BMJ 1998;316:1824 ( 13 June )

Letters

MMR vaccination and autism 1998

    There is no causal link between MMR vaccine and autism
    Those giving MMR vaccine had no input into editorial
    Medical practitioners need to give more than reassurance

There is no causal link between MMR vaccine and autism

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR---Nichol et al considerably understate their case when they write "chance alone dictates that some cases [of autism] will appear shortly after vaccination."1 Such a temporal association is unremarkable, given the epidemiology of autism and MMR vaccine.

Over the time described by Wakefield et al2 MMR vaccine was given to around 600 000 children each year in Britain3 and the prevalence of autistic spectrum disorders was 91/100 000.4

Assuming that the diagnosis of autism is evenly distributed over the second and third years of life and that the incidence over this period approximates to the current prevalence,5 over the eight years that the reported cases represent autism would have been diagnosed in around 364 cases in the two months after MMR vaccination (the time that the authors regard as noteworthy---(((91/100 000) ×600 000)×8)×(2/24)=364). The reported cases therefore represent a fraction of the cases of autism whose onset coincides with the administration of . . . [Full text of this article]
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Relevant Article

MMR vaccination and autism 1998
Angus Nicoll, David Elliman, and Euan Ross
BMJ 1998 316: 715-716. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

This article has been cited by other articles:

  • Heller, T., Heller, D., Pattison, S., Heller, T. (2001). Ethical debate: Vaccination against mumps, measles, and rubella: is there a case for deepening the debate? How safe is MMR vaccine? Validity of the evidence Dealing with uncertainty GP's response. BMJ 323: 838-840 [Full text]  

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