Another Misguided Panic About Autism

http://goo.gl/14ZiLj

Autism is such a hot-button issue that it’s dangerously easy to frighten and mislead people. Infamously, a fraudulent 1998 study purportedly linking autism to the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine stoked a mass panic that resulted in lower vaccination rates, lower herd immunity, and the return of measles. I recently investigated how the debunked pseudoscience of facilitated communication persists in large part by feeding on the desperate hopes of autistic children’s parents, some of whom are quietly shepherding such junk science into public schools. So it is not surprising that other researchers have stressed a note of caution about the new antidepressant study and its methods. Yet even these dissenting voices do not, I think, go far enough.

Study co-author Bérard, it turns out, has been criticized by a federal judge for cherry-picking results to link antidepressants to birth defects. The press should treat such studies with skepticism rather than leading with their findings. Sober pieces inScience, Wired, and NPR rightly questioned whether the study was significant and whether Bérard’s advocacy for stopping antidepressant usage during pregnancy was justified. In particular, Emily Underwood in Science wisely led off by writing “Many epidemiologists and psychiatrists say the study, published today in JAMA Pediatrics, is flawed and will cause unnecessary panic,” which is the most important point to make about this study. But too many journalists failed to make this point, and with autism research, such credulity is downright dangerous.

Researchers have already questioned the significance of the observed correlation. Aaron Carroll of Indiana University’s Center for Health Policy and Professionalism Research wrote at his blog, the Incidental Economist, in a post titled “The Panic Du Jour”:

You have to place things in context. … It’s only significant for SSRIs and in the second and/or third trimester, which is 22 kids total. The absolute risk increase was only 0.5%. There are limitations to the study, and other studies have found different results. My take home would be that this deserves more work and attention, and that any potential harms from the antidepressants should be weighed against the known benefits for these pregnant moms.