Cal-Oregon Unvaccinated Survey
Posted: Wed Oct 28, 2009 11:37 pm
Cal-Oregon Unvaccinated Survey
"Final Thought
Why hasn't a larger scale study comparing ND rates of vaccinated and
unvaccinated children already taken place? We don't know. We credit
Dan Olmsted, a reporter for United Press International, with giving
us the idea to do this study. At a press conference in the summer of
2005, Mr. Olmsted had a chance to ask Julie Gerberding, the Director
of the CDC, a simple question. Mr. Olmsted asked:
"Has the government ever looked at the autism rate in an unvaccinated
U.S. population, and if not, why not?""
see end of article for CDC response to question
http://www.generationrescue.org/survey.html
Cal-Oregon Unvaccinated Survey
GO TO WEBPAGE FOR LINKS EMBEDDED IN ARTICLE
Background
"We surveyed over 9,000 boys in California and Oregon and found that
vaccinated boys had a 155% greater chance of having a neurological
disorder like ADHD or autism than unvaccinated boys." - Generation Rescue
- Read our press release discussing the survey here.
- Read an article from UPI Investigative reporter Dan Olmsted
Discussing the survey: Study Sees Vaccine Risk.
If you are interested in learning about alternative vaccine
schedules, please read our section titled On Vaccines.
Methodology
Generation Rescue commissioned an independent opinion research firm,
SurveyUSA of Verona NJ, to conduct a telephone survey in nine
counties in California and Oregon. Counties were selected by
Generation Rescue. Interviews were successfully completed in 11,817
households with one or more children age 4 to 17. From those 11,817
households, data on 17,674 children was gathered. Of the 17,674
children inventoried, 991 were described as being completely
unvaccinated. For each unvaccinated child, a health battery was administered.
Generation Rescue chose to use telephone interviews with parents to
gather data on children, so as to closely mirror the methodology the
CDC uses to establish national prevalence for NDs such as ADHD and
autism through their national phone survey of parent responses.
Generation Rescue chose to focus on children ages 4-17 to match the
age range used by CDC.
Are parent responses a reliable indicator of a child's diagnostic
status? According to Dr. Laura Schieve, co-author of the CDC's
national phone survey study, in discussing the CDC's two phone
surveys on autism prevalence, "the consistency of prevalence
estimates across the two surveys supports high reliability or
reproducibility of parental report of autism and reliability is one
important component of validity."
SurveyUSA is a well-known national opinion research firm with unique
expertise in canvassing local communities. SurveyUSA has no vested
interest in any outcome this or any survey might produce. You can see
a copy of the questionnaire used in the survey here. The data the
survey intended to capture included:
- Households with a child or children aged 4-17
- Whether or not that child had been vaccinated
- Whether or not that child had any one (or more) of the
following diagnosis: ADD, ADHD, Asperger's, PDD-NOS, Autism, Asthma,
or Juvenile Diabetes (the final two of which were added to consider
other health outcomes).
The results of the survey allowed us to compare the prevalence (what
percentage of children have a particular diagnosis) to see if there
was any meaningful difference between unvaccinated and vaccinated children.
The most common way to measure prevalence differences is through a
calculation known as relative risk or the Risk Ratio, where we
compared prevalence amongst unvaccinated children to prevalence
amongst vaccinated children. So, if 5% of unvaccinated children have
asthma, and 10% of vaccinated children have asthma, that represents
an "RR" of 2.0 (10%/5%), or a difference of 100%. We were also able
to look at the data by gender, age, and county.
Results
SurveyUSA gathered data on 9,175 boys and 8,499 girls. Counties
surveyed in California included:
San Diego
Sonoma
Orange
Sacramento
Marin
Counties surveyed in Oregon included:
Multnomah
Marion
Jackson
Lane
The results of the survey can be accessed as a pdf file here.
http://www.generationrescue.org/pdf/survey.pdf
This is the primary data we received from SurveyUSA and it can be
used for anyone to independently analyze our results.
Generation Rescue analyzed the data provided by SurveyUSA, and a copy
of our analysis can be found here. The most notable results of our
survey are with the boys, which is not surprising considering boys
represent approximately 80% of total cases of NDs. Namely:
All vaccinated boys, compared to unvaccinated boys:
- Vaccinated boys were 155% more likely to have a neurological
disorder (RR 2.55)
- Vaccinated boys were 224% more likely to have ADHD (RR 3.24)
- Vaccinated boys were 61% more likely to have autism (RR 1.61)
Older vaccinated boys, ages 11-17 (about half the boys surveyed),
compared to older unvaccinated boys:
- Vaccinated boys were 158% more likely to have a neurological
disorder (RR 2.58)
- Vaccinated boys were 317% more likely to have ADHD (RR 4.17)
- Vaccinated boys were 112% more likely to have autism (RR 2.12)
(Note: older children may be a more reliable indicator because many
children are not diagnosed until they are 6-8 years old, and we
captured data beginning at age 4.)
