Orac: Andrew Wakefield’s libel suit against Brian Deer: Dismissed!

Orac: Andrew Wakefield’s libel suit against Brian Deer: Dismissed!

Anti-Vaxxers and the "Autism Epidemic"

The antivaccine movement resurrects the zombie that is the "autism epidemic"
from Respectful Insolence

If there's one thing that I've learned that I can always--and I do mean always--rely on from the antivaccine movement, it's that its members will always be all over any new study regarding vaccines and/or autism in an effort to preemptively put their pseudoscientific spin on the results. It's much the same way that they frequently storm into discussion threads after stories and posts about vaccines and autism like the proverbial flying monkeys, dropping their antivaccine poo hither and yon all over science-based discussions. If these commenters weren't there, I couldn't manage because dealing with the antivaccine trolls is so time-consuming. I can either lay down the near-daily dose of Insolence, both Respectful and not-so-Respectful, that you all crave, or I can dive into comment threads and refute all the antivaccine nonsense being laid down by some of my more prominent trolls. I can't do both.

In any case, antivaxers are also known for not respecting embargoes. They infiltrate their way into mailing lists for journalists in which newsworthy new studies are released to the press before they actually see print and then flood their propaganda websites with their spin on the studies, either attacking the ones they don't like or trying to imprint their interpretation on ones on which they can, all before the skeptical blogosophere has a chance to post about them. Such is the price of being honorable and honoring embargoes. So it was yesterday, when vaccine-autism cranks jumped the embargo on a CDC study released yesterday that announced new autism prevalence numbers. This is nothing new; it's the antivaccine movement's modus operandi, which makes me wonder why the various journals don't shut off the flow. The study, of course, was announced in press conferences and a number of news stories. No doubt many of you have seen them. They focus on the key finding of the CDC study, which is that the prevalence of autism in the U.S. has risen to approximately 1 in 88.

…

Before I dig into the report a bit more and discuss the reaction of the antivaccine movement to it, let's first note one thing that you will not (and I did not) see in the various hysterical reactions to the study that I've seen thus far. You will not see any of the usual suspects emphasize mercury in the thimerosal preservative that used to be used in vaccines in the context of the report (although one does foolishly mention it, see below). The reason is obvious. If autism prevalence is still rising (or even if it's staying the same), it's yet another death blow to the hypothesis that mercury in vaccines causes autism. After all, thimerosal was removed from nearly all pediatric vaccines back in 2001. …

As always, it's worth to read in its entirety.

Orac: the latest about Wakefield's law suit

Why Wakefield is going to loose this one – again. Must read for anybody slightly interested.

"No support for the hypothesis of differences in urinary mercury excretion in children with autism compared to other groups"

A Comparison of Urinary Mercury between Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders and Control Children

Barry Wright 1*, Helen Pearce 2, Victoria Allgar 3, Jeremy Miles 4, Clare Whitton 1, Irene Leon 5, Jenny Jardine 1, Nicola McCaffrey 1, Rob Smith 6, Ian Holbrook 6, John Lewis 5, David Goodall 7, Ben Alderson-Day 1

1 North Yorkshire and York Primary Care Trust, York, United Kingdom,
2 Tees Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust, Durham, United Kingdom,
3 Hull York Medical School, York, United Kingdom,
4 FNORD RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, California, United States of America,
5 Food and Environment Research Agency, Sand Hutton, United Kingdom,
6 York NHS Foundation Trust, York, United Kingdom,
7 Department Of Chemistry, York University, York, United Kingdom

Abstract

Background
Urinary mercury concentrations are used in research exploring mercury exposure. Some theorists have proposed that autism is caused by mercury toxicity. We set out to test whether mercury concentrations in the urine of children with autism were significantly increased or decreased compared to controls or siblings.

Methods
Blinded cohort analyses were carried out on the urine of 56 children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) compared to their siblings (n = 42) and a control sample of children without ASD in mainstream (n = 121) and special schools (n = 34).

Results
There were no statistically significant differences in creatinine levels, in uncorrected urinary mercury levels or in levels of mercury corrected for creatinine, whether or not the analysis is controlled for age, gender and amalgam fillings.

Conclusions
This study lends no support for the hypothesis of differences in urinary mercury excretion in children with autism compared to other groups. Some of the results, however, do suggest further research in the area may be warranted to replicate this in a larger group and with clear measurement of potential confounding factors.

