An ethical dilemma? Measles vaccine or not?

     Andrew Wakefield is a former British surgeon and medical researcher who published articles which he said related Measles vaccine as a cause of a new form of inflammatory bowel disease he called autistic enterocolitis. Medically there is not such a disease recognized. He also said that the MMR (Measles, Mumps, and Rubella) vaccine may have caused autism in children who received it. There is absolutely no evidence that such is case. Multiple blinded medical studies have been done and there is no evidence of any kind of a causative relationship. Others have suggested that the mercury (thimerosol) used in some vaccines as a preservative and antiseptic could be toxic to infants and might play a role in causing autism. Again multiple studies have been done looking for such a connection. None was found. Now thimerosol is only used in tiny amounts in influenza vaccine. It is not used in an other vaccines that are given routinely to children
     Multiple lawsuits have been filed in all directions. Dr. Wakefield's article which was found to have tampered with results, unethical recruitment of study patients, invasive and harmful tests performed on study patients without approval of ethics committee among other more minor but still significant problems with the data. There was even evidence suggesting that Dr. Wakefield was paid by a legal group to produce this article, that he had applied for a patent for a single Measles vaccine which he stood to make money from should MMR become suspect and be withdrawn, and also a test kit for this supposed new form of inflammatory bowel disease.      .

     Wakefield's conclusions were broadcast in the media worldwide and resulted in fear of children's vaccines and a drop off of the vaccination rates. It is estimated that MMR vaccination rates in Britain dropped from 92% to 73% in the late 1990s after Wakefield's press conference raising the concerns about MMR which he raised in his article in Lancet, the British medical journal. The effect was less in the US but it is still estimated that as many as 125,000 children born in the late 1990s in the US also were not vaccinated due to this scare. Many children therefore got sick and some died from complications of measles. The lawsuits have subsided. Lancet retracted the article and 10 of the 12 coauthors of the original Lancet article withdrew their support for the conclusions. Wakefield left England after losing his medical license to practice there. He is still trying to do research in the US and is still claiming that his research was honest, that there was no deceitful data changes and that there is still a reason to be concerned about the MMR. He still has a small group that supports his conclusions. But the greater medical and scientific community agrees that he is a fraud and there is absolutely nothing to fear with MMR and a bowel disease or autism or any developmental behavioral problems.
     What does all this mean for society? How can one man and at best a very bad medical study, at worst a completely fraudulent publication perpetrated in order to make money have such a broad effect on medical care world over? I recall a few years ago when my grandson started daycare, my daughter in law was concerned. She knew there were some parents of children at the daycare who were not vaccinating their children because of just these fears. She then had concerns about her own infant who would be at this daycare and subjected to exposure to these children and their possible illnesses before our grandson's own vaccinations would have had a chance to take effect. It does become a personal issue when a family member might be involved. This is sort of like the Ponzi scheme of medicine. It doesn't affect people's wealth but instead may affect children's lives. It is true that every area of human endeavor has its bad people who don't care about doing harm to others, whose self interest outweighs any concern for others. However, it is particularly heinous when that person is in the field of medicine. People generally tend to trust their own doctor and by inference the medical profession at large. They would normally believe these allegations coming from a researcher and printed in a prestigious journal like Lancet. Of course, they would react with fear concerning their own children. The legal system and the medical self policing system (British Medical Council, Lancet) and the media itself have more or less shown Wakefield for what he is, but there are still concerned parents out there who don't know the whole story and still wonder. What else could we have done? We are limited in a free and just society in order to protect the rights of the innocent. But I sometimes wonder if the rights of the fraudulent and the criminal are protected too strongly in our Western democracies. What do you think? Send me some comments. Let's get this comment section going!

Fall is in the air!

