Zed?

a propos:

McCain Rated As America’s Worst Senator For Children

Sad story here. Thanks PW.

That information should raise his cred with the hard right considerably…

isn’t one of the Kennedys on the anti-vax bandwagon?

I happen to believe some vaccines do cause autism, those that contain mercury are high on the list

of course there is a cost evalution, the possibility of autism against the possibility of getting the disease that vaccine might prevent

I don’t believe the “debunkings” of the speculation that mercury based vaccines might be responsible for autism

My kid is vaccinated. Not doing it was never even a consideration.

I’ll join back in after this.

Hekebolos has a diary up on DailyKos on the huge success of the Associated Press “Show Your Patriotism” action. If you’re a Kossak please stop by and hit the “recommend” button.

Done.

PW, although not related to the anti-vax people directly, NPR reported this week on outbreaks of cholera (sp?), of all things. It is disheartening to see a needless and potentially devestating comeback of things we all believed to be defeated years ago.

Hey Betsy!!

moi aussi. hey, egregious!

Bon soir

Aussie? I thought you were French, mate.

There is a fantastic weekly podcast from the New England Skeptical Society called “The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe”. They regularly debunk numerous fanciful claims and have covered the anti-vaccine nonsense from time to time. It is hosted by an academic neurologist from the Yale University School of Medicine.

http://www.theskepticsguide.org/

hi doodle!

Hes my all time hero. I get goosebumps…thanks Pete

Hey TexBetsy, when is the next gathering?

Aussie? I thought you were French, mate.

more French than qui? oui!, actually

We cannot trust the Pharmaceutical corporations, or their lobbyists. They corrupt Health Care by making it “for profit”. They promote artificial drugs, instead of proven natural remedies. They charge excessive prices for medicines, and promote unnecessary vaccinations, such as the HPV vaccine.

The fact is that thimerosal, a mercury based neuro-toxin, was widely used in vaccines. This has yet to be explained.

we are not sure. LS may or may not have access to the farm and a bunch of dates in April are lousy for a bunch of us.

explanations: it’s a cheap preservative

Neuro and I left ya a note downstairs, Mr. CBL!

There was a legitimate concern about the pertussis vaccine decades ago, which has been addressed by the development of acellular vaccine. The fear lingers many years beyond the solution to this problem, and children are dying from a completely preventable disease in this country.

As for the autism argument:

I have seen no *legitimate* public health studies showing this link to autism. In fact the Danes used their extensive civil and medical records to show there was no change in autism when mercury was taken out of the mix.

Seems this is just one more opportunity for those who wish to prey on people’s fears. There will always be such predators, but doesn’t it seem like there are so many more of them under Bush-Cheney?

I didn’t know they had Kiwis in Austria.

I can understand why people don’t believe the government or big pharma about the possible side effects of meds. How many times have we been lied to? How many times have we been poisoned? It will continue to be problematic as long as people don’t trust their corporate government.

dugg

Has a study been done of the incidence of autism among children who have not been vaccinated?

Another Pox on Charter Schools..

Across the full spectrum of this Maladministration… EPA, FDA, OSHA, DoJ, DoE(both), DoD, ad nauseum…

The anti-vaccination folks rely on the fact that other people vaccinate their kids to keep their own kids safe.

Pox Americana

I think a great part of the problem is that today’s parents have never known or experienced themselves what can happen to children who are not vaccinated for diseases such as measles, Rubella, and polio, or what can happen without the availability of antibiotics to combat strep infections. Many of today’s parents view mumps, measles and rubella as somehow benign – for many children, they are not. Ever read the “Little House” books? Remember Laura’s sister, Mary? She had measles and she went blind. This was not an uncommon side effect of having measles – other side effects were deafness, damage to hearts and death. I had rubella as a child so bad that the joints in my arms, hands, feet and knees were effected – and I continue to have problems because of it. I had mumps for three weeks when I was ten. We won’t even discuss what life was like before polio immunizations.

I of course stand corrected and thank you.

As an ” anti-vax ” parent I find it disheartening to hear a tone of scorn in this post. I had measles,chicken pox and mumps as a child. Back then no one referred to me as a victim. It was a normal childhood ordeal and you dealt with it. Which benefitted the immune system.
The choice to pump your kids with vaccines is not something to take lightly.
My kids are young adults now and healthy. I don’t have to be concerned that they’ll contact mumps as adults when the vaccine has worn off, putting them at risk for a much more serious form of the illness. And, yes, they had measles,mumps and chicken pox.

No Prob! There are a few exceptions…

Hello, everyone!

My heart stops each time I look at the picture of that little toddler. The poor dear!

Damn, Imus’s wife really rages on about this all the time. I don’t know what to think.

The real quandary to me is whether the government has the authority to force vaccinations on parents who don’t believe in them. It’s a thorny constitutional question.

http://newsprism.wordpress.com

Robert Kennedy Jr. has discussed it on Ring of Fire. IIRC he was talking about the serum that the vaccination was in, not the vaccination itself. Maybe this is the mercury issue that PW is describing.

I live in San Diego County, and work in a public elementary school, and have not seen a rise in measles and mumps first hand. But, this is great info to be on the alert for. Thanks, PW.

Me too.

Are vaccinations provided free in the US?

Read the links, openhope. And look at the picture.

There is no nice way to phrase it: The anti-vax movement is based on falsity (namely, the repeatedly-debunked “vaccines cause autism” claim) and children, such as the one in the photo above, are suffering anything from disfigurement, brain damage and even death as a result. Legitimate autism researchers are infuriated at the actions of Wakefield and his followers.

I don’t know what to think.

My answer is the same as for topics like global warming. People should find out what the peer-reviewed scientific community is saying.

In Austin TX, students can be vaccinated for free, but I think that is pretty unusual.

Is there a Darwin award for people who get their kids killed?

(quickly putting in my 2¢ while working) i think food additives, pollution, and pesticide contamination should be bigger worries than obsessing over mercury in vaccines.

Here, in Hawaii, every child is mandated to show proof of their vaccination shots throughout their schooling… No exceptions, one parent tried last year to circumvent it as an adamant anti-vaxer and failed miserably…!

Lucky you.

The thing is, this is a public health issue, not just a personal issue.

And when enough kids go unvaccinated, there will be epidemics.

It’s provided free of charge here in Hawaii…

thanks for the follow-up

CT, we had a deferral on texteen’s immunizations because of an allergy early on. All resolved by 2nd grade, but we still get letters from school if he needs a new shot for the next semester.

openhope,
No scorn here. I to have children that are now young adults. It was agonizing every single time whether or not to get the shots. However, because all of our kids went to public school a shot record was always required for admission. I have assumed it is the same for everyone.

A fine potpourri of discrediting links, but how about one simple question:

Why are trace amounts of mercury found in fish such a risk that pregnant women are advised to avoid tuna, but mercury is suddenly ok, and ruled out as a factor in the epidemic of Autism Spectrum Disorder?

not just ruled out, but stridently denounced?

Methinks the lady doth protesteth too much.

There are clinics for vaccinations throughout California.

The question is…why is the autism rate increasing so rapidly? It’s now really high. 1 out of 166? Something’s up.

I remember as a kid lining up at school for polio vaccine. Course that was a long time ago! It was a big deal. People still remembered the epidemics.

shhhh….mumps the word

Republicans say that scientists scream about global warming to pursue an agenda. You seem to be saying scientists here are pursuing a pro-corporate agenda.

It is sad to see anti-science attitudes coming from both the right and the left in this country.

I happen to believe some vaccines do cause autism, those that contain mercury are high on the list

of course there is a cost evalution, the possibility of autism against the possibility of getting the disease that vaccine might prevent

The relationship between autism and vaccines was not even very good on the correlation front, much less ever finding a causal relationship. The increases in reports of autism occurred well after the use of vaccines, even those using mercury. Those who argue there is a link have to rely on the “well nobody began tabulating data on autism until…” argument.

But that’s precisely the issue. Autism reports have gone up simply because there is higher reportage. In addition, in areas of the world where there is low vaccine use, autism reports are up there as well. And since the decline of people opting out of vaccine use autism reports continue high.
The recent studies actually have looked at epidemiological relationships between those who have children that use vaccines and those that don’t…no difference.

But as Phoenix Woman has pointed out there have been major increases in the outbreaks of transmissable diseases that vaccines would largely prevent from occuring.

It’s been one sad side-effect of the Bush Administration that respect for multiple scientific studies have been tainted by non-scientists like Ann Coulter, Michael Medved, Global-Warming naysayers, HIV-skeptics, and a host of Creationists that reputable science become “Junk Science”, while their heavily politicized agendas is “true”.

I have to fall in with the consensus of the Scientific community here, and history and cross-societal comparisons of health. Vaccines have a substantial benefit to a societies health and children that get them habve a vastly greater survivorship than those that don’t. In societies where childhood diseases are largely eradicated a few “freeloaders” who refuse to get vaccinated can be tolerated and they will largely escape risk of infection, but when their numbers increase situations like that raised by Phoenix Woman are inevitable.

Because it is not longer used in vaccines. And when they stopped using it, autism diagnoses did not decline.

As PWs post explains.

Robert Kennedy Jr. is a strong advocate that the mercury in the serum causes autism.

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0616-31.htm

You have a real way with words.

The autism rate is not necessarily increasing. The rate of diagnosis is increasing. Alot of the kids start showing signs of autism about he time the first set of shots are complete.

It depends on the kind of mercury compounds and their concentration. This is the same kind of logic that leads people to think that radiation from cell phones and power lines causes cancer.

That’s understandable, there are exceptions, such as allergies to chicken eggs, of which some vaxs utilize, etc… The state DoE sends us periodic updates too…

You’re right. Here in WV, they advise against eating fish from our streams due to high levels of mercury. Most of the mercury contamination is from coal-burning power plants.

Loo Hoo: Most of the cases, thankfully, are confined to a small area. But for vaccination to be effective at controlling disease, a minimum of 95% of the population needs to be vaccinated at any one time; less than that, and the virus has a chance to get a strong foothold and to develop strains not covered by the vaccine. In England, that percentage dropped to around 75% after the Wakefield Lancet article appeared — the one that the Lancet has long since repudiated — but immunization levels started going back up once the debunkings started coming out; I believe they’re up to around 85% by now.

Thanks!

Wait a minute– what are you trying to say?

Apples and oranges.

seems PW forgot to include this link from the AMERICAN ACADEMY OF
PEDIATRICS (AAP) AND THE UNITED STATES PUBLIC
HEALTH SERVICE (USPHS

A press release about Mercury in Thimerosal from the National Vaccine Information Center in July of 1999 press points out that, “The cumulative effects of ingesting mercury can cause brain damage.” During this same month, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) alerted the public about the possible health effects associated with thimerosal-containing vaccines. These health-related organizations strongly recommended that thimerosal be removed from vaccines as soon as possible. Under the directive of the FDA Modernization Act of 1997, the Food and Drug Administration also determined that infants who received several thimerosal-containing vaccines may be receiving mercury exposure over and above the recommended federal guidelines.

http://pediatrics.aappublicati…../3/568.pdf

not entirely off-topic, this email from our health insurance broker:

…As you may know, your Blue Cross plan is coming up for renewal on 4/1/08. With your renewal, your medical rates are increasing 17%, your dental rates are increasing 13.6% and there is no increase this year on the vision plan. (See attached breakdown). While no increase is good news, Blue Cross – along with all other insurance carriers – are feeling the effects of rapid inflation within the healthcare industry. Some of the causes of these ever increasing costs are: increased reimbursements to providers, aging population which translates into increased medical care, extremely high cost of brand name drugs and brand name drug utilization and medical technology. Blue Cross is doing a good job in trying to keep rates as low as possible. Nevertheless, I will shop your plan in the marketplace and report back to you shortly.

heckuvajob, Bluey

When I was a child there were no vaccines for anything. I had all the diseases and believe me, if you care about your child, do not let them get whooping cough. I had it and it was truly awful. There have been multiple studies re autism and vaccines and not one shred of proof has been found that they are connected. I think this is pure hysteria and it’s putting children at risk and all the people the child is around.

I agree completely. I’ve seen parents, many parents, who actually want their children diagnosed with a problem like autism so that their child qualifies for special education services. Strange, but true.

i have three kids, all under five. Each child has received vaccines on a schedule that we believe suits our kids, not what some federal health bureaucrat tells us to do. For example, the Hepatitis B vaccine is one we do not give our children. Why should we?