All vaccinated boys, removing one county with unusual results
(Multnomah, OR), compared to unvaccinated boys:
- Vaccinated boys were 185% more likely to have a neurological
disorder (RR 2.85)
- Vaccinated boys were 279% more likely to have ADHD (RR 3.79)
- Vaccinated boys were 146% more likely to have autism (RR 2.46)
All vaccinated boys and girls, compared to unvaccinated boys and girls:
- Vaccinated boys and girls were 120% more likely to have
asthma (RR 2.20)
- No correlation established for juvenile diabetes
All vaccinated girls, compared to unvaccinated girls:
- No meaningful differences in prevalence were noted for NDs
(which may be due to the smaller sample size of the study because
girls represent about 20% of cases.)
Commentary
Generation Rescue is not representing that our study proves that the
U.S. vaccine schedule has caused an epidemic in neurological
disorders amongst our children. We are a small non-profit
organization. For less than $200,000, we were able to complete a
study that the CDC, with an $8 billion a year budget, has been unable
or unwilling to do. We think the results of our survey lend
credibility to the urgent need to do a larger scale study to compare
vaccinated and unvaccinated children for neurodevelopmental outcomes.
It is also the opinion of Generation Rescue that we are
over-vaccinating our children, and we encourage parents to use
caution in how they choose to vaccinate their children, particularly
boys. In the vaccine section of our website, we provide additional
detail on vaccines and vaccinating safely and provide three
alternative vaccine schedules parents may want to consider for their children.
Background:
In 1983, the Centers for Disease Control ("CDC") recommended a total
of 10 vaccines for our children up to the age of 5. In 2007, the CDC
recommends 36, an increase of 260%, or 3.6x. (See a comparison here).
During this time period, we have witnessed an epidemic of childhood
neurological disorders ("NDs"). Today, the CDC estimates that 1 in 13
U.S. children has been diagnosed with ADHD and 1 in 150 has been
diagnosed with autism. In the 1980s, ADHD was almost unheard of and
autism was estimated to affect 1 in 10,000 children. Boys are
significantly more affected by NDs, accounting for approximately 80%
of all cases.
Unfortunately, the mainstream media still misreports that the
explosive growth in NDs is the results of "better diagnosis" despite
the considerable published scientific research to refute this
position. As one example, Department of Developmental Services in
California, known for keeping the best autism data in the country,
issued this report regarding the growth of autism rates in California
where they stated:
"There is no evidence that a loosening in the diagnostic criteria has
contributed to increased number of autism clients...we conclude that
some, if not all, of the observed increase represents a true increase
in cases of autism in California...a purely genetic basis for autism
does not fully explain the increasing autism prevalence. Other
theories that attempt to better explain the observed increase in
autism cases include environmental exposures to substances such as
mercury; viral exposures; autoimmune disorders; and childhood vaccinations."
Many parents blame vaccines for their children's ND, and many
published biological studies seem to support this position, because
vaccines contain ingredients capable of causing neurological damage.
Yet, no studies have ever been done to compare ND rates of
unvaccinated children to vaccinated children. Until now.
(Note: Neurolological disorders include ADD, ADHD, Asperger's,
PDD-NOS, and Autism.)
Brief commentary:
There is a lot of misreporting that would lead parents to believe
that vaccines have already been scientifically proven to be unrelated
to the epidemic of NDs. This is simply not true.
- U.S. children have been analyzed to compare those who
received some mercury in their vaccines with those who received more
mercury in their vaccines for the outcome of autism (not ADHD). The
conclusion of the study was neutral, meaning a link could neither be
confirmed nor denied. This study, conducted by the CDC, is the only
study ever done using data of U.S. Children.
- Children in several European countries have been analyzed to
compare those who received mercury in their shots with those who
received no mercury in their shots for the outcome of autism. The
conclusions of these studies was that no association was found,
although these studies have been disputed. See
www.putchildrenfirst.org for more details.
- Further, in 2006 the National Institute of Environmental
Health Sciences, at the request of Senator Joseph Lieberman, issued
this report which effectively conceded that both the CDC study of
U.S. children and the "Danish Studies" were of poor study design and
not reliable in determining whether or not Thimerosal causes autism.
As this article from UPI reporter Dan Olmsted noted following the
report's release: "For three years, the CDC has used a study
conducted on its own Vaccine Safety Datalink to reassure parents that
mercury in vaccines does not cause autism. Now a panel of
government-appointed experts says there are "serious problems" with
exactly the approach the CDC took." Olmsted interviewed the
Chairperson of the NIEHS Committee who was quoted as saying:
"It's an 'open question' whether anything about vaccines --
timing, dose, preservative -- is related to the rise in diagnoses [of
autism]. Some studies are stronger than others. The Verstraeten
[Pediatrics] study was an improvement on other studies including the
two in Denmark, both of which had serious weaknesses in their designs
that limit what we can learn from them."
- No studies have ever been done to compare ND rates of
children who received vaccines with those who received no vaccines,
which is what our survey accomplished. Moreover, no studies have ever
explored a link between vaccines and ADHD, despite the fact that 1 in
13 U.S. children have this diagnosis (versus 1 in 150 for autism).
- Even the Institute of Medicine, which is often cited in the
media for issuing a 2004 report refuting the relationship between
mercury and autism, held a 2007 workshop on "autism and the
environment" that featured "presentations and discussions on
strategies for research focusing on the potential relationship
between autism and an array of environmental exposures."
The glaring absence of a study to compare vaccinated and unvaccinated
children for ND rates caused Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) to
introduce this bill to compel the National Institutes of Health to do
such a study.
