CALLING THE SHOTS
He spent years developing vaccines and raising an autistic daughter. Here’s what this MD wants anti-vaxxers to know
W HEN respected medical journal the Lancet published a bombshell study linking vaccines to autism in 1998, parents of children afflicted with the neurological disorder took notice. But for Dr. Peter Hotez, that report linking vaccines to inflammatory bowel disease and autism seemed doubly monumental. The pediatric medical researcher, now 60, develops vaccines against ailments including hookworm and Chagas disease (a parasitic infection that leads to heart deterioration) — and he has an autistic daughter, Rachel, who was 6 years old when the report was published.
Hotez, now dean for Baylor College of Medicine’s National School of Tropical Medicine in Houston and director of Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, had stakes on both sides of the study, which was later discredited and retracted — although not before kicking off anti-vaccine sentiments that rage to this day.
While he says he was skeptical of it from the start, Rachel’s mother and his wife, Ann, was anxious. “She wanted to know why they made these findings and wondered if I was concerned,” says Hotez, the author of the new book “Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism” (Johns Hopkins University Press).
“I told Ann that something was not right with the findings; autism is guided by genetics,” says Hotez. “Plus, there were other red flags. The study was very small — there were only 12 children in it — and the mechanism proposed in the study did not make sense. It was proposed that the vaccine led to inflammation in the gut and colon and somehow that led to autism, [but] big changes in the brain lead to kids being on the autism spectrum.”
The study happened to drop, too, right when Peter and Ann were in the thick of dealing with their young daughter’s autism — and trying to minimize its negative impact on their other three children, Matt, Emmy and Daniel, respectively, 10, 8 and 1 at the time. Although Rachel was not diagnosed until she was around 2 years old, there were early hints that something was amiss.
“Ann told me that, as an infant, Rachel did not conform to her body while being held,” says Hotez, adding that their other children did. “Also, Rachel cried in a piercing voice and would later be extremely noncompliant. But, initially, the symptoms were too vague for us to put a finger on any specific thing being wrong.”
Throughout Rachel’s childhood, her condition, along with her associated intellectual disability, exacted a toll on Hotez and his wife. “Taking care of Rachel became grueling,” he says. “She ran away from home, had no sense of danger, threw books and toys and food into the toilet.
“I felt a sense of loss over the fact that she would not do the things that kids do as they become adults: Go to college, find a life partner, have a meaningful career. Because someone always had to be focused on Rachel, we could never take family vacations or do things as a complete family. It created a lot of sadness.”
These days, as a vaccine expert who raised an autistic child — currently 26, Rachel exhibits ex- treme OCD, awkwardly approaches strangers with personal questions and eats the same foods every day — Hotez possesses what he calls “street credibility.” He uses it to dispel myths about links between vaccines and autism.
“I can tell people about massive evidence that shows a lack of connectivity for the link,” says Hotez. “Studies done at University of California in San Diego show that autism begins in early pregnancy, long before vaccines are given to children. Plus, there are large population studies that show no correlations between autism and vaccines. The bottom line is that you should not let a fear of autism stop you from vaccinating your child.”
In 2010, 12 years after the Lancet study was published, a British medical panel blasted its lead author as “irresponsible and dishonest.” Soon after, the Lancet retracted the study.
Nevertheless, says Hotez, “There were sensational claims that caused a lot of damage; you still have people who believe what was published. Some of them have stopped vaccinating their kids, and that is a mistake.”
Most parents on the fence about vaccinations are at least open to hearing his scientific rationale — but not all. “A small number, maybe 10 to 20 percent... they start believing in an elaborate plot that involves the [provaccine] CDC being paid off by drug companies.”
Some anti-vaxxers can be vocal, unwavering and even nasty to him. “One guy compared me to a Nazi,” says Hotez. “Others say that I have made millions from vaccines, which is not true. My vaccines are for diseases that afflict the poorest people in the world.”
Hotez believes that recent events should cause the antivaccination crowd to re-evaluate their stance — especially last season’s flu epidemic, which killed 172 children in the US. “The vast majority of whom were not vaccinated,” he says. “Those deaths were preventable.”
Meanwhile, measles — a leading killer globally of children — was all but eradicated in the US at the turn of the century. But recent outbreaks threaten to reverse that. “Now, if people do not go back to vaccinating their kids,” says Hotez, “all the progress we made will go to waste.”