Andrew Wakefield, his claims to the contrary, is antivaccine to the core. To be honest, I’m not sure if he was always antivaccine. After all, around 20 years ago when he was doing his “research” into whether the MMR vaccine causes autism, he was being generously funded by a barrister seeking to sue vaccine manufacturers and he was developing a competing measles vaccine (for which he filed for a patent) that would be unlikely to be profitable unless the MMR became discredited. In retrospect, knowing what I know now about these aspects of Wakefield’s “research,” I consider it highly likely that Wakefield was cynically making money where he could. However, somewhere along the line, whether it was due to the celebrity or the adulation he received from antivaccine mothers of autistic children who viewed him as a hero for giving them something to blame for their children’s condition or the lucrative nature of being an autism quack, Wakefield did become truly antivaccine. Now, he’s traveling the country promoting VAXXED: From Cover-up to Catastrophe, a documentary that is in reality an antivaccine propaganda movie spewing the same old antivaccine pseudoscience coupled with the newer “CDC whistleblower” myth, to communities that can ill afford the return of vaccine-preventable diseases.
When last we left Andrew Wakefield, he was with his old friend and ally Polly Tommey and his new buddy and producer of VAXXED Del Bigtree spreading antivaccine misinformation to a largely African-American group in Compton, CA, complete with the mayor and an African-American woman featured in the film named Sheila Ealey, who believes that vaccines caused her son’s autism and buys completely into the “CDC whistleblower” conspiracy theory. Worse, he peddled the intellectually dishonest “vaccines didn’t save us from infectious disease” gambit. His words are worth repeating here because they lead into what I’m going to discuss:
The mortality and the morbidity—that is, the illness associated with infectious disease—of virtually every infectious disease—measles, mumps, rubella, typhoid, chickenpox—was coming down dramatically before vaccines were ever introduced. The morbidity and mortality from measles had come down by 99.6% before vaccines were introduced. If we had not introduced vaccines, would they have come down to zero? We’ll never know, because we intervened with vaccines, and they claim it was vaccines that caused the improvement. It was nothing to do with vaccination. OK, that may have produced an incremental improvement. Are they necessary for life? Absolutely not!
This is, of course, utter bollocks (to borrow a word from Wakefield’s native land). The sleight-of-hand is to point to declining mortality from infectious diseases, which was due to improvements in medical treatments that allowed more children to survive these diseases, with incidence of infectious diseases, which did decline markedly for each disease for which an effective vaccine was introduced at exactly the time one would expect, shortly after the widespread use of the vaccine took hold. Unfortunately, I learned recently that Wakefield just expounded on this little snippet on the VAXXED website in a little ditty called Notes on Herd Immunity from Andrew Wakefield. Basically, it’s a compilation of the “greatest hits” of antivaccine lies about herd immunity presented as a bullet list. Basically, Wakefield tries to claim that “natural” herd immunity is better than herd immunity due to vaccination and fails risibly and despicably.
So let’s look at Andy’s rationale, such as it is. Before I do, however, I can’t help but note that at no point does he provide links to his sources for his claims. For instance, Wakefield claim that in the developed world “As a consequence of natural Herd Immunity, in the developed world measles mortality had fallen by 99.6% before measles vaccines were introduced.” This is probably a not entirely unreasonable estimate of how much mortality had decreased. Then, Wakefield goes off the rails, saying, “A fall in morbidity will have paralleled the fall in mortality (mortality is the extreme of morbidity).” Um, no. You can’t make that claim. An equally plausible outcome is that, as more children survive measles, the survivors live with more morbidity. Think of it this way with another disease, polio. As more children survived polio, thanks to iron lungs, more survived to face the possibility of permanent weakness and paralysis. Mortality might well have declined, but morbidity in the survivors stayed the same or increased because more children survived to face that morbidity. Also, there is long-lasting morbidity due to measles virus infection in the form of immunosuppression that lasts two to three years after infection and predisposes to death from infectious disease. In other words, the benefits of measles vaccination go beyond just measles.
Wakefield’s claim is without evidence and rests on an assumption that is completely backwards. That’s even leaving aside the fact that getting sick is morbidity! Seriously, if you get sick with measles, even if you recover (as the vast majority do), you have suffered significant morbidity, and if there’s a vaccine suffering that morbidity is potentially preventable! Basically, Wakefield redefines morbidity as only permanent sequelae to make this deeply dishonest argument. I could much more reasonably define morbidity as being ill with vaccine-preventable disease (because that is morbidity, albeit temporary) and point out that, since the measles vaccine was introduced in the US, morbidity has declined by 99.9% and mortality by very close to 100%, while morbidity and mortality from polio have declined 100%. Meanwhile, worldwide, thanks to the measles vaccine, mortality has fallen dramatically since 2000, from an estimated 733,000 deaths in 2000 to 164,000 in 2008 to an estimated 96,000 in 2013, thanks to a worldwide vaccination program.
Let’s look at Wakefield’s “reasoning.” Wakefield makes the claim that “high dose exposure” due to natural infection (you know, complete with the replicating virus that makes you sick) results in better herd immunity:
- High dose exposure occurs because, in the absence of viral immunity, viral replication is unimpeded in the multiple susceptible human reservoirs in which it thrives. High doses of measles virus are transmitted from one person to the next. Added to this, socioeconomic circumstances contribute to high dose exposure. This includes high population density (easy transmission) and poor antiviral defenses (e.g. low vitamins A, D, and C). An example is the ravage of measles in Confederate soldiers amassed in barracks and hospitals in the American Civil War.