How to tell its fall!! Here in Wisconsin, we have had one of the hottest summers on record and statistics are similar across the country at least from the Rocky Mountains east to the Atlantic coast. But a front has gone through and now the air is cooler, there is a wonderful breeze! Some people would call it a wind. We are opening the windows and turning off the AC. This year's two young eagles are practicing their flying. One landed on our neighbors' chimney and my husband caught a picture or two. It is still so exciting to see those birds as our neighbors here on Lake Michigan.  The purple coneflowers outside my dinette window are turning chocolate brown as they end their flowering season. But there are gold finches in droves on the seed heads. The gold finches nest late and therefore are probably still feeding their fledgelings. I hear our neighborhood bluebirds occasionally give their bubbling song and they are hunting in our backyard. Of course, these may be northerners moved in on their way south. Today I heard a wren singing. That usually doesn't happen in September. The little bird must feel the same invigoration that I feel with the lowered temperatures and humidity. A hummingbird is making the rounds of the flower heads. It comes around the corner of the dinette where there is a window cranked widely open to catch the refreshing breeze. The little buzzing bird stops in midair as only they can do and looks in the open window. It obviously sees something different than its usual rounds. Then it quickly moves on. These little birds with their high metabolism and need for constant nutrition, with their complex tiny brains that keep track of all the flowers they visit and the time it will take for each flower to reacccumulate its nectar, can notice tiny little changes on their daily rounds. There are apples on our flowering crabapple tree and every morning a doe and her two half grown fawns visit the tree to get what apples they can, the doe standing on her hind feet to reach those on the lower branches, the fawns of course eating off the ground. I haven't seen any signs of the males yet but that will come shortly as the males enter the rutting season. They will strut across our yard, neck muscles standing out and looking like kings of the deer world, seeking the females that are receptive.  Monarchs are starting to move south along the Lake Michigan bluff. I must remember the broad wing hawk migration at Concordia University along Lake Michigan. It is usually around September 18 or within 5 days each side of that date, when a cool front with a Northwest wind moves through moving those birds up against the lake shore. Then a viewer might be privileged to see kettles of hawks circling over head and slowly peeling off to move further south. Why do these kettles as they are called form? Raptors generally don't like to fly great distances over water. They rely on thermal updrafts to help them rise and not as many thermals develop over water. Since the broad wings all migrate at about the same time which is a specie specific trait, there will be 100s of these birds in each thermal creating these circular formations of birds. Each individual bird rises to the top of the thermal and when the rising hot air cools and ceases to rise the bird peels off the top of the air column and glides, losing height until it finds the base of another rising air column. This formation resembles a kettle boiling over. Hence the name -- a kettle of hawks.

Elation!!

     The plastic surgeon called yesterday afternoon and since I was taking my husband in to get a mole (I hope, a mole) removed from the bottom of his foot,  the surgeon left a message that he had good news for me. Yes, the two sentinel nodes were clean -- no cancer. And there was no residual tumor in the arm either. So the original depth of lesion of 0.48 mm stood as the total depth -- a depth that has very low risk of spread. I am still to follow up with medical oncology but I don't think there is much to do unless there will be some followup chest xray and other imaging down the road, I don't know. Anyway after this last week of surgery followed by worry, fearing the worst, a great load is now lifted from my shoulders. Hopefully Amos' path will also be negative when we get the results on Friday. Then we will both be able to heal and then get back to normal life. It is certainly amazing how quickly a very positive outlook on life can be changed for the worse with one of these medical adventures. I feel that it is very important to keep up my spiritual practices and to continue to live each day with mindfulness to maintain some of the life learning that this experience has provided to me.
     Now on to other topics in this blog. I am working on the story of our sojourn in Moldova, land of Amos' ancestors. I want to combine this with some photos. I plan for that to be my next posting here.
    

Waiting, Waiting, Waiting ....

Yes, I am waiting ... one of the hardest things to do when associated with the diagnosis of cancer.

Hoping for the Best, Worrying about the Worst.

Tomorrow I go to have definitive surgery for my melanoma. If you have a strong mental constitution read on to find out my mental ramblings during this time.

"When It Rains, It Pours"

For me the title applies to my current medical condition.

Our Travels + Melanoma

After the last post, anyone accessing this site might be wondering what is going on. Well, we decided with the support of my surgeon, and my oncologist partner, my son the surgeon, and another surgeon partner of mine, that we would go ahead with the planned trip. Everyone agreed that it would not make any difference to postpone the definitive surgical removal and the sentinel node biopsy for 4 weeks so we could take this trip. I have spent some time off and on checking the lesion that still remains on my right upper arm. It will be nice to get it off though the trip of course has kept me occupied to block most of these thoughts.