Comments on: Vaccines, Autism and Brain Damage: What's in a Name?
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- Thank you Sharyl Attkisson and CBS News for this report.
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- Obama enforces vaccine use...Obama is a killer.
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- By the way, it is not just mercury, people - it is all vaccines, some with mercury, some without. The cumulative effect of all vaccines has never been studied, has never been proven to be safe, nor has their efficacy, and they are a major contributor to a myriad of chronic health problems, starting often in the GI tract. Further, the CDC, FDA, Big PHARMA refuse to study the vaccinated vs non-vaccinated, again leading to questions regarding efficacy of the vaccine program as a whole
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- There's so much hype around this topic, I put together a summary that maybe will help you with your questions. I have no agenda other than a desire to be a good parent.
Do vaccines cause autism?
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Some parents claim they do. But there are many many studies that show no link between vaccines and autism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMR_vaccine_controversy#Recent_studies
Also, many parents have stopped vaccinating, or are vaccinating less over the past 10 years
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-immunization29-2009mar29,0,3148179.story
but the rate at which autism is diagnosed is still climbing, unchanged:
http://www.fightingautism.org/idea/autism.php
If autism was caused by vaccines, and if many parents (as many as 40% in some wealthy California districts) are choosing to not vaccinate, shouldn't we see SOME change in the rate of autism diagnosis?
Also, there is very strong evidence that autism is genetic:
http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-na-autism29-2009apr29,0,4441598.story
Is there an autism epidemic?
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It sure seems like it, doesn't it? You never used to hear about it, then came Rain Man, then came Jenny McCarthy, Jim Carrey, Larry King and Oprah, and now everyone has an autistic kid.
So if autism is rising, all things being equal, then we should see more kids applying for special education assistance in school, right?
But we don't. We see about the same number (as a % of population) getting special attention in school that we saw 10 years ago. But more of them are diagnosed as having "autism spectrum disorder" and fewer are diagnosed with other disorders.
http://www.autismstreet.org/weblog/?p=297
Other studies are similar. There may be a slight rise in actual cases of autism, but it's hard to see through all the "switched diagnoses" and the effect of greater awareness of the condition: "Honey, I just learned on Oprah that Johnny is autistic."
How did this vaccine-autism thing start?
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In 1998 Dr. Andrew Wakefield at the Royal Free Hospital in England concluded, based on a study of 12 kids, that there was a connection between the MMR vaccine and autism. Since then, it has been learned that:
what he said about the kids medical histories was not true;
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article5683671.ece
10 of the 12 doctors who co-authored the study removed their names from the study and published a retraction saying: "We wish to make it clear that in this paper no causal link was established between MMR vaccine and autism as the data were insufficient.";
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autistic_enterocolitis#.22Retraction_of_an_interpretation.22
While they were criticizing the MMR vaccine, Wakefield and the Royal Free Hospital were filing patent applications for an ALTERNATIVE VACCINE!
http://briandeer.com/wakefield/vaccine-patent.htm
In addition, Wakefield was paid by lawyers who made their money filing claims of autism damage.
The Lancet medical journal has now fully retracted Wakefield, and he now faces professional misconduct charges.
Yes, Wakefield is charismatic. But it is impossible to ignore the fact that his results have not been repeated, his data was flawed, and he had multiple personal financial incentives to find the conclusions he published. This is a bad guy.
Is it really possible that this is all just hype??
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Over the past 6 years, Americans convinced themselves that (1) it was just fine to give mortgages to people who had no down payment and no income; and (2) these mortgages became valuable assets when repackaged and sold by banks.
The entire premise is absurd, yet we ALL fell for it, and our economy fell into shambles.
Yes, it's possible for people to get fooled by hype, fooled in MASSIVE numbers. We're in a period where science=unnatural=bad. After all, sticking a needle into a baby seems grossly unnatural, and unnatural is bad, right? So blaming vaccines for SOMETHING just feels right.
But that is bad logic. Diseases are all natural, and they are bad. Very bad.
http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/010978.html
If you want a good site to link, try this:
http://antiantivax.jottit.com/
Humans realized long ago that they could be fooled, and they started coming up with ways to keep from being fooled. That's where the scientific method, and controlled, blinded studies came from - a desire to not be fooled.
Comprehensive list of evidence against vaccine/autism link, including relevant studies:
http://sciencebasedmedicine.org/reference/vaccines-and-autism/ - Reply to this comment
- Corrected version:
Dr. Brian Strom is quoted as saying that "The question for science is to prove whether or not that truly occurs more often than one would expect by chance. Absent that, a scientist assumes there is no association."