Potential Criticisms
The question of whether or not vaccines have played and role in the
epidemic of neurological disorders is an explosive topic with many
passionate voices on both sides of the debate. Our survey results
will most assuredly be challenged and criticized. Some of the more
likely challenges (and our responses) include:
Criticism: Parents who do not vaccinate their children are less
likely to seek an ND diagnosis, which explains the difference in
prevalence you found.
Response: We think the data disproves this, because we found no
meaningful difference in prevalence for NDs between vaccinated and
unvaccinated girls. If this was simply an issue of parent behavior,
the girls would have shown wide discrepancies in prevalence, too, and
they did not.
It's also interesting to consider a study completed by the
CDC and published in Pediatrics, Children Who Have Received No
Vaccines: Who Are They and Where Do They Live? The study noted:
"Unvaccinated children tended to be white, to have a mother who was
married and had a college degree, to live in a household with an
annual income exceeding $75,000, and to have parents who expressed
concerns regarding the safety of vaccines and indicated that medical
doctors have little influence over vaccination decisions for their children."
And, it continues:
"Why do some parents avoid vaccinating their children? Our results
indicate that parents of unvaccinated children are much more
concerned about vaccine safety than are parents whose children
receive Your browser may not support display of this image.1 vaccine
dose. In a survey of parent's beliefs and practices regarding
vaccinations and autism, siblings in families in which there was an
autistic child were 3 times more likely to be unvaccinated, compared
with siblings in families in which there was a child with
attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. In response to concerns
about the perceived risk of autism resulting from vaccinations,
parents might have avoided having their sons vaccinated at a higher
rate than their daughters, as a result of knowing that they have risk
factors for autism and knowing that the rate of autism is 4 times
greater for boys than for girls."
Criticism: The ratio of diagnosed to undiagnosed children in
this survey may be too high, indicating a potential response bias.
Response: The survey does not attempt to newly establish the
prevalence of autism in the general population. The survey attempts
only to shed preliminary light on any relationship between
vaccination status and diagnosis. It is not surprising and not
unexpected that parents with children who have received a diagnosis
may have been more willing to complete the health battery included in
this survey than parents of children who have not been diagnosed.
However, that does not make the parents who did participate in this
study likely to lie about, or forget about, the vaccination status of
their children. The only way a possible "response bias" in favor of
those households with a diagnosed child would invalidate the results
of this research is if asking about vaccination status of a child
independently produced a bias and that bias interacted with the bias
caused by asking about NDs. For the concern to be valid: somehow, the
main group of vaccinated families would have to be more likely to
respond if there was an ND in the family, without also affecting the
response of unvaccinated families in the same way. While such an
interaction is possible, this criticism can be addressed by further,
more elaborate research. Such a potential interaction does not
invalidate this research.
It's also worth considering that if there was response bias, we
should have received a disproportionate share of our responses from
parents of boys, who represent 80% of NDs, and we did not. Boys were
51.9% of responses and girls were 48.1%. (We hope there was some
response bias, because our numbers show a prevalence of autism of 1
in 43, far higher than the CDC's reported number of 1 in 150.)
Criticism: Parent responses is not a reliable way to gauge
either a child's diagnosis or whether or not a child has been vaccinated.
Response: We would point to our "Methodology" section above and
cite the CDC, who also uses a parent phone survey to gauge prevalence
of NDs in children. We generally mimicked their approach.
Final Thought
Why hasn't a larger scale study comparing ND rates of vaccinated and
unvaccinated children already taken place? We don't know. We credit
Dan Olmsted, a reporter for United Press International, with giving
us the idea to do this study. At a press conference in the summer of
2005, Mr. Olmsted had a chance to ask Julie Gerberding, the Director
of the CDC, a simple question. Mr. Olmsted asked:
"Has the government ever looked at the autism rate in an unvaccinated
U.S. population, and if not, why not?"
Ms. Gerberding's answer:
"In this country, we have very high levels of vaccination as you
probably know, and I think this year we have record immunization
levels among all of our children, so to (select an unvaccinated
group) that on a population basis would be representative to look at
incidence in that population compared to the other population would
be something that could be done.
But as we're learning, just trying to look at autism in a community
the size of Atlanta, it's very, very difficult to get an effective
numerator and denominator to get a reliable diagnosis.
I think those kind of studies could be done and should be done. You'd
have to adjust for the strong genetic component that also
distinguishes, for example, people in Amish communities who may elect
not to be immunized (and) also have genetic connectivity that would
make them different from populations that are in other sectors of the
United States. So drawing some conclusions from them would be very difficult.
I think with reference to the timing of all of this, good science
does take time, and it's part of one of the messages I feel like I've
learned from the feedback that we've gotten from parents groups this
summer (in) struggling with developing a more robust and a faster
research agenda, is let's speed this up. Let's look for the early
studies that could give us at least some hypotheses to test and
evaluate and get information flowing through the research pipeline as
quickly as we can.
So we are committed to doing that, and as I mentioned, in terms of
just measuring the frequency of autism in the population some pretty
big steps have been taken. We're careful not to jump ahead of our
data, but we think we will be able to provide more accurate
information in the next year or so than we've been able to do up to
this point. And I know that is our responsibility.
We've also benefited from some increased investments in these areas
that have allowed us to do this, and so we thank Congress and we
thank the administration for supporting those investments, not just
at CDC but also at NIH and FDA."
