In early October, the Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry announced it planned to retract a study that had used altered data to conclude there was a link between aluminum adjuvants in vaccines and autism in mice, according to Retraction Watch.
Though it is good news the paper was retracted, the bad news is that such studies continue to be published, and fuel ongoing arguments within the anti-vaccine community that researchers are covering up evidence of links between autism and vaccines, says Timothy Caulfield, author of the new book The Vaccination Picture.
“Rather than ending the story, the retraction of a vaccine study can become a powerful part of the conspiracy theory narrative,” Caulfield, Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy at the University of Alberta, wrote in Toronto’s Globe and Mail.
The most notorious of these retractions is the fraudulent 1998 paper by Andrew Wakefield, a former physician who falsified data in his study linking vaccines to autism. He has since lost his medical license to practice, but he continues to give speeches to health care providers.
Since 1998, public health officials and pediatricians have been grappling with increasing parental reluctance to vaccinate their children. Outbreaks of disease that were once rare, like measles and mumps, are increasing in frequency. Earlier this year, 79 people, mostly unvaccinated children in a Minnesota Somali-American community, developed measles, after their parents received false information about the link between autism and vaccines.
To counter the anti-vaccine message, some physicians are taking a relatively new approach to convincing parents to vaccinate – explain that a vaccine may prevent ear infections and antibiotic usage later in life.
Alice Callahan, an Oregon-based freelance health writer, wrote about this strategy to counter “vaccine-hesitant” parent fears. In a piece published in FiveThirtyEight, “Digging into data to illuminate how vaccines reduce dependence on antibiotics,” Callahan explains how a Portland, Ore., physician effectively links vaccines to a future reduction in antibiotic use.
Callahan backs up the story with data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other studies demonstrating that after the pneumococcal vaccine was added to the infant vaccine schedule in 2000, there was a reduction in antibiotic usage. She also used multiple sharp graphs to illustrate her story. Further, she highlighted the growing efforts by some public health policy experts to emphasize how vaccines can help fight the growing problem of antibiotic resistance.
To learn more about how the author approached this story and how she used data to build on her idea, see Callahan’s article in the “How I Did It” section of the infectious disease core topic page.
