Doctor disputes autism, vaccine link

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After I appeared on MSNBC, an extreme anti-vaccine activist called our home; later, our eleven-year-old daughter asked whether I thought anyone would ever hurt me. While I was on a federal advisory committee to the CDC — one that had made recommendations about the use of the mercury-containing preservative thimerosal in vaccines — I got a death threat. A man from Seattle wrote, “I will hang you by your neck until you are dead!” I called the CDC, which sent the e-mail to the Department of Justice, which sent it to the FBI. The threat was deemed credible, and for the next few years an armed guard was placed at the back of advisory committee meetings; for the first few months, he followed me to and from lunch, a gun hanging at his side. The mail room at my hospital regularly checks my mail for suspicious letters and packages. In June 2006, I had to walk through a rally by anti-vaccine protesters at the CDC. People shouted at me. One put a megaphone in my ear, calling me the devil. Another carried a placard with the word Terrorist in big red letters under a picture of me. Just before I emerged from the crowd, a man dressed in a prisoner’s uniform grabbed my jacket and pulled me toward him. I don’t think he wanted to hurt me; he was just excited to be close to the personification of such evil. I put my hands up in the air and asked him to please let go of my coat, which he did.

It got worse. While sitting in my office, I got a phone call from a man who said that he and I shared the same concerns. We both wanted what was best for our children. He wanted what was best for his son, giving his name and age. And he presumed I wanted what was best for my children, giving their names and ages and where they went to school. His implication was clear. He knew where my children went to school. Then he hung up.

Some people who believe vaccines cause autism hate me because they think I’m in the pocket of the pharmaceutical industry, that I say vaccines are safe because I am paid to do it. To them, it is logical that I would spend twenty-five years working on a rotavirus vaccine — a vaccine that has the chance of saving hundreds of thousands of lives every year — so that I could lie about vaccine safety and hurt children. But the reason I say vaccines don’t cause autism is that they don’t. I say this because the false alarm about vaccines and autism continues to harm a lot of children — harm from not getting needed vaccines, harm from potentially dangerous treatments to eliminate mercury, and harm from therapies as absurd as testosterone ablation and electric shock. I say this because the feared vaccine–autism link, which has now been disproved, diverts research dollars from more promising leads. I say this because I care about children with autism.

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I’m not alone in this. Many parents of autistic children are angry that the media and Congress rarely talk about autism without blaming vaccines. And although I am certainly a target of some parents’ anger, I simply represent the other side. A special kind of venom is reserved for parents of autistic children who don’t believe that vaccines are at fault and actively, vigorously, and relentlessly oppose those who do. You will come to know some of these parents — the real heroes of this story — in the pages that follow.

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Doctor disputes autism, vaccine link