Is Ms. Gerberding genuinely interested in getting an answer? We will
let the reader decide.
*********
http://www.generationrescue.org/olmstead.html
The Age of Autism: Study sees vaccine risk
By Dan Olmstead
WASHINGTON (UPI) -- A new, privately funded survey finds vaccinated
U.S. children have a significantly higher risk of neurological
disorders -- including autism -- than unvaccinated children.
In one striking finding, vaccinated boys 11-17 were more than twice
as likely to have autism as their never-vaccinated counterparts.
The telephone survey of parents representing a total of 17,000
children appears to be the first of its kind -- and contrasts starkly
with several government-backed studies that have found no risk from vaccines.
"No one has ever compared prevalence rates of these neurological
disorders between vaccinated and unvaccinated children," said J.B.
Handley, father of a child with autism and co-founder of Generation
Rescue, which commissioned the $200,000 survey conducted by
SurveyUSA, a respected marketing firm. "The phone survey isn't
perfect, but these numbers point to the need for a comprehensive
national study to gather this critical information.
"We have heard some speculation that unvaccinated children would be
difficult to locate," Handley said. "But we were able to find more
than enough in our sample of more than 17,000 children to establish
confidence intervals at or above 95 percent for the primary
comparisons we made."
Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., reintroduced a bill
first submitted last year calling for the National Institutes of
Health to conduct such a study.
"Generation Rescue's study is impressive and forcefully raises some
serious questions about the relationship between vaccines and
autism," Maloney said. "What is ultimately needed to resolve this
issue one way or the other is a comprehensive national study of
vaccinated and unvaccinated children.
"The parents behind Generation Rescue only want information. These
parents deserve more than roadblocks, they deserve answers. We can
and should move forward in search of those answers."
Both Maloney and Handley said their efforts were sparked by Age of
Autism columns that found anecdotal, unscientific evidence of less
autism among the Amish, who have a lower vaccination rate. The column
also reported on Homefirst Health Services in Chicago, whose director
said there is no autism or asthma among several thousand
never-vaccinated children who were home-delivered and remain patients
of the family practice. The U.S. autism rate is 1 in 150 children,
according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A spokesman for the CDC, which recommends the childhood immunization
schedule and has conducted studies that found no link to autism, said
the agency has not seen the Generation Rescue data.
"We look forward to learning more about the survey," spokesman Curtis
Allen said. "It's important to note that self-report surveys on
topics like this often have significant limitations, so one must be
cautious with respect to interpreting the findings."It's also
important to note that previous studies involving hundreds of
thousands of children have failed to find an association."
Generation Rescue's Handley, however, said those studies never
compared vaccinated with unvaccinated American children. He also said
his survey took its cue from the CDC's own phone-survey approach to
estimating the incidence of such disorders among American children.
"Listening to the CDC talk about the reliability of parent reporting,
we thought there's a quick way to get a proxy for whether or not
there's any truth to the hypotheses that vaccines and all these
neurological disorders are related," Handley said. His organization
believes that mercury, including a type used for decades in routine
childhood immunizations, is a major factor in the ten-fold increase
in reported autism cases over the past 20 years.
Handley said the survey, conducted in nine counties in Oregon and
California, asked parents "whether their child had been vaccinated,
and whether that child had one or more of the following diagnoses:
attention deficit disorder, ADHD, Asperger's syndrome, Pervasive
Development Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified, or autism."
Results highlighted by Generation Rescue:
- "Among more than 9,000 boys age 4-17, vaccinated boys were
2.5 times (155 percent) more likely to have neurological disorders,
224 percent more likely to have attention deficit hyperactivity
disorder, and 61 percent more likely to have autism."
- "For older vaccinated boys in the 11-17 age bracket, the
results were even more pronounced. Vaccinated boys were 158 percent
more likely to have a neurological disorder, 317 percent more likely
to have ADHD, and 112 percent more likely to have autism."
Handley said he believes the higher results for the older boys are
probably more complete because not every child in the younger age
group would have received a formal diagnosis.
Concern that vaccines are linked to the rise of autism and other
neurodevelopmental disorders has been largely dismissed by public
health officials and mainstream medical groups, especially since a
2004 report by the respected Institute of Medicine found no such
evidence -- and suggested research money go to more "promising" areas.
But parents -- some of whom say they watched their children regress
into autism immediately following physical reactions to vaccines --
have continued to press the issue. A U.S. vaccine court in Washington
is currently hearing argument over whether nearly 5,000 such claims
should be paid by a federal vaccine injury compensation fund.
Handley said the fact that his organization could produce such a
study on a relative shoestring while the U.S. government has not
suggests it is hesitant to confront the possible ramifications.
Two years ago CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding told UPI that "such
studies could and should be done" but offered several reasons why
they might prove difficult, including the variability of autism
diagnoses, possible genetic differences in the Amish and the small
number of never-vaccinated children in the United States.
"They haven't lifted a penny since then," Handley said.
Full results of the study are at www.generationrescue.org/survey.html.