- Over time, as measles becomes endemic (constantly circulating) in a population with typical 2-yearly epidemics, Herd Immunity increases rapidly. Natural exposure leads to long term immunity. Immunity limits viral transmission and opportunities for viral replication. Concomitantly, developed countries have experienced an improvement in nutritional status and consequently antiviral immunity. Dose of exposure falls and a dramatic reduction in morbidity and mortality is observed.
I haven’t used this in a while, but truly it is appropriate now. The stupid, it burns.
Herd immunity (or the newer, more preferred term, community immunity, a term that doesn’t liken us to cattle) is not defined by morbidity and mortality of a vaccine-preventable disease. It’s defined by the incidence! Guess how many cases of measles there were in the US before the introduction of the vaccine? Between 1952 and 1963, there were an estimated 530,217 cases per year (with 440 deaths). Apparently that “natural” herd immunity didn’t work so well back then. What about now? A few hundred cases, thanks to the Disneyland measles outbreak, fewer before. That’s thanks to the measles vaccine and thanks to community immunity.
But wait, it gets stupider:
Let us look at an example of how natural Herd Immunity operated to provide age-appropriate immunity.
- Infants less than one year of age have a limited ability to generate adequate immunity and are susceptible to serious measles infection.
- In the pre-vaccine era mothers conferred good passive immunity on their infants by transplacental and breast milk transfer.
- This passive immunity protected infants through a period of vulnerability until they were better able to cope with measles through the generation of their own active immunity.
Yep, that passive immunity worked so well that measles still ran rampant through the population. Just let the kids get sick after whatever passive immunity they had from breast milk wears off! And the price of that passive immunity is only a half a million sick kids a year and a few hundred deaths. What a bargain. Of course, one can’t help but point out the dichotomy here. Antivaccine activists like Wakefield will wax indignant over a single vaccine injury or death and scoff at any argument that vaccines are safe enough because only 1 in a million suffers a serious adverse event, but then will turn around with brain dead arguments that “natural immunity” is worth hundreds of deaths a year.
Now look at Wakefield’s characterization of the “vaccine era,” in which, as Wakefield tells it, “natural herd immunity” has been destroyed. Never mind that “natural herd immunity” is an oxymoron when describing one of the most easily transmissible infectious diseases out there:
- The increasing Herd Immunity associated with natural measles and the accompanying decrease in morbidity and mortality, has been interrupted by vaccination. This makes it difficult to predict how vaccinated populations might respond to, say, a new strain of measles virus that has escaped the ‘protection’ conferred by measles vaccine (escape mutant). Because that population is not immune to the escape mutant we risk high morbidity and mortality from measles once again.
- Vaccinated mothers do not confer adequate passive immunity upon their infants (< 1 year of age). Infants are unable to generate an adequate immune response to measles vaccine and in the absence of passive maternal immunity, are unprotected during the first year, putting them at risk of serious measles infection.
- Unlike natural measles, measles vaccine does not provide lasting immunity and a substantial proportion of measles cases are reported in those who have been vaccinated against measles.
- Boosting of immunity using repeated doses of measles vaccine is not sustained and falls off rapidly. The only answer to this diminishing return that is offered by the regulators and manufacturers is to give more and more vaccines. The vaccine is highly profitable in terms of volume of sales, precisely because it is inadequately effective.
There’s a whole lot of hand waving going on here which is silly in the extreme. In particular the first bullet point almost made me bleed from my ears, as the ignorance in it assaulted my neurons. If a new strain of measles virus were to evolve it would be difficult to predict how any population might respond to it because it’s a new strain. It could be more virulent, cause more harm, or be potentially more deadly, or it could be less so. There would be no way to predict a priori in a vaccinated or unvaccinated population. Also, the unvaccinated population wouldn’t be immune to the “escape mutant” either. Seriously, Wakefield isn’t even trying here, but his followers will lap this idiocy up. As for the implication that measles immunity rapidly declines, that’s not true. It lasts over 20 years after two doses of MMR, and the CDC only recommends one adult dose if there is no evidence of ongoing immunity, which implies that a significant part of the population is immune much longer than 20 years.
After dumping this load of antivaccine nonsense on us, Wakefield can’t resist moving on to the mumps vaccine. Railing against the mumps vaccine as being ineffective and referring to mumps as being a “trivial disease in children” but not trivial in post-pubertal males because of its ability to affect the testicles and cause sterility, he claims that “natural Herd Immunity” (which he inexplicably keeps capitalizing) has been destroyed by mumps vaccination. I can’t help but note that the incidence of mumps has fallen 96% since the pre-vaccination era; so Wakefield’s claim that the mumps vaccine is ineffective is, as the rest of his claims, deceptive. Truly, though, Wakefield can do an excellent Gish gallop, as he continues to do with chickenpox and shingles:
The chickenpox virus (varicella zoster) causes a mild self-limiting disease in healthy children. The virus frequently establishes latent infection in the cell bodies of sensory nerve roots where it has the potential to episodically reactivate and cause shingles, a very painful and debilitating condition. Shingles can cause blindness. Historically, shingles was an uncommon disease occurring in, for example, people with immune deficiency due to cancer or immunosuppressive drug therapy.
Reactivation of zoster is inhibited by an adequate level of immunity to this virus which, in turn, is maintained by boosting of immunity in parents and grandparents by re-exposure via children with chickenpox. Natural epidemics of chickenpox maintained Herd Immunity by ‘wild-type boosting’ (referring to the natural virus) of adults which prevented shingles in otherwise healthy individuals. This is no longer the case.
Widespread chickenpox vaccination has removed natural Herd Immunity by preventing epidemics, eliminating ‘wild-type’ boosting, and allowing immunity to fall in individuals to the point where shingles is now much more common, occurring in young, apparently healthy people. Vaccination has created a new epidemic to which Merck’s response is, ‘we’ve created a market; now let’s make a vaccine to prevent shingles.’
