Local health care providers are optimistic that a report published last week will further their efforts to convince skeptical parents that autism is not linked to vaccines.
The British Medical Journal reported that a 1998 paper by Andrew Wakefield, which linked measles, mumps and rubella vaccines to autism in children, used fraudulent data. The report was published about a year after another journal, The Lancet, retracted the original study.
But even as those findings were published, critics said the original, fraudulent report has caused irreparable harm to public health. And in Wausau, pediatricians and county health officials said they still hear from parents concerned that autism is linked to vaccines, though few parents opt to not vaccinate their children.
Doctors said more credible reports, including the most recent from the British Medical Journal, give them more resources to share with parents.
"It has definitely helped with some (parents), but has not helped with everybody, which is a shame," said Dr. Larry Gordon, a pediatrician at the Aspirus Weston Clinic. "It's very hard sometimes to undo damage."
The anti-vaccine movement gained traction in recent years largely because of Wakefield's study and support from celebrities such as Jenny McCarthy.
In Marathon County, immunization rates for 2-year-old children have hovered around 85 percent for the past decade, according to county data.
But Eileen Eckardt, director of family health and communicable diseases for the Marathon County Health Department, said parents regularly voice concerns, even since the study was retracted and denounced by 10 of its 13 authors.
She said the county continues to try and educate the public that there is no evidence linking autism to vaccines, but that fear is a very tough factor to conquer.
"It's hard to undo what the anti-vaccine people have said," Eckardt said.
Dr. Jeffrey Lamont, a pediatrician at Marshfield Clinic's Weston Center, said parents often have good intentions but are misguided and have false notions that vaccines are only for diseases that no longer exist. The truth, however, is that only smallpox has been completely eliminated, he said.
"Vaccines are about prevention and one of the ironies about an effective prevention program is the more effective it is, the less evidence it leaves that it was ever necessary," he said.
Lamont said questions and concerns about vaccines are common, but most parents ultimately opt for their children to receive them. Along with fears of autism, parents also worry about the number of doses their children receive at one time. He usually only has four parents a year who altogether refuse every vaccine.
Doctors in the region for years have continued to support vaccines, believing long before any retraction of Wakefield's paper was issued that it was a hoax.
Lamont said the issue of not getting a child vaccine also becomes an ethical concern. If a child isn't vaccinated and gets sick, there is a chance that other children, and especially infants, could become ill. Then parents are not only putting their own children at risk, but others as well.
"We (doctors) would never advocate for something we don't feel is the right thing to do," he said.
By Jake Miller • For Central Wisconsin Sunday • January 9, 2011
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