(e-mail: dolmsted@gmail.com)
Copyright 2007 by United Press International
------------------------------------------
Sheri Nakken, R.N., MA, Hahnemannian Homeopath
http://www.wellwithin1.com/vaccine.htm & http://www.wellwithin1.com/homeo.htm
ONLINE/Email classes in Homeopathy; Vaccine Dangers; Childhood Diseases Reality
Next classes start October 28 & 29
"Final Thought
Why hasn't a larger scale study comparing ND rates of vaccinated and
unvaccinated children already taken place? We don't know. We credit
Dan Olmsted, a reporter for United Press International, with giving
us the idea to do this study. At a press conference in the summer of
2005, Mr. Olmsted had a chance to ask Julie Gerberding, the Director
of the CDC, a simple question. Mr. Olmsted asked:
"Has the government ever looked at the autism rate in an unvaccinated
U.S. population, and if not, why not?""
see end of article for CDC response to question
http://www.generationrescue.org/survey.html
Cal-Oregon Unvaccinated Survey
GO TO WEBPAGE FOR LINKS EMBEDDED IN ARTICLE
Background
"We surveyed over 9,000 boys in California and Oregon and found that
vaccinated boys had a 155% greater chance of having a neurological
disorder like ADHD or autism than unvaccinated boys." - Generation Rescue
- Read our press release discussing the survey here.
- Read an article from UPI Investigative reporter Dan Olmsted
Discussing the survey: Study Sees Vaccine Risk.
If you are interested in learning about alternative vaccine
schedules, please read our section titled On Vaccines.
Methodology
Generation Rescue commissioned an independent opinion research firm,
SurveyUSA of Verona NJ, to conduct a telephone survey in nine
counties in California and Oregon. Counties were selected by
Generation Rescue. Interviews were successfully completed in 11,817
households with one or more children age 4 to 17. From those 11,817
households, data on 17,674 children was gathered. Of the 17,674
children inventoried, 991 were described as being completely
unvaccinated. For each unvaccinated child, a health battery was administered.
Generation Rescue chose to use telephone interviews with parents to
gather data on children, so as to closely mirror the methodology the
CDC uses to establish national prevalence for NDs such as ADHD and
autism through their national phone survey of parent responses.
Generation Rescue chose to focus on children ages 4-17 to match the
age range used by CDC.
Are parent responses a reliable indicator of a child's diagnostic
status? According to Dr. Laura Schieve, co-author of the CDC's
national phone survey study, in discussing the CDC's two phone
surveys on autism prevalence, "the consistency of prevalence
estimates across the two surveys supports high reliability or
reproducibility of parental report of autism and reliability is one
important component of validity."
SurveyUSA is a well-known national opinion research firm with unique
expertise in canvassing local communities. SurveyUSA has no vested
interest in any outcome this or any survey might produce. You can see
a copy of the questionnaire used in the survey here. The data the
survey intended to capture included:
- Households with a child or children aged 4-17
- Whether or not that child had been vaccinated
- Whether or not that child had any one (or more) of the
following diagnosis: ADD, ADHD, Asperger's, PDD-NOS, Autism, Asthma,
or Juvenile Diabetes (the final two of which were added to consider
other health outcomes).
The results of the survey allowed us to compare the prevalence (what
percentage of children have a particular diagnosis) to see if there
was any meaningful difference between unvaccinated and vaccinated children.
The most common way to measure prevalence differences is through a
calculation known as relative risk or the Risk Ratio, where we
compared prevalence amongst unvaccinated children to prevalence
amongst vaccinated children. So, if 5% of unvaccinated children have
asthma, and 10% of vaccinated children have asthma, that represents
an "RR" of 2.0 (10%/5%), or a difference of 100%. We were also able
to look at the data by gender, age, and county.
Results
SurveyUSA gathered data on 9,175 boys and 8,499 girls. Counties
surveyed in California included:
San Diego
Sonoma
Orange
Sacramento
Marin
Counties surveyed in Oregon included:
Multnomah
Marion
Jackson
Lane
The results of the survey can be accessed as a pdf file here.
http://www.generationrescue.org/pdf/survey.pdf
This is the primary data we received from SurveyUSA and it can be
used for anyone to independently analyze our results.
Generation Rescue analyzed the data provided by SurveyUSA, and a copy
of our analysis can be found here. The most notable results of our
survey are with the boys, which is not surprising considering boys
represent approximately 80% of total cases of NDs. Namely:
All vaccinated boys, compared to unvaccinated boys:
- Vaccinated boys were 155% more likely to have a neurological
disorder (RR 2.55)
- Vaccinated boys were 224% more likely to have ADHD (RR 3.24)
- Vaccinated boys were 61% more likely to have autism (RR 1.61)
Older vaccinated boys, ages 11-17 (about half the boys surveyed),
compared to older unvaccinated boys:
- Vaccinated boys were 158% more likely to have a neurological
disorder (RR 2.58)
- Vaccinated boys were 317% more likely to have ADHD (RR 4.17)
- Vaccinated boys were 112% more likely to have autism (RR 2.12)
(Note: older children may be a more reliable indicator because many
children are not diagnosed until they are 6-8 years old, and we
captured data beginning at age 4.)
All vaccinated boys, removing one county with unusual results
(Multnomah, OR), compared to unvaccinated boys:
- Vaccinated boys were 185% more likely to have a neurological
disorder (RR 2.85)
- Vaccinated boys were 279% more likely to have ADHD (RR 3.79)
- Vaccinated boys were 146% more likely to have autism (RR 2.46)
All vaccinated boys and girls, compared to unvaccinated boys and girls:
- Vaccinated boys and girls were 120% more likely to have
asthma (RR 2.20)
- No correlation established for juvenile diabetes
All vaccinated girls, compared to unvaccinated girls:
- No meaningful differences in prevalence were noted for NDs
(which may be due to the smaller sample size of the study because
girls represent about 20% of cases.)