First of all, chickenpox is not nearly as benign a disease in children as Wakefield represents it. It can produce real complications, including:
- bacterial infections of the skin and soft tissues in children including Group A streptococcal infections
- pneumonia
- infection or inflammation of the brain (encephalitis, cerebellar ataxia)
- bleeding problems
- blood stream infections (sepsis)
- dehydration
These complications can be serious enough to require hospitalization and can even cause death in otherwise healthy children. Such complications might not be common, but when large numbers of children get chickenpox, there will be these complications. Aside from that, having the chickenpox is just plain miserable. I got it when I was around seven, and its one of the few things I remember most vividly about that age because it made me so itchy, feverish, and downright sick. I still have a couple of scars from pox that I scratched open. But what’s the suffering of millions of children compared to an antivaccine ideology valuing “natural” immunity?
As for the rest of Wakefield’s argument, Skeptical Raptor does a good job of dismantling the rest of Wakefield’s argument, which is basically antivaccine boilerplate about chickenpox and shingles. First, I agree with the scaly one that it is morally repugnant to use children as a vehicle to immunize adults by maintaining a pool of infected children through not vaccinating, particularly when the cost is that some children will become very sick and some children will even die. Again, antivaccinationists, who wax so morally righteous at the thought that one in a million children receiving vaccines might have a serious adverse reaction seem unconcerned about more children (particularly the immunosuppressed) suffering and even dying to protect adults. More importantly, as our scaly friend put it:
Previously, scientists thought that the potential immune effect against shingles by recurrent chickenpox infections in children would last around 20 years. Based on real immunological and virological data from individuals, a new model of chickenpox vaccine and shingles, developed by the scientists in Belgium, shows that the effect only lasts for about two years.
So, if one could argue that putting children at risk for chickenpox just to protect adults was morally acceptable, the effect is so short-term that adults would essentially need to encounter a constant pool of chickenpox infected children. I swear this sounds like some surreal post-apocalyptic movie running on Netflix.
Of course, nuance is not what Wakefield is about. Fear mongering is. Yes, vaccinating against varicella (the virus that causes chickenpox) could temporarily increase the incidence of shingles in younger adults. However, vaccinated children who don’t get chickenpox, thanks to the vaccine, will never have to worry about getting shingles. These are the sorts of trade-offs that real public health officials, real physicians, and real infectious disease efforts consider while evaluating evidence that ideologues like Wakefield completely ignore.
Andrew Wakefield, Polly Tommey, Del Bigtree, and the rest of Wakefield’s crew might tell themselves they are “vaccine safety advocates,” but in reality they are clearly antivaccine, given that they keep repeating long-discredited misinformation about vaccine efficacy and safety. Unfortunately, they’ve made a vehicle, VAXXED, to peddle those same old lies as old wine in a new skin. Worse, they’re peddling them to populations that can least afford the return of the scourges of the diseases that vaccines have been effectively holding at bay.
61 replies on “Andrew Wakefield claims “natural Herd Immunity” is better than anything vaccines can do, never mind all that suffering”
Not sure I entirely agree with your analysis. Or maybe it’s a question of emphasis. I don’t think he’s anti-vaccine “to the core”, as you put it.
I think he has simply moved his presentation to that stance – which I agree is now through the looking glass in terms of his positions over the years – simply because he has to do this to bring to himself the money he wants and the control over these mothers that he needs.
It’s a cynical positioning, but it’s worth pointing out that this former doctor – with no consequential expertise now on any of the matters he raises – has no knowledge or belief to substantiate what he says.
As I say, he’s through the looking glass now.
Repeated natural exposure.
FTFY.
Also, it’s basically saying that other should become sick – with all the attendant suffering – so little selfish me doesn’t become sick ever again.
But I’m belaboring a point Orac already made.
I couldn’t say it any better.
A number of African countries are still stuck with this bargain and don’t seem very happy about it. I guess a few hundred thousands death from measles a year don’t count, since the babies were brown-skinned.
True, part of the issue in third-world countries is malnutrition and healthcare access, but I haven’t seen Wakefield doing a tour of duty with Doctors without Borders.
Well, actually, I believe a regular here got natural measles and her all-natural illness also failed to provide lasting immunity.
Also, all-natural measles has been found to be able to erase parts of our immune system memories. Good-bye, hard-earned immunity.
I could not agree more.
Regardless of what he himself believes, Andrew Wakefield has to make sure his pronouncements are anti-vax to the core. He has managed to throw so many people under the Andrew Wakefield gravy train that he is now reduced to the absolute hard-core, welded on anti-vaxxers for support.
A few of them don’t think he goes far enough, so expect more of this.
I quite like the development in one way, because it is not possible to show to the vaccine worried that Andrew Wakefield is actually a stark raving fabulist and not worth listening to.
That should be “now possible”. Oh autocorrect how I hate thee.
“Yes, vaccinating against varicella (the virus that causes chickenpox) could temporarily increase the incidence of shingles in younger adults. However, vaccinated children who don’t get chickenpox, thanks to the vaccine, will never have to worry about getting shingles.”
Ha. I wish I had known that when I had shingles at 20, barely six years after a bout of chickenpox! Of course, at that time, we didn’t have a vaccine for that, so I had only that magical “natural immunity” to protect me. It didn’t work as well as Wakefield thinks it works. Shocker, I know.
But then, there’s the individual differences in the immune system: why did I get so many infections during childhood and my sister a lot less? Vaccines seemed to take, though, so maybe my immune system is just slow to learn and would soon be swamped when faced with a fast reproducing microbe. Or maybe it has trouble knowing friend from foe (yep, I have allergies and auto-immune disorders). Vaccines are just making the immune system faster and smarter.
