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PHILADELPHIA--On the morning
For years, Marwa had struggled to help her son. But Abubakar remained distant and uncommunicative, unable
Now, however, there was a ray of hope. Television and newspaper reports claimed that thimerosal, a mercury-containing preservative in some vaccines, had caused autism. Although thimerosal had been taken out of most vaccines by 2001, Marwa believed that its toxic effects hadn't been taken out of her son.
At around 10 a.m., Dr. Kerry gently took the boy's arm, cleaned an area of skin with alcohol, inserted a needle attached to a syringe containing EDTA (ethylene diamine tetraacetic acid), and directly injected the medicine into the boy's bloodstream.
At 10:50 am, Abubakar Nadama was dead--of a heart attack.
At the time that Kerry injected Abubakar with EDTA, epidemiologic studies performed in three continents by four separate groups had found that vaccines don't cause autism.
The findings were clear, consistent, and reproducible. Also, the signs and symptoms of mercury poisoning are different from those of autism.
If mercury in vaccines didn't cause autism, then why did more than 10,000 autistic children this year receive the same chelation therapy that caused Abubakar's death?
One answer is the media concentration on scare stories linking thimerosal to autism.
The notion that vaccines might cause autism contains all of the elements of a great story: greedy pharmaceutical companies, government cover-up, uncaring doctors, and parents fighting against all odds for their children.
But it isn't easy to promote this story. On the one hand, you had every major medical organization, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Institute of Medicine, stating that there was no link.
On the other, you had a few marginal scientists and clinicians who, in the absence of any solid, reproducible data, said that it did.
The media solved the problem by quoting one person from column A (representing the vast weight of medical and scientific data) and one from column B (representing conjecture
Television producers refer to the column B guests as "the explosion factor." And it makes for great television. Giving the public bad information, unfortunately, often correlates with higher ratings.
Scientists, doctors, and public-health agencies also must share some of the blame. Although scientific studies have answered the question of whether vaccines cause autism, scientists have done little to explain these studies to the public.
On July 19, Dr. Julie Gerberding, the director of the CDC, called a press conference to explain the science that refutes the notion that vaccines cause autism. Gerberding is an excellent communicator. And her message was clear and compelling. But that was it. One conference, on one day--a tiny bell ringing against the constant, deafening drumbeat of alarmist weekly stories
Desperate parents also are tragic components in this campaign of misinformation. Parents of autistic children desperately want to find something, anything that works. So they're susceptible to fad therapies.
Several years ago it was the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine that caused autism. Before that, secretin, a small protein secreted by the intestine, was proposed as a cure; many parents traveled hundreds of miles and spent thousands of dollars for secretin injections.
Today, it's the mercury in vaccines.
Doctors who play to such fears are
During the polio epidemic in New York City in 1916, Dr. George Retan ignored warnings from his colleagues and drained spinal fluid from the backs of polio victims at the same time that he infused a salt solution into their veins.
The procedure killed more people than it saved. But like autism today, in 1916 no one knew what caused polio or how to treat it. And George Retan offered hope. He cared.
Because we are all responsible for the death of Abubakar Nadama, none of us will be held accountable. We're off the hook. But, if we are to effectively prevent the next tragedy, then we must equal the passion of those who firmly believe that mercury in vaccines caused autism.
We must show that we are not just uncaring physicians standing at a distance behind the one-way mirror of science--but that we are also parents who don't want to see another child sacrificed at the altar of bad science. Otherwise, the death of Abubakar Nadama won't be the end of this.
PAUL A. OFFIT is chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and a professor of pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.
