CDC scrambles to reassure on vaccine safety
Other officials conceded link to autism in rare case
Officials with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scrambled yesterday to reassure the public that childhood vaccines are safe after news spread that another agency had acknowledged a link between a child's autism and the shots she received as a toddler.
"Our message to parents is that immunization is life-saving," Dr. Julie Gerberding, the CDC's director, said at a hastily convened conference call with reporters. "There's nothing changed. ... This is proven to save lives and is an essential component of protection for children across America and around the world."
During the years, despite a small and vocal group of parents who insist otherwise, studies have consistently shown no credible link between vaccines and autism. But pediatricians who have long reassured suspicious parents braced for another cascade of questions.
Yesterday, the parents of Hannah Poling, now 9, took their case public, sharing news that federal health officials have conceded that a series of vaccines she got when she was 19 months old - and living in Ellicott City - worsened an underlying condition and ultimately led to her diagnosis of autism.
That concession - believed to be the first of its kind - makes her eligible for money from a federal vaccine-injury fund.
Many experts say Hannah's case is unique and that her rare condition led to a rare consequence. They say her case should not be extrapolated to the thousands of other autistic children whose parents say they believe they were harmed by the vaccines.
"This is not an admission that vaccines cause autism," said Dr. Neal Halsey, director of the Institute for Vaccine Safety at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
But the publicity surrounding the case - the family held a news conference yesterday on the courthouse steps in Atlanta and was expected to tell their story last night on CNN's Larry King Live - could set back public health officials' efforts to convince parents that polio, tetanus and measles are far more dangerous than the vaccines that protect against them.
"Vaccines have been the greatest leap forward in childhood health in 100 years," said Dr. Timothy Doran, a pediatrician at Greater Baltimore Medical Center. "There's no pediatrician who would vaccinate if they thought they [vaccines] were unsafe."
Doran said he spends "a tremendous amount of time" explaning to parents that vaccines do not cause autism. He said he reminds them that thimerosal - a mercury additive long used as a preservative - is no longer an ingredient in any shot.
"In some ways we've been so successful in eliminating disease that people are resisting vaccines," he said yesterday. "If we had polio cases in the community, this issue of vaccines and autism would go away very fast."
The evidence has mounted for years against the link between thimerosal and autism - a spectrum of neurological disorders diagnosed in as many as 1 in 150 children that makes it difficult to establish normal interactions.
Many public health experts said they hoped a recent study by the California Department of Public Health would discredit the autism-vaccine theory forever. It showed that since 2001, when nearly all thimerosal was removed from vaccines, the autism rate has continued to rise in California. Had thimerosal been the culprit, the rate should have decreased.
Hannah Poling was vaccinated in 2000, before thimerosal was taken out of vaccines. Her family described her as a healthy toddler who could speak 20 words, walk and point to body parts. She had suffered a series of ear infections, so she was behind on vaccinations when she visited her Catonsville pediatrician.
"They did a catch-up on her shots - five shots, nine vaccines - in one sitting," said her father, Dr. Jon Poling, a Johns Hopkins-trained neurologist.
Within 48 hours, she developed a high fever and couldn't stop crying. Soon she stopped walking and became less verbal.
Ultimately, she was diagnosed with a mitochondrial disorder, a deficiency that prevents the body from producing enough energy from food. Symptoms can include fatigue, muscle problems, seizures and other neurological disorders. Her disorder was exacerbated by the vaccines, doctors concluded, which triggered her autism.
"Not only did she lose brain function, she lost her growth, she lost her ability to walk. She lost everything," said Poling, an Upper Marlboro native who moved his family from Ellicott City to Athens, Ga., in 2001.
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