It’s not unfitting that a week in which a new study further disputing the MMR vaccine-autism link appeared would end with the publication of a book with no less a title than Autism’s False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure, and by no less an author than Dr. Paul Offit, chief of Infectious Diseases, the director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children?s Hospital of Philadelphia. In the words of Orac of Respectful Insolence, Dr. Offit is the “Dark Lord of Vaccination” himself, and the special target, now for some time, of the ire, rage, and general hatred of proponents of a vaccine-or-something-in-vaccines-autism link.
One of those proponents, Generation Rescue founder and Editor At Large for Age of Autism J.B. Handley, has expressed some of these feelings by creating a website, PaulOffit.com, by which he proclaims that Dr. Offit is “the vaccine industry’s most well paid spokesperson.” In a number of articles and other writings over the years, Handley and other anti-vaccine/pro-vaccine-safety advocates have performing the verbal equivalent of tarring and feathering Dr. Offit and widely impugned not only his work as a scientist and doctor, but also his character. After attending an August 2005 press conference on vaccines sponsored by Every Child By Two at which Dr. Offit and actress Amanda Peet were present, June Johnson (director of Defeat Autism Now!), wrote this on Age of Autism:
“I have to say it felt odd sitting that close to Paul Offit. There are few human beings toward whom I feel so much anger.”
More than just the “Dark Lord of Vaccination,” Dr. Offit has been raised (or lowered, I suppose you could say) to the level of some demonic force of evil. An April 2007 article in Nature Neuroscience indeed noted that some of the tactics used against Dr. Offit—-and some autism bloggers, and scientists and researchers who have publicly stated that there is no link between vaccines and autism— resemble those used by “certain animal rights groups” (such as this group).
“I get a lot of hate mail” is actually the first sentence of Autism’s False Prophets; Dr. Offit notes a few choice examples that he has received—-and before you can say, Elementary, my dear Mr. Handley, it’s clear that Dr. Offit’s mail box, email inbox, voicemail inbox, and who knows what else will be filled to the brim in the wake of the publication of his new book, Autism’s False Prophets.
And yet, despite buckets of anger and meanness directed towards him, Dr. Offit’s tone throughout the book is one of thoughtful civility, rigorous and constant adherence to science and the scientific method, and a generosity of spirit and unflagging sense of purpose. After noting all the hate mail he gets, Dr. Offit narrates why he decided to become a doctor by describing two childhood memories. In one, a doctor made a home visit after a n-year-old Dr. Offit was in a serious playground accident; the second memory is about a three-week stay in a chronic care hospital in a room with twenty children, all of whom had polio.
With Autism’s False Prophets, Dr. Offit has written a succinct account of a curious chapter of the history of autism. He traces the rise and fall of hypotheses about mercury and also the MMR vaccine as a cause of autism, beginning with an overview of earlier theories of autism causation and of treatments—faciiliated communication and secretin are mentioned—-that offered parents “false promises” (p. 17). Dr. Offit begins with the 1998 Lancet study by Dr. Andrew Wakefield that set off the whole scare about the MMR vaccine. He shows how books like David Kirby’s 2005 Evidence of Harm and Robert Kennedy Jr.’s 2006 “Deadly Immunity” article in Rolling Stone magazine directly fueled the flames of the so-called mercury militia. The numerous alternative and biomedical treatments for autism are reviewed (pp. 119-124), along with the Autism Omnibus Proceedings and the roles that figures ranging from Don Imus to Representative Dan Burton have played in keeping the vaccine-autism alive in the minds of the public. Dr Offit also considers why scientists have not been able to effectively communicate about vaccines to the public, and about how scientific study after study continues to refute a link.
Autism’s False Prophets also highlights four parents of autistic children who “don’t believe that vaccines are at fault” and for whom a “special kind of venom is reserved” (p. xviii). Kathleen Seidel, librarian and dedicated chronicler of the science and legal issues surrounding autism today on Neurodiversity, is prominently featured in chapter 7, “Behind the Mercury Curtain.” Chapter 11, “A Place for Autism,” describes Camille Clark who is “the best known, most widely read, and arguably the most irreverent autism blogger” (p. 223) for her Autism Diva blog. Dr. Offit also notes Peter Hotez, chairman of Microbiology and Tropical Medicine at George Washington University School of Medicine, and Roy Richard Grinker, professor of anthropology at George Washington University and author of Unstrange Minds: Remapping the World of Autism.
I hope that many, if not every, individual who is certain that vaccines or something in vaccines can be linked to autism reads Autism’s False Prophets and, even more, writes in a public forum about what he or she thinks, and thereby stokes the interest of others to read it. Actually, I hope that anyone with an interest in autism reads Autism’s False Prophets, and not only for the evidence and arguments that Dr. Offit presents to refute the hypothesis that vaccines or thimerosal or mercury might be a cause of autism. Autism’s False Prophets presents a history of the past several years of autism in the United States and, to a lesser extent, the United Kingdom. I’ll be posting more about Autism’s False Prophets and specifically about how the public attention and sometimes paranoia and a vaccine-autism link has distracted our focus away from the other issues—of education, supports and services, housing, employment, and quality of life—-of pressing concern autistic persons and their families, beyond what false prophets and failed poets can claim.
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