Dr. Mikovits on Autism and Vaccines

"On that note, if I might speculate a little bit," she [Judy Mikovits] said, "This might even explain why vaccines would lead to autism in some children,..."

I dunno: seems to be a pretty clear admission that she thinks vaccines are "implicated" in autism, don't ya think?

Posted by: divalent | October 1, 2010 8:53 PM

Contrast with:

One of the most replicated physical features of autism is a larger brain with more neurons and a larger number of minicolumns.

The number of minicolumns is fixed during the first trimester in utero. Nothing months or years later can change that number.

I think she was trolling for funding. Telling the delusional anti-vax people what they want to hear so they will give her money.

Unfortunately that is the way that getting funding works. The honest and good scientist who knows his/her limits and doesn't lie has difficulty competing with the frauds who say "I will cure cancer/CFS/autism/stupidity/ugliness with this funding".

Posted by: daedalus2u | October 2, 2010 10:04 AM

Interesting phone survey by Generation Rescue

And what it means:

The bias factors in the unvaccinated group were 4.33 for boys and 15.17 for girls. That's quite surprising. To emphasize, unvaccinated girls participating in the survey were found to be diagnosed with ASD 15 times as often as in the general population of girls.

Either not vaccinating girls is a significant cause of ASD, or familial autism is more common in the families of autistic girls. (Any other explanations?) I'm inclined to believe the second explanation, though I haven't found much support for this in the literature. Tsai et al. (2005) comes close. Either way, this seems to be an interesting direction of future research.

Read it all.

Orac on AoA's Julie Obradovic

Today I'm giving thanks for the antivaccine propaganda blog Age of Autism and one of its bloggers, Julie Obradovic for giving me an utterly irresistable bit of material that I rather suspect you'll find just as amusing as I did. Of course, what made her post so irresistible to me is the very reason she's not going to be very happy with me if she sees this post. Not that I care much, I just find it amusing. You see, Julie Obradovic really, really, really doesn't like being called "antivaccine," as in hates it so much that she wrote a post bout how much she hates it and considers it a horrific injustice and wants to convince you that she and the merry band of antivaccine propagandists over at AoA aren't anti-vaccine after all. Yes, it's the old antivaccine trope, "I'm not 'antivaccine'; I'm a vaccine safety advocate," and it comes in the form of a post entitled The Trouble with the ANTI "Anti-Vaccine" Movement: How They Hijack the Issue; Distort the Facts; and Totally Miss the Point. Not content to turn the antivaccine whining up to "10," Obradovic turns it up to "11" with 11 things she finds really, really wrong with those of us who stand up for vaccine science against the likes of AoA.

It's truly hilarious reading. Well, hilarious and sad at the same time.
…

The most common form that torture of the English language comes in is denying they are "antivaccine" and trying to recast themselves as vaccine safety advocates, starting with Jenny McCarthy herself proclaiming herself to be "not 'antivaccine' but 'pro-safe vaccine.'" It's a lie, of course, and it's a lie that's easy to refute. All that's necessary is to ask Obradovic (or any other anti-vaccine zealot), "If you are not 'anti-vaccine,' then, please, tell us which vaccines you would give your children." In other words, make them get specific: Would you give your child the MMR? The Hib vaccine? Pertussis? Don't let her waffle; don't let her place all sorts of conditions on it. The questions should follow the form of "Do you think this vaccine is safe enough to give to your child, yes or no?" Be aware that this question may require some pushing to get an answer. Rarely am I able to get a definitive answer on the first try, because most anti-vaccine advocates are cleverer than that. They realize that I'm trying to get them to admit that they are anti-vaccine. Even so, if I ask something like, "If you had it to do all over again, would you vaccinate your child?" or "If you have another child, will you vaccinate that child?" I will usually get the candid response I'm looking for. The reason I try to make the question real now is because often antivaccine activists will retort that they vaccinated their child. That's in the past and it's a dodge. What matters is what they say now and what they would do now, not what they did or thought in the past.

As is often the case with propagandistic twisting of reality, there is a grain of truth in Obradovic's viewpoint. In an earlier post, she wrote that the "overwhelming majority of parents foregoing vaccines are actually not anti-vaccinationists." No one that I'm aware of disputes that, but it's an irrelevant observation. Most parents who don't vaccinate have been frightened by people like the bloggers at AoA claiming that vaccines cause autism and a wide variety of other chronic diseases, slamming vaccine scientists as corrupt, touting any study that they can twist into fear mongering. Because in the end, to the antivaccinationist it is about the vaccines. It's always been about the vaccines. It always will be about the vaccines. They always find a way to make their health fears be all about vaccines.

