Years back the evidence was rolling in debunking the hypotheses that the MMR and/or thimerosal in vaccines causes autism. At that time I naively wrote some colleagues in online writer’s community about how perhaps the groups that had been advocating about autism being a vaccine-induced epidemic would now become actual autism advocacy groups. They were at a fork in the road: become autism organizations or focus solely on vaccines. But acting like they were doing both was no longer going to work. One writer responded in a way that has stuck with me as he has been shown to be dead on right. Dr. David Gorski (who writes at Science Based Medicine among other places) was the colleague and I he said essentially: it has always been about the vaccines for them and it always will.
Years later it’s obvious: Dr. Gorski was correct. I was wrong. And we are seeing good examples of that now in this measles outbreak as groups like Safeminds and, of course, the Age of Autism blog chime in with articles downplaying the dangers of measles. A prime example recently came on AoA from Mark Blaxill. Mr. Blaxill is largely responsible for the thimerosal scare of the past decade. He wrote a paper (published in the non peer reviewed Medical Hypotheses) Thimerosal and autism? A plausible hypothesis that should not be dismissed. It was junk when it was published, it’s junk now.
His recent article on AoA is “Measles Hysteria — The Truth About a Non-Epidemic in Eight Simple Slides”. It’s junk and one could spend an article debunking each point. But Let’s take a more focused look. He has a slide “Why Measles is No Longer a Threat in the U.S.” (click to enlarge)
So, it was supposedly 1500 infections ago that someone in the U.S. died of measles. Only 1 in 1500 or so and so it’s not a big deal. Mr. Blaxill even called (or got someone from his organization to call) the CDC for a statement. Who knows what was asked, what was said. Maybe the CDC spokesperson made a mistake. You see, Dr. Vincent Iannelli at Pediatrics.About.Com actually tabulated measles deaths in the U.S. in recent years. Even with a low infection rate, people die of measles and have died in the U.S.. After presenting the data for each year he summarizes:
So that’s 10 measles deaths since 2000 and at least 7 measles deaths since 2005.
Why do people say that there have been no measles deaths in the United States in the past 10 years? Whether they are misinformed or intentionally trying to misinform people, they are wrong.
One can confirm this on the CDC Wonder website. Here’s a screenshot.
This isn’t about proving Mark Blaxill wrong on some point. Because in the end it doesn’t matter if it’s one death or ten deaths, it’s too many. But I suspect 1 death or 10 deaths wouldn’t change Mr. Blaxill’s assertion that measles is a minor deasease.
\Those 10 measles deaths Dr. Iannelli mentions are deaths that occur during the infection, usually from complications like pneumonia or encephalitis. But the thing about measles is that it can kill years later. There’s a condition called SSPE, Subacute Sclerosing Panencephalitis. You see, for some people, the measles virus enters the brain and stays there. And slowly kills.
From Dr. Iannelli:
About 6 to 8 years after having measles, children with SSPE develop progressive neurological symptoms, including memory loss, behavior changes, uncontrollable movements, and even seizures. As symptoms progress, they may become blind, develop stiff muscles, become unable to walk, and eventually deteriorate to a persistent vegetative state.
Children with SSPE usually die within 1 to 3 years of first developing symptoms
and
That’s 32 SSPE deaths since 2000 and at least 19 SSPE deaths since 2005. Why so many? Many of them can likely be attributed to the large number of cases associated with measles outbreaks from 1989 to 1991.
There is no cure for measles infection. There is no cure for SSPE. One can read more about SSPE at the link given above or at a recent article at Science Based Medicine: SSPE: A Deadly and Not-That-Rare Complication of Measles.
Mr. Blaxill includes a quote from someone in the 1963 who stated that measles is of “moderate severity” or “low fatality”. Perhaps to someone who lived through the early 20th century when measles was even more deadly, this might seem so. Perhaps. But not now. And how can someone ever use the phrase “self limiting” about a disease that can lead to SSPE? SSPE is only “self limiting” in the death of the patient.
Another of Mr. Blaxill’s slides shows the decline in measles infections and deaths following the introduction of the vaccine. Mr. Blaxill annotated this with his own observations (click to enlarge):
Here’s the thing that pops out of that graph: the death rate has remained constant at about 1 in 1,000 since at least 1950. Take a look at any datapoint in the deaths and go up a factor of 1,000 and there’s the infection rate. And that doesn’t account for SSPE deaths years later.
