First-episode controversy: The vaccine-autism link

By Janet Kornblum, USA TODAY

The premiere episode of Eli Stone, in which a mother wins a $5.2 million lawsuit charging her son got autism from a vaccine, is stirring controversy before it airs.

The American Academy of Pediatrics is calling on ABC to cancel the show, saying in a statement that it leaves audiences "with the destructive idea that vaccines do cause autism."

ABC Entertainment rejected the request in a statement Monday, reminding viewers that the show is fictional: "The story line plays on topical issues for dramatic effect, but its purpose is to entertain."

Still, the academy, an organization of 60,000 pediatricians, is "alarmed that this program could lead to a tragic decline in immunization rates," said president Renée Jenkins in a letter to Anne Sweeney, president of Disney-ABC Television Group.

The letter — and an article criticizing that letter posted Sunday night and circulating Monday on huffingtonpost.com — is rekindling the emotional debate about vaccines and autism.

Some advocacy groups believe the preservative thimerosal, which contains mercury and once was routinely used in childhood vaccinations, is linked to autism or other brain deficits.

But several medical studies have concluded there is no link. A large study reported in September in the New England Journal of Medicine found no link between babies' exposure to the controversial vaccine preservative and the development of problems in language, behavior or intelligence.

Jenkins says even a fictional show might frighten parents away from immunizations, which routinely save lives. In the letter, she said ABC "will bear responsibility for the needless suffering and potential deaths of children from parents' decisions not to immunize based on the content of the episode."

David Kirby, author of the Huffington blog post and of the book Evidence of Harm: Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic: A Medical Controversy, criticizes the letter, saying in his the post that it "borders on near-hysteria over a fictional television entertainment."

"I don't have all the answers," he adds in an interview, "and my job is to keep asking questions. Definitely the jury is very much out" on any autism-vaccine link.

But the jury is not out, counters Paul Offitt, chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. There have been more than a dozen epidemiological studies and none proves a link, he says. "I only hope that people see this as the fantasy that it is."

ABC says it will refer viewers to the website for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at the end of the program.