That's what I mean by "antivaccine."

Get Vaccinated

Get Vaccinated

"The vaccine exposure and schedule is minimal, a wee dribble of a smidgeon of an immunologic challenge"

Compared to the antibody response to the antigens of life, the vaccine exposure and schedule is minimal, a wee dribble of a smidgeon of an immunologic challenge. The ability of the immune system to respond to antigens is vast, with a capacity that exceeds the minds ability to comprehend. The immune system is big. Really, really big. You just don’t realize how incredibly vast the immune system is. I mean, you might think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to the immune system. I hear Carl Sagen chanting billions and billions.

(via)

Gee, thanks!

The other day, I noted a contrast between certain parts of the developed world (namely, Europe) where, thanks to fears of the MMR vaccine stoked by Andrew Wakefield and the credulous and sensationalistic British press, MMR uptake rates have fallen and, predictably, measles incidence has skyrocketed, and the rest of the world, where polio is now on the verge of being eradicated, thanks to vaccination campaigns. It's evidence that the antivaccine movement, inspired by Andrew Wakefield and promoted by antivaccine groups like Generation Rescue, the National Vaccine Information Center, the Australian Vaccination Network, and Safeminds, has harmful consequences to public health. Of course, it's entirely predictable that, where vaccination rates fall, vaccine-preventable diseases will tend to make a comeback. Indeed, it was antivaccine fear mongering based on religion and suspicion of Westerners that delayed progress in the eradication of polio, progress that is only now getting back on track.

Other vaccine-preventable diseases are also making a comeback, unfortunately, as I found out when I read Trine Tsouderos' excellent article in the Sunday paper entitled Whooping cough returns as vaccine use drops, changes. The situation is a little more complex than that for the resurgence of measles due to catastrophic declines in MMR uptake in the U.K. and parts of continental Europe, but once again it's a situation where less vaccination equals more disease.

Now was your little anti-vaxx irrational confirmation bias worth that? Gee, thanks.

Vincent Racaniello on poliovirus vaccine litigation

Vincent Racaniello on poliovirus vaccine litigation – a must read in its entirety:

…
Second, a single monkey with a 3-3 neurovirulence score appears to have played an important role in this case, but that ignores the fact that there are almost always wide variations that result in “outliers” whenever biological assays are involved.  We have studied poliovirus infection of mice in my laboratory, for example, and outliers are common – the one mouse in twenty that becomes ill or dies, while the others remain well. Other investigators have shown that poliovirus recovered from the spinal cord of an outlier monkey – one with a 3-3 neurovirulence score – does not produce these results when re-injected in a different group of monkeys. The monkey with a 3-3 score observed in the government’s test of one monopool of type 3 poliovirus vaccine is clearly an outlier. The other 14 monkeys in the intraspinal test had very low scores, and Lederle’s neurovirulence test did not produce a monkey with a 3-3 score. I conclude that the neurovirulence test on this type 3 monopool clearly did not exceed that of the reference virus – there is no scientifically valid justification for arguing otherwise.

If you don’t believe in outliers, there is another way to look at this issue: does a monkey with a 3-3 score in the neurovirulence test mean that the lot of vaccine is more likely to cause paralysis in humans? We cannot carry out such an experiment prospectively, but we can do the next best thing – compare the results of the monkey neurovirulence test with the rate of vaccine-associated poliomyelitis. In the entire history of the monkey neurovirulence test – from 1962-1999 – some monopools of vaccine periodically had one or two monkeys with a 3-3 neurovirulence score, and others did not. Nevertheless, the rate of vaccine-associated paralytic disease remained remarkably constant over this time: 5-10 cases per year. There were no spikes in the years when the “3-3″ vaccines were in distribution. The conclusion is clear: no lot of vaccine is associated with an increase in the number of paralytic cases in any year.