Over the years I’ve found that Mr. Blaxill often takes an unreasonable and unfounded stance on issues. But since when is a death rate of 1 in 1,000 low enough to state “Why Measles is No Longer a Threat in the U.S.”?
For comparison, Mr. Blaxill informs us that there have been 80 deaths attributed to measles containing vaccines reported to VAERS (the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) in the past 10 years. He ignores, as most people do who use VAERS in this manner, to include the disclaimer one must acknowledge in order to access VAERS data, which concludes that VAERS data do not imply causality. But let’s for the moment assume that every report to VAERS is causal. 80 deaths. There are about 4 million babies born in the U.S. each year. About 90% get the MMR vaccine. Twice. Over 10 years. That’s nearly 80 million doses of MMR vaccine administered. So, even if we take each report to VAERS as causal, that would be 1 death in 1 million doses. 1 death in 500,000 infants. This is a huge over estimate given the assumptions, but let’s do the difficult: compare these numbers. To Mr. Blaxill 1 in 500,000 is too many, but 1 in 1,500 is “low fatality”.
Even using the Mr. Blaxill’s flawed assumptions, his logic doesn’t make any sense.
Let’s take a look at Mr. Blaxill’s concluding slide so I can bring this back to how it shows that he has abandoned not just logic but also the autism community. I’ve highlighted one sentence that is particularly important. (click to enlarge):
Measles has ceased to be a dangerous illness? Seriously? First, the idea that we can accept 1 out of 1000 people dying due to measles is just astonishingly bad advocacy. For that point alone we in the autism community need to distance ourselves from Mr. Blaxill and people like him. These irresponsible actions are not the actions of the autism community.
That said, let’s consider this key phrase: “in healthy children”. If you will, try to recall back in the day when Mr. Blaxill presented himself as an autism advocate. Actually, we don’t even have to go back that far, only recently he was telling a congressional hearing:
In New Jersey, 1 in 29 boys born in 2000 were diagnosed autistic.
What’s going on? Why are so many American children sick?
The message he had for many years was that autistic children are sick. Not healthy. His former organization (Safeminds) would be quick to point out a number of conditions that are more common in autistics than in the general population. Since even by his own definition autistics are not “healthy”, why should we let measles return in force to the U.S.? Of course it is Mr. Blaxill’s failed hypothesis that vaccines are making children “sick”. But let’s consider this very real point: the developmentally disabled are more likely to become sickened by infectious diseases and they are more likely to die (Why vaccination uptake matters to the autism community).
And that’s ignoring the fact that a large fraction of autistics are also epileptic. And a huge trigger for seizures is infectious disease and the prolonged fever that comes with it. Perhaps Mr. Blaxill is unaware of the term status epilepticus, the situation where someone gets into a state of constant seizures. And, yes, this can be brought on by infection.
Or perhaps Mr. Blaxill has forgotten the emphasis his community placed on mitochondrial disease and autism just a few short years ago.
From a U.C. San Diego Metabolic Deseaese Center website, the paragraph: What is Mitochondrial Disease?
If a child is stricken with a catastrophic disease affecting three or more organ systems, or if a child has been afflicted with a relapsing disease that affects two or more organ systems and leads to slow but measurable deterioration, he or she may have a mitochondrial disease. At times, mitochondrial diseases can cause isolated symptoms. These may include unexplained seizures, low blood counts, dystonia (abnormal muscle tone or spasms), blindness, deafness, dementia, ataxia (stumbling or tremors), cerebral palsy, heart failure, or progressive muscle weakness. More often, however, several organ systems are affected in sequence, one faltering or failing after another. Good periods are frequently punctuated by abrupt deteriorations that are caused by simple infections. For children with mitochondrial disease these infections can be life threatening, and leave them with deficits that cannot be recovered.
Emphasis added. Some fraction of our population does have mitochondrial disease. Allowing diseases like measles back would put this community (as well as those with mitochondrial disease without autism) at huge risk.
I’d like to say that Mr. Blaxill, like many in the “autism is a vaccine-induced epidemic” camp, has lost his way. A very valid question is whether Mr. Blaxill and his colleagues were ever on the path of autism advocacy. Was it always, as Dr. Gorski opined, about the vaccines?
While I’ve entitled this article “Was autism ever a first advocacy priority for those promoting the idea that vaccines cause autism?”, in the end motivations are secondary. Mr. Blaxill’s actions are and have been irresponsible. They are an example of the actions of a group of faux autism advocates that have a history of irresponsible actions. Not just to public health but to the autism communities.
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By Matt Carey
Left Brain Right Brain 
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