Background of the Wakefield Study
In 1998, a gastroenterological surgeon by the name of Andrew Wakefield had an article published in The Lancet, a medical journal based out of the United Kingdom. Wakefield’s study argued that the MMR vaccination was a cause of autism in children. However, according to an article by the GI Society, Wakefield’s research was fueled by personal profit and consisted of numerous flaws and acts of misconduct that made the study unreliable. Regardless of the research that has been done to refute the claims of Andrew Wakefield, including The Lancet retracting Wakefield’s original publication, his work was enough to convince a considerable number of parents to become “Anti-vax.”
Problems and Purposes of the Study
One of the fundamental errors of Wakefield’s study was that he used a sample size of only 12 children. To make matters worse, he selected these children specifically because they had known gastrointestinal and developmental issues. In order to provide a reliable study, Wakefield would have needed a sample of hundreds if not thousands of people, and would have needed to choose at random, thus providing a sample that can give statistically significant results. As a matter of fact, other researchers performed similar studies only to find inconclusive data, and failed to establish a causal relationship between the MMR Vaccine and autism. While Andrew probably knew that random-sampling and a larger sample were necessary, he avoided these tactics because he published the study for financial gain. Wakefield was being paid by a lawyer of one of the autistic children’s parents’ in return for helping the lawyer win an anti-vaccine lawsuit. He also led a non-profit in which he was secretly profiting $300,000 per year, and planned to release his own MMR vaccine for profit as well. When considering these facts today, it should be clear to see that the original MMR vaccine is safe and in no way should be avoided.
Why Get the MMRV Vaccine?
According to the FDA, the United States is still experiencing outbreaks of the measles, despite being declared “eliminated” in 2000. While the Wakefield allegations caused skepticism about the vaccine and resulted in “anti-vaxxers”, it should be known that the MMRV vaccine has been approved in the United States for about 5 decades now. The ideal way to prevent outbreaks of the contagious illnesses the MMRV protects against would be to have as many people as possible vaccinated, if not everybody. When a large proportion of the population gets vaccinated (about 90-95%), herd immunity is provided to the community and outbreaks become seemingly impossible. The dangers of measles, mumps, and rubella should not be underestimated, and by simply getting a vaccination that is proven to be safe and efficient, these diseases can be suppressed.
Christian Brewster Microbiology 