Commentary
Generation Rescue is not representing that our study proves that the
U.S. vaccine schedule has caused an epidemic in neurological
disorders amongst our children. We are a small non-profit
organization. For less than $200,000, we were able to complete a
study that the CDC, with an $8 billion a year budget, has been unable
or unwilling to do. We think the results of our survey lend
credibility to the urgent need to do a larger scale study to compare
vaccinated and unvaccinated children for neurodevelopmental outcomes.
It is also the opinion of Generation Rescue that we are
over-vaccinating our children, and we encourage parents to use
caution in how they choose to vaccinate their children, particularly
boys. In the vaccine section of our website, we provide additional
detail on vaccines and vaccinating safely and provide three
alternative vaccine schedules parents may want to consider for their children.
Background:
In 1983, the Centers for Disease Control ("CDC") recommended a total
of 10 vaccines for our children up to the age of 5. In 2007, the CDC
recommends 36, an increase of 260%, or 3.6x. (See a comparison here).
During this time period, we have witnessed an epidemic of childhood
neurological disorders ("NDs"). Today, the CDC estimates that 1 in 13
U.S. children has been diagnosed with ADHD and 1 in 150 has been
diagnosed with autism. In the 1980s, ADHD was almost unheard of and
autism was estimated to affect 1 in 10,000 children. Boys are
significantly more affected by NDs, accounting for approximately 80%
of all cases.
Unfortunately, the mainstream media still misreports that the
explosive growth in NDs is the results of "better diagnosis" despite
the considerable published scientific research to refute this
position. As one example, Department of Developmental Services in
California, known for keeping the best autism data in the country,
issued this report regarding the growth of autism rates in California
where they stated:
"There is no evidence that a loosening in the diagnostic criteria has
contributed to increased number of autism clients...we conclude that
some, if not all, of the observed increase represents a true increase
in cases of autism in California...a purely genetic basis for autism
does not fully explain the increasing autism prevalence. Other
theories that attempt to better explain the observed increase in
autism cases include environmental exposures to substances such as
mercury; viral exposures; autoimmune disorders; and childhood vaccinations."
Many parents blame vaccines for their children's ND, and many
published biological studies seem to support this position, because
vaccines contain ingredients capable of causing neurological damage.
Yet, no studies have ever been done to compare ND rates of
unvaccinated children to vaccinated children. Until now.
(Note: Neurolological disorders include ADD, ADHD, Asperger's,
PDD-NOS, and Autism.)
Brief commentary:
There is a lot of misreporting that would lead parents to believe
that vaccines have already been scientifically proven to be unrelated
to the epidemic of NDs. This is simply not true.
- U.S. children have been analyzed to compare those who
received some mercury in their vaccines with those who received more
mercury in their vaccines for the outcome of autism (not ADHD). The
conclusion of the study was neutral, meaning a link could neither be
confirmed nor denied. This study, conducted by the CDC, is the only
study ever done using data of U.S. Children.
- Children in several European countries have been analyzed to
compare those who received mercury in their shots with those who
received no mercury in their shots for the outcome of autism. The
conclusions of these studies was that no association was found,
although these studies have been disputed. See
www.putchildrenfirst.org for more details.
- Further, in 2006 the National Institute of Environmental
Health Sciences, at the request of Senator Joseph Lieberman, issued
this report which effectively conceded that both the CDC study of
U.S. children and the "Danish Studies" were of poor study design and
not reliable in determining whether or not Thimerosal causes autism.
As this article from UPI reporter Dan Olmsted noted following the
report's release: "For three years, the CDC has used a study
conducted on its own Vaccine Safety Datalink to reassure parents that
mercury in vaccines does not cause autism. Now a panel of
government-appointed experts says there are "serious problems" with
exactly the approach the CDC took." Olmsted interviewed the
Chairperson of the NIEHS Committee who was quoted as saying:
"It's an 'open question' whether anything about vaccines --
timing, dose, preservative -- is related to the rise in diagnoses [of
autism]. Some studies are stronger than others. The Verstraeten
[Pediatrics] study was an improvement on other studies including the
two in Denmark, both of which had serious weaknesses in their designs
that limit what we can learn from them."
- No studies have ever been done to compare ND rates of
children who received vaccines with those who received no vaccines,
which is what our survey accomplished. Moreover, no studies have ever
explored a link between vaccines and ADHD, despite the fact that 1 in
13 U.S. children have this diagnosis (versus 1 in 150 for autism).
- Even the Institute of Medicine, which is often cited in the
media for issuing a 2004 report refuting the relationship between
mercury and autism, held a 2007 workshop on "autism and the
environment" that featured "presentations and discussions on
strategies for research focusing on the potential relationship
between autism and an array of environmental exposures."
The glaring absence of a study to compare vaccinated and unvaccinated
children for ND rates caused Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) to
introduce this bill to compel the National Institutes of Health to do
such a study.
