South Africa is in the grip of a measles epidemic (luckily confined primarily to the province of
Gauteng), with
2000 cases and 4 deaths. The culprit? Parents not vaccinating their children (among other things) due to the fear that jabs can cause autism. Before getting into a bit more detail, I want to praise reporter Kim Hawley at the
Times (of South Africa) for getting the story exactly right: her
article emphasized the unscientific nature of such worries. Well done.
A
press release issued by South Africa’s department of health contains the following revealing paragraph:
One striking feature of this latest outbreak is that while it has affected children of the poorer communities, it has also been concentrated among relatively well-off children, predominantly in the 15-19 year old age group. We believe that in both groups, the underlying cause has been failure by the parents or guardians to take children for immunization i.e. both the initial and follow-up doses.
It seems likely that among the well-off children (and much less so among the poorer children, where
other factors were likely involved) the cause is parents’ fears over
vaccines causing autism. The source of these fears is the anti-vaccination movement (and their
idiotic celebrity sponsors) that has spread unscientific claims that either the
MMR vaccine causes autism or that
thimerosal (until recently a common vaccine ingredient) causes autism. These claims have
been disproved beyond reasonable doubt. Being more influenced by Britain than America, it's probable that the MMR claim is most relevant to South Africa, so I'll focus on that. The source of the MMR-autism worry was a deeply flawed, and
possibly fraudulent,
1998 study by
Andrew Wakefield and colleagues, that was merely a
case series of 12 subjects (that is, a series of 12 anecdotes) that could not, in principle, determine whether there was a causal link. Moreover, Wakefield had undisclosed conflicts of interest (he received £50,000 in legal aid money from lawyers preparing a case against MMR – over the years he received over £434,000 from such cases). Wakefield is also currently
under investigation by the UK's General Medical Council on charges of serious misconduct, and he might lose his license to practice.
Just because the original study was flawed does not mean, of course, that the there cannot be a link between vaccines and autism. But, as I said above,
numerous subsequent studies have found no such link. In other words, there is
no good reason at all to think vaccines cause autism. Note to parents:
VACCINATE YOUR CHILDREN. Dammit.
(via
The Lay Scientist)
A public service announcement: the rumors and emails (example after the jump) doing the rounds that KwaZulu Natal is about to be hit by a "tempestuous cyclone" is fake, false, a hoax, bollocks, and completely made up. (There is a warning of heavy rainfall - "in excess of 50mm in 24 hours" - but there is no cyclone). Some observations: South Africa's east coast is very rarely hit by cyclones and email hoaxes are plentiful. Put these facts together, apply a bit of common sense, and you get doubt. And doubt should motivate some fact checking (Google is your friend)... If you did so, you'd find this East Coast Radio article saying it's fake, this cyclone tracking service showing no cyclones heading South Africa's way, and this blog entry by the SA Weather and Disaster Information Service saying it's a hoax.
