1 00:00:01,832 --> 00:00:05,904 So for last 20, 30 years we've noticed an increased in autism. 2 00:00:05,904 --> 00:00:09,380 I'm actually gonna quickly scatch out a graph to show you what I mean. 3 00:00:09,380 --> 00:00:13,998 We have autism rates over here and if you fall them over time basically what 4 00:00:13,998 --> 00:00:18,742 happens that you see that things are going upwards. And the main reason that people say is awarness. 5 00:00:18,742 --> 00:00:22,229 They say we have more parents in families are aware of autism 6 00:00:22,229 --> 00:00:24,084 because we talk about it more nowdays. 7 00:00:24,084 --> 00:00:28,000 Then of course we're gonna bring it up with the doctors and it's gonna get diagnosed. And although that 8 00:00:28,000 --> 00:00:32,245 may be one reason for the increase, people have been searching for other reasons to explain 9 00:00:32,245 --> 00:00:39,164 the increase as well. In 1998 there was a team of doctors and researchers that put together a study, 10 00:00:39,164 --> 00:00:43,135 a study that we call the Wakefield study. 11 00:00:43,135 --> 00:00:47,251 It's named after the main author which was a guy named doctor Wakefield. 12 00:00:47,251 --> 00:00:49,665 He was a surgeon working in England. 13 00:00:49,665 --> 00:00:53,040 And in total there were 13 people, 13 authors on this study. 14 00:00:53,040 --> 00:00:57,544 So this study was done in United Kingdom and what they did 15 00:00:57,544 --> 00:01:01,330 as they took 12 children and these children came into the hospital 16 00:01:01,330 --> 00:01:04,828 reportedly kind of a normal way, the routine way that 17 00:01:04,828 --> 00:01:08,814 children come into the hospital. They were recruited and he found that they 18 00:01:08,814 --> 00:01:13,837 had developmental problems. So these were 12 children with some sort of developmental 19 00:01:13,837 --> 00:01:20,252 problem or delay and the most common example of a developmental of problem 20 00:01:20,252 --> 00:01:25,065 among these kids was autism. So lot of these kids under the paving of diagnosis of autism. 21 00:01:25,065 --> 00:01:28,939 And what they did, I'm actually gonna scatch off for you. 22 00:01:28,939 --> 00:01:33,085 Let's imagine that this is the head of one of our children. 23 00:01:33,085 --> 00:01:36,756 What he asked them was you know do they have any symptoms, 24 00:01:36,756 --> 00:01:39,317 when did the symptoms start, all these kinds of things to kind of get it 25 00:01:39,317 --> 00:01:44,471 their history, their medical history. And lot of the families that will remember them 26 00:01:44,471 --> 00:01:50,663 having these symptoms of autism which I'm drawing as kind of a greyed out brain 27 00:01:50,663 --> 00:01:53,879 and there seems to be, this is their parents talking 28 00:01:53,879 --> 00:01:57,273 they felt like there's some sort of relationship with the vaccine. 29 00:01:57,273 --> 00:02:03,256 They felt like they remembered the vaccine specificaly the MMR vaccine - measles, mumps, 30 00:02:03,256 --> 00:02:06,366 rubella vaccine around the time that symptoms began 31 00:02:06,366 --> 00:02:14,399 and that's what he reported. So we actually have now a relationship based in turns of parents recolection 32 00:02:14,399 --> 00:02:20,584 between the vaccine and autism. But what the study is mainly about was actually the gut. 33 00:02:20,584 --> 00:02:25,170 So he was a surgeon and he wanted to look at the intestins of these kids. 34 00:02:25,170 --> 00:02:29,998 And he noticed that on the intestinal biopsies, when you actually got a little bit of 35 00:02:29,998 --> 00:02:34,742 tissue from these intestins a lot of them had inflamation. That was what his 36 00:02:34,742 --> 00:02:38,421 paper was primarily about was this inflamation result. 37 00:02:38,421 --> 00:02:43,540 So he proposed and this is a big deal, he proposed that vaccine was causing this 38 00:02:43,540 --> 00:02:48,317 inflamation. He thought that was the cause of the inflamation and he then thought 39 00:02:48,317 --> 00:02:53,253 that perhaps there's some mystery protein, let's say this blue little protein, that 40 00:02:53,253 --> 00:02:59,168 maybe you take in through a diet that can now because its inflamed can get accros the gut 41 00:02:59,168 --> 00:03:05,135 and kind of affect the developing brain. So this was how he proposed there could be a link 42 00:03:05,135 --> 00:03:10,542 between the vaccine and autism. Now when Wakefield study first came out in 1998 you can 43 00:03:10,542 --> 00:03:13,966 imagine the kind of excitement this created for lot of parents and families 44 00:03:13,966 --> 00:03:18,874 that have been for years looking for something to explain why their kid has autism. 