(Via Wikipedia) Hepatitis B is transmitted from exposure to infectious blood or body fluids containing blood. Possible forms of transmission include (but are not limited to) unprotected sexual contact, blood transfusions, re-use of contaminated needles & syringes, and vertical transmission from mother to child during childbirth.

So my wife is not a carrier (tested prior to childbirth in all three cases. That rules out transmission from mother to child during childbirth. My children are not sexually active, which rules out sexual contact. They do not get blood transfusions. They are not drug users. So my children are not at risk for contracting Hepatitis B.

So why vaccinate for this disease? Why, Phoenix Woman, have you so scornfully attacked parents who do not vaccinate our kids without asking why? Do you have children? Do you educate yourself about the risks posed by vaccines and weigh them against the risks posed by the illness?

Just that your comment was fairly pointed. I don’t have kids and my doggies have all their shots! I will say that, after my tour in Korea, I faked my shot record before I went to the Nam because I didn’t want another one of those damn gamma globulin shots!

I believe that this country will do very little about the health care crisis.

SINGLE PAYER IS THE ONLY WAY TO GO.

and yours is the same kind of logic that leads the gullible to beleive industry and government assurances that toxic chemical pollution does not harm anyone.

their favorite line about cancer clusters is “better detection and diagnosis” – its from the very same Public Relations playbook as the denial of an increase of Autism Spectrum Disorder.

I thought Firepups adored the Kennedy clan?

http://www.rollingstone.com/po….._immunity/

Frick, every time I turned around they kept giving me shots… B*stards! The anthrax ones during the buildup to the first Gulf War totally pissed me off…!

I teach in a school that is about 70% Latino, most of whom were born here. There is no issue with this population having their children vaccinated. It is the home-schoolers whose parents object.

BTW, what is the difference between a vaccination and an innoculation? Kirk?

The malaria pills that gave you the shits and the salt tabs turned out to be real good for you too!

Keep clicking through to the Politics tab and read the article about McCain by Matt Taibbi (sp).

Time for Obama to discuss health care for Americans. This is absolute and total crapola.

Will you have them immunized against HepB at some point?

My answer is the same as for topics like global warming. People should find out what the peer-reviewed scientific community is saying.

Click on the links in my post. The peer-reviewed scientific community is firmly on the side of vaccination.

There is no evidence of any link between immunizations and autism that has survived actual peer view by actual medical science professionals. The sole scientific foundation, the Wakefield Lancet paper, was blasted to bits so thoroughly that ten of Wakefield’s fellow twelve authors made a point of disassociating themselves with Wakefield’s conclusions, as they said that he had misrepresented himself and his aims to them.

As for the claimed autism epidemic that vaccinations have allegedly triggered, there hasn’t been a rise in autism cases so much as there’s been a rise in correct identification of autism, instead of confusing it with mental retardation. Notice that in the graphs at this link, the rise in autism is matched by a corresponding drop in mental retardation.. This is consistent with doctors making fewer MR diagnoses and more autism diagnoses, which is what one would expect as autism becomes better understood and less likely to be confused with mental retardation.

I am late to this thread and I haven’t read the comments. But I do think that Pharma and doctors are far from perfect and cause death and suffering.

I suspect all vaccines may not be all that they are cracked up to be.

Not being a scientist I would do a lot of research and contact reliable sources for their opinions on vaccinations.

OMG, me too. I had measles, mumps and whooping cough. I remember that my class after lunch was upstairs, and coughing so much after lunch recess (I admit to playing four square competitively!!) that it took about 15 minutes before I could quit coughing and go into class.

we are all one car accident away from possibly needing a blood transfusion.

I guess you folks may have forgetten that some who took the polio vaccine did get polio probably as a result of it.

That’s not funny. /s

yes, when the time is right that their risk of catching Hep B increases. I highlighted this vaccine as an example of one that doesn’t need to be given to every child as CDC states, but should be given based on testing of the mother.

My “plan” went up 12% this yr. (1-1-08) It appears to me that the plan is nothing more than seperating me from my money. I have decided that I do not want insurance. Period. I want healthcare when I need it.

I had a lengthy discussion with my employer the other day on the suject. He is a very hard right repub and asked me why I thought he should vote for a Dem this time. I very gently explained to him that between the 2 of us we paid $1100.00 + a month to insure me, my wife and 1 child. Would he prefer to continue that or pay perhaps $500.00 a month between us in additional taxes? He went away to research. And he will. I believe this is a valid argument to use when confronted with people that continue to vote against their best interests.

That was the earliest form of the polio vaccine — later forms were crafted differently, and that is no longer an issue.

And some folks may have forgotten that before there was a polio vaccine, a lot of folks died as a result of the lack of one.

“There was a legitimate concern about the pertussis vaccine decades ago, which has been addressed by the development of acellular vaccine. The fear lingers many years beyond the solution to this problem, and children are dying from a completely preventable disease in this country.

As for the autism argument:

I have seen no *legitimate* public health studies showing this link to autism. In fact the Danes used their extensive civil and medical records to show there was no change in autism when mercury was taken out of the mix.

Seems this is just one more opportunity for those who wish to prey on people’s fears.

And what government can you think of that has been preying on people’s fears with great regularity lately?

What government can you think of that supports businesses against the public interest by opposing safety regulations (”red tape”), and being reluctant to prosecute corporation abuse and neglect?

What government can you think of that sanctions the sale and barely regulated use of neurotoxins (such as alcohol), suggesting only that the public use the product “sensibly”?

Although I think that the autism scare has been laid to rest, I am frankly on the side of the citizens against this particular government, which shows noticably more sympathy towards the megacorporations than it does towards its marginal citizens.

Bob in HI

I have mixed feelings about the vax issue, though lean toward conservative in my views (e.g. I believe in the necessity of most vaccines from a public health standpoint). I agree that there is no science to support the autism claim, yet are sympathetic towards parents trying to find answers. I had my own child vaccinated. Yet, in retrospect I wonder whether I should have had some of the vaccines done.Chicken pox for one. I am very skeptical of the more recent vaccines on the market (chicken pox, HPV) because of the heavy pharmaceutical company influence. Frankly, i no longer trust much of anything from the pharma industry with the FDA stamp of approval. Even though mercury removed from some vaccines, aluminum is in many and can be dangerous esp. to premature infants.

So my friends what is the correct way to approach this, when I was a child I had both measles and Mumps, not fun. My kids are vaccinated, I have a son by choice, not blood who is very adhd, I would like to know wtf to believe in all of this, and I would tend to side with you sporkvat but I don’t know what is true and what is not. Logic would say if pregnant woman should not eat tuna then babies sure as hell should not use it either, along with all the other stuff in our food and food chain but that is another story in itself.

Thimerosal and Autism

Some parents are concerned that thimerosal, a mercury-containing preservative contained in the influenza vaccine, causes autism. However, during the past few years a series of biological and epidemiological studies have shown this concern to be unfounded. Here is a summary of the evidence showing that, while some things do cause autism, mercury in vaccines isn’t one of them.

Posted: March 2006
Updated: July 2006

from:

http://www.chop.edu/consumer/j…..p?id=75751

Your citation was from 1999

Here’s some useful sites that provide peer-reviewed articles both pro- and contra- the claim that vaccines are related to autism.

Autisms Relationship to Vaccination?

It should be noted that almost all of the co-authors of the paper that made the original claim have recanted their own paper, and it’s senior authors conclusions. Another of the three papers has been totally withdrawn by the authors.

Here is some information about the situation regarding various communicable diseases before vaccines were introduced in the United States, and the transformation in incidence subsequent to vaccination.
Vaccination and Occurence Statistics

We could likely live without a mumps vaccine but rubella was deadly, and could become pandemic killing tens of thousands, and measles had major health impacts on children in terms of blindness, deafness, and other neurological impacts. And you don’t even want to get me talking about polio.

What?? I have a friend who contracted polio months before the vaccination was available, and just had to have surgery to stablize her ankle.

Openhope,

Just like you all my immunity came the natural way. I probably even had polio since my closest friend developed the paralytic version one summer – and we played together every day. I didn’t develop paralysis, as most children didn’t. I also didn’t develop measles encephalitis, die from whooping cough, or tetanus, and thank god my mother was not exposed to rubella while she was pregnant.

Just because none of these things didn’t happen didn’t mean they couldn’t then and wouldn’t now. The fact that you have never seen these diseases doesn’t mean they aren’t still around and aren’t still deadly. You were lucky. You rolled the dice on your kids, but the universe didn’t pick up the bet.**

The link between autism and thiomersal has never been proven, and, in fact, recently received a body blow with this study, which has followed the incidence o autism since thiomersal was removed completely from US vaccines in 2001*. The reported incidence of autism is actually rising. Should we then conclude that thiomersal was protective against autism? Please. The evidence for that is as thin as the evidence for causation.

I’m trying hard not to sound scornful, as you suggest others have been, and I know that I’m failing. It’s just that vaccination, along with public sanitation advances, are life-giving miracles of modern medicine and technology. To reject these simple and almost risk-free life-saving measures is a form of Luddism. There are so many diseases which we cannot fix, or for which the fixes are painful or dangerous. Every vaccine is a step into safety.

* Please note that thiomersal is no longer in US vaccines, and an acellular pertussis vaccine is now available.
No excuse not to get the vaccinations that protect all of us.

**They are vaccinated against tetanus, aren’t they? At least tetanus! Tetanus mortality rate is rising in older people due to inadequate re-vaccination, and it’s a prolonged, agonizing illness with a 50% mortality

That’s not funny. /s

oh, go chew on light bulb! /s, :~)

The sole scientific foundation, the Wakefield Lancet paper

PW,
The Kennedy article is all I’ve read up til now about this. Is this the same as the Lancet paper?

disturbing new study that raised alarming questions about the safety of a host of common childhood vaccines administered to infants and young children. According to a CDC epidemiologist named Tom Verstraeten, who had analyzed the agency’s massive database containing the medical records of 100,000 children, a mercury-based preservative in the vaccines — thimerosal — appeared to be responsible for a dramatic increase in autism and a host of other neurological disorders among children.

BTW, both my kids had ALL the vaccinations recommended by our pediatrician.
14 year old son diagnosed with ADD, one of the complications mentioned in the Kennedy article.
Cause and effect? I don’t know. Do you?

Autism. Autism is a heart breaker. I have a thrrteen year old cousin, Alex who is severely autistic. She has the mind of a three year old. She like me, is a half breed Native Indian (I am 1/2 Cherokee). Little Alex is 1/2 Creek. We, in the family know the time is approaching when we will have no choice but to place our little darling in a facility, and it is tearing us up. She’s going to be so scared. I’m tearing up as I type.

Good night.

Because of the developmental processes in the womb, an embryo or fetus is much MORE sensitive to even tiny amounts of things passed along from the mother (whether toxic like mercury or just flavorful like garlic) than even a one month old infant.

our two children got all the vaccinations. it was required to be in public school, and I think they were free or very low cost.

HPV for teen punaisette, however, costs a bundle (x3).

As far as “cancer clusters” there was a good episode on Frontline that explained the “Texas Sharpshooter” fallacy and how it can be used to manipulate and misinterpret statistics. Bottom line– there certainly is no increased risk of cancer from power lines or cell phones.

I don’t have my medical texts handy, so I can’t be sure about this, but I think that when they’ve investigated cases of childhood hep B, they’ve found a significant numbers of cases in which the mode of transmission couldn’t be determined. In other words, they can’t figure out how the kids got it. That’s one of the reasons we vaccinate young children for the disease.

Sorry. What you forgot to mention is the difference between methyl mercury (the sort found in seafood these days) and ethyl mercury, a.k.a. Thimerosal. Which, BTW, has been removed from childhood vaccines inthe US even though a relationship to autism has never been proven.

Google on the following pair of words -

ethyl mercury

Read the first four links. Then start doing your bloody homework.

Sporkovat, the “National Vaccine Information Center” is not a peer-reviewed scientific group, but an anti-vax advocacy group. Plus, what you quoted was from 1999 — before the major debunkings of the Wakefield paper.