I don’t understand the objection to the term ‘herd immunity’ – I’ve even heard antivax mothers saying that we might win more of them over if we didn’t compare their kids to cattle.
For one, ‘community immunity’ is such an awkward mouthful, I would even prefer a neologism like ‘comimmunity’.
But mainly, we *are* animals. Someone who is offended by being reminded of that by the word ‘herd’ is someone who is also likely to be offended by the knowledge that we share 98% of the same DNA as chimps, i.e. an idiot.
Sorry to bang on but it’s just such a daft argument – oh, I might’ve gotten my kids vaccinated but the word ‘herd’ reminds me that I’m a bag of meat standing on a rock hurtling through a cold and indifferent galaxy, and I find that offensive to my sensibilities.
As a great man once said “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be”.
the objection to the term ‘herd immunity’
It’s just an attempt to divert from the real issues, and to try to show oneself as occupying the moral high ground.
@ Can’t remember my nym
Well, on one hand, people have the right to feel offended if being compared to an ox or a sheep, or at the implication of being just one drone in a sea of indistinguishable lookalike creatures.
OTOH, I have a sneaky suspicion that the opposition to “herd” is guilt/denial talking. The term “herd” is not just a reminder that we are animals, but that we are social animals, depending on each other for survival.
Accepting the term “herd” would mean accepting/acknowledging the accompanying baggage of social interactions and responsibilities.
tl;dr: “herd” could be rightfully felt as offensive, but as Peter Dugdale said, objection to it is mostly a distraction from the main issue.
@Helianthus (waves). Yup. Over here. Had measles, had mumps, had the vaccines more than once. Tested about a month ago and Hey, guess what! Non-immune. Sure, I’m an outlier. But I have to depend on the community immunity. And I’m also going in for another MMR as soon as I can get an appointment.
I don’t exist in Wakefraud’s world.
@MI Dawn.
Mind if I ask why you were tested for antibodies against measles and/or mumps? Also how uncommon is it to not build up resistance towards those deceases?
One more thing that sounded “off” to me: I thought that “passive immunity” was, in most cases, acquired purely through placental means, and that most maternal antibodies are NOT transmitted through breastmilk (with the exception of some gut antibodies). So, at the end of two months or whatever, the poor little baby is more or less out of luck…which, coincidentally, is when sane people start many of the vaccine series. But someone correct me if I’m wrong, as I’m merely a humble layman.
So…Wakefield pretty much added nothing new to the same old anti-vaccine arguments that we’ve been hearing for years. Except for saying that morbidity and mortality can be assumed to be the same, which makes no sense.
The anti-vaccine crowd is always saying that there’s no such thing as herd immunity from vaccines, only from the disease itself. Which never made sense to me. Can there really be heard immunity from just the disease? As long as the disease is circulating (in large enough numbers anyway), then there’s no herd immunity, right?
Hi, Troels. I was tested because I requested it, since I haven’t had an MMR for several years and there are outbreaks (currently mumps and chicken pox) semi-locally (NYC area and I’m in NJ). I’d rather not get any of them at my current age.
It is not common to not develop immunity after having the diseases, and really not common as an adult to not develop it after being vaccinated. However, I don’t develop a permanent immunity for some reason.
“Natural” herd immunity breaks down as soon as enough non-immune individuals get added to the population (i.e. get born).
This is why you see disease cycles – because outbreaks are followed by decreases in incidence…until new people get added.
Unfortunately, I learned ( via AoA) that VAXXED! is being shown all over the US. IIRC its premier was 2 months ago.
How much damage ( through fear mongering) will that do?
Possibly though the audience is already converted.
A. Re anti-vaccine: He suggested he wouldn’t vaccinate his kids now. That sounds pretty there to me.
B. Re breastmilk: my understanding is that the difference in immunity from naturally infected mothers v. vaccinated ones is real, but not as big as they make it out – I think this is the study he has in mind: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23661802
And of course, it requires risking the mother’s generation with measles. I guess he’s assuming that’s an acceptable sacrifice.
C. Since anti-vaccine activists repeatedly equate autism with encephalitis, it’s probably worth recalling the 1:1000 encephalitis rate pre vaccine, around 4,000 a year.
one not insignificant gripe:
there are no measles specific antibodies past the immediate postnatal period (we are talking a couple of weeks). See PMID: 15601649
Fifty-five colostrum samples from the same mothers and 347 breastmilk samples collected at various periods of breastfeeding also showed that anti-measles IgA had dropped below the protective cut-off within the first 2 weeks of birth.
***
it is not insignificant to get this right, because the perpetuation of the (like false) idea that breastfeeding will protect from measles for any length of time will contribute to more mothers delaying the first MMR (because they are still breastfeeding).
Brian Deer says (#1),
I don’t think he’s anti-vaccine “to the core”, as you put it.
MJD says,
It appears Andrew Wakefield may have abandoned his efforts as a “vaccine safety advocate” based on deliberate avoidance of vaccine benefits in his communications.
I agree with Orac, Andrew Wakefield is now antivaccine to the core.
Although, an “antivaccine” Andrew Wakefield may provide heightened awareness of forced-immunity and thereafter be a catalyst for future vaccine improvements.
Is Andrew Wakefield fulfilling a great public service?
Re: Chicken pox –
“However, vaccinated children who don’t get chickenpox, thanks to the vaccine, will never have to worry about getting shingles.”
I don’t think we can say it that strongly (talking about nuances). After all, the vaccine is a weakened live virus vaccine. I think all we can say is that if there’s going to be a virus in your central nervous system that might reawaken you are better off having the much, much weakened vaccine virus there than the virulent wild virus – the chances of shingles are less.