Potential Criticisms
The question of whether or not vaccines have played and role in the
epidemic of neurological disorders is an explosive topic with many
passionate voices on both sides of the debate. Our survey results
will most assuredly be challenged and criticized. Some of the more
likely challenges (and our responses) include:
Criticism: Parents who do not vaccinate their children are less
likely to seek an ND diagnosis, which explains the difference in
prevalence you found.
Response: We think the data disproves this, because we found no
meaningful difference in prevalence for NDs between vaccinated and
unvaccinated girls. If this was simply an issue of parent behavior,
the girls would have shown wide discrepancies in prevalence, too, and
they did not.
It's also interesting to consider a study completed by the
CDC and published in Pediatrics, Children Who Have Received No
Vaccines: Who Are They and Where Do They Live? The study noted:
"Unvaccinated children tended to be white, to have a mother who was
married and had a college degree, to live in a household with an
annual income exceeding $75,000, and to have parents who expressed
concerns regarding the safety of vaccines and indicated that medical
doctors have little influence over vaccination decisions for their children."
And, it continues:
"Why do some parents avoid vaccinating their children? Our results
indicate that parents of unvaccinated children are much more
concerned about vaccine safety than are parents whose children
receive Your browser may not support display of this image.1 vaccine
dose. In a survey of parent's beliefs and practices regarding
vaccinations and autism, siblings in families in which there was an
autistic child were 3 times more likely to be unvaccinated, compared
with siblings in families in which there was a child with
attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. In response to concerns
about the perceived risk of autism resulting from vaccinations,
parents might have avoided having their sons vaccinated at a higher
rate than their daughters, as a result of knowing that they have risk
factors for autism and knowing that the rate of autism is 4 times
greater for boys than for girls."
Criticism: The ratio of diagnosed to undiagnosed children in
this survey may be too high, indicating a potential response bias.
Response: The survey does not attempt to newly establish the
prevalence of autism in the general population. The survey attempts
only to shed preliminary light on any relationship between
vaccination status and diagnosis. It is not surprising and not
unexpected that parents with children who have received a diagnosis
may have been more willing to complete the health battery included in
this survey than parents of children who have not been diagnosed.
However, that does not make the parents who did participate in this
study likely to lie about, or forget about, the vaccination status of
their children. The only way a possible "response bias" in favor of
those households with a diagnosed child would invalidate the results
of this research is if asking about vaccination status of a child
independently produced a bias and that bias interacted with the bias
caused by asking about NDs. For the concern to be valid: somehow, the
main group of vaccinated families would have to be more likely to
respond if there was an ND in the family, without also affecting the
response of unvaccinated families in the same way. While such an
interaction is possible, this criticism can be addressed by further,
more elaborate research. Such a potential interaction does not
invalidate this research.
It's also worth considering that if there was response bias, we
should have received a disproportionate share of our responses from
parents of boys, who represent 80% of NDs, and we did not. Boys were
51.9% of responses and girls were 48.1%. (We hope there was some
response bias, because our numbers show a prevalence of autism of 1
in 43, far higher than the CDC's reported number of 1 in 150.)
Criticism: Parent responses is not a reliable way to gauge
either a child's diagnosis or whether or not a child has been vaccinated.
Response: We would point to our "Methodology" section above and
cite the CDC, who also uses a parent phone survey to gauge prevalence
of NDs in children. We generally mimicked their approach.
Final Thought
Why hasn't a larger scale study comparing ND rates of vaccinated and
unvaccinated children already taken place? We don't know. We credit
Dan Olmsted, a reporter for United Press International, with giving
us the idea to do this study. At a press conference in the summer of
2005, Mr. Olmsted had a chance to ask Julie Gerberding, the Director
of the CDC, a simple question. Mr. Olmsted asked:
"Has the government ever looked at the autism rate in an unvaccinated
U.S. population, and if not, why not?"
Ms. Gerberding's answer:
"In this country, we have very high levels of vaccination as you
probably know, and I think this year we have record immunization
levels among all of our children, so to (select an unvaccinated
group) that on a population basis would be representative to look at
incidence in that population compared to the other population would
be something that could be done.
But as we're learning, just trying to look at autism in a community
the size of Atlanta, it's very, very difficult to get an effective
numerator and denominator to get a reliable diagnosis.
I think those kind of studies could be done and should be done. You'd
have to adjust for the strong genetic component that also
distinguishes, for example, people in Amish communities who may elect
not to be immunized (and) also have genetic connectivity that would
make them different from populations that are in other sectors of the
United States. So drawing some conclusions from them would be very difficult.
I think with reference to the timing of all of this, good science
does take time, and it's part of one of the messages I feel like I've
learned from the feedback that we've gotten from parents groups this
summer (in) struggling with developing a more robust and a faster
research agenda, is let's speed this up. Let's look for the early
studies that could give us at least some hypotheses to test and
evaluate and get information flowing through the research pipeline as
quickly as we can.
So we are committed to doing that, and as I mentioned, in terms of
just measuring the frequency of autism in the population some pretty
big steps have been taken. We're careful not to jump ahead of our
data, but we think we will be able to provide more accurate
information in the next year or so than we've been able to do up to
this point. And I know that is our responsibility.
We've also benefited from some increased investments in these areas
that have allowed us to do this, and so we thank Congress and we
thank the administration for supporting those investments, not just
at CDC but also at NIH and FDA."
Is Ms. Gerberding genuinely interested in getting an answer? We will
let the reader decide.