Why do the Sabin vaccine strains cause paralytic disease in some recipients and contacts? Albert Sabin derived these vaccine strains by serially passing neurovirulent isolates in different cell types, empirically identifying viral mutants with a reduced capacity to cause disease. There are few mutations responsible for the reduced neurovirulence of the Sabin strains – 5 for type 1, and 2 each for the type 1 and type 2 strains. These mutations rapidly revert during multiplication of the vaccine viruses in the human gut, and that occurs in every recipient of the vaccine. Within several days, the recipient sheds viruses that no longer bear the mutations that Sabin so painstakingly selected. These excreted revertants, when tested in monkeys, are more neurovirulent than the vaccine that was fed to the recipient.
…

Oral polio vaccine has an inherent risk that public health authorities deemed to be acceptable, given the extraordinary benefits of the vaccine. However, in a sense, the ~400 individuals who contracted vaccine-associated polio from 1962-1999 paid a price for the greater good of the population. For this reason alone they deserved compensation, which is what they now receive under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act. Compensation for these individuals is given without the need to castigate life-saving vaccines likes OPV.

Jamie Deckoff-Jones MD, Dr. Judy Mikovits and the Cuckoo Bananas Anti-Vaxxers

Thanks to her completely self-unaware comment on Trines site and zero internet skillz, I saw on her Facebook page that she 'likes' an anti-vax group, 'Autism Mothers'. 'Autism Moms' advertises for BioRay. BioRay is buddy-buddy with Mikovits and the WPI. Mikovits took time out of her busy research schedule to speak with Andrew Wakefield and Jenny McCarthy at AutismOne, while WPI is run by the Whittemores, a couple of folks who let their daughter pass up MMR (which youre supposed to get as a toddler) until she was 17, who now blames her 'relapse' of 'CFS' after she was 'cured' by 'yoga and homeopathy' on the MMR. The WPI, a 'legitimate scientific organization' just hired Dr. DJ.

Oh my, what have we gotten into.

That was your best shot? When certain people disagree, you know you are on the right track:). And thanks for the heads up about FaceBook. I am a newbie and it is definitely creepy.

Jamie Deckoff-Jones
http://treatingxmrv.blogspot.com/

Posted by: Jamie Deckoff-Jones MD | March 23, 2011 11:25 AM

Yeah Jamie, better hide your cuckoo FaceBook anti-vax connections. Don't let others see what friends you have.

What you [Deckoff-Jones] have written, from what I read from your site, is not based in science. It is based on your personal bias and cherry picking.

Posted by: MI Dawn | March 23, 2011 1:31 PM

Could not have said it better myself.

PSA from Jamie Deckoff-Jones MD

In our latest series of Public Service Annoucement about major health concerns from Jamie Deckoff-Jones MD (not to be mistaken with cranks who overestimate their own knowledge and ability, and underestimate that of acknowledged experts while insisting that their alleged discoveries are urgently important or other forms of scientific bankruptcy) we bring you:

ITS THE VACCINES!!!!11!!ONE1!

Here it is: I think that simple animal retroviruses, endogenous and exogenous, were introduced into the human population in the form of live attenuated vaccines. The first outbreak of epidemic neuromyasthenia was in 1934 at LA County Hospital, 2 years after the first paper was published on the use of the Yellow Fever vaccine in humans, a live vaccine that was produced in mouse brains. Killed vaccines produced in rabbit spinal cord was used in the late 19th century for rabies. There also may have been low level natural zoonoses prior to that, nature's normal process. The vaccine industry has continued to do essentially the same things in a more refined way into the present day, even though it should have dawned on them by the late '70's that there might be a serious problem. They have persisted despite huge anecdotal evidence that vaccines are harming large numbers of people (in addition to the good that they do). Furthermore, many new biomedical "advances" have put the human species at further risk, e.g. xenografts, xenotransplants, hybridomas, chimeras, designed to, or having potential to fuse human DNA with that of other animals. It's a dirty little secret that the biomedical industry doesn't want to look at.

We congratulate Jamie Deckoff-Jones MD on becoming a fresh member of the Anti-Vaxxer crank society.

Unfortunately Jamie Deckoff-Jones MD doesn't speak out about The Real Truth!©™, that occam's razor quite clearly says that nature and evilution evolution are not capable of creating pathogens and therefore the first, prime and sole suspect for all diseases must be vaccines. So I made little infographic to condense it down:

Congratulations to Jamie Deckoff-Jones MD for collecting the truly overwhelming amount of evidence implicating Zoonotic Retroviruses From Vaccines! as the cause of her disease and making an absolute airtight case. And kudos for having the intellectual capacity to connect the dots, which enabled her to make this amazing scientific break-through – while others are hiding because they are afraid of The Real Truth!©™! She found one case of vaccine use that happened two years before the first recorded instance of her disease (or the first record that she could find) and in her mind it makes it abundantly clear that it must have been Zoonotic Retroviruses From Vaccines! She shuts the case! Go ahead and call this a simplistic baseless fearmongering speculation aimed at garnering the admiration of fellow patients. You would be so wrong, because her bright example of sticking it to The Man should be a guidance to us all! She showed us all – far far beyond any reasonably doubt – that scientific advantages are causing our downfall!  I applaud her scientific and medical integrity to come to the public with such an important and well researched theory!