Thimerosal is a mercury compound. That is not, repeat, not the same as raw mercury. If we remember our junior-high-school chemistry classes, compounds tend to have different properties and effects than their constituent parts. For instance, there is table salt, or sodium chloride. Pure sodium is a dangerous and caustic poison that can spontaneously combust. Pure chlorine is also poisonous to ingest. Yet together, they create an essential compound for life as we know it.

PW–

You did a nice job with your research. The down and dirty summary of the medical lit on literaly hundreds of careful studies as to whether either bowel disorders or autism has been linked to MMR or any preceding vaccinations for Measles, Mumps, and Rubella have shown no correlation whatsoever.

They are typical of this study from NEJM

A Population-Based Study of Measles, Mumps, and Rubella Vaccination and Autism

Disease a Month, a popular monograph used by physicians that does indepth study of either diseases or medical procedures devoted about 100 page monograph a few years back studying thousands of cases during years when their was a large movement to withold MMR vaccination in the UK and Japan and studied thousands of children in whom the vaccines were witheld.

I can’t find it, but there were substantial incidences not only of death, but of some of the severe sequella of measles, mumps, and rubella that can occur that resulted in these unvaccinated children.

There has also been a popular theme advanced by parents sucked into the phony cult that espouses autism as a result of the vaccinations that dividing the doses or separating them would somehow prove to be beneficial, and the med lit is replete with studies that have shown doing this is not beneficial.

As with most supersticians by quacks, the advocates of witholding vaccination have produced no credible studies in many years of a link between MMR and autism.

Republican Representative from Indiana’s 5th, Dan Burton who used to be Chair of the House Government Reform Committee from Indiana has an only grandson, who is unfortunately severely autistic. He has blamed vaccination for years and has held hearings on the subject and has tried to pass bills that would compensate parents of children.

These links on Burton’s site are typical of the kind of misinformation that causes deaths and illness in children in whom vaccination is witheld.

It is unfortunate that Burton’s grandson has autism, and unfortunate that he has wasted so much of his time advancing a medical myth.

Thanks for the more recent link. Less fear is better.
I’ll read more.

I am reading
Goodnight Kiddo, if it means anything I have your 6 in spirit.

the virtues of vaccination in preventing horrible communicale disease are unquestioned – and people who make it an either/or are deploying a red herring.

the mercury containing preservative thimerosol does nothing to prevent the mumps.

Parents should protect their kids by asking their doctors for vaccines that do not contain mercury.

the respected medical establishment institution – the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health center for Vaccine Safety has the updated list:

http://www.vaccinesafety.edu/thi-table.htm

Oh, Kiddo. It’s got to be the most difficult decision ever. Hugs.

As for the claimed autism epidemic that vaccinations have allegedly triggered, there hasn’t been a rise in autism cases so much as there’s been a rise in correct identification of autism, instead of confusing it with mental retardation. Notice that in the graphs at this link, the rise in autism is matched by a corresponding drop in mental retardation.. This is consistent with doctors making fewer MR diagnoses and more autism diagnoses, which is what one would expect as autism becomes better understood and less likely to be confused with mental retardation.

PW–this is obviously pure anecedote, but I used to work in a residential facility with very elderly patients suffering from lifelong “mental illness”. Many of these patients, now in their 80s, 90s, had been institutionalized their entire life. Many had diagnoses of MR, schizophrenia slapped on them years ago. Not sure if they were accurate by today’s diagnostic standards.

So my wife is not a carrier (tested prior to childbirth in all three cases. That rules out transmission from mother to child during childbirth. My children are not sexually active, which rules out sexual contact. They do not get blood transfusions. They are not drug users. So my children are not at risk for contracting Hepatitis B….So why vaccinate for this disease?

I don’t challenge your right to make the decisions for your children, but in the interest of risk assessment, there are gaps in your scenario.

As we have seen, there are many people who do not vaccinate their children, and there’s no requirement that I am aware of to notify schools or parents if a child is a Hep B carrier. Your children will be entering school in the next year or two and will be exposed to a large number of other children. A blood exchange will not be out of the question when wrestling around on the playground or climbing on the same equipment with skinned knees and palms. Not to mention if the child gets into a rougher altercation such as a bite.

Surface survivable pathogens are one risk that we cannot prevent our children from contacting. We can teach our children to cover their mouths to cough, to wash their hands frequently, and even to avoid voluntary contact with others’ body fluids. It is not realistic to expect a child to sanitize each rung of the monkey bars each time they use them.

Your children aren’t teenagers yet, but the odds are that they will experiment with drugs and sex at least once. Why increase the risks they will face unnecessarily?

There is no possibility I would have ever considered passing on the vaccines for my children. My heart breaks for those families dealing with Autism though.

cancer risk from cell towers, power lines, and/or toasters are your own straw men.

I just said the PR technique of claiming “better detection and diagnosis” is the same one used in many situations.

Bob, that’s what’s so insidious about this whole thing. If our public school systems hadn’t been deliberately trashed over the past few decades (Google George H.W. Bush and Sandia Labs sometime), we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

People will get cynical, but they very seldom get educated. That’s what allows people like Wakefield and JB Handley to run wild and unchecked.

amen, I agree, just want to know the facts he said dragnet style.
Would like to thank all and PW, this stuff hits home with me, as it does all with children to protect.

My point is simply that Pharma can kill too.

Oh.

But better detection does have an effect on the results in many of these kinds of studies, don’t you think? I don’t see how you can dismiss it just because it’s often cited.

My siblings and I weren’t vaccinated for religious reasons, and yes, we got all those childhood diseases. We spent a lot of time at home recovering — especially Rubella.

My son got all of the vaccines recommended by his pediatrician — my sister’s 5 kids all had them too. I’ve read the pros and cons and while I understand they are officially safe, I can’t trust oversight on vaccines any more than I can trust that all prescription medicines are safe. This has more to do with our limits in testing than anything nefarious.

OT

PBS has a wonderful show about Pete Seeger, one of the greatest Americans who ever lived.

Cool. Thanks! I just switched to it.

I have an autistic kid. I’m trying to keep my emotions in check while trying to read this post. I do believe that excessive amounts of mercury injected in kids under 6 mos. old, when they have not developed any way to expel it is a likely culprit in the autism epidemic as well as a host of less acute neurodevelopmental disorders. I want to make two points:
1) autism is unlike any other neuro disorder and the idea that it is a “fake epidemic” driven by a rash of overdiagnosis is patent horseshit. Where are all the 30 and 40 year old autistic people who were diagnosed as “something else?” Did you go to school with them? Ask someone who has worked in the schools for a long time if there isn’t something new going on. Take an inventory of your relatives and friends and see how many autistic kids you know of. Then take an inventory of the previous 2 generations.
2) Many physicians and parents who buy into the “debunked” thimerisol thesis are not anti-vaccine zealots as you characterize them. Generally such people believe vaccines should be administered singly and well spaced between innoculations and not given to infants. Dr. Phillip de Mio of Ohio, as one example claims that one should not necessarily believe that a given vaccination is thimerisol free since he keeps finding it in the stocks he receives. Maybe he is nuts or a liar, who can know?

I must say I am disappointed at the hostile tone, the one-sided approach, and the total lack of compassion of this post. Autism strikes 1 in 150 children in this country. At the height of the polio epidemic, I have read, it was 1 in 600.

It’s wonderful. I should have recorded it.

but PW – mercury is a neurotoxin and there are reasons to want to avoid exposing children to neurotoxins. the autism scare is NOT the whole story.

from my perspective, IANAP (i am not a physician) this is a complex problem of public health.

part of the problem, imo, is that we’ve had pharmaceutical companies lying to the public (see merck). we have a government that lies to us. and initially, it wasn’t a crazy hypothesis that increased doses of a neurotoxin might be a contributor to neurological diseases (not just autism).

another problem is that there probably is a conflict between public health and individual health that isn’t, imo, being addressed in an honest and open way. probably the best thing for one’s kids is to withhold vaccinations and have the rest of the world vaccinated. i’d like to see this issue addressed head on because so long as it’s not – we have no right to expect parents to believe the public health folks who are lecturing them on what vaccinations to give their kids.

i just think a more thoughtful, and less inflammatory (by that i mean not treating the people you’re trying to convince like they’re idiots) approach would be more persuasive.

I have no position on vaccinations as a cause of autism, and don’t claim to know anything about it. But reading these comments has been interesting in the respect that there are such strongly held opinions that are so diametrically opposed.

I don’t know what happened to my links to the research so I will post them againhttp://www.cdc.gov/od/science/…..tsheet.htm ">CDC Research studies on the Relationship b/w Autism and MMR Vaccination

A Very Recent Japanes Study compared Autism reports for a period when MMR vaccination wasn’t administered to surrounding periods when it was. They found no difference in the incidence of Autism before, during, or after.

Time on PCoast
The film, directed by documentarian Jim Brown and nominated for the best-documentary award by the Producers Guild of America, will be televised Wednesday (Feb. 27) at 8 p.m. on WYES-Channel 12 as part of the “American Masters” series.

is this a repected enough institution for you?

The Institute for Vaccine Safety was established in 1997 at the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health – now the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

and, er, doesn’t the rest of FDL over the past few years include a little bit more skepticism towards Official statements and reports, like the 2002 NIE detailing Iraq’s pursuit of nefarious WMD?

http://www.globalsecurity.org/…..er2002.htm

if powerful elite institutions have a very strong incentive to “disprove” something, maybe the studies they produce should be treated with less reverence, maybe?

i applaud your thoughtful approach to decision making for your children.

Generally such people believe vaccines should be administered singly and well spaced between innoculations and not given to infants.

You say they “believe” as if you’re talking about belief in God. You don’t believe in scientific facts, you do studies and find out what’s true.

I think this attitude is part of the current climate of anti-intellectualism in America.

Under our “For Profit” Health Care System, there is more money to be made from an autistic child, than from a healthy child.

Yeah, Able Danger man!

I hope that I did not appear to be hostile. I am not but I do worry about the children who are not vaccinated. I had a very good friend who got polio and walked on 2 canes the rest of her life. I also have seen children who had hearing loss due to measles. Both sides should be looked at carefully and decisions made based on what is good for the child. I don’t like opinions coming from one or two sources who really can’t prove what they are saying.

I may be a devil’s advocate, ok?

I don’t have certainty, indeed, I am suspicious of excessive certainty.

almost all major social institutions in this country are experiencing a legitimacy crisis, imho, and usually they deserve it.

FDL has no trouble calling into question the legitimacy of official denials from the USDOJ, or what have you.

If you beleived the statements from the National Assosciation of Realtors, you would never have seen the housing bubble coming, and ending.

the medical/pharmaceutical/insurance industry, let us hypothesize, is also capable of massaging studies to protect themselves.

since I accept this hypothesis, I cannot just swallow their assurances.

As mentioned above many people who develop hepatitis B have no appreciable risk factors. However, once a person has contracted hepatitis B there is a definite risk of chronic active infection. This is as high as 50 % in some patient populations. How do you know that your kids won’t develop an autoimmune disease which vastly increases the risk of chronic active hepatitis, both B and C, and reduces the effectiveness of the vaccine. Or be involved in an accident requiring splenectomy? Ditto.

Chronic active hepatitis causes progressive scarring at best and hepatic failure at worst. The incidence of heptocellular carcinoma is cumulative in chronic active disease and increase 10% yearly.

Why risk it?

I must say I am disappointed at the hostile tone, the one-sided approach, and the total lack of compassion of this post.

david,

i love PW, but i’m with you on the above. although i come done on side of the benefits to vaccination as a public health matter. i’d like to start from a place of compassion for all children and that recognizes the concern, love and special insight parents have with regards to the health matters of their children.

one must only consider the history of lyme disease to know that there have been times when the medical/scientific community told a bunch of parent they were nuts – only to have it proven the parents were right and the doctors were wrong.

is it too late to take a deep breath and start this conversation over again?

Sorry to be OT but just saw a fantastic program, “The Power of Song”, on American Masters chronocling the life of Pete Seeger. A must see for any true patriot.

You say they “believe” as if you’re talking about belief in God. You don’t believe in scientific facts, you do studies and find out what’s true.

I think this attitude is part of the current climate of anti-intellectualism in America.

RF– Don’t interpret “believe” as such a literal religious term. DavidO’s reference to physicians who advocate spacing of vaccinations is based on science regarding the level of neurotoxins an infant’s body can handle.