I’m going to use the same example I usually use.
Where are the populations with their natural herd immunity to rabies? Are there any?
@ Angela
Actually yes, whenever enough individuals from a given population have been sick and developed immunity. At some point, the spreading of the illness could drop to a trickle, because the remaining susceptible people are few and far between.
As Lawrence #14 explained, that only lasts until enough people are added to the population and the bugs have again plenty of fresh hosts to jump into.
The new individuals could be newborns, or a displaced population. Or people staying isolated from the outbreak, but coming back too early, and catching the disease en masse. There is a story/urban legend like this in a city next to my parents’ place, about one of the black plague pandemia.
Or it could be a visited population. The visiting people are immune and fine, with sub-clinical symptoms, but the visited people are susceptible and outbreaks occur quickly. Like the various American indigenous people suddenly meeting Genoese explorers, Portuguese adventurers, Dutch merchants, French privateers and other European riffraff, and all their fancy pathogens. In some cases, in the form of a poisoned blanket.
There must be some corollary to Betteridge’s law of headlines that can be invoked here.
@ ScienceMonkey
I should have thought of this in my previous response.
The concept of natural herd immunity is only viable with illnesses which are survivable and leaving a working immunity (tetanus usually fails on both).
One reason there is no-one left to infect could be because there is no-one left….
irenedelse@5
I had shingles in my 30s,twice.I had chicken pox,at age seven that was acute enough cause cardiac complications,and put me in the hospital for a couple weeks. Things may have changed in recent years,but most doctors are not willing to give the shingles vaccine to a person under the age of 60 or so,who has not been diagnosed with a disease compromised immunity.I have since been diagnosed with an extremely rare genetic disease,that does include a degree of innate immune deficiency.
#2 Well, actually, I believe a regular here got natural measles and her all-natural illness also failed to provide lasting immunity.
I lost my chicken pox immunity. I was tested for work to a whole slew of things, didn’t have for that one. And I had it, bad, when I was five. So, no immunity, but I can stick get shingles! Yay!
Actually I have immunity now, you better believe I got the vaccine. Eff catching chicken pox from a patient with shingles.
#6 I don’t understand the objection to the term ‘herd immunity’ – I’ve even heard antivax mothers saying that we might win more of them over if we didn’t compare their kids to cattle.
How DARE you compare one of their special snowflakes to cattle!!!1!!11!!one!1!
Is Andrew Wakefield fulfilling a great public service?
That’s a hard NEGATORY.
Oh, Andy, you magnificent liar, you. As Orac notes, mortality had fallen before the vaccine was introduced, but it leveled off around 1-2 deaths per 1,000 cases to around 1 death per 3,000 cases. And it should be noted, that’s for acute measles deaths and does not include things like SSPE.
Morbidity (i.e., getting sick with the measles), on the other hand, didn’t drop at all until the vaccine was introduced.
This post is rather timely, as I am working on a post about measles deaths.
In the early 20th Century, measles killed up to 15,000 kids per year. Actually, most deaths were from opportunistic secondary bacterial pneumonia and malnutrition, mainly B vitamin deficiencies. With the advent of antibiotics, together with better nutrition, the death rates plummeted to, in the 1950s, around 400 to 500 kids per year. However, 50,000 were hospitalized, and up to 2,000 suffered irreversible damage, e.g., deafness, seizure disorder, mental retardation. And almost all kids suffered and missed school. Nowadays, both parents in two-parent homes need to work to make ends meet and there are many single-parent families, so staying home to take care of a sick child could impose economic problems.
Measles is just as contagious today as it was in the 1950s. The US population has more than doubled and there is no treatment that I know of that has been scientifically validated. In addition, with the rise of antibiotic resistant bacteria, it is possible that it would be much more difficult to treat the opportunistic secondary bacterial pneumonias, so, without vaccination, we could see up to 1,000 deaths or more, 3 – 4,000 permanent disabilities, etc.
Yes, measles rates had come down significantly, but reached an asymptote and though deaths were way down, suffering wasn’t.
As for Wakefield’s patent for a monovalent measles vaccine, the patent was actually submitted by The Royal Free Hospital. Wakefield was listed as the developer. It may be, as in the US, that inventors are given a generous share of royalties by whoever owns the patent as in the US; but, just to be clear, Wakefield did not apply for the patent. However, as the developer/inventor and as researcher at a hospital in financial difficulties, it would still have been in his best interest to further the use of the monovalent vaccine and, as mentioned, he probably did anticipate a share of the royalties.
Just setting the record straight, definitely NOT taking Wakefield’s side.
Joel Harrison: “As for Wakefield’s patent for a monovalent measles vaccine, the patent was actually submitted by The Royal Free Hospital. Wakefield was listed as the developer. It may be, as in the US, that inventors are given a generous share of royalties by whoever owns the patent as in the US; but, just to be clear, Wakefield did not apply for the patent.”
You think a medical school would apply for a vaccine based on the technology therein. I don’t think so.
You’re facts are wrong. Wakefield applied for the vaccine patent personally, His employer was unaware of it. It later found out. So, to correct you: just to be clear, Wakefield did apply for the patent.
Didn’t Wakefield file the patent in the name of the Royal Free, but without the Royal Free’s knowledge?
Correction: “Your” facts are wrong!
Rebecca: exactamente.
My mild CDO is making me want to rewrite that as “low vitamins A, C, and D”…
The best passive immunity, of course, is when the mother is “immunized” with rubella while pregnant.
I wonder why AJW didn’t put the patent in his own name…
why wouldn’t he want to be connected with his own work?
