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The Amish and Vaccines
By Dr. Paul Varnas | October 27, 2008
We all seem to pay attention to information sources that reinforce our beliefs. Conservatives watch Fox News and Liberals read the New York Times. It is pretty much the same way with the autism and vaccine controversy. I have heard from a couple of people “They did the study—the Amish don’t get autism.” We seem to take this kind of intellectual laziness for granted. It is in our politics, it is in our educational system and our news media are full of it. People who tend to believe in the medical establishment commonly say that there is no proven link to autism and vaccines. They feel as strongly—and with as little proof as the first group.
I looked for the fabled Amish study and could not find it. What I did find was a series of articles by a reporter, Dan Olmsted. Mr. Olmsted reasoned that if vaccines were causing autism, we should be able to look at an unvaccinated population and find little or no autism. He wrote a series of articles on autism and the Amish and came to the conclusion that the Amish did indeed vaccinate, but they did less vaccination than the general population and have less autism. He also felt that when autism was present, there was either a vaccine involved or some exposure to mercury.
In one article he wrote about children being cared for by Homefirst Health Services in Chicago. Many of the families using the clinic home school and tend not to vaccinate. To quote Dr. Mayer Eisenstein, “We have a fairly large practice. We have about 30,000 or 35,000 children that we’ve taken care of over the years, and I don’t think we have a single case of autism in children delivered by us who never received vaccines.” Dr. Eisenstein makes the point that these observations do not rise to the level of an actual study, even speculating the families with autistic children may have moved or stopped going to the clinic. It is unlikely, but possible. An interesting side note, Dr. Eisenstein says that the clinic does not get many cases of severe asthma either.
Of course pro-vaccine people sharply criticize Dan Olmstead for his work. Some even say that his work is “dangerous” because it has people questioning vaccines. Articles have been written stating the he did not look very hard when looking for autism among the Amish in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. “The idea that the Amish do not vaccinate their children is untrue,” says Dr. Kevin Strauss, MD, a pediatrician at a large clinic in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. “We run a weekly vaccination clinic and it’s very busy.” Dr. Strauss also notes that the Amish don’t vaccinate as much as the general population. He also says, “Autism isn’t a diagnosis – it’s a description of behavior. We see autistic behaviors along with seizure disorders or mental retardation or a genetic disorder, where the autism is part of a more complicated clinical spectrum.”
Olmstead’s critics say that Olmstead has not proven there is a connection between vaccinations and autism. The gorilla in the room is the fact that these critics haven’t proven that there isn’t. The research denouncing the idea that mercury in vaccines could be causing a problem says things like, “Gee, we gave the kids vaccines and tested the blood, stool and urine for mercury and didn’t find any.” or, “Gee, the Danes use a lower level of mercury in their vaccines and they have as much autism as we do.” or, “Gee, we checked kids with autism and those without and the mercury levels were about the same.” All of the medical journals sell ads to drug companies. Is there a better way to corrupt your findings than money? The studies that supposedly prove that the vaccines are not the problem are not exactly a “slam dunk”. Autism basically didn’t exist until the 1940s—it started after we started vaccinating children. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the vaccines are to blame; our environment has also gotten worse since the 1940s. But if there were real scientists in the medical community, they would compare the health of a population that does not get vaccinated to one that does. In the mean time, maybe it isn’t unreasonable to put the burden of proof on those who think that vaccines are a good thing, because they really haven’t proven that there is no connection between vaccines and autism. Let’s face it, a case of autism is a lot more inconvenient than a case of chicken pox.
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Topics: General | 3 Comments »
October 28th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
As the parent of a child who died from osteosarcoma(malignant bone tumor) I discovered while doing research to help my child, that the polio vaccine that I received was contaminated by a green monkey virus. The government never came clean about this contamination. They administered 98 million doses. They are now finding this virus in rare tumors like my daughters. The government has been irresponsible for a long time. They have done no research to examine the effects of this contamination. Obviously, these children are inheriting this virus as they have not been vaccinated. I would not trust anything they are peddling regarding autism. They have lied before and are probably lying now.
November 15th, 2008 at 8:41 am
I am very sorry for your loss. It is unfortunate that the systems in place for protecting the public health are so flawed.
November 10th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
“Olmstead’s critics say that Olmstead has not proven there is a connection between vaccinations and autism. The gorilla in the room is the fact that these critics haven’t proven that there isn’t.”
No, that’s not how it works. If someone says “I think you are a child molester”, then the burden of proof is not upon you to prove that you aren’t because, well, you can’t prove a negative.
The above makes logical sense but it is not science. There are plenty of vaccines (most?) that don’t have mercury in them at this point anyway, and with all the hoopla that will likely continue. You said it yourself – the enviornment has changed a lot since the 1940s.
I don’t think you’ll find a scientist that says anything but that this causality has never been established in a controlled, peer reviewed study. If one comes along, they’ll change their tune in a hurry. But you can’t have people looking to validate a result (the people that believe this) choosing the data, that doesn’t work. You generate the data, then you look at the result. The Instutue of Medicine has done that and they didn’t find a correlation. They’ve done their part of the work.
The burden is on those that believe in the linkage, period. That’s how it works.