DavidO, my heartfelt sympathy for what you go through on a daily basis. Autism is one of the most difficult conditions around, because the victim has normal intelligence but the inability to communicate. It must be awful for your child and for you. I hope that soon the experts will be able to figure out this situation. It is most frustrating.

Can you address the first part of the DavidO post @ 125?
Hopefully without being condescending?
Thanks.

Ditto.

PW, I also agree with necessity of vaccinations. But yes, your piece is highly inflammatory. How about a thoughtful approach?

My thoughts:

Vaccines, like almost anything else that goes into your body, have risks associated with them. The point of a vaccine is to sensitize the immune system to a particular virus or bacterium. Any time the immune system is activated, there is always a chance of things going haywire. So rare cases of unusual side effects, usually caused by autoimmune reactions, are going to occur in a small number of individuals who get any vaccine. For this reason, the decision to give a vaccine is going to involve a risk/benefit calculation. For all of the common vaccines (most of the ones discussed here), the benefits are widely believed to outweigh the risks, so we recommend that everyone receive them. For others (smallpox vaccine is the best example), the risks usually outweigh the benefits, so most people aren’t given the vaccine.

I think that parents who decide not to have their children immunized are making a bad decision, but I think that they are within their rights as parents to make that decision. The flip side of this is that, as a pediatrician, I think that I have the right to tell parents who do not vaccinate their children that they are risking their children’s lives, and that they need a find another pediatrician.

As for the topic we’re discussing, I do not think that vaccines are common cause of autism. However, I do think that, in VERY rare cases, they may trigger an autoimmune reaction that results in neurologic damage. So I would be quite hesitant to say that vaccines NEVER cause autism.

Finally, the advances that are being made in genetics these days are quite remarkable, and we can very often identify genetic causes of autism that were unknown just a few years ago. If your child has an autistic spectrum disorder, a genetics evaluation is definitely warranted, and if you haven’t seen your geneticist in the past few years, a re-visit is in order.

Frank J Probst, MD, PhD
Board Certified in Pediatrics and Clinical Genetics

There’s anti-intellectualism for sure, but there are also scientific studies that parse and interpret in such a limited way, it’s hard to know how well ‘these are safe for all children’ is true.

Lack of trust isn’t just due to ignorance. The purpose of many studies is to prep products for market. Not all of them are publicly funded and even those that are may not be designed to fully answer the ’safety’ questions in the real world — just those variables identified as important by the medical industry.

Apparently this site is not taking my link to the comparative research. But suffice it to say the original study claiming a link was retracted by 11 of the 13 co-authors. Only the Senior author who drew the conclusions has reatined them. Another paper, that appeared to support a link by MMR to gastric distress was also retracted. There are over 20 other studies that demonstrate that various claims made in the original study are erroneous or unsupported by further evidence.

Science is always a work-in-progress, and there may be some future research that does, in part support either the thimesorol thesis (or some other effects of the PAST use of mercury in vaccines other than autism). But at this point the Scientific evidence is counter to the claim of a relationship.

I don’t think anyone is “putting down” parents who have children with autism and their struggles to find causation. But just as someone who has undergone a horrific rape or murder of a family member would not solve the problem by accusing the wrong culprit, by attacking vaccines when other causes are out there seems to be actually deferring the finding of the “guilty party”. It delays the finding of cures and treatments and puts others at a serious health risk.

I still have tears in my eyes. Pete Seegers music has touched my life. I saw him in Chicago with the armed guards watching him. I was 18 and the whole huge audience sang and I was moved.
I couldnt help but think that this Obama thing has some of the same elements. Could somehow, with our help,could our nation be healed?
Still an old hopeful hippie.

David O says.. Autism strikes 1 in 150 children in this country. At the height of the polio epidemic, I have read, it was 1 in 600.

Is this an anomaly, there seems to be an increase across the board in diagnoses of Childhood behavioral/neurological disorders, and an increase in the rate autism is diagnosed, I have not read all the links, I am not that fast but it seems to me something is going on, there is a reason for this.

Don’t flame me if there is some info I have not seen yet, it is just on the ground where the rubber meets the road something is not quite right.

selise, I don’t think PW has in any way tried to tell people who don’t vaccinate their children as being stupid. She is pointing out the healthy gains of vaccination with sound research.

what you say would be true if all the necessary studies had already been done.

the problem people face is that there isn’t such certainty – certainly not at the level of assurance parents naturally want to have for their children. and it can be hard to discern was is real certainty and what sometimes seems like a doctor pontificating from on high like we should just take their word as fact.

i think david’s comments deserve some respect and thoughtful engagement – that is if you are truely interested in being persuasive and not just trying to score points of off him in some debate competition.

This is awful.

Kiddo has gone to bed. Good evening.
Lahoma.

Autism group demands apology from CBS

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/200…..sm_protest

Nice Selise,

I’ve read tons of studies. I’m an atheist and am not inclined to take anything on faith. I used the word “believe” in the layman’s sense of taking the best information I can find and giving weight to people who have invested many years of their lives studying these issues and who seem credible to me. I don’t know what the hell you do or how much you think you know about the causes of autism. It seemed like a fairly reasonable position to me. Like others here my kids got all the shots the physicians were recommending. My son is 17, he is not autistic. My autisic daughter is 9. When I compared their shot records, she got about twice as many as he did. Since she was born in 1998, thimerisol was used in all her vaccines, presumably.

PW, thanks for this great post.

I’m new to the thread, but I am grateful you are discussing this.

Though the Lancet paper persuaded me when I first heard of it (mercury = brain damage. a no brainer, right?) the numerous studies you and others cite failing to find significant correlations between thimoseral and autism convince me there is no causal link.

I suspect most American parents declining vaccines have seen far more kids with autism than they have seen kids with permanent effects from polio, measles, mumps, and rubella.

So I understand why, subjectively, they’d avoid anything with mercury – even though the rational calculation is to accept the risks of vaccination over the risks of catastrophic disease.

I’d love to see people start to make rational health decisions, but I’m – well – afraid that so long as vaccines contain mercury, the preventable plagues won’t go away.

One structural problem in addressing all his is literally how to address all this: how to succintly talk about biology and statistics when people are scared? Explaining the difference between causality and epiphenomona just come across as sophistry.

Good on ‘ya, PW.

But people who post can’t write if they have to censor every word. This is led to a very good discussion, I think.

a growing number of parents, particularly in Britain and California, are falling under the spell of the anti-vaccination cultists

this is what i as referring to.

the risks usually outweigh the benefits

Thank you for saying that.
But,

if you haven’t seen your geneticist in the past few years, a re-visit is in order

I had no idea.
Geneticist?
OMG, I have a hard time visiting my dentist very often.

Loo, no PW does not explictly state they are “stupid”. She states they are deluded and implies they are ignorant.

The anti-vaccinators claim that medical professionals who support vaccination are deluded or lying — yet they themselves not only routinely engage in lies and deceit, their entire campaign is based on a debunked paper created under the dodgiest of circumstances.

Why is all of this happening? Because a growing number of parents, particularly in Britain and California, are falling under the spell of the anti-vaccination cultists

and

Parents who fall for this don’t get their kids vaccinated

Where are all the 30 and 40 year old autistic people who were diagnosed as “something else?” Did you go to school with them?

*Raises hand*

I am one of them. Both my son and I have been diagnosed with HFA, in my son’s case it’s Asperger’s Syndrome. When I was in school, the teachers considered me “lazy” or a “daydreamer”. My 2nd grade teacher even blamed it on me being left handed! They never even considered that it was the way I was wired. It was so hard for them to understand how I was able to take tests so well when I (according to the standards of the day) didn’t listen in class and without doing the homework.

I didn’t know much about autism until I went to a psychiatrist to discuss my son’s behavior issues. In discussing his case, the doctor started asking me questions about my history. It turns out that I didn’t understand just how different I was as a kid until I discussed it with both the doctor and my mom. There just wasn’t a name for it back then.

I was in the cohort who were first protected from polio by vaccination, so I knew a number of kids just older than me who had survived polio, and knew of several children who didn’t. I am frequently surprised at use of the statistical fallacy of “I survived, so you will, too.” If 50% of a population survives, all interviews will be with only that part of the sample space. Not a very accurate predictive tool.

Certainty — words like “always” and “never” — is rarely appropriate when discussing cutting-edge scientific research. But when a parent is sitting across the exam room with a child on his or her knee, a vaccine is an either/or choice. IMHO, your tone and your careful words and counsel here are likely greatly appreciated by your patients and their families when you speak with them in your office.

Well said, Doctor (and thanks for including your own credentials).

The most current 14 state study from the CDC pegs the incidence of autism or closely related disorders at 1/150. One of the problems for incidence accuracy has been that different medical groups have different classification critieria for some of the “related disorders.”

1 in 150 Children in U.S. Has Autism, New Survey Finds

The CDC uses the classification ASDs (Autism Spectrum Disorders) as does much of the literature.

CDC Autism Info Center

CDC Autism Activity Fact Sheet

I guess I just don’t share many people’s faith in the AMA version of health care. And it seems to me that in the end that is all we have…faith. For every study there is another study contradicting the results.
No one enjoys being sick and having a sick child is extremely stressful. But there is a risk in the vaccines, just as there is a risk in non-vaccine.
When choosing to not do vaccines I realized I would have to be extremely vigilant in the symptoms of sickness my children were presenting and act swiftly.
We’re a homeschool family which allowed us the luxury of keeping sick children isolated.
We also refused antibiotics as the first option for ear infections and other problems, choosing homeopathic alternatives. Which actually helped.
There is no reason to fear illness so much that we blind ourselves to letting nature take it’s course. And, unfortunately, many of those studies are not necessarily done with a non-agenda. Who financed the research, and what was their desired outcome?
I’m reminded of the Australian doctor who discovered stomach ulcers were caused by bacteria. I watched the AMA put him through hell when his reports first came out.

I tried to catch up, but it CAN NOT BE DONE! So here I am, jumping in at the shallow end of the gene pool.

Did I miss much?

I suspect most American parents declining vaccines have seen far more kids with autism than they have seen kids with permanent effects from polio, measles, mumps, and rubella.

The medical literature (pediatric, ID, epidemiology) overwhelmingly confirms this, but the plethora of mercury info in circulation does spook parents.

I’ll try to have you some links on junkets later or tomorrow–I’m building some shelves.

DavidO, I’m sympathetic to you; I have a daughter with Asperger’s, though thanks to lots of support and various kinds of therapy she’s doing very well. In the process of dealing with her issues, I’ve met tons of parents dealing with kids who are somewhere on the autism spectrum. Some of them are just “bright but clueless”, some are severely impaired, but it’s hard.

Certainly it seems like mercury in vaccines could be harmful, and you want to find something to blame. But you’ve got a problem: they stopped using mercury in vaccines almost entirely some years ago, and the autism rate did not go down. Not. At. All.

So that theory has been refuted. But now, some activists have decided that all vaccines are to blame. If those activists succeed in convincing a significant fraction of the public, then thousands of children may well die. We have a globalized economy, with people living in regions where some very bad diseases are still active flying back and forth to the US.

Sorry, but we can’t just sit back and let children die because having some answer you (generic you, not DavidO in particular) can hang on to helps you feel better.

The anti-vaccination promoters, who got their start in the UK in 1998

c’mon, PW, what about the dedicated wackos and kooks of the John Birch Society – who were convinced vaccination, and fluoridation were all a Communist plot?

they are very useful to slur anyone who questions medical/govt denials and assurances, why leave them out?

It sounds like you don’t realize the difference between scientific studies and the anecdotal evidence you gave about your daughter having more vaccinations than your son. Scientists study a large sample of people and analyze the studies with statistics. They can estimate mathematically how confident they can be in the results. They have been doing studies of this issue for many years and the overwhelming majority of the researchers involved have concluded that vaccines do not cause autism.

It’s frustrating to keep going over stuff like this. It’s basic science that should be taught in high school.

I’m reminded of the Australian doctor who discovered stomach ulcers were caused by bacteria. I watched the AMA put him through hell when his reports first came out.

He was initially ignored. Then he was sneered at. That was back in the 1980s. In 2005, he won the Nobel prize in medicine.

RF–apparently your high school did not teach you the basic ABC’s of compassionate social intercourse.

