Graduate Program in Neuroscience, and his colleague Lucija Tomljenovic have recently published a carefully parsed and thoroughly peer reviewed paper on vaccine safety, without a doubt one of the most controversial topics in medicine today. Despite the cautious and professional tone of the paper, and despite the authors' clear statement that their findings are not in themselves decisive, only pointing to the need for more extensive research into vaccine safety, the paper, published in November 2011 in the Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry which describes correlations and possible causal links between increased exposure to aluminum salts used as adjuvants in vaccines and increased levels of neurological trouble in exposed populations, seems to inflame angry and punitive responses in some quarters.


For example, when I discussed the Tomljenovic/Shaw paper with Dr. Paul Offit, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, a strong proponent of vaccines and the developer of a successful new vaccine that has made him a multi-millionaire, he told me that the paper "should never have been published," despite the fact it was rigorously peer reviewed before publication. (Like many who want to insist that all questions of vaccine safety have been settled, Offit invokes the notorious Andrew Wakefield affair involving a now discredited and withdrawn paper published in The Lancet in 1998, which suggested a link between MMR vaccines and autism. Offit claims that paper is responsible for avoidable deaths as worried parents failed to vaccinate their children. Wakefield has recently filed a suit for defamation against Brian Deer, the investigative journalist whose work was central to the storm of criticism that surrounded the Lancet paper.)"

In the context of the autism vaccine war the late Dr. Bernadine Healy expressed confidence in the general safety of vaccines while talking about the need to explore possible vaccine impacts on susceptible populations. She also expressed confidence in public understanding of the value and importance of vaccines in protecting and promoting pubic health and safety while cautioning public health authorities against dismissing further scientific research on autism vaccine issues:

"There is a completely expressed concern that they don't want to pursue a hypothesis because that hypothesis could be damaging to the public health community at large by scaring people. First of all, I think the public's smarter than that. The public values vaccines. But more importantly, I don't think you should ever turn your back on any scientific hypothesis because you're afraid of what it might show."

The concerns expressed by Dr. Healy about the suppression of scientific inquiry into vaccine autism issues by public health authorities appear to be supported by the attempts to suppress the publication of articles like that of the UBC professors published after rigorous peer review which pointed to possible issues with aluminum salt adjuvants in vaccines.  Dr. Offit, and others who wish to suppress such inquiry, claim to be afraid of ignorant members of the public who will react out of fear and refuse to vaccinate their children.  The attempts at suppression however give rise to an equally plausible hypothesis as suggested by Dr. Healy ...  that Offit and company are afraid of what such inquiry might show.

NOTE: As the author of this blog comment I advise that my children have received all recommended and mandatory vaccines and that I have received vaccines at different times including during the H1N1 panic two years ago. I recognize the importance of vaccines in public health and safety. I am, however, seriously concerned about the incessant attempts to suppress scientific inquiry of vaccine safety issues and the view that all possible connections between vaccines and autism spectrum disorders have been explored and "debunked" for all time.