November 17th, 2009 at 9:29 am
If I were recommending that vaccines be banned, you would be absolutely right. If you look at it from a parent’s point of view, there is other information that is pertinent. Drug companies advertise in medical journals, so we have to take the research with a grain of salt. Since most of us cannot afford to fund scientific studies, we have to use the information that is available to us and make a decision. If it was 1750, I may choose not to have my bad humours bled out of me rather than wait for studies to prove that bleeding is a bad idea. Let’s use your child molester metaphor. I can’t prove that the neighbor is a child molester, so I can’t get him arrested (I would need a ‘study’). I can, however, think the guy is a little creepy and opt to keep my kids away from him.
It is not unreasonable to not trust the medical information that is give to us. Vioxx was kept on the market for two years after there was information linking it to heart attacks. Other cox-2 inhibitors also increase the risk for heart attack, but are still on the market. Hormone replacement therapy was recommended long after the dangers were known and our researchers still don’t recognize that bioidentical hormones may be superior to the xenobiotics patented by drug companies–logic says that a molecule identical to your own hormones are safer than an analog, but the research still isn’t there. The analogs are on the market because they can be patented. There was a struggle getting research published that proved ulcers were caused by Heliobactor. Medical “science” in this country is a joke. Economic factors make it at best flawed and at worst, corrupt.
As far as vaccines are concerned, there are some serious questions that are not being looked into. There is a way to test–compare an unvaccinated population to one that has been vaccinated. It hasn’t been done and I don’t trust the people who are telling me the vaccines are safe. It is a personal decision and I am not suggesting that they be banned. We should be able to choose for ourselves. Are you truly free if the government can force you to inject your child with a concoction of viruses and toxins? I shouldn’t have to prove the vaccines are bad, just make my best decision about the health of my children. Do they really need to be protected from chicken pox and hepatitis B? I don’t need to prove that vaccines are dangerous or to wait for studies. I have never tasted horse manure, but I have a pretty good idea that it doesn’t taste very good. I don’t need to perform a “study” by tasting it to verify my suspicion.
November 29th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
Vaccines shouldntbe banned, but it should be a freedom of choice and be known before one gets a vaccine how its linked to autism just like cigarettes aren’t “banned” but they have to make it known to the people it causes lung cancer. People have a free will on whether they want to buy cigarettes, people should also be given the choice of whether they want to get a vaccine.With knowing all the possible side effects.
December 22nd, 2009 at 4:16 pm
Thank you Dr. Varnas for presenting a balanced and fair review of this problem. It is rare that anyone presents both sides in a rational manner. Given the impact of autism on society one would think that scientists would be working feverishly on figuring out the problem. That seems to be where monetary interests block all progress and everything remains status quo. The vaccines continue unabated as does the rise in autism.
December 24th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
While I agree with Dr. Varnas that people should not make unsubstanciated claims, I ask if the pharmaceutical companies do not make those claims every day. I could provide a long list of drugs that have been taken off the market after killing and maiming thousands of people every year.
My best source of medical information have been close friends who are medical researchers. Some of those friends hold very prominent positions in hospitals and some teaching positions in medical programs in universities.
Most have shared the corruption and dishonesty they have experienced in dealing with pharmaceutical companies. Drug trials are not about finding out the potential dangers of a drug to humans, but about getting approval for the production and sale of that drug and about getting physicians to prescribe it a lot.
Some of my friends went into the business wanting to safe lives. All of them remain because it is lucrative. The new most powerful religion in the world is medicine and unlike other religions the promise of life and health is for the present and not after death. All the pharmaceutical companies need to do is use their trillions of dollars to buy influence, to market, to spin bad results, and to distance themselves from mal practice.
The tabacco industry got away with killing people for decades and it is still in business. I am not holding my breath that the pharmaceutical companies will lose its power and influence in my lifetime, but my three children,13, 8, and 6, have never been sick and they have never have injested any medication. The last two were born at home and have never met a physician as their patients, only as friends of ours.
My three boys are giants physically, intellectually, and emotionally. My oldest at 13 years of age is 5’10″, weighs 140 lbs and is strong enough to lift my 205 lbs of weight effortlessly. He is an A student, a competitive athlete, an adorable, thoughtful, loving son, a loving supportive eldest brother, and handsome as someone who has never used any drugs.
Our second is proportionally much larger than the first. He is truly an eight year old giant at 5′ height and 110 lbs weight of muscle and bone. The third is within normal range in the 90th percentile. Both of them are proportionally stronger academically than the first and are a couple of grades above their ages in reading writing and arithmatic. They are public schooled, but they acquire their knowledge at home were they are loved and cherished.
People call it genetic, coincidence, and simply correlation with the facts that they are not vaccinated, injest only unprocessed organic foods and water from the well in our farm, and have never injested any drugs. I let people think what they will and don’t bother telling them that my children’s grandparents range in height from my father-in-law’s 5’4″ to my mother’s 5’2″. I also don’t share with them that my children’s great grandparents were evern shorter.
We must know something that is beneficial to our children and do not need to prove to believers of the contrary that our knowledge of human development benefits our children.
March 27th, 2010 at 11:40 pm
What we could be doing is educating the public so they can make informed choices about the risks associated with the vaccines. I don’t believe in “banning” as the other side believes its their right to be protected.. Be informed and inform others..