Geneticist?
OMG, I have a hard time visiting my dentist very often.

If you have a child with autism, you really should try to find the time. And remember to brush and floss your teeth after each meal. ;)

Pete: Thanks. I did find a mention of the number of deaths related to deliberate non-vaccination, but I can’t find it right now.

I did find this useful general-info site on vaccination, as well as this site that explains the concept of “community immunity“:

Unimmunized persons are protected—indirectly—against some infectious diseases by being surrounded by immunized persons. This is known as community (or “herd”) immunity. (1)

For example, someone who has never had chickenpox or chickenpox vaccine is said to be susceptible to chickenpox. That means the person can become infected and develop the disease along with its potential complications. However, if everyone in proximity to the susceptible is immune to chickenpox (either by vaccination or prior infection), and so incapable of transmitting the infection to others, the chickenpox virus will be blocked from reaching the susceptible.

This is an especially important way to protect immunosuppressed children such as those being treated for leukemia. Children with leukemia usually cannot be immunized against chickenpox because both the vaccine virus and the wild type virus can cause severe—sometimes fatal—infection because of the child’s weakened immune system. But they can be protected if others around them are immunized.

Another example of indirect protection is the diphtheria vaccine. This vaccine protects against the worst forms of diphtheria illness; it also reduces the likelihood of becoming infected and spreading infection. Thus this is also a form of community immunity.

Community immunity only applies to diseases transmitted from person to person, such as measles, smallpox, rubella, and chickenpox, among others. Tetanus on the other hand is not spread from person to person but acquired from the environment, so there can be no community immunity—only the immunized person is protected.

Community immunity can only be achieved when the vast majority of the population is immune. In other words, a population needs high immunization rates to reap the benefits of community immunity.

Unvaccinated children are not only at greater risk of catching vaccine-preventable diseases but they can affect community immunity. (2) For instance, various studies have looked at the health consequences of exemptions from immunization laws. These studies have found that individuals claiming religious and/or philosophical exemptions from immunization (exemptors) are at a greater risk of contracting the diseases and thus put the rest of the population at risk by spreading infection.

For some diseases, such as measles, a population needs more than 94% immunity to achieve community immunity—or else the disease could spread in the susceptible population. This percentage is known as the community immunity threshold and it varies for each vaccine-preventable disease.

Reaching the thresholds for these diseases is important for the public health because no vaccine is 100% effective. For instance, measles vaccine protects 95% of those immunized; the other 5% are protected by the others being immune. One reason why a second dose of the measles vaccine is recommended is because it takes more than 94% of the population being immune to measles to get community immunity. In the end, only community immunity provides full protection for everyone.

It is important to understand that when a vaccine fails (which happens 5% of the time for measles), the chances of being infected are reduced if everyone nearby has also received that particular vaccine. In other words, people in whom the vaccine fails can still be protected by the immunity of those around them.

in thinking about this issue a bit more….. i hope someone will correct me if i’m wrong on this, but my memory is that the “arguments” against thimerosol being linked to autism came early on (from pharma and public health officials) – before the data was available to really make that conclusion.

do i have that sequence correct?

because if my memory is correct, then that could also help explain why parents might rationally continue to reject the arguments now.

I’m also quite sceptical of industry and power.

That’s why the Scandanavian health record studies are so definitive for me. These records were on paper (until recently) and kept track of all sorts of data with thorough impatiality.

That’s why studies like the Danish study cited above are so persuasive.

Whateve else officialdom may be tweaking, I don’t think it’s tweaking the health records of Danish kids over the past many years.

There’s a problem with statistics like this.

Asperger’s is considered part of the autism spectrum, but milder forms of it are, I think, just part of the human condition and actually help in many professions. My daughter has been diagnosed with Asperger’s, and I think I would have been too by modern standards (I’m 50). I think that Bill Gates probably is an Aspie, he has so many of the symptoms.

Asperger’s kids are often social outcasts, monomaniacally focused on specific interests (often involving something like science, or computers, or something else not requiring much intuition about the behavior of other people), very bright, but clueless about human relationships. Sounds like about half the computer programmers I know. But it used to be that people were only diagnosed if they didn’t talk and banged their heads on the furniture.

Please email me. I have questions. I am a left handed dreamer who never did well in school until I got into college. I still have “issues”. mary at dahothouse dot com. thanks.

All my children were vaccinated No one thought anything about it. What happened between the 60’s and now. I remember the children in Exeter NH where I grew up getting polio, one hot summer. We were all scared and not allowed to swim.

herd immunity was what i was referring to in my 127.

Somewhere, I have been told, there are Scandinanvian studies that DO link cancer to cell phones…

corrected JoeBuck

Certainly it seems like mercury in vaccines could be harmful, and you want to find something to blame. But you’ve got a problem: they stoppedgradually phased out using mercury in vaccines almost entirely some years agoin 1999 and 2000, and the autism rate did not go down. Not. At. All.

those periods after every word, they are even more authoritative and convincing than TYPING IN ALL CAPS.

actually, thimerosol is still present in some vaccines – see
http://www.vaccinesafety.edu/thi-table.htm

from the high-status Institute for Vaccine Safety
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

so, since the first kids to really go through the schedule of reduced mercury vaccination are only 7-9 now maybe allow time for some more studies before we can boast of total certainty.

There is no reason to fear illness so much that we blind ourselves to letting nature take it’s course. And, unfortunately, many of those studies are not necessarily done with a non-agenda. Who financed the research, and what was their desired outcome?

As someone who grew up having opted out of standard medical treatment (because of religious belief) in the 60s and 70s when alternative / complementary treatment options were rare, I can attest to that. As I stated previously, though, we did all get those childhood illnesses that our classmates with the vaccines didn’t get. Will nationalizing medical care give us better studies because there is a larger public stake in the outcome or fewer studies because there is less profit? Will alternative treatments be more or less acceptable in this environment?

Wow! Honored to have your take on this, Frank.

No autism, but ADD. Possible link to parent.
Brushing and flossing: duh!

They tried. :-)

I think this issue is important. I see this is a manifestation of the prevalence of anti-intellectualism in America, especially anti-science attitudes. On the one hand I don’t want to sound angry or arrogant, but on the other hand it’s hard to constantly argue against the silliness like “Hey man, they didn’t believe in plate tectonics at first man!”

But I’m actually very compassionate.

Asperger’s kids are often social outcasts, monomaniacally focused on specific interests (often involving something like science, or computers, or something else not requiring much intuition about the behavior of other people), very bright, but clueless about human relationships.

Joe,
Don’t ya just love how psychiatry labels who is and who is not a “disorder”? Where would the world be without these gifts?

Certainty — words like “always” and “never” — is rarely appropriate when discussing cutting-edge scientific research. But when a parent is sitting across the exam room with a child on his or her knee, a vaccine is an either/or choice. IMHO, your tone and your careful words and counsel here are likely greatly appreciated by your patients and their families when you speak with them in your office.

Well said, Doctor (and thanks for including your own credentials).

Thanks! It is, after all, what I get paid for.

I understand your point about how a parent’s decision to vaccine is an either/or choice. One of the things that hasn’t been mentioned yet is that any time we give a vaccine in this day and age, we give the parent (or the patient, if it’s an adult) a “Vaccine Information Statement”. You can see them all here: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/vis/default.htm

If you want to see what a really bad vaccine looks like, click on the smallpox link.

Please accept my sympathy, although I know that’s not much, for a parent dealing with an autistic child. I’m not going to pretend I know what it’s like.

There’s no doubt that the incidence of autism spectrum disorders has increased. There’s also no doubt that the diagnostic criteria for autism and its associated disorders have evolved. Does one account for the other? No one really seems to know, but just because the diagnosis of autism wasn’t as common years ago, doesn’t mean it wasn’t around.

Focusing on things that probably do not cause autism distracts from finding and trying to treat actual causes. Just as cerebral palsy is probably mostly genetic and developmental and not due to birth injuries so too may be autism. Also there are new approaches and interventions for autistic children which I’m sure you’re taking advantage of. I do believe that like many developmental diseases autism is amenable to treatment, and even cure. It just requires more research and perhaps new thinking, which surely as a nation we can do if we wish to do so.

It is people that think far out of the box that make life worth living. They are the gift to us all.

I’m also quite sceptical of industry and power.

That’s why the Scandanavian health record studies are so definitive for me. These records were on paper (until recently) and kept track of all sorts of data with thorough impatiality.

That’s why studies like the Danish study cited above are so persuasive.

Whateve else officialdom may be tweaking, I don’t think it’s tweaking the health records of Danish kids over the past many years.

respect – that is good commenting and civil point/counterpoint.

I’ve heard of those studies, too, and they are probably the high water mark of credibility.

OMG, Snowbird, you must be just a bit older than me. I was in high school, and watched you college students with total and absolute respect. Thanks so much for what you did for America. I can only hope and believe that Obama will have that same effect. GOOD FOR YOU SNOWBIRD!!

http://xkcd.com/386/

Thanks, SuburbanGrrrl! I’m a software engineer and science geek.

it’s not anti-scientific to refuse to believe something just because one is told to believe it. imo, it’s not about “believing” stuff because a scientist says it’s true. science is a way to try to understand the world and anyone can do it.

Replying to Frank Probst

Wow. I wish you’d taught in my medical school. None of our faculty could come close to writing so well.

You rawk.

Replying to PetePierce @ 166

No hurry, Pete – good luck with the shelves!

(and I apologize I was too sleepy last night to thank you for your kingd oobservation. so thank you!)

hustle over to store.xkcd.com and check out the t-shirt
“Science. It works bitches”

they say you cant remember pain,i remember one of the most painful weeks of my life,was when i had mups as a 5 yr old,get the vaccine

I’m reminded of the Australian doctor who discovered stomach ulcers were caused by bacteria. I watched the AMA put him through hell when his reports first came out.

I have a few books(some of my favorites) on important/crucial medical discoveries over the years where the person or persons making the discovery were given a very rocky road by the establishment before their discoveries were accepted or confirmed.

I have one dealing with the history of penicillin which was discovered many years before it was clinically used. What got penicillin onto the market was WWII. More soldiers died of pneumococcal pneumonia or S. Pneumonia then died from war injuries from bullets or other trauman. Then shortly after it got into wide use, it was so overused that we quickly got staph resistance.

I’m not so sure though it was the “AMA” who was resisting H. Pylori as an adjunct eitioloic agent to PUD though, but there were a lot of doctors who mocked the thesis early on.

I’d have to review the path of H. Pylori from discovery to accepatance of triple therapy for PUD to remember who were the main groups who resisted it.

The AMA has been scape-goated for many years before I went to med school as a symbol or metaphor for mistakes by the medical establishment, but most of what I’ve seen of them once I knew a little about medicine has been pretty positive.

I’m sure there might be a variety of political stances, or things people feel they should have done (I don’t have time to follow all of them) that might not be accepted by everyone.

Mary, you’re my fave out-of-the-box thinker!

g’evening ya’ll

No, science isn’t about believing what you’re told to believe, and I didn’t say it was. I’m saying that science education should prepare people to look at some studies on the internet and reach an intelligent conclusion, instead of falling for anecdotal evidence.

Mercury into the environment? Coal fired power plants put 40-50 tons per year into the air in the US.

SUZ!!!

LOL! Cool t-shirt!

have you seriously done that on this topic?

one of my favorite places on the net

nite all

i miss my pa,he passed several years ago…pathologist,scientist,healer,and humanitarian…they broke the mold after him

Actually, I’m not sure the AMA was the first to jump on him and call him a fool. It may have been the Brits.

Semmelweis.

I haven’t read a ton of literature on Asperger’s, but literature and awareness is increasing. My impression of it and a number of ‘autism related diseases’ is that there is probably a spectrum from milder forms to more severe forms.

It’s hard for me to generalize though that geeks or any other group have a high cohort of Asperger’s people in them.

From what I know about Bill Gates and what I’ve seen of some people who have been Dx’d with Asperger’s, I’d never diagnose Gates as having Asperger’s syndrome though.

OMG. You’ve partly answered a question I have always had. Is autism so new? Is it more pronounced than before?

g’nite mack, sweet dreams.

See my comment @96

(((sadlyyes)))

DavidO: People can have both autism and mental retardation (in fact, it’s fairly common: See below), just as people can be both mentally retarded and have other mental issues.