Angela: Except for saying that morbidity and mortality can be assumed to be the same, which makes no sense.
Actually, it makes perfect sense. To an anti-vaxxer, disabled is the same as dead, doesn’t matter if it’s deafness, blindness, autism or sterility.
MJD:Is Andrew Wakefield fulfilling a great public service?
Only if his crazy persuades people to stay away from the anti-vax movement.
Sciencemom: If I remember correctly, non-mammals can’t get rabies. If you meant human populations, I can’t think of any.
I would guess that he didn’t want to be accused of a massive COI flitting about vilifying the triple jab whilst developing his own single jab. Guess that didn’t work out too well for him except for his pathetic acolytes’ belief in his silly lies.
@ Science Mom:
OF COURSE, I’m not really that clueless- I wanted to see what kind of replies ( including frivolity) would occur.
e.g. perhaps he was SO selfless, he wanted a worthy institution to get the credit.
@ Brian Deer
On your own website, under heading “Wakefield filed for a patent on vaccine products before unleashing MMR crisis” you give a patent application which reads:
Title PHARMACEUTICAL COMPOSITION FOR TREATMENT OF IBD AND RBD
Applicant (s)
Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine
In addition, I found another: UK Patent Application GB 2 325 856 A (can’t remember how I found it; but I have the complete pdf).
Applicant(s) Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine and Neuroimmuno Therapeutics Research Foundation
Inventors Andrew Jeremy Wakefield
Hugh Fundenberg
So, the example from your own website lists only the Royal Free; but, on looking at the other patent page I found, it gives the Royal Free and Neuroimmuno Therapeutics, which Wakefield I believe Wakefield had an interest in. I don’t have the time to look into this. So, the Royal Free definitely did submit a patent application; but, Wakefield may also have, through Neuroimmuno Therapeutics, submitted one.
It is usual in the US for Institutions to submit patent applications for discoveries made by their researchers and share the royalties. Whether the Royal Free would or would not submit a patent based on Transfer Factor is a moot question because they did!
Whether Wakefield stood to gain directly, based on one of the patents, to royalties, or indirectly through the Royal Free sharing royalties with him, it is clear that the Royal Free did submit patent applications.
Regardless, Wakefield’s biases and dishonesty, remain. Even if a patent had not been submitted, he was reimbursed generously by the Dawbarn law firm, instrumental in getting money from Legal Aid where the application clearly stated it was to prove the causative relationship between MMR and autism, and recruiting of many of the 12 kids in his 1998 article.
Joel: You found the other one by downloading it from my site! Otherwise, I refer you to the answer I’ve previously given.
I repeat my previous answer. The Royal Free did not submit the patent application.
@ Brian
You may be right that the Royal Free didn’t submit the application in that Wakefield may have submitted it on their behalf. If he did, without their agreeing to or awareness of it, just adds another strike against him; but, still, one of the applications listed by you only lists the Royal Free and the other both the Royal Free and Neuroimmuno. I just found the second one on your website, http://briandeer.com/mmr/1998-vaccine-patent.pdf
This is one of the things I really appreciate about you as an investigative journalist, your thoroughness in documenting the bases for your reports. You are truly one of my heroes.
In any case, my first comment also addressed Wakefield’s claim of natural disease and herd immunity. Yes, if one doesn’t mind the immense suffering, those who survive do have better immunity, stronger and longer lasting that from vaccines; but since, despite what antivaccinationists believe, the risks from vaccines are exponentially less than from the natural diseases, even with the need from boosters, Wakefield is just NUTS!
@ Joel Harrison, Wakefield filed the patents without the knowledge of Royal Free. This was documented at the GMC and available on the transcripts. Neuroimmuno is a Wakefield company put (I believe) in his wife’s maiden name.
@ Joel A. Harrison, PhD, MPH:
“.. despite what antivaccinationists believe, the risks from vaccines are exponentially less than from the natural diseases…”
But you see, they’ve been instructed by their own experts!
If the real risk of vaccine injury is about one in a million and the risk from the disease itself is about one in a thousand, it makes sense to vaccinate
HOWEVER ( big however) these folks believe that vaccination carries a risk of autism at a rate of one in a hundred ( or even one in fifty recently)
So the (imagined) risk is one in a million plus one in a hundred ( or one in fifty) which is worse than one in a thousand.
Unfortunately, I understand how their minds work a bit.
Though not as bad as MI Dawn, I got mumps twice as a child. The second time was during the 1968 mumps epidemic (just after the vaccine came out).
My mother was surprised I had caught it, and apparently I was not the only child that got again the second time. So she repeated a common explanation that was going around: that mumps can affect only one side, and you can get it again on the other side. Which is wrong… I was miserable and had it on both sides.
It turns out that it was not a coincidence that I got mumps again during an epidemic year. Apparently “suggest that intense exposures, particularly among boys in schools, facilitated transmission and overcame vaccine-induced protection in these patients”. Since I was surrounded by mumps virus, I assume it overcame my “natural” immunity.
Also, there is no permanent immunity to pertussis, diphtheria or tetanus. You can get pertussis again in as short a time as five years, and there is no immunity to the bacteria of the other two (which is why the vaccines only help with the toxins they create).
Brian Deer writes (#30),
Wakefield did apply for the patent.
MJD says,
The Applicants in your “secret” 1997 document is as follows:
Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine and Neuroimmuno Therapeutics.
http://briandeer.com/wakefield/vaccine-patent.htm
Legally, the Applicant stated above (not Andrew Wakefield) is responsible for Patent Application Number 9711663.6
In continuation, Andrew J. Wakefield isn’t an assigneeinventor for a patent application in the United States.