So, if you have been injured by xenografts, xenotransplants, hybridomas or chimeras, or suspect you will be in the future, head over to Jamie Deckoff-Jones MD to find likeminded mindless minds in a desperate yet somehow futile search of a cure. And stay tuned for how to cure any illness by giving anti-retrovirals.

Vaccines you definitely need

As there is still some confusion about vaccines ("Do we need them? Or should we rather take a chance of dying from the diseases they prevent") I present here for your enterainment a table from a nice presentation:

"Annual Morbidity" is how many people died got infected fell ill per year from that disease. "Reported Cases" is how many people got the disease in 2006.

Trust me: anything you might imagining in your wildest dreams that you would get from vaccines ("weaken the overall immune system", "make someone autistic", or anything else you want to believe) is far far far better than the diseases they prevent. Far better.

You don't want Smallpox.
You don't want Diphtheria.
You don't want Measles.
You don't want Mumps.
You don't want Pertussis.
You don't want Polio.
You don't want Rubella.
You don't want Tetanus.

And don't tell me you want that your loved ones get ANY of those diseases – what are you, some kind of monster?

Alas, with the modern vaccines like the ones against influenza or HPV, for me the picture is anything but that clear.

(via)

Nature.com: "Fresh dispute about MMR 'fraud'"

Bjarnason says he doesn't believe they are sufficient to support claims in the Lancet paper of a new disease process. He also questions whether "non-specific" on the grading sheets refers to colitis, saying it could refer to any kind of gut changes. But he says that the forms don't clearly support charges that Wakefield deliberately misinterpreted the records. "The data are subjective. It's different to say it's deliberate falsification," he says.

I think Andrew Wakefield is a quack, but even he deserved a fair trial – with less foaming accusations and more scientific inquiry. Or did Bruno Bettelheim ever get the Wakefield treatment?

When Science is marketed...

To achieve the 98 percent efficacy claim, Merck excluded from analysis anyone who “violated” the study protocol. In other words, all real-world problems that arose were excluded from analysis. Problems like girls who refused to take a second or third shot after they became sick and (correctly or incorrectly) blamed the vaccine. Or doctors who incorrectly gave the vaccine to someone who shouldn’t have received it. While it’s worth knowing how effective the vaccine is when it’s used exactly as it should be, for a public-health decision, it’s not as relevant as its real-world effectiveness.

To Merck’s credit, they reported that when all women in the study were analyzed, the vaccine’s efficacy dropped to 44 percent. Still, 44 percent might be considered a smashing success when you’re talking about saving lives. Except for one thing: the numbers get worse. The 44 percent benefit included only those women with the two specific cancer-causing HPV strains found in the vaccine. But when the researchers looked at negative cervical changes from any causes, they found that changes occurred in unvaccinated women at a rate of 1.5 events per 100 person-years, while vaccinated women had 1.3 events—dropping the benefit to 17 percent.

Moreover, most of the cervical changes tracked by the researchers weren’t even indicative of cervical cancer in the first place. Most were innocent cellular abnormalities that either disappear entirely on their own, or never progress to cancer. In fact, when they looked more closely at advanced cervical changes most likely to progress to cancer versus more innocent changes that go away spontaneously, it was the innocent changes that accounted for the decline.

Whether Gardasil will reduce cervical cancer deaths in real-world conditions has simply never been answered. It might—but that would take a long-term study, and one that should be done before it’s widely promoted.

…

So how did the HPV vaccine become a multi-billion-dollar winner for Merck? Well you might not be surprised to hear that the company happily lavished money on doctors, professional societies, and over 100 legislators. Of course, there is no tie between the recipients of this largesse and their promotion of the vaccine, say beneficiaries like presidential candidate and current Texas governor Rick Perry. In 2007, Perry signed an executive decree mandating that all girls in Texas receive the vaccine. The $28,500 Perry received was minor compared to his other connection to Merck: Perry’s chief of staff, Mike Toomey, became a lobbyist for Merck, championing the HPV vaccine. Once in that position, announced his plans to raise over $50 million for Perry’s presidential campaign.