45 00:03:18,874 --> 00:03:24,419 And so finally people could kind of circle this and say ah! maybe was the vaccine that cause 46 00:03:24,419 --> 00:03:28,174 autism, that's what people thought. But there where couple of problems with this idea. 47 00:03:28,174 --> 00:03:34,197 The first problem was that some of the patients that had autism symptoms, they 48 00:03:34,197 --> 00:03:39,587 actually reported that they were having these symptoms before thay had any of the 49 00:03:39,587 --> 00:03:44,751 gut symptoms. Now think about that, if you're having autism symptoms before 50 00:03:44,751 --> 00:03:49,815 gut symptoms not after, then that really goes against this theory because this theory 51 00:03:49,815 --> 00:03:55,373 is based on the idea that it's the gut that comes first, so immediately this is one 52 00:03:55,373 --> 00:03:59,568 concern kind of a big question mark over here whether this is really true. 53 00:03:59,568 --> 00:04:04,132 Another question mark is around this mystery protein up here. So this mystery 54 00:04:04,132 --> 00:04:08,838 protein, this is something that Wakefield never realy identified, he never said 55 00:04:08,838 --> 00:04:15,078 well I think it's this protein or that one, and in the last 15 plus years nobody 56 00:04:15,078 --> 00:04:19,520 has founded this mystery protein, that would explain what Wakefield was suggesting. 57 00:04:19,520 --> 00:04:24,339 So the fact, that nobody can actually find these proteins is also another big question mark. 58 00:04:24,339 --> 00:04:28,268 Neverthles a lot of studies started getting done. You know people started saying 59 00:04:28,268 --> 00:04:35,229 there truly is relationship between vaccines and autism. Then let's explore that further. 60 00:04:35,229 --> 00:04:41,420 So a group of studies were done around MMR vaccine rates. How often 61 00:04:41,420 --> 00:04:45,936 in a population do you actually see people getting them MMR vaccine. And you'd imagined 62 00:04:45,936 --> 00:04:49,696 that if there truly is a link between vaccine causing autism, if that's true 63 00:04:49,696 --> 00:04:53,671 then of course the vaccine rates must be going up, you know that would explain the 64 00:04:53,671 --> 00:04:57,220 autism going up. And so they actually looked in few different places and of course 65 00:04:57,220 --> 00:05:00,671 the first place to talk about is the UK, because of course the study was initially 66 00:05:00,671 --> 00:05:06,029 done in the UK. And in the UK they looked over 6 years and they found that actually 67 00:05:06,029 --> 00:05:12,132 MMR vaccine rates had been steady. There had not been in an increase. So already this is 68 00:05:12,132 --> 00:05:15,771 a little wierd if you're thinking that the vaccine is causing autism, you'd expect 69 00:05:15,771 --> 00:05:20,424 something different. So they looked again, actually looked another time. This time they 70 00:05:20,424 --> 00:05:27,729 actually looked in the US and in US they did the study over 15 years. And over 15 years same thing 71 00:05:27,729 --> 00:05:33,406 steady vaccine rates even though autism rates were going up. Now another study was 72 00:05:33,406 --> 00:05:39,372 actually done, this time in Canada. And surprisingly, in Canada turns out that the vaccine 73 00:05:39,372 --> 00:05:46,673 rates were actually going down slightly. So vaccine rates over 12 years now went down even though autism rates 74 00:05:46,673 --> 00:05:52,197 were going up. So this data is done at the population level, but it really does go against 75 00:05:52,197 --> 00:05:57,596 this idea that vaccine is causing autism. But people weren't satisfy with that. They wanted more 76 00:05:57,596 --> 00:06:03,643 specific research to be done on this mechanism that doctor Wakefield proposed. 