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Doctor's research finds link between MMR vaccine, autism

By Cynthia T. Pegram

Lynchburg News and Advance

Sunday, May 25, 2003

On the screen was a photo of a toddler, smiling.

The next photo was of a pale child, a few years older with no expression. “The lights in this child’s life had effectively gone out,” said Dr. Andrew Wakefield, describing the first autistic child he’d seen.

Wakefield was one of five speakers at a Saturday conference sponsored by the Central Virginia Autism Group. The audience of more than 100 included parents, therapists, teachers, speech therapists and others in related fields.

Autism is a disorder that ranges from mild to severe and impairs a child’s ability to process sensory information, creating problems in learning and behavior.

The autistic child first treated by Wakefield, a British gastroenterologist, sent him on a research journey that has taken him away from the established medical opinion about autism as a neurological disorder.

His research links the MMR (Measles, Mumps, Rubella) vaccine with autism.

His detractors say if there was credible evidence the vaccine would be off the market.

Wakefield described how the child’s mother said her son was developmentally normal until he had his MMR vaccine at 15 months old. Then the autism appeared, and with it severe bowel problems. She wanted him examined for bowel disease, but doctors had repeatedly told her “he’s autistic. They’re bound to have bowel problems.”

The circular logic made no sense.

That was more than five years ago. Since then Wakefield has studied bowel disease in children with autism. He has identified an inflammatory condition that seems to be linked to the MMR vaccine, which at that time contained a mercury preservative.

His team’s first findings on 12 children were published in The Lancet, a British medical journal, and for the first time brought to light on-going parental concerns about the vaccine and changes in their children.

Wakefield lost his job after refusing to back down from the findings and now continues research with several other teams, finding evidence that argues against traditional public health practices using vaccines.

His latest findings implicate the measles virus used in the vaccine.

Wakefield says that the children with the inflammatory disorder in the bowel also include those with other developmental disorders.

“It suggests the spectrum of biological disorders … may have a common link,” he said.

The inflammation is throughout the intestines, he said. The only other viral infection with such an impact, he said, is in AIDS.

“Clearly these children don’t have HIV infection,” he said. “But they have all the features of a chronic viral disease of the intestine.”

How does that create the problems of autism? The damaged membrane of the intestine, he explained, can’t act as an efficient barrier to harmful molecules which can then enter the blood stream.

Wakefield said that it was the parents who saw the connection between the vaccine and the changes in their children

“The parents were right,” he said. “The medical profession, to a man and to a woman, virtually, was not. That is a lesson in humility.”

Autism is very complex, said Dr. Mary Megson, a Richmond pediatrician, who has more than 2,000 patients who have autism and other disabilities.

“I think autism is caused by having a genetic predisposition and then an environmental event which disconnects major metabolic pathways in the body,” she said.

Megson is having some success treating autism with vitamin A, which is best absorbed as an oil molecule but most often found in other forms in today’s diet.

As she researched vitamin A, she found it affected cell growth differentiation, cell repair, vision, immune function, genetic expression and modulating metabolism.

“Sounds like a list of areas affected by autism, doesn’t it?” she asked, rhetorically.

“The first child I treated was a fifth-grader with no language,” she said. “I put him on just the RDA, the recommended dietary requirement of vitamin A in the form of oil molecules — cod liver oil. Three weeks later, when I walked into the room, he was telling his mother ‘leave me alone, I can get up on the table by myself.’”

Having an active practice, she began evaluating visual function and family history that might relate to vitamin A, such as night blindness. And she found it.

She now believes that many autistic children have vision without the ability to perceive the shading that gives form and shape to objects. Something blocks the metabolic pathways so the production of normal vision doesn’t happen.

As a result, the child sees the world in a bizarre pattern and blobs of color that make little sense.

Vision is just one of many pathways that can be affected.

The DPT vaccines were first given in 1943, she said.

Autism is now growing at an extraordinary rate.

“We have a huge increase,” said Dr. Elizabeth Mumper, a Lynchburg pediatrician.

Of special concern to her is the amount of mercury that children got with their vaccines prior to the late 1980s and early 1990s. Mercury is toxic to the brain.

Although each vaccine was well within the guidelines for mercury exposure, children got several vaccines in one visit to the doctor. As a result, some were getting 125 times the “safe” exposure levels on a single day.

Although the goal was to make sure the children were protected from five or six deadly infections they might catch, the unintended consequence was the very high mercury level, so high that damage could be predicted to occur, if it had been known.

Babies were getting very small doses, she said, “but we were giving them to very small people.”

Although much of the conference was highly technical, it didn’t seem to daunt anyone.

“It is complicated,” said Willmer Price, parent of a 3½-year-old autistic child. “Autism itself is complicated. So there is no one answer to any of the problems.”

Contact Cynthia Pegram at cpegram@newsadvance.com or (434) 385-5541.