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Editorial: Clarity needed over autism and vaccines
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Editorial–
Not another vaccine scare
Public health could take a beating if the US government doesn’t speak up SHOULD parents have their children vaccinated? Decades of research show that vaccines are extremely safe and an invaluable means of fighting disease, so the answer is a clear yes. But some parents remain confused. In the UK, much of the blame lies with poor government information and sensationalist media reports about the safety of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine. In the US, a small, noisy group of families has prolonged uncertainty by continuing to insist that vaccines have caused their children’s autism. Unfortunately, this group is particularly vociferous at the moment. For reasons that have not been fully explained, the US government has compensated a mother and father who claim that their daughter developed autism as a result of childhood vaccinations. The anti-vaccination campaigners are triumphant, issuing blogs and press releases proclaiming that the government has finally admitted that vaccines cause autism. In reality, nothing has changed, and parents have nothing new to fear. At the centre of the furore is the sad case of a 9-year-old girl who developed communication problems similar to those seen in autism after being vaccinated. Yet the link between these two events is unclear. In very rare cases, vaccines can cause brain damage. This may be one of those instances,
with the damage producing autism-like symptoms. The girl also has a genetic disorder in her mitochondria, which provide her cells with energy. Such disorders are associated with autism, so perhaps she was always destined to develop the condition. Or perhaps vaccination aggravated the genetic disorder to produce features seen in autism. This latter explanation is favoured by the government but the truth is that each explanation fits the facts (see page 8). As with almost all cases of autism, the cause remains elusive. Yet such subtleties tend to get lost once a story hits the headlines. Then the consequences can be serious. Measles rates in the UK are still unusually high because parents are turning down MMR. Some US states are also seeing increasing numbers of parents opting out of vaccination programmes. To avoid another vaccine scare it is imperative that the US government explains its decision. Right now, that’s not possible because the official report has been sealed. A copy was leaked to a website last week, but it does little to clarify matters. Unless the government explains how it reached its decision, what it means – and what it does not mean – the anti-vaccination campaigners will control the story. The implications of that for personal and public health are grim. ●
Do bacteria make our weather? WE HAVE all heard tales of frogs, toads and fish raining from the heavens: these are rare events triggered by freak weather. But there are land and water-based life forms that seem to be present in the atmosphere just about all the time. These include algae, fungi and bacteria. What are they doing up there? The late, great evolutionary biologist William Hamilton thought about this from the microbes’ point of view. In 1998, he argued that they were probably using the atmosphere as a dispersal medium (Ethology, Ecology and Evolution, vol 10, p 1). He had previously shown that dispersal is third on the list of priorities for an organism, after survival and reproduction, because the benefits of colonising a new area are so great. For lightweight bacteria, then, the problem is not getting up into the atmosphere but
getting down. Hamilton proposed that some bacteria do this by acting as ice-nucleation centres, which are essential in the creation of raindrops and snowflakes. Since 1998, replicating bacteria have been found in clouds and this week we hear that snow from different continents is full of ice-nucleating proteins from bacteria (see page 14). There is one part of Hamilton’s idea left to be tested. He suggested that microbes may play a key role in making our weather, and even form part of the global biofeedback that seems to keep the planet healthy – what is called the Gaia hypothesis. This is highly controversial yet leads to the most intriguing questions. Could a better understanding of this role improve forecasting, and could we use that knowledge to “make deserts bloom”? We await further forays into aerobiology with anticipation. ● 8 March 2008 | NewScientist | 5
www.newscientist.com
Editorial–
Not another vaccine scare
Public health could take a beating if the US government doesn’t speak up SHOULD parents have their children vaccinated? Decades of research show that vaccines are extremely safe and an invaluable means of fighting disease, so the answer is a clear yes. But some parents remain confused. In the UK, much of the blame lies with poor government information and sensationalist media reports about the safety of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine. In the US, a small, noisy group of families has prolonged uncertainty by continuing to insist that vaccines have caused their children’s autism. Unfortunately, this group is particularly vociferous at the moment. For reasons that have not been fully explained, the US government has compensated a mother and father who claim that their daughter developed autism as a result of childhood vaccinations. The anti-vaccination campaigners are triumphant, issuing blogs and press releases proclaiming that the government has finally admitted that vaccines cause autism. In reality, nothing has changed, and parents have nothing new to fear. At the centre of the furore is the sad case of a 9-year-old girl who developed communication problems similar to those seen in autism after being vaccinated. Yet the link between these two events is unclear. In very rare cases, vaccines can cause brain damage. This may be one of those instances,
with the damage producing autism-like symptoms. The girl also has a genetic disorder in her mitochondria, which provide her cells with energy. Such disorders are associated with autism, so perhaps she was always destined to develop the condition. Or perhaps vaccination aggravated the genetic disorder to produce features seen in autism. This latter explanation is favoured by the government but the truth is that each explanation fits the facts (see page 8). As with almost all cases of autism, the cause remains elusive. Yet such subtleties tend to get lost once a story hits the headlines. Then the consequences can be serious. Measles rates in the UK are still unusually high because parents are turning down MMR. Some US states are also seeing increasing numbers of parents opting out of vaccination programmes. To avoid another vaccine scare it is imperative that the US government explains its decision. Right now, that’s not possible because the official report has been sealed. A copy was leaked to a website last week, but it does little to clarify matters. Unless the government explains how it reached its decision, what it means – and what it does not mean – the anti-vaccination campaigners will control the story. The implications of that for personal and public health are grim. ●
Do bacteria make our weather? WE HAVE all heard tales of frogs, toads and fish raining from the heavens: these are rare events triggered by freak weather. But there are land and water-based life forms that seem to be present in the atmosphere just about all the time. These include algae, fungi and bacteria. What are they doing up there? The late, great evolutionary biologist William Hamilton thought about this from the microbes’ point of view. In 1998, he argued that they were probably using the atmosphere as a dispersal medium (Ethology, Ecology and Evolution, vol 10, p 1). He had previously shown that dispersal is third on the list of priorities for an organism, after survival and reproduction, because the benefits of colonising a new area are so great. For lightweight bacteria, then, the problem is not getting up into the atmosphere but
getting down. Hamilton proposed that some bacteria do this by acting as ice-nucleation centres, which are essential in the creation of raindrops and snowflakes. Since 1998, replicating bacteria have been found in clouds and this week we hear that snow from different continents is full of ice-nucleating proteins from bacteria (see page 14). There is one part of Hamilton’s idea left to be tested. He suggested that microbes may play a key role in making our weather, and even form part of the global biofeedback that seems to keep the planet healthy – what is called the Gaia hypothesis. This is highly controversial yet leads to the most intriguing questions. Could a better understanding of this role improve forecasting, and could we use that knowledge to “make deserts bloom”? We await further forays into aerobiology with anticipation. ● 8 March 2008 | NewScientist | 5