77 00:06:03,643 --> 00:06:09,196 So another study was done and actually it was done in United Kingdom. And this study 78 00:06:09,196 --> 00:06:17,633 looked at 473 autistic children. So remember the initial study was done on 12 children and now 79 00:06:17,633 --> 00:06:24,196 we're looking at hundreds of children with autism. And among these 473 they actually wanted to 80 00:06:24,196 --> 00:06:28,975 figure out this part of the study, is there a link between vaccine and any sort of 81 00:06:28,975 --> 00:06:33,141 gut inflamation. And the answer was the resounding no there doesn't seem to be 82 00:06:33,141 --> 00:06:39,266 any relationship in autistic kids with vaccine MMR vaccine and inflamation of the gut. 83 00:06:39,266 --> 00:06:44,436 So that was actually very dodgemental to Wakefields theory. But what about this 84 00:06:44,436 --> 00:06:51,349 second part, this second link between gut inflamation and any sort of autism. This part right here. 85 00:06:51,349 --> 00:06:58,596 Well, again another study in the UK looking this time at 262 autistic children found 86 00:06:58,596 --> 00:07:07,530 that there is no link between these two things. So gut inflamation and autism did not seem to be related at all. 87 00:07:07,530 --> 00:07:13,933 So now the two important components of Wakefield's idea didn't seem to bear out. 88 00:07:13,933 --> 00:07:17,677 And then I should also just kind of cross this off this mystery protien bit because 89 00:07:17,677 --> 00:07:21,426 again people have been looking for that and no one seem to find that. But that wasn't 90 00:07:21,426 --> 00:07:25,009 good enoug because you get say well maybe there's still some link between vaccine and autism, 91 00:07:25,009 --> 00:07:30,873 but maybe this mechanism wasn't quite right. So research got done on this purple area over here. 92 00:07:30,873 --> 00:07:34,845 So they say: Ok, what about this. You know could it be possible there is a link between 93 00:07:34,845 --> 00:07:40,022 the two using some other mechanism. So study was done in the UK specifically looking at 94 00:07:40,022 --> 00:07:45,094 MMR vaccine and autism, is there a relationship and it turns out that they 95 00:07:45,094 --> 00:07:51,267 in this study looked at 71 autistic children and they found that among these children 96 00:07:51,267 --> 00:07:56,183 there was no relationship. And this study was actually you know way done again in fact 97 00:07:56,183 --> 00:08:00,873 in another setting done in a different way but also tried to answer the same question of 98 00:08:00,873 --> 00:08:06,686 a link between vaccine and autism in Finland this time. They found that among 99 00:08:06,686 --> 00:08:13,134 309 autistic children there was no link. Now remember this link that we created was 100 00:08:13,134 --> 00:08:18,731 done among 12 children and now we have hundreds and hundreds of kids in different 101 00:08:18,731 --> 00:08:23,908 countries and another one was done in the US and all these states were kind of finding 102 00:08:23,908 --> 00:08:30,220 the same result that basically there were no links that they could find between vaccine and 103 00:08:30,220 --> 00:08:36,273 autism. And so people started really doubting the truth behind the very first study, 104 00:08:36,273 --> 00:08:40,244 that first study done on 12 kids. But people were still talking about it and said you 105 00:08:40,244 --> 00:08:44,342 know what about that Wakefield study. Isn't it possible that there could still be a link 106 00:08:44,342 --> 00:08:51,798 in spite of all this other evidence. So finaly a group out of Finland tried to do another 107 00:08:51,798 --> 00:08:56,766 type of study with definite approach, but they found kind of conclusively answer the question. They basically 108 00:08:56,766 --> 00:09:04,019 said well fine, why don't we follow 1.8 million children, so this is many many children 109 00:09:04,019 --> 00:09:09,180 that were getting vaccinated and just follow them over time and see if they develop 110 00:09:09,180 --> 00:09:14,103 autism. And this might kind of answer once and for all whether there is a link. 111 00:09:14,103 --> 00:09:21,355 And so they followed these kids over time and they found a grand total of zero cases of vaccine 112 00:09:21,355 --> 00:09:30,077 associated autism. So in all these cases of vaccination none of them resulted in autism. 113 00:09:30,077 --> 00:09:35,607 So this point people really stop beliveing this study the Wakefield study and whether 114 00:09:35,607 --> 00:09:39,351 there was any link that was kind of resolve all these studies kind of said no 115 00:09:39,351 --> 00:09:43,603 there was really no link between vaccine and autism. But a question remain around the 116 00:09:43,603 --> 00:09:46,772 Wakefield study and how those results were found in the first place.