As for the diagnosis of autism, and how it could be mistaken for (and often is found in conjunction with) mental retardation, see here:

Question 1: Is there a universally accepted definition of autism? Is there sufficient scientific evidence to support this current definition of autism spectrum disorders as separate from other developmental disorders? For the first time, there are consistent criteria for diagnosis of autism spectrum disorders in both DSM-IV (American Psychiatric Association, 1994) and ICD-10 (International Classification of Diseases, 10th ed., World Health Organization, 1993). The working group agreed that there is both national and international support for these newly published definitions. The precision of these definitions will continue to evolve as new research clarifies the phenotype (visible characteristics of autism). Identification of one or more biological markers for autism disorders is needed to diagnose definitely atypical cases. Strong empirical support in the DSM-IV international Field Trials and other NIH-funded research, however, indicates that the clinical diagnosis of autism remains one of the most reliable diagnoses in psychiatric or developmental research. Additional research is needed to establish the validity of the diagnosis in terms of criteria based on etiology, course, and response to treatment.

[…]

Question 3: What other disorders that occur as separate disorders in conjunction with autism (comorbid conditions) must be taken into account in the diagnosis and assessment of autism, Asperger syndrome, Rett syndrome, and childhood disintegrative disorder? Most, but not all persons with A also have some degree of mental retardation. There is now a very clear expectation in behavioral research that degree of mental retardation and severity of language deficit must be considered in designing and interpreting studies of the autism spectrum disorders. These co-occurring factors (mental retardation and degree of language deficit) have received less consideration in biomedical research. Lack of control for mental retardation and language deficits may be one reason why the replication rate of findings (i.e., multiple investigators obtaining the same findings) within biomedical research has typically been much lower than within behavioral research. The importance of diagnosis of comorbid (co-occurring) conditions such as affective disorder (e.g., depression) or obsessive-compulsive disorder, particularly in adults with autism spectrum disorders is also recognized, but standard procedures to do so are not well established. These await further research. It is particularly important to clarify the difference between true comorbidity and other ways in which symptoms from autism and different disorders may overlap.

He was initially ignored. Then he was sneered at. That was back in the 1980s. In 2005, he won the Nobel prize in medicine.
reply

But that’s because he was demonstrably right in his asssertion, as we understand the term, and not because that is the reward of those whom the AMA mocks.

I haven’t followed the recent controversy, not having young children, but I too was born on what we could call the Salk line. That means that I was just old enough for the first disseminations of the vaccine, which was not given to infants, and I knew some children as I was growing up who did get polio but made varying degrees of recovery; a couple lived chair-bound. I’ve made the acquaintence of other polio survivors over the years, from all over the country. I might know more of them than I know children of friends who suffer autism.

I myself had chicken pox, mumps, and measles by my 7th year. (Rubella, mercifully held off for a few more years.) I don’t remember the former too clearly, just that I was pretty miserable for some reason or other and always had to go to the doctor, it seemed. The measles case, which as I was somewhat older I remember all too well, was quite severe. I also remember some uncertainty about my hearing and sight. Neither was permanently affected, but I think my parents could have done without those few weeks of anxiety. I know I could have.

I would urge parents to consider this side of the matter before deciding not to immunize their children. My history, so far from being exceptional, was typical of children in my cohort, repeated millions of times throughout the country and world. I wonder how the experience in the population of delayed aftereffects traceable to these “childhood diseases” compares to the incidence of autism from any and all causes?

Asperger’s kids are often social outcasts, monomaniacally focused on specific interests (often involving something like science, or computers, or something else not requiring much intuition about the behavior of other people), very bright, but clueless about human relationships.

Some cases, like that of my son, it extends to an inability to “parse” communicative emotions. In testing, at age 8 my son was able to tell the emotions on a “smiley face”, like the ones used on the 1-10 pain scale in Dr’s offices, but when shown photos of faces showing emotion, or listening to a voice expressing emotion, he had trouble identifying the emotions.

The “social outcast” aspect often comes from being incapable of determining when sarcasm or irony is intended, making us seem gullible or naive to those who process these signals correctly.

Email sent.

I am not a scientist, but I do think I understand the basic issues in the studies I have seen. I understand correlation does not equal causation. The studies I have seen, specifically the one headlined by Dr. Verstraeten in 2002, did show correlation. I never said it was proven that thimerisol caused autism. I also never said I was anti-vaccine. Did you catch that? I make mistakes. I reach wrong conclusions. My main point was that throughout the ’90s our children were probably over-vaccinated and their may well be a more rational approach between “anti-vaccination cultists” and accepting uncritically everything that comes down the pike from the AMA or the CDC.

Thankyou!

he always had time to answer ANYBODYs questions….and prolly 30 % of his patients that couldnt pay …didnt have to….kewl guy…but he loved him some Nixon …go figur

Thank you, PW, for opening the door on this fascinating discussion.

I’m a fan of the revived CBS show “Jerico”–it reminds me of the Bush government we have now. They’re using hurd immunity (community immunity) to protect against the deadly virus that’s sweeping the U.S. or what used to be the U.S. on the show.

JoeBuck: This is a big reason why autism is such an emotional minefield. It’s only been since the early 1990s that the DSM-IV and ICD-10 have had consistent criteria for diagnosing it. This, not coincidentally, is around the time that the “autism epidemic” is held to have commenced. (Of course, the fact that autism and mental retardation are commonly found together makes things even more fraught.)

Oh. Well you did say “My son is 17, he is not autistic. My autisic daughter is 9. When I compared their shot records, she got about twice as many as he did. Since she was born in 1998, thimerisol was used in all her vaccines, presumably.”

So it did sound like you were using anecdotal evidence to refute scientific research. That’s what I thought you were saying.

With a sense of humor too as it were. :-) g’night.

Unfortunately, most non-specialists do not rely on DSV-IV criteria to make diagnoses, so I’d be careful relying on this. “Autism” means different things to different people, and that’s lead to a lot of confusion in the field. “Autism” is often used interchangably with “mental retardation”, even though though they are (as you’ve pointed out) two different but overlapping entities.

So am I! Can’t believe the show was brought back due to the fans! Such a good show, too. Shows what can happen when, well, it’s kinda the ultimate shock doctrine. Scary. Keeps me on the edge of my seat. Sure hope it stays around.

One of the books dearest to my heart is Temple Grandin’s ” Animals in Translation “. I’m sure you’ve probably heard of her. An incredible woman who used the unique gifts her autism gave her to translate animal communication/behavior. She could see the world in a way that people without autism were completely clueless to.
With her insight our whole slaughter house system was revamped. Because she worked so hard to communicate to “normal” people her knowledge, I was able to transform my relationship with my problem horse and understand the subtle communication he was giving me.

‘night.

ProstrateDragon: I was lucky — I was born on the right side of the Salk line, but before the antivaccination epidemic; plus, both my parents worked in professions that required them to work with doctors on a daily basis. I had all my shots well before I left school.

Agreed.

My boss at Mass General was one of the only defenders of the early research into how prions multiplied. It was viewed as highly improbable in the beginning phases of the research.

[So called mad-cow disease]

That’s exactly the problem.

There’s a new post up, but I want to comment a little bit about thimerosal. While no causative link has been established between thimerosal and autism, it does not seem like a terribly bright idea to inject a mercury-containing compound into infants (or anyone else, for that matter). Again, there’s a risk/benefit argument to be made–thimerosal lets you make safer multi-use vaccine vials, which lowers the cost of the vaccine. In first-world countries that can afford single-use vials, it’s probably not worth it. On the other hand, in third-world countries, where multi-use vials are necessary to keep costs down, refrigeration of vials is difficult if not impossible, and the risk of infectious disease is much higher, it’s probably worth the trade.

The debate over thimerosal reminds me a bit about the debate over taking lead out of gasoline several decades ago. There were nay-sayers at the time, but almost everyone now agrees that it was a good idea.

Yup. Or, as Carl Sagan famously said:

“They laughed at Galileo. They laughed at Newton. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.”

That’s exactly the problem.

I think we’re having a heated agreement here. :)

For anyone wanting to read great books on major medical discoveries–accidental and many resisted by the establishment for years or some that had a long road but were very critical–here’s my list of faves:

Dr. Folkman’s War: Angiogenisis and the Struggle to Defeat Cancer by Robert Cooke

The Human Blueprint: The Race to Unlock the Secrets of Our Genetic Script by Robert Shapiro

Serendipidy: Accidental Discoveries in Science by Royston Roberts

Sentinel For Health: The History of the CDC by Elizabeth Etheridge

Guinea Pig Doctors: The Drama of Medical Research by Self-Experimentation by Jon Franklin and Jon Sutherland, M.D.

Who Goes First: The Story of Self-Experimentation by Lawrence K. Altman, M.D.

Medical Odysseys: The Different and Sopmetimes Unexpected Pathways to Twentieth-Century Medical Discoveries by Allen B. Weisse, M.D.

Phoenix Woman!

Excellent post!

FrankProbst:

There is a difference between a pure element and an element that’s part of a compound; the properties of one aren’t always the same as the properties of the other. As I mentioned earlier, both sodium and chlorine are by themselves deadly and dangerous poisons, yet when combined as sodium chloride, or common table salt, they form one of the key building blocks of life.

I meant to add:

The Mould in Dr. Florey’s Coat: How Penicillin Began the Age of Miracle Cures by Eric Lax

and

Penicillin Man: Alexander Fleming and the Antibiotic Revolution by Kevin Brown

so, is there any such thing as a compound that is dangerous, despite your compelling observation that NaCl is safe?

There is a difference between a pure element and an element that’s part of a compound; the properties of one aren’t always the same as the properties of the other. As I mentioned earlier, both sodium and chlorine are by themselves deadly and dangerous poisons, yet when combined as sodium chloride, or common table salt, they form one of the key building blocks of life.

Yes, but I think heavy-metal compounds are in a somewhat different category, and they’re rarely “harmless”. Keep in mind that the reason thimerosal is used in the first place is because it’s toxic to bacteria and fungi.

One thing to bear in mind is that in cases where the medical establishment fought against what would turn out to be the correct understanding or treatment of a disease, this was a disease about which very little was often known; as our knowledge advances, the likelihood of this happening, much less being sustained for very long, decreases.

Polio is the classic example of this; the disease had been known for millenia — Egyptian pharaohs were known to have suffered from it — but it was poorly understood, which is how a person like Elizabeth Kenny could beat out most doctors of the day in realizing that persons with polio needed exercise, not inactivity, to avoid permanent paralysis. However, not all doctors rejected her treatments — the Mayo Clinic took to her and between them and the State of Minnesota, she and her daughter Mary were well subsidized and encouraged to do research of and treatments for infantile paralysis.

Doing the either/or logic trap, then?

ethylmercury is not methylmercury (i think there is a big difference in residence time?)- but i hope you’re not trying to say that ethylmercury is non-toxic like table salt? unless you have something to back that up?

I think heavy-metal compounds are in a somewhat different category, and they’re rarely “harmless”. Keep in mind that the reason thimerosal is used in the first place is because it’s toxic to bacteria and fungi.

exactly.

Sporkovat: If thimerosal caused autism, why then have autism diagnoses not dropped in the years since it was pulled from use?

I understood her to be simply saying that the characteristics/properties of elements were different from those of compounds.

when are you considering “the years since it was pulled from use” ?

i think it could easily be misunderstood. methymercury is a compound too – and, i think, very toxic.

i’m counting on the md.s here to correct me if i have that wrong….?

Selise and Sporkovat, what do you think of this report from last month?

Mercury from vaccines seems to disappear rapidly from the blood, returning to pre-vaccination levels in one month, according to a small study of children in Argentina.

The findings bolster the argument that a mercury-based vaccine preservative doesn’t cause autism in children, although it’s unclear from the study whether some mercury may linger elsewhere in the body.

The research addresses an unanswered question about the safety of thimerosal, a preservative that has been eliminated from routine U.S. vaccines, and breaks down as ethyl mercury in the body. It is still used in other countries, including Argentina.

Scientists assumed the health risks from ethyl mercury were similar to methyl mercury from eating fish. And in 1999, the federal government and vaccine manufacturers agreed that thimerosal should be reduced or eliminated in vaccines to lower exposure to mercury from all sources. The decision was based on what was known about methyl mercury exposure.

