A Queasy Comparison

As the mother of a child with autism, I’m occasionally asked what I think about “the vaccine thing,” i.e. the purported link between vaccines and autism.

To answer that question, let me tell you a story. It will seem unrelated at first, but stick with me.

From 1956 to 1983, pregnant women in the U.S. suffering from “morning sickness” had access to an effective medication called Bendectin. Unfortunately during part of that time another medication, thalidomide, was also on the market in a number of countries, as a sedative that also had some nice anti-morning-sickness effects (it was never approved in the U.S., but was distributed to some extent here on an experimental basis). The manufacturers claimed thalidomide was safe for use in pregnancy, though testing had been minimal or non-existent. After the 1957 introduction of the thalidomide, unusual birth defects began to appear in striking numbers. Thalidomide was removed from the market in 1962 and its manufacturers expended great effort in claiming innocence and trying not to be held liable for its awful effects, effects which turned out to be easy to replicate and impossible to deny.

Meanwhile, Bendectin continued to rise in popularity, eventually being used by as many as 1 in 10 pregnant women in the U.S. In the wake of the thalidomide disaster, Bendectin came under serious scientific scrutiny – so much so that perhaps no other medication has ever been so thoroughly studied for use in pregnancy. The results held firm in study after study: no adverse associations with Bendectin were ever established.

However, as one might expect in that large a population, a certain number of women taking Bendectin also gave birth to children with birth defects. After what happened with thalidomide, blaming Bendectin – despite all the studies to the contrary – was not that big a mental leap. Soon the lawsuits started to pile up. Eventually the manufacturer Merrell Dow pulled the drug off the market due to the financial pressure, but continued to mount an exceptionally successful defense to the various suits that came to trial, among them a class action suit brought by over 800 plaintiffs and an individual case that went all the way up to the Supreme Court and had an impact on evidentiary standards in the process.

No plaintiff ever received damages after a Bendectin-related trial. (Current Controversies in the Biological Sciences, p. 170)

So, there's been no Bendectin on the market for suffering pregnant women in the U.S. for the past 26 years, with no discernable decline in birth defects. Hospitalizations due to hyperemesis (extreme vomiting) of pregnancy, though, increased considerably. Click here & scroll down to see a chart of the trends. Fortunately for our neighbors to the north, a generic version of Bendectin called Diclectin has been available in Canada all along. And, as my OB advised me during my pregnancies, you can buy Bendectin’s ingredients separately, doxylamine succinate as Unisom and pyridoxine as Vitamin B6, and take ‘em yourself -- only on the advice of your own physician, please!

Now, back to the vaccines.

Vaccines do occasionally have adverse effects, sometimes dire ones. To take that fact into account, the U.S. government has set up the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), an alternative to the court system that provides for vaccine-injury compensation in cases where a credible scientific rationale can be advanced, without laying all the lawsuits on the backs of the vaccine manufacturers.

Thank God for the vaccine court. Because if there were no such process in place, autism-related lawsuits might well drive the vaccines right off the market in the U.S., just like Bendectin, despite all the science that finds no evident connection between vaccines & autism. And there’s no do-it-yourself over-the-counter alternative for protection against pertussis, diphtheria, measles, polio... all those diseases that used to kill and maim so many people before vaccines came on the scene.

People get into big online slugfests about vaccines and autism all the time. I'm not really spoilin' for a fight myself, because nobody wins those things. I could wish that coming out online in support of mainstream science and the American Academy of Pediatrics weren't potentially a lightning-rod kind of thing to do! What a world, what a world.

Anyway. That's where I'm coming from on the "vaccine thing." Just in case my readers would like to know.