This is the same utter nonsense that was offered by the Thalidomide manufacturer in defending the safety of Thalidomide.
Scientists do not assume that there is not an association.
Absence of evidence of harm is not evidence of absence of harm.
And besides, there is evidence of harm, although it has been improperly ignored based a false proclamation that the scientific method uses a legal term of weight of evidence.
Here is the evidence. "In conclusion, we can state that this analysis does not rule out that receipt of thimerosal containing vaccine in children under three months of age may be related to an increased risk of neurologic development disorders. Specific conditions that may warrant more detailed study include autism, dyslaia, misery and unhappiness disorder and attention deficit disorder."
"Thimerosal VSD Study, Phase One, Update 2/29/00, CONFIDENTIAL DO NOT COPY OR RELEASE," Verstraeten, Robert Davis, Frank DeStefano, page 9. See http://www.safeminds.org/research/library/20010229.pdf .
In fact, science does not use a courtroom tort law requirement that there be a "50 percent plus a feather" weight of evidence favoring harm. Neither is this a contest to win a Nobel Peace prize in biochemistry. This is an issue of safety for children.
And with significant data that indicates that there may be harm then the issue should be safety first. - Reply to this comment
- For an example of "Absence of Evidence of Harm is Not Evidence of Absence of Harm" look at the nonsense used by Chemie Grunenthal in July 1961. When asked about the safety of Thalidomide use during pregnancy, the company doctors replied:
"On the basis of experience obtained so far we should like to say that there is no evidence that Contergan (Thalidomide) passes the placental barrier to fetuses."
See Thalidomide and the Power of the Drug Companies 1971. - Reply to this comment
- Clean the World has found a way to battle the top two killers of children under 5 worldwide. Soap. Soap that is being thrown away by the hotel and lodging industry in America at the rate of 1-1.5 million bars a day. Coupled with the fact that 9,000 children die every day from diseases that can be prevented with hand washing with plain bar soap. We collect, recycle, and redistribute soap domestically and internationally to help fight hygiene related illnesses. Just this month we passed our 6,000,000 bar mark in just over 18 months!! Check us out @ http://www.cleantheworld.org .
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- what if deaths from all of the childhood diseases we?ve heard of (whooping cough, diphtheria, polio, measles, scarlet fever, typhoid fever, scurvy, and also tetanus, flu, mumps, rubella (aka German measles)) had all been well on their way to disappearing before any vaccines were ever widely-used? If I can find data and graphs that show that deaths from these diseases steadily and significantly declined over x number of years coupled with the date that the corresponding vaccines were introduced, would that prove the vaccines weren?t the miracles we think they are? Further, what if three diseases, namely scarlet fever, scurvy and typhoid fever, had death rates that mirrored the other falling death rates, yet these never had a widely used vaccine, or had none whatsoever?
Adding to my skepticism as to whether or not the CDC / FDA etc are owned by Big Pharma, what if I could show you the graphs they like to publish which only show data starting just prior to the wide spread use of the vaccine, but when shown side by side with all the known data, show vaccines to be insignificant?
http://www.vaccinetruth.org/help_with_doctors1.htm http://www.vaclib.org/links/graphs.htm links to
http://childhealthsafety.wordpress.com/graphs/ - Reply to this comment
- Correction:
Absence of evidence of harm is not evidence of absence of harm. - Reply to this comment
- Dr. Brian Strom is quoted as saying that ?The question for science is to prove whether or not that truly occurs more often than one would expect by chance. Absent that, a scientist assumes there is no association.?
This is the same utter nonsense that was offered by the Thalidomide manufacturer in defending the safety of Thalidomide.
Scientists do not assume that there is not an association.
Absence of evidence of harm is not evidence of harm.
And besides, there is evidence of harm?although it has been improperly ignored based a false proclamation that the scientific method uses a legal term of weight of evidence.
?In conclusion, we can state that this analysis does not rule out that receipt of thimerosal-containing vaccine in children under three months of age may be related to an increased risk of neurologic development disorders. Specific conditions that may warrant more detailed study include autism, dyslaia, misery and unhappiness disorder and attention deficit disorder.?
?Thimerosal VSD Study, Phase I, Update 2/29/00, CONFIDENTIAL DO NOT COPY OR RELEASE,? Verstraeten, Robert Davis, Frank DeStefano, page 9. See http://www.safeminds.org/research/library/20010229.pdf .
In fact, science does not use a courtroom tort law requirement that there be a ?50 percent plus a feather? weight of evidence favoring harm. This is not a contest to win a Nobel Peace prize in biochemisty. This is an issue of safety for children.
And with significant data that indicates that there may be harm then the issue should be safety first. - Reply to this comment