The new findings suggest that methyl mercury and ethyl mercury are very different and that the removal of thimerosal from vaccines may have been overcautious.

Sporkovat: If thimerosal caused autism, why then have autism diagnoses not dropped in the years since it was pulled from use?

I would be cautious with this argument, too. It’s clear that thimerosal is not the major (or even A major) cause of autism. However, it could very well be a contributing factor to autism in a small number of cases. We don’t know for sure, and we will probably never know, since it’s almost impossible to test scientifically. Still, if you can have a thimerosal-free vaccine for only a small increase in price, it seems reasonable to go with thimerosal-free vaccine.

i’m the one arguing FOR vaccination – just not clobbering people with it.

and if you would read my earlier comment i wrote that ethylmercury is not methylmercury and may have a short residence time.

but you are going to argue that thimerosal is safe – count me out. i’m for the precautionary principle.

OMG. You’ve partly answered a question I have always had. Is autism so new? Is it more pronounced than before?

I think its more of an expansion of the definition of autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) and a clinical acceptance of the links between them. Asperger’s was first described in the 40’s or 50’s, but wasn’t added to the diagnostic manuals until ~10 years ago.

Phoenix Woman
Maybe autism hasn’t dropped because we’re continuing to pump unnatural ingredients into the blood streams of developing human infants. Maybe it’s just not something we should do on a regular basis to avoid a couple weeks of sickness.
It’s a tough call. I’m personally more in favor of a flexible caregiver schedule that allows for sick time. Yeah, it’s a bitch to have a high fever and all that, but why do we think it’s sooooo awful? How can an immune system develope as nature intended without getting sick? Of course, that would require parental sick leave at work and family friendly schools.

Selise, remember — mercury was supposed to cause autism, per Wakefield. It was also thought that the mercury in thimerosal stayed in the body for much longer than what is currently shown by the recent Argentinian study, which is why it was pulled from use nearly a decade ago.

Since autism and MR diagnoses are typically made well before the child turns ten — usually well before the child turns five — the phase-out of mercury-based vaccines should have caused a corresponding drop in diagnoses of autism among young children. It didn’t.

A new study provides more proof that childhood vaccines with mercury as a preservative — no longer on the market — did not cause autism, researchers reported on Monday.

The findings came from a look at children diagnosed with autism in California from 1995 to 2007. It found that the number of autism cases continued to rise through that period even though the preservative thimerosal — nearly half of which is made of ethylmercury — was removed from most vaccines in 2001.

The data “do not show any recent decrease in autism in California despite the exclusion of more than trace levels of thimerosal from nearly all childhood vaccines (and) do not support the hypothesis that that exposure (to it) during childhood is a primary cause of autism,” the study concluded.

Some earlier studies had linked mercury to autism, theorizing that as more and more children were being vaccinated against more health threats, it could explain increases in autism.

But a 2004 report from the U.S. Institute of Medicine said a review of existing studies did not appear to back the mercury-autism theory.

What causes autism remains a mystery. Some experts have said the increased number of cases is due at least in part to more awareness, an expanded definition, education and other factors.

When I was growing up, the kid next door wasn’t sent to school because there was something really wrong with him. Now I wonder if he was autistic. Nice guy, the parents did every loving and kind thing for him.

pw – i’m NOT arguing that thimersol is the cause of autism. i actually don’t think it is. but, i did write that mercury is a neurotoxin and i think it is stupid to inject it into kids if we don’t have to – ie if there is a mercury-free vaccination for comparable cost.

I’d like to thank everyone for their thoughts on this tough subject. I REALLY wish it was simple.
I’d also be interested in knowing if any adults are immunizing themselves to update their vaccinations since some actually have a “shelf” life in our systems.

noted cultist Robert F. Kennedy Jr says:

Other researchers point out that Americans are exposed to a greater cumulative “load” of mercury than ever before, from contaminated fish to dental fillings, and suggest that thimerosal in vaccines may be only part of a much larger problem. It’s a concern that certainly deserves far more attention than it has received — but it overlooks the fact that the mercury concentrations in vaccines dwarf other sources of exposure to our children.

maybe this is why yr statistics on ASD’s do not show a sharp drop-off after the phase-out of thimerosol, but the lack of a sharp drop off in this study you cite does not exonerate mercury toxicity.

Updating vaccinations as an adult — sure. I get the usual Td tetanus diphtheria booster every 10 years, and recently had a pertussis booster since I work in a hospital overseas. A friend of my mother’s actually got sick from pertussis a couple years ago, scary time.

Openhope:

Phoenix Woman
Maybe autism hasn’t dropped because we’re continuing to pump unnatural ingredients into the blood streams of developing human infants. Maybe it’s just not something we should do on a regular basis to avoid a couple weeks of sickness.

The problem is that “A couple of weeks of sickness” is not what measles, polio or even mumps can entail. These diseases can and do kill — even mumps has been known to take lives — and when they don’t kill, they often leave physical and/or mental damage that can be quite severe. (Mumps, for instance, often renders its victims hard of hearing; male victims past the age of puberty are sometimes rendered sterile.)

Prior to 1900, infant mortality rates worldwide typically were between 200 and 300 out of every thousand live births; even in the US, where conditions generally were better for most persons than in much of the rest of the world, 165 out of 1000 infants died before their first birthday. The irony is that the very success of immunization in slashing child-mortality rates has made people forget the horrors of the diseases that immunization prevents. Various public-health measures, of which immunization was one of the most important, contributed 25 of the 30-odd years by which American lifespans have been lengthened since 1900.

Sporkovat: If you want to talk about RFK Jr. and autism, check here to see how RFK Jr. played the “quote-mining” game to make the Institute of Medicine’s report seem to say something that wasn’t what it really said:

Kennedy also claimed in his article that the Institute of Medicine (IOM) had been paid by the CDC to further bury this so-called link, and presented several (un-sourced) quotes to support this claim. The IOM’s president replied that the quotes were taken out of context, and denied that they were part of any cover up. I reported on this, stating that Kennedy should offer evidence (with cites) of the original quotes (in context) and evidence of the “paid cover-up” that he so scandalously alleged. He hasn’t done so, as far as I am aware.

touting the glories of immunization is of topic from the toxicity of mercury.

vaccines work by stimulating the immune system to produce antibodies against the disease causing organisms.

ethylmercury, as we have learned from PheonixWoman is a compound like friendly salt, and not an organism at all.

therefore, ethylmercury does not assist in the production of antibodies, and should not be given credit through sleight of hand for the ” 25 of the 30-odd years by which American lifespans have been lengthened since 1900.”

ANYTHING is toxic if you absorb a large enough dose.

Salt. Oxygen. Water. These ALL have LD(50)s.

And I see you have still not started doing your homework.

you’re mixing public health and private health. and that’s not how most rational people make decisions for their children. i personally think there is a good argument for vaccination – but i don’t think you are making.

do you really think the risks today of avoiding vaccination are what they were when no one was vaccinated? i doubt it…. although i don’t know. remember your post of herd immunity for human transmitted diseases?

also from the Kennedy article

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who has received $873,000 in contributions from the pharmaceutical industry, has been working to immunize vaccine makers from liability in 4,200 lawsuits that have been filed by the parents of injured children. On five separate occasions, Frist has tried to seal all of the government’s vaccine-related documents — including the Simpsonwood transcripts — and shield Eli Lilly, the developer of thimerosal, from subpoenas. In 2002, the day after Frist quietly slipped a rider known as the “Eli Lilly Protection Act” into a homeland security bill, the company contributed $10,000 to his campaign and bought 5,000 copies of his book on bioterrorism. The measure was repealed by Congress in 2003 — but earlier this year, Frist slipped another provision into an anti-terrorism bill that would deny compensation to children suffering from vaccine-related brain disorders.

Bill Frist must be one of PW’s heroes.

thank you. excellent point.

pw – again, i don’t disagree with most of your conclusions. i just think your arguments would not convince me.

i think now you’re being unfair.

a vigorous disputation over at skeptico. quite agitated writing, like yours. from where does all this personal affront arise? who knows. often, someone is wrong on the internet(s).

however, RFK Jr’s article also contained approximately 1292 other statements which were not so strenuously debunked, like:

While the Institute of Medicine was busy whitewashing the risks, the Iowa legislature was carefully combing through all of the available scientific and biological data. “After three years of review, I became convinced there was sufficient credible research to show a link between mercury and the increased incidences in autism,” says state Sen. Ken Veenstra, a Republican who oversaw the investigation. “The fact that Iowa’s 700 percent increase in autism began in the 1990s, right after more and more vaccines were added to the children’s vaccine schedules, is solid evidence alone.” Last year, Iowa became the first state to ban mercury in vaccines, followed by California. Similar bans are now under consideration in thirty-two other states.

or maybe it was 31 and a half other states? Case Closed, Kennedy is a kook!

More on RFK Jr.’s dodgy writings, this time from Majikthise:

The Simpsonwood study is often cited as evidence of a coverup of data supporting the autism/thimerosal hypothesis. In fact, no phase of the study ever found a statistically significant association between autism and vaccine exposure. (At least none of the data discussed at the retreat supported the autism hypothesis, I’ve heard unconfirmed allegations that the CDC has yet more embargoed analysis pointing to such a link.)

Anyway, here is the money shot from Simpsonwood:

From those risk analyses, excluding the dichotomized EPA, we have found statistically significant relationships between exposure and outcome for these different exposures and outcomes. First, for 2 months of age, an unspecified developmental delay which has its own ICD-9 code. Exposure at 3 months of age, tics. Exposure at 6 months of age, attention deficit disorder. Exposure at 1, 3, and 6 months of age, language and speech disorder, which are two separate ICD-9 codes. Exposure at 1, 3, and 6 months of age, the entire category of neurodevelopmental delays, which includes all of these, plus a number of other disorders.–Thomas Verstraeten, Simpsonwood transcript, p 40-41.

The transcript shows that the assembled experts agree that the data are interesting, and that the effects of thimerosal on neurological development deserve further study. However, they are also acutely aware of the severe limitations of the study, especially as a guide to policy making.

The Simpsonwood study could not have established a causal link between thimerosal and ill health. The study is sophisticated accounting of correlations. The original data show that infants who got more vaccines (or got their vaccines “on time”) were also more likely to be diagnosed with certain neurological conditions later in life.

What might this mean? Maybe thimerosal in vaccines caused the problems. The most likely alternative explanation is that conscientious parents who vaccinate their kids on time are also more likely to seek treatment and obtain diagnoses for more subtle neurological symptoms like speech delay and ADHD.

“Since the beginning of March, Imus has been ranting about thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative used to prevent contamination from fungi and bacteria in countless vaccines administered to adults and children since the 1930s.”

Don Imus must be one of sporkovat’s heroes.

aye, selise has already dinged me on that strange bedfellows post.

aye, I slip sometimes. there is a word for such an unjust linkage, like the old “Hitler was a vegetarian” canard.

indeed, Dr. Frist can be used against an “appeal to credentials” argument, like “Dr. Andrew Weil has an M.D. from Harvard Medical School, therefore, eat your dandelions!”

to which my dad says “Bill Frist has an MD from HMS too, so that can’t mean very much!”

ok, its been fun everyone, lets do it again sometime.

I’ll ask for a dash of mercury in my next martini, ethyl, not methyl.

Majikthise sums up:

The bottom line is that all the Simpsonwood data showed was a correlation between number of vaccinations and subsequent language problems and ADD. These correlations may have been caused by confounding variables (like health-seeking behavior) rather than by any aspect of the vaccination. Even if we suppose that vaccination caused the problem, we still have no particular reason to assume that thimerosal is the harmful substance. As the experts noted, any number of alternative substances or mechanisms might account for the results: aluminum, the vaccine antigens, autoimmune reactions in susceptible patients, etc.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. argues that the CDC should have immediately banned all thimerosal vaccines on the basis of the Simpsonwood data. That would have been an absurd overreaction. A year before Simpsonwood, federal public health authorities had already committed to removing thimerosal from the vaccine supply, which is worthwhile goal. Thimerosal is, after all, a preventable source of mercury exposure.