A quick search in the USPTO Patent Application Full-Text and Images Database using the words below:
Wakefield (Assignee name/inventor); and
Vaccine (All Fields).
Results – No application publications have matched your query.
Brian Deer writes (#30),
Wakefield applied for the vaccine patent personally, His employer was unaware of it. It later found out.
MJD says,
If this is true Andrew J. Wakefield may be a Maverick that follows:
Never ask for permission only forgiveness.
Amazing how some geniuses operate.
@34
After listening to and reading about some moron anti-vaxxers (and no, I don’t apologize for the epithet), it is my belief that most of them don’t give a toss for fetuses, especially if the fetuses are in someone else’s body. As long as they can declare they are doing The Good Mommy Thing, all else is irrelevant.
#45,
Try searching for US Patent 6,534,259.
@ Chris
You are right that some of the diseases that we vaccinate for do not confer long term immunity from the natural disease. Since these diseases, e.g. tetanus and diphtheria, are deadly, all the more reason to vaccinate. You are also right that even natural immunity is not 100%. Whether one gets a disease or not depends on several factors:
Virulence of the disease
Exposure, both dose and duration
Ones own immune system
Just as a kevlar vest protects against bullets; but not all bullets, e.g. velocity, steel jacket, etc. immunity doesn’t always protect. But, natural immunity from many childhood diseases does confer an extremely high level of immunity. And many believe that natural boosters, that is, exposure to the disease from future outbreaks, helps keep one immunity level high. So, either way, we need some type of booster. And, as I wrote, for the vast majority, the natural disease represents far greater risk of suffering and adverse outcomes.
@ Denice
Yes, the antivaccinationist believe that we are in the midst of an epidemic of autism. Unfortunately, they refuse to even consider that there is not one autism; but many that have been subsumed under a more general diagnostic category. They also refuse to even acknowledge what we know from early studies, going back to the 1920s, that kids were seen with the same problems later diagnosed as autism. We even have today senior citizens finally diagnosed with Aspberger’s after a lifetime of wondering why they were different. There are a number of reasons for the increased numbers:
Broadened definition. Aspberger’s wasn’t even included until a couple of decades ago. Studies have found an almost perfect negative correlation between diagnoses of retardation and autism spectrum disorders
Increased awareness
Development of diagnostic instruments that can be used by school and other personnel, instead of more subjective diagnostics by individual psychiatrists
Monies available. In bordeline cases, whether conscious or unconscious, diagnoses made to benefit child, so if more money available for autism than “retardation,” kid gets autism diagnosis.
More low birth weight and very low birth weight children surviving and we know they often have both physical and mental problems
Over 100,000 chemicals synthesized and released into our environment since World War II
Children being born to older parents
Numerous studies have found no association between vaccines and autism. We have removed thimerosal in vaccines, except flu vaccine and there are thimerosal free versions, and yet the numbers keep increasing. As for MMR vaccine, doesn’t make much biological sense, except in Wakefield’s mind. Since almost all kids got these diseases, sometimes one after the other, how could severely weakened microbes cause somethng that the full blown natural disease didn’t. Wakefield’s hypothesis that the combined vaccine somehow causes permeability in the intestinal epithelia, allowing measles to get to the brain, has not been shown valid in numerous studies.
If we didn’t have vaccines, not even the smallpox, life would be much much different. About 1/3 of children would not have made it to 5. There would be much more disability.
I guess if one were callous, the population of the US would probably be half or less than what it is, average life expectancy would be much less; but we wouldn’t be taxing our environment, water, air, natural resources. However, I, for one, think life has an intrinsic worth and dignity and would not want a world that randomly allowed people, especially children to suffer, become disabled, and even die.
Joel: “If we didn’t have vaccines, not even the smallpox, life would be much much different. About 1/3 of children would not have made it to 5. There would be much more disability.”
Someone on another blog asked if vaccine makers were making sure people became ill later on so they would buy more pharmaceuticals. Well, of course! With the average American lifespan going from just under fifty in 1900 to now almost eighty years old, there are more older people who need meds!
If Olivia Dahl had not died from measles, she would be about my age. And here I am with age related high blood pressure taking a ridiculously cheap medication for it.
Remember parents, before you take your child to see the new movie The BFG, make sure you read the book to your child and explain why it is dedicated to Olivia.
“I guess if one were callous, the population of the US would probably be half or less than what it is, average life expectancy would be much less; but we wouldn’t be taxing our environment, water, air, natural resources.”
Unfortunately that does not really work. Families would be bigger trying to make sure at least one or two children grow up to be adults:
https://www.gapminder.org/videos/will-saving-poor-children-lead-to-overpopulation/
Cynthia Parker has recently ascribed the death to aspirin (despite the fact that encephalitis isn’t a hallmark of Reye syndrome), I sh*t you not. I linked the comment over at Reuben’s, but I haven’t had time to follow up since.
There is something very fundamentally wrong with Ms. Parker….
MJD, if you’d bother to read Wakefraud’s patent you’d see it was for both therapeutic and pre-prophylaxis measles vaccine, even going so far as to claim a “vaccine replacement”. Instead of course, having your lips attached to Wakefraud’s bum. Wakefield is a liar, scammer, fraud, loathsome charlatan and not even an expert in any of his autism-related endeavors. It’s pathetic that anyone would walk across the street for the scumbag.
Frequent Lurker@26
Same here.
