Vaccines and autism, a fictitious relation

These days there is at least two excellent news on the autism. The one that more has attracted attention of me, although not surprised, it has been the retreat of an article published in 1998 in The Lancet where the viral triple vaccine was related to the above mentioned disorder. Ten of thirteen signatories had already cut themselves off of the work years behind (why had they signed?) and three remaining ones were submitted to an investigation. His problems began when in the year 2004 a journalist started investigating and denounced that the children taking part in the study had been selected by the lawyers of a couple that wanted to demand the manufacturers of the viral triple vaccine. The same lawyers also had hired the principal author, Andrew Wakefield, to confirm the relation between the vaccine and the illness.
Immediately after these denunciations, General Medical Council of Great Britain initiated an investigation which conclusions have become public only two weeks ago. There happened problems of diverse type that led to concluding that the Wakefield conduct had been "dishonest and irresponsible". The original article can still be, if someone has curiosity, here without figures or here I complete in format PDF. The prolix report of the GMC is here.
The Lancet is one of the most important medical magazines of the world, with a factor of impact of 28, and also one of the most ancient since it was founded in 1823. Reading the article superficially there attracts attention of me the enormous aftereffect that it had (it motivated a strong descent in the vaccination in Great Britain and antivaccination served as argument for groups in the USA where this movement is quite powerful). The motive of my astonishment is, especially, the number of children that were examined: twelve. Yes, twelve, eleven of them males and a girl, with ages between the 3 and 11 years. It is supposed that these boys appeared by the gastroenterología service with a similar history: they had had an initial normal development and a strong later retrogression (that was including the loss of the language) together with diarrhea and abdominal pains. The children were put to a heap of tests: colonoscopias, biopsies, magnetic resonances, electroencephalography, lumbar punctures... From that, the authors concluded (I save a pair of paragraphs not related to the autism; the linkage and the italics are mine):

The appearance of the symptoms of behavior was associated, according to the parents, with the vaccine of the measles, mumps and German measles in eight of twelve children, with a measles infection in one more and with an earache in other. The behavior disorders include autism (in nine of the children), psychosis desintegrativa (in one) and an encephalitis, possibly postviral or postvaccination.

And in the discussion the following thing is said:

We cannot prove the association between the vaccine and the described syndrome. There are studies virológicos in march that they can help to solve this matter. If there is a causal relation between the vaccine and the syndrome might state an increasing incidence of this one after the introduction of the vaccine in UK in 1988. The existing publications are insufficient to demonstrate changes in the incidence or in a relation with the vaccine.

And it is already. That is quite. Seen today the impact of the article is incomprehensible in the society for several motives. The first one is that the study is done by a minuscule sample from any point of view. The second one is that in the article no association evidence appears between the vaccine and the infantile symptoms. The third one is that the suspicion of the causal relation vaccine - autism comes exclusively from "impressions" of the parents. Why did publish a magazine as The Lancet a work that, to all, you show, it was deficient?
In the investigation after the denunciation of the journalist worrying details appeared. For example, in the article one affirms that the problems of the children began a few days after receiving the vaccine, but a review of the files of the hospital revealed that several of the families had communicated the problems before the date of vaccination (would not it be necessary to have verified this on the part of the authors?) . Also one found that it departs from the funds they were used for ends different from the declared ones (although not for personal lucre), I motivate for which the Wakefield conduct declared itself "dishonest" and "misleading". Finally, it was confirmed that the children were put to invasive tests which justification was doubtful and for some of which Wakefield was lacking the obligatory permission of the commission of ethics of his institution. Regrettably, the investigative commission also came to the conclusion that Wakefield showed a "entire indifference for the suffering and the pain that he knew or he should have known that the children could suffer" with that one you try.
Let's finish, much more briefly, with second news on another work. In this one a slightly wider sample has been used: 4 947 935 cases. Bearing in mind that the predominance of the autism is low, this sample seems slightly more suitable than the previous one. The authors, of the University of California, did a pursuit of those almost 5 million children from his birth finding with something more about twelve thousand showed autism symptoms. The most important results were that a relation was between the ages of the parents and the predominance of the disorder. In particular, the maternal age is associated with the risk of having an autistic child, while the age of the father it is only when the mother is major than 30 years. The risk grows quickly, 18 % every five years of maternal age.
The autism keeps on being a disorder of unknown cause and also there is a discussion if his incidence is or without growing or, in his case, until point. Some studies affirm that the predominance of the disorder has multiplied for ten in the last decade in the USA. Others indicate that this apparent growth is due to the fact that the diagnosis is not always done with coherent criteria, that these are not easy to apply and that at present include under the above mentioned denomination pictures that earlier they were not considered. For lack of better numbers, I remain with those of the WHO:

The predominance of the autism changes greatly according to the method of identification of the cases, ranging between 0,7 and 21,1 for 10 000 children (median of 5,2 for 10 000), while the predominance of disorders of the autistic bogey calculates that from 1 to 6 performs the order for 1000.

Streaming The Amazing Race S16E05 I Think We're Fighting the Germans, Right? online