However, in 1999 there were no thimerosal-free hepatitis B vaccines suitable for administration at birth, there was a t-free vaccine on the market, but it was only indicated for infants aged 2 months. The CDC policy makers felt it was unacceptable to delay HB vaccination from birth to 2 months because of an unsupported theoretical concern about mercury. Since thousands of US infants are exposed to HB at birth, a delay in vaccination would have resulted in significantly more babies getting hepatitis B.

And of course, Majikthise wrote this in June of 2005, back when it was still assumed that the mercury in thimerosal, ethyl mercury, was like methyl mercury in that it stayed in the body for long enough to pose a health risk — which is why it was removed from vaccines in the US. Subsequent research referenced by the World Health Organization in June 2006, as well as the recent Argentine study, showed that ethyl mercury leaves the body within a week, as opposed to methyl mercury (the kind found in contaminated seafood) whose “half-life” in the body is six weeks.

From the New Scientist, February 11, 2008:

Mercury compound makes for safer jabs

* 11 February 2008
* NewScientist.com news service

Is the mercury used as a preservative in vaccines dangerous to children? The balance of evidence up to now suggests not, and a new study supports this conclusion. It turns out that the mercury compounds in question behave quite differently in the body from those on which the original inferences were based.

This is as much as I dare quote under “fair use” law. Again, this tallies with research referenced by the World Health Organization in June 2006:

Statement on thiomersal

The Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety concludes that there is no evidence of toxicity in infants, children or adults exposed to thiomersal (containing ethyl mercury) in vaccines.

In 1999, concerns were raised in the United States of America about exposure to mercury in vaccines. This was based on the realization that the cumulative amount of mercury in the infant immunization schedule potentially exceeded the recommended threshold set by the United States government for methyl mercury. However, thiomersal, the preservative in some vaccines, contains ethyl mercury not methyl mercury. The Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety (GACVS) first assessed this issue at a special meeting in August 2000. The Committee review has been ongoing since then.

Expert consultation and data presented to the GACVS indicate that the pharmacokinetic profile of ethyl mercury is substantially different from that of methyl mercury. The half-life of ethyl mercury is short (less than one week) compared to methyl mercury (1.5 months) making exposure to ethyl mercury in blood comparatively brief. Further, ethyl mercury is actively excreted via the gut unlike methyl mercury that accumulates in the body.

Four independently conducted epidemiological studies investigating associations and frequency of neurobehavioural disorders in relation to vaccination with thiomersal-containing vaccines have been completed in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and Denmark. The findings from these studies do not challenge the safety of existing thiomersal-containing vaccines in infants. Recently two studies were published alleging reduction of neurodevelopmental disorders in the United States of America following discontinuation of thiomersal-containing vaccines in the national immunization programme. The Committee found the conclusions made by the authors unconvincing due to the study design, and the data source.

The GACVS reviewed available information on an ongoing thiomersal pharmacokinetic study in macaque monkeys and assessed the validity of animal models in studying associations between thiomersal and neurobehavioural disorders in humans. The Committee was informed of ongoing human neurobehavioural studies and thiomersal exposure in the United States of America and Italy and of a study on the suitability of thiomersal-free vaccines in multidose vial presentations, assessed by retained sterility for up to 30 days.

On the basis of the foregoing, the GACVS concluded that the most recent pharmacokinetic and developmental studies do not support concerns over the safety of thiomersal (ethyl mercury) in vaccines. The Committee concluded, and advises accordingly, that there is no reason on grounds of safety to change current immunization practices with thiomersal-containing vaccines, as the risks are unproven. However, data for well-nourished neonates born at term cannot necessarily be extrapolated to preterm or malnourished infants. Studies on the latter group would be difficult to conduct, but the GACVS encourages further research.

The GACVS will continue to review the evidence, including any epidemiological data, that might emerge from on-going studies.

Heh!

Ahem. This may be EPUd, but whatever. The U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services just conceded a case in federal court that links autism with vaccines. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…..88323.html I have to say that this is the first time in the many years I’ve visited here at the Lake that that a post has made my blood boil but not in a good way. PW, you are spouting a party line that is not longer operational, particularly in light of the above court case. If there is a resurgence of measles or any other preventable disease, don’t blame the parents or call them crazy. Blame the CDC and FDA, for failing to make the vaccine supply and vaccine schedule safe.

You clearly have no experience dealing with autism, or dealing with the current vaccine schedule that adds up to about 42 doses of vaccines before the age of 5. I do. Twice over. And now I am working to recover two children from autism and motor coordination and speech problems. I know for a fact that the vaccines are what did it. My daughter’s stutter began immediately after her DTaP and Varicella shots last summer, at age 4. Both my children have tested off the charts for mercury and measles virus.

In addition to the case above, there are more test cases happening right now in Washington, and things don’t look to be going the government’s way. There are also cases against vaccine manufacturers pending in France and in Japan, specifically with regard to the HepB shot.
http://www.reuters.com/article…..7120080201
http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/S…..uits/6883/

Several girls and young women have died from the fantabulous new Gardasil shot.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pag…..&ct=5
http://www.ageofautism.com/200……html#more

Vaccines contain not only mercury but aluminum, another powerful neurotoxin, and formaldehyde, and antifreeze, and on and on. Not to mention that the gajillions of shots have never been tested in combination with one another for how those viruses might interact. And nobody has been able to explain to me how it is safe to give an infant a vaccine that is NOT to be given to people with serious egg allergies before the age at which they would have tried solid food so one could know about the allergy in the first place.

So we parents would appreciate not being treated like morons. Most of us could probably get a biochemistry degree with what we’ve unfortunately had to learn. Next up we will be working on a law degree to send the Pharma-sponsored mofos at the CDC to jail, where they belong.

Orac has an oldie but goodie from March of 2006 on RFK Jr., thimerosal and autism:

Of course, RFK Jr. presents no evidence whatsoever that the CDC was or is trying to derail any vaccine studies in any population. (I guess we just have to take his word for it.) Indeed, his assertion that there are lower rates of autism and neurological disorders in these children is also flawed. In reality there is no credible evidence to support this contention, which has been popularized by UPI reporter Dan Olmstead. I addressed one such bit of credulity towards unsupported claims about unvaccinated patients in the suburbs of Chicago, and pointed out how this supposed finding was based solely on the undocumented and unsubstantiated recollection of a single practice of altie doctors. (Can you say confirmation bias? Sure, I knew your could.) Prometheus ably took on the claim that the Amish have a lower incidence of autism, pointing out that, even if that were the case, there are so many other factors, genetic and environmental, that could be just as plausible an explanation for such a difference that it is curious that antivaccination advocates would automatically zero in on vaccines without even acknowledging these other possibilities.

The bottom line is that at present there is no compelling epidemiological, scientific, or clinical trial evidence that mercury in thimerosal in vaccines causes autism, RFK Jr.’s conspiracy-mongering notwithstanding. Indeed, now that thimerosal has been removed from all routine pediatric vaccines except the flu vaccine since 2003, there is as yet no evidence of a decrease in the rate of autism. In other nations, such as Denmark, there has been no evidence of a decrease in the rate of new diagnoses of autism even 13 years after thimerosal was removed from vaccines. This is pretty strong epidemiological evidence that there is no link between the two. At best, one can postulate that a very small percentage of the population might be susceptible to mercury, a population that is such a small percentage of the overall population that it wasn’t detected, but that’s a far cry from the dogmatic statements of groups like Generation Rescue that “autism is a misdiagnosis for mercury poisoning.” In addition, there isn’t really any good evidence that such a population exists or that mercury causes autism in it. In fact, the symptoms of autism don’t even resemble the symptoms of mercury poisoning. (Look up Pink Disease, if you don’t believe me, particularly the skin changes associated with mercury poisoning in children.)

So why does this pseudoscience persist? Certainly it’s not because of good science. The available evidence does not support a link between thimerosal in vaccines and autism, and the articles published by those claiming a link is usually published in journals that are either ideologically biased or not peer-reviewed. Articles in better journals that are touted as showing a link almost always, upon closer examination (such as reading the entire article rather than just the abstract) do not support a link or are very weak evidence at best. Kathleen Seidel correctly points out one reason:

It’s time for RFK Jr. to come clean about the fact that he represents the interests of private litigants seeking compensation for supposed vaccine injury when in fact many of those litigants have no evidence that such injury occurred. Many never even suspected that their children were “damaged” until they were convinced after the fact that vaccines offered the only possible explanation for their children’s autism. The sense of entitlement and certainty expressed by many autism=poisoning crusaders is not always based on a careful review of a wide range of information. The numerous studies exonerating vaccines as a cause of autism are often dismissed out of hand, simply because they do not support litigants’ preconceptions.

I agree. For what they no doubt consider to be noble motives, people like RFK Jr. and David Kirby have foolishly hitched their names to a cause that is primarily at its heart not about finding the cause of or better treatments for autism, but rather about trial lawyers seeking to sue the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VCIP). Indeed, as I wrote about recently, this litigation has tainted a major vaccine adverse events reporting database. Perhaps the chief driving force behind this movement are the father-and-son tag team of autism quacks and providers of “expert testimony” and legal services to parents seeking to sue the VCIP, Mark and David Geier. They publish highly speculative papers in non-peer-reviewed journals like Medical Hypotheses (which is dedicated to “radical ideas outside the mainstream) or poor quality articles in which they dumpster-dive this tainted database in really crappy woo-filled journals like The Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, and then use these papers to support their litigation.

garbo, your comment had too many links and was caught in the spam filters. if you refresh the page, it should be there now.

Thanks. Sorry. Don’t mean to get exercised. But this is about so much more than lawsuits. This is perhaps the greatest corporo-governmental CYA exercise of all time going on here. I’ve seen what the vaccines did, and I’ve seen how the kids can get better. What’s prevented research into treatment is not these lawsuits but rather the blind eye that everyone seems to be willing to turn to the truth. In striving to cover the egregious lapses in safety, the CDC is waving it’s magic “genetics” fairy wand trying to get everyone to look at that bright shiny object. We don’t know what causes austism, lalalalalala, but we’re certain it’s genetics. Don’t look on the side of that vial of thimerosal where there’s a skull and crossbones.

And for the record, on reading the above posts, the same full amounts of mercury are still in 80 percent of the flu shots manufactured. Mercury is also still in other vaccines in “trace” amounts. The FDA tests samples from each vaccine lot before it’s released for use, but they only test whether the lot is effective against the disease, they don’t test for levels of mercury or aluminum or other ingredients. Scientific studies have shown neurotoxic effects of mercury and aluminum at far lower dosages than even the “trace” amounts that the government trusts the pharma companies to measure.

Not to mention Dan Olmstead’s brilliant series of investigative articles about the Quadvax trials in Washington state that went awry. Turns out trying to mix MMR with Varicella was an exceedingly bad idea. So bad that the drug company had to pull the vaccine they’d invested millions of dollars in.

My daughter was one of the people who got adult measles in California. It wasn’t because she wasn’t vaccinated — she was vaccinated twice, as a child and as an adult. She couldn’t get into college without being immunized and they recommended a double immunization when she was in high school. But she’s immuno-compromised from chemo and radiation, and she crossed paths, either in the airport or the airplane she took between New York City and California with a child with measles.

She was deathly ill, on top of already being deathly ill. Her doctor had never seen a case of adult measles and it took days to diagnose. The decision to immunize or not rests with the parents, but here’s an example of what happens to other people when un-immunized children infect others. If a parent chooses to not immunize, then they must quarantine their children immediately if they suspect measles.

utahgirl

Did you read any of the comments above? You quoted some examples of legal cases and a few anecdotes and act like that ends the matter. So you’re saying that the lawyers and judges know more about this than the medical researchers, the overwhelming majority of whom say that vaccines do not cause autism.

See, this is why people get frustrated, going over the same silly arguments over and over. And your argument is really silly, I’m sorry.

So if anyone wonders why the derisive tone, we get frustrated when arguing with the anti-science crowd, going over the same dumb things. It’s like arguing about evolution.

In fact I think I have an apt analogy for this kind of thing:

The anti-science crowd on the left is like the fundamentalist christians on the right.

Bwwwwwaaaaaahhhhhh!!!!

Idiots. We don’t necessarily believe that the vaccines cause autism, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to let my kids be vaccinated with anything that uses a mercury preservative. We told our pediatrician order individual doses which don’t use the preservative.

Unless you have a problem with the vaccine itself, not vaccinating is just dangerous.