“Children should get chickenpox so adults don’t need to get the shingles vaccine” is sooo terrible. Especially since shingles was still around when chickenpox was endemic, there was just less of it. “Children should get chickenpox so that fewer adults who choose not to get the shingles vaccine get shingles” is what this viewpoint actually is and that’s amazingly even worse…
A related, recent doozy from AoA crank par excellence Linda1/LZ:
The money quote from the paper:
“We propose that the crucial event, which shifted the competitive balance between ptxP1 and ptxP3 strains, was the removal by vaccination of immunologically naive infants as the major source for transmission, selecting for strains, which are more efficiently transmitted by primed hosts. Recent studies and historical data indicate an important role of naïve infants in transmission in unvaccinated populations. In a previously unvaccinated population, infant vaccination resulted in a reduction in pertussis in the vaccinated and unvaccinated parts of the population (37). Furthermore, in unvaccinated populations, 60%–80% of the pertussis cases were found in children 0–5 years of age, most of whom were probably immunologically naive (32,38). In most countries infants receive their first vaccination at the age of 2 or 3 months, essentially eliminating transmission by immunologically naive hosts.”
Capn’ krunch:
“Children should get chickenpox so adults don’t need to get the shingles vaccine” is sooo terrible. Especially since shingles was still around when chickenpox was endemic, there was just less of it. “Children should get chickenpox so that fewer adults who choose not to get the shingles vaccine get shingles” is what this viewpoint actually is and that’s amazingly even worse…
I gave two younger siblings chicken pox. We were all miserable. What kind of a parent wants their kids to be miserable, feverish and itchyfor a week? And that’s the best case scenario- what if the kid gets Bell’s Palsy, or he pox gets into some unfortunate place and causes permanent disability? I developed Bell’s Palsy as an adult, and I was freakin’ terrified, I wouldn’t wish that on a kid, especially up here. (After the palsy, I developed an awful sensitivity to cold.)
Siblings, on the other hand…
My older brother caught it first, and then my younger brother caught it from him, who then proceeded to deliberately cough in my direction at almost every opportunity. Not surprisingly, I caught it too, just before the end of summer. I won’t wish it upon him directly, but if one of us has to develop shingles…
@ Chris
When children have a chance to survive, historically families had fewer children, especially in cultures where the attainment of middle class was possible. However, prior to vaccinations, families did have many more children; but world population increased at a much slower rate than it is currently increasing. Smallpox alone killed at least 1/3 of children and most others died before being able to procreate. Yes, without vaccines there would be a population increase; but not near that we are experiencing.
Note. I have books and many articles on the rise in population. I wouldn’t rely on one webpage.
@ Narad
First, you cite one article. While the findings of pertussis virulence are interesting, until additional studies confirm their findings, it is just one study and the finding may, despite methodological soundness, be due to “random chance.”
Second, their conclusion states: “ The effect of pathogen adaptation on disease impact
may depend on factors such as vaccine coverage and the quality of the vaccine used, which may differ between countries. A relatively weak vaccine used in the Netherlands may have exacerbated the effect of the emergence of ptxP3 strains on disease impact. Our results underline the important role of Ptx in the transmission of B. pertussis and suggest that an effective way to control pertussis is the improvement of current vaccines”
Starting with the “weak vaccine”, they are probably referring to the TDaP which uses an acellular form of pertussis. This vaccine was developed due to early reports of serious adverse events from the whole cell pertussis vaccine. Numerous follow-up studies have found these reports to have been grossly exaggerated. The whole cell vaccine confers both a stronger and longer lasting immunity, is being used in several countries and being considered for re-introduction in the US. If the study’s findings are correct, that is, that younger kids are protected by the vaccine but as its protection wanes older kids can get the new more virulent strain, booster vaccination should stop or reduce this significantly. The TDaP’s protection wanes and as long as the bacteria still exists, it will mutate. If the whole cell vaccine is re-introduced or boosters given, it is quite possible that the new strain will die out or become less prevalent. All, of course, depending on whether the study you cite is confirmed by additional studies.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, vaccination rates fell and, for instance, diphtheria cases rose, including new variants, some which we may not be as well protected against. The fewer the people who get a disease, the less probability of mutations.
In any case, thanks for the reference. I downloaded the article and added it to my electronic database, now approaching 10,000 articles, filed in different folders.
Oh joy.
Believe it or not, some of the individuals I see on twitter
( e.g. Kim Stagliano/ twit and Tanner’s Dad Tim) are attempting to bring two of Orac’s absolute fave woos together
by lobbyng for Andy W to appear on Bill Maher’s show.
Consider the possibilities:
a black hole of anti-vax live televised, two aging hipsters trying to get their fans excited, enough to make rational guests shriek or high ratings for the audience who get high ( Bill admirers) ?
Oh, bloody hell. If that were to happen, I promise an epic rant. It probably won’t, though. Maher is an antivaxer, but he can’t afford to go full on tinfoil hat.
I’ve had all the childhood illnesses (all before vaccines became available except polio) except for mumps to which I’ve been exposed at least 13 times.
Measles I’ve had twice, the last time was in the late 70’s when I was coaching a 3rd/4th grade basketball team. The little snots gave the measles. I guess natural head immunity really works.
I was in Nepal in 96 and the population was about 22 million, most of which was rural. Thirty years before Nepal’s population was in the 2 to 4 million range.
Families were large for two reasons: hand labor farms require as many (and cheap) hands as possible; 2. the child mortality rate was high. Enter childhood vaccinations: many children who would’ve died survived and the need for cheap farm labor remained. Families remained large and the population boomed.
Meanwhile a new measles outbreak is happening in AZ at a detention center for people who’ve illegally entered the US (and in AZ, those people come from all over the globe, not just from the south of the US) that has caused 11 cases (7 detainees and 4 workers–http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/health-officials-now-confirm-11-cases-measles-arizona-39487756 ).
Maybe Wakefraud and Dillweed will take a break from their busy schedule to go ask those 11 people if it was worth it catching measles.