Another Look At Vaccines And Autism

How's this for a provocative title: "Vaccines and autism-- can we stick a fork in it now, please?"
This is from a must read post by Tara C. Smith, an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology. Read it on her blog Aetiology. Basically she is commenting on a recent expose' in the London Sunday Times that asserts that the original research by Andrew Wakefield that claimed to show a direct link between vaccines and Autism, was a fraud. The paper claims that Wakefield made up his data. Here is a key excerpt from the Times story:

"Confidential medical documents and interviews with witnesses have established that Andrew Wakefield manipulated patients' data, which triggered fears that the MMR triple vaccine to protect against measles, mumps and rubella was linked to the condition.

The research was published in February 1998 in an article in The Lancet medical journal. It claimed that the families of eight out of 12 children attending a routine clinic at the hospital had blamed MMR for their autism, and said that problems came on within days of the jab. The team also claimed to have discovered a new inflammatory bowel disease underlying the children's conditions.

However, our investigation, confirmed by evidence presented to the General Medical Council (GMC), reveals that: In most of the 12 cases, the children's ailments as described in The Lancet were different from their hospital and GP records. Although the research paper claimed that problems came on within days of the jab, in only one case did medical records suggest this was true, and in many of the cases medical concerns had been raised before the children were vaccinated. Hospital pathologists, looking for inflammatory bowel disease, reported in the majority of cases that the gut was normal. This was then reviewed and the Lancet paper showed them as abnormal."

Looming Shortage of Primary Care Doctors May Add to Unhealthy Behavior

A recent survey of 270,000 primary care and 50,000 specialist doctors funded by The Physician's Foundation presents an alarming picture of the future. Here are some of the depressing stats from the survey:

49% of physicians – more than 150,000 doctors nationwide – said that over the next three years they plan to reduce the number of patients they see or stop practicing entirely. In that same time frame:

11%, or more than 35,000 doctors nationwide, said they plan to retire

13% said they plan to seek a job in a non-clinical healthcare setting, which would remove them from active patient care

20% said they will cut back on patients seen

10% said they will work part-time

60% of doctors would not recommend medicine as a career to young people

Add to this the fact that the doctors who continue to practice are reacting to declining reimbursement by closing their practices to Medicaid patients (33% say they will) and Medicare patients (12% say they will).