Pregnant? Don’t get Vaccinated

A computer scientist at the blog MedAlerts, has collated and graphed the data for us. The chart below shows the total number of spontaneous abortions/stillbirths reported to VAERS per a variety of vaccines.

It is clear from the graph that both the H1N1 vaccine and the Gardasil vaccine have a far greater risk for this outcome than other vaccines. What the graph does not capture is that this is raw data of all adverse events for the time the vaccine has been on the market going back to the start of the database. So as is pointed out by Dr. Rubin at MedAlerts, while the H1N1 vaccine shows a bit less than 3 times as many reports of abortion/stillbirth as the seasonal flu vaccine, the H1N1 vaccine has only been on the market for a year versus 21 years worth of data collection for the regular seasonal flu vaccine. This implies that the H1N1 vaccine is some 60 times more likely to cause a miscarriage than the still relatively unsafe seasonal flu vaccine.

The vaccine with the greatest number of total reported abortions/stillbirths is Gardasil, which has only been on the market for four years. I would speculate whether Gardasil, targeted strongly towards prepubescent girls, and likely not near as widely received as the flu vaccine may even be more dangerous than the H1N1 vaccine.

It should also be pointed out that the most common vaccines a pregnant woman would be at risk of being exposed to would be the influenza vaccines and the Gardasil vaccine.

How reliable is data gathered by doctors?

While these case reports are not in the medical literature I would argue that they are more trustworthy then those written in journals in that, 1) they are not anonymous and 2) they are the exact words of the patient or parents impacted by the adverse event. The government keeps a database of adverse vaccine reactions known as VAERS. One parent had a very succinct critique of this program which I will reproduce.

“The horrible realization is that VAERS is not accurate. Prior to Gardasil, I did not know what VAERS was. When my daughter became ill, I found out about VAERS by research performed on the internet. My daughter’s doctors did not even know what it was and they did not file a report until I filed one myself and told them they were obligated by law to file a report. How can the #’s be accurate if doctors don’t file the reports? I even had to explain what VAERS is. Shouldn’t VAERS and the adverse side effects of vaccines be taught in medical school or shouldn’t the doctors receive periodic newsletters from the CDC explaining VAERS and its importance?

It is the same thing that we have seen in ME/CFS: If you rely on doctors to report something (heck, they are even obligated by the law!), then doctors will underreport it. Doctor won't have the time to write reports, won't take the time, will be skeptical as to a causal relationship, will be skeptical to the significance of the symptoms and attribute it to other 'causes' (It's "the flu", it's "the weather", it's the patient's imagination, etc.)

Loren Cordain on Autoimmunity and Nightshades

… experiments in animals confirm that organ specific autoimmune diseases can be caused by injecting a self-antigen with a powerful adjuvant such as Freund’s [33, 34]. Neither the adjuvant alone nor the self-antigen typically results in autoimmunity in animals [33-35].
…

33. Fairweather D, Kaya Z, Shellam GR, Lawson CM, Rose NR. From infection to autoimmunity. J Autoimmun. 2001 May;16(3):175-86.

34. Fairweather D, Frisancho-Kiss S, Rose NR. Viruses as adjuvants for autoimmunity: evidence from Coxsackievirus-induced myocarditis. Rev Med Virol. 2005 Jan-Feb;15(1):17-27.

35. Fairweather D, Rose NR. Women and autoimmune disease. Emerg Infect Dis 2004;10:2005-2011.

"The loss of the vaccine would be devastating. But we need to clean it up as soon as possible."

A majority of an advisory committee for the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today voiced support for the continued use of a contaminated rotavirus vaccine now under FDA suspension, arguing that the vaccine's benefits far outweigh the theoretical risks of the contaminant.

However, members of the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee also recommended studies of possible long-term risks of the vaccine in question, GlaxoSmithKline's Rotarix.

"On the whole, the vaccine seems to have a spectacular record for safety and efficacy," said committee member John Coffin, PhD, professor of molecular biology and microbiology at Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts. "The loss of the vaccine would be devastating. But we need to clean it up as soon as possible."

"The benefits are so big the risks would have to be enormous to outweigh them," added Harry Greenberg, MD, senior associate dean for research at Stanford University School of Medicine in California. "So far, we see only theoretical risks."

John Coffin says reasonable things. I think I have to apologize to him.

But I have to disagree with Harry Greenberg: Just because you see only theoretical risks, doesn't mean that aren't actual risks. Yes, the benefits far outweigh the risks, but that is no reason to puh-puh the risks.