*********
http://www.generationrescue.org/olmstead.html
The Age of Autism: Study sees vaccine risk
By Dan Olmstead
WASHINGTON (UPI) -- A new, privately funded survey finds vaccinated
U.S. children have a significantly higher risk of neurological
disorders -- including autism -- than unvaccinated children.
In one striking finding, vaccinated boys 11-17 were more than twice
as likely to have autism as their never-vaccinated counterparts.
The telephone survey of parents representing a total of 17,000
children appears to be the first of its kind -- and contrasts starkly
with several government-backed studies that have found no risk from vaccines.
"No one has ever compared prevalence rates of these neurological
disorders between vaccinated and unvaccinated children," said J.B.
Handley, father of a child with autism and co-founder of Generation
Rescue, which commissioned the $200,000 survey conducted by
SurveyUSA, a respected marketing firm. "The phone survey isn't
perfect, but these numbers point to the need for a comprehensive
national study to gather this critical information.
"We have heard some speculation that unvaccinated children would be
difficult to locate," Handley said. "But we were able to find more
than enough in our sample of more than 17,000 children to establish
confidence intervals at or above 95 percent for the primary
comparisons we made."
Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., reintroduced a bill
first submitted last year calling for the National Institutes of
Health to conduct such a study.
"Generation Rescue's study is impressive and forcefully raises some
serious questions about the relationship between vaccines and
autism," Maloney said. "What is ultimately needed to resolve this
issue one way or the other is a comprehensive national study of
vaccinated and unvaccinated children.
"The parents behind Generation Rescue only want information. These
parents deserve more than roadblocks, they deserve answers. We can
and should move forward in search of those answers."
Both Maloney and Handley said their efforts were sparked by Age of
Autism columns that found anecdotal, unscientific evidence of less
autism among the Amish, who have a lower vaccination rate. The column
also reported on Homefirst Health Services in Chicago, whose director
said there is no autism or asthma among several thousand
never-vaccinated children who were home-delivered and remain patients
of the family practice. The U.S. autism rate is 1 in 150 children,
according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A spokesman for the CDC, which recommends the childhood immunization
schedule and has conducted studies that found no link to autism, said
the agency has not seen the Generation Rescue data.
"We look forward to learning more about the survey," spokesman Curtis
Allen said. "It's important to note that self-report surveys on
topics like this often have significant limitations, so one must be
cautious with respect to interpreting the findings."It's also
important to note that previous studies involving hundreds of
thousands of children have failed to find an association."
Generation Rescue's Handley, however, said those studies never
compared vaccinated with unvaccinated American children. He also said
his survey took its cue from the CDC's own phone-survey approach to
estimating the incidence of such disorders among American children.
"Listening to the CDC talk about the reliability of parent reporting,
we thought there's a quick way to get a proxy for whether or not
there's any truth to the hypotheses that vaccines and all these
neurological disorders are related," Handley said. His organization
believes that mercury, including a type used for decades in routine
childhood immunizations, is a major factor in the ten-fold increase
in reported autism cases over the past 20 years.
Handley said the survey, conducted in nine counties in Oregon and
California, asked parents "whether their child had been vaccinated,
and whether that child had one or more of the following diagnoses:
attention deficit disorder, ADHD, Asperger's syndrome, Pervasive
Development Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified, or autism."
Results highlighted by Generation Rescue:
- "Among more than 9,000 boys age 4-17, vaccinated boys were
2.5 times (155 percent) more likely to have neurological disorders,
224 percent more likely to have attention deficit hyperactivity
disorder, and 61 percent more likely to have autism."
- "For older vaccinated boys in the 11-17 age bracket, the
results were even more pronounced. Vaccinated boys were 158 percent
more likely to have a neurological disorder, 317 percent more likely
to have ADHD, and 112 percent more likely to have autism."
Handley said he believes the higher results for the older boys are
probably more complete because not every child in the younger age
group would have received a formal diagnosis.
Concern that vaccines are linked to the rise of autism and other
neurodevelopmental disorders has been largely dismissed by public
health officials and mainstream medical groups, especially since a
2004 report by the respected Institute of Medicine found no such
evidence -- and suggested research money go to more "promising" areas.
But parents -- some of whom say they watched their children regress
into autism immediately following physical reactions to vaccines --
have continued to press the issue. A U.S. vaccine court in Washington
is currently hearing argument over whether nearly 5,000 such claims
should be paid by a federal vaccine injury compensation fund.
Handley said the fact that his organization could produce such a
study on a relative shoestring while the U.S. government has not
suggests it is hesitant to confront the possible ramifications.
Two years ago CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding told UPI that "such
studies could and should be done" but offered several reasons why
they might prove difficult, including the variability of autism
diagnoses, possible genetic differences in the Amish and the small
number of never-vaccinated children in the United States.
"They haven't lifted a penny since then," Handley said.
Full results of the study are at www.generationrescue.org/survey.html.
(e-mail: dolmsted@gmail.com)
Copyright 2007 by United Press International
------------------------------------------
Sheri Nakken, R.N., MA, Hahnemannian Homeopath
http://www.wellwithin1.com/vaccine.htm & http://www.wellwithin1.com/homeo.htm
ONLINE/Email classes in Homeopathy; Vaccine Dangers; Childhood Diseases Reality
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