- Fombonne's latest study is not based on any vaccination data.
- he assumes the children studied either did or did not have vaccinations based on what he says they might have had, but he does not know really
- there are only 180 PDD children and their vaccination status was unavailable
- the pervasive development disorder status was also not checked but assumed
Dear Sir,
New
study shows no MMR link to autism Sarah Hall, The Guardian, Thursday
July 6, 2006
You need to check your sources more carefully.
The International Cochrane Collaboration confirmed the author of the study
you report on, Eric Fombonne is not qualified to be engaged in this kind of
work.
The last study Eric Fombonne carried out was dismissed as "impossible to
intepret". That was the conclusion of a comprehensive scientific review by
the Cochrane Collaboration. The Cochrane team investigated 5000 medical
papers on the subject and cut them down to only 6 dealing with Eric's pet
topic and those papers were pretty shakey too according to Cochrane.
Regrettably, they had to throw Eric's paper out completely - it was junk.
And if you check the BMJ, you will find an editorial dealing with the
continuing problem of even the supposedly most esteemed medical journals in
the thrall to drug companies publishing junk -
Can
we tame the monster? BMJ 2006;333 (8 July)..
This is what the Cochrane Collaboration said in a review of the safety of
MMR about Fombonne's last paper:-
"The number and possible impact of biases in this study is so high that interpretation of the results is impossible". (1)That is a pretty damning comment. If you need the .pdf of the paper with it highlighted - see the attached.
Reference