Is Vaccination Risky?
Autism and measles
Vaccine safety has been a parental concern at least since Edward Jenner first inoculated a child with cowpox in 1796. But despite some recent studies that have caused further alarm, experts say the consequences of not getting vaccinated remain potentially far more dangerous than the vaccines themselves.
The latest immunization scares have been over the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine, commonly known as MMR, and its possible connection to autism, a serious developmental disorder that causes problems in communication, social interaction, and body movement. A 1998 study in England showed that eight of 12 autistic children treated for bowel disease at a London hospital began showing symptoms of autism around the time they received MMR shots. Researchers suggested that the live, weakened measles virus in the vaccine attacked the children's intestines and prevented them from absorbing nutrients critical to brain development.
Debunked. Within days of the study's publication, however, the Medical Research Council of the U.K. declared that there was no connection between MMR and either bowel disease or autism. Researchers in other countries also found no link. And the most recent study, which appeared in June in the British medical journal Lancet, tracked 498 autistic children born in London and found no pattern in the onset of autism and the dates of vaccination.
Still, in Great Britain at least, damage to public confidence has already been done. Between 1995 and 1998, MMR vaccination rates for children under 17 months old fell 4.1 percent.
"Vaccination is not a foolproof procedure," says Barbara Loe Fisher of the National Vaccine Information Center, a U.S. group that urges better training to spot children at risk for complications and more research into vaccine safety.
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention admits that no vaccine is completely safe. But Walter Orenstein, director of the center's immunization program, emphasizes the risk of something worse. A 1989-1991 measles outbreak in the United States, he points out, sickened 55,000 people--and caused 120 deaths.
This story appears in the August 30, 1999 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.