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Yet another study has found no association between vaccines and autism. Mercury, the main ingredient in vaccines suspected of causing learning disabilities, hasn’t been used to preserve the medicines since 2001. And since then, the incidence of autism has still decreased.
That’s what researchers found in a study published yesterday in the open access science journal PLoS One. The study follows recent news from the Wall Street Journal that doctors are “firing” patients who refuse to have their children vaccinated. Numerous reports have named the dangers of foregoing childhood vaccines.
For this most recent study, scientists collected urine samples from 54 children with autism spectrum disorders, and compared them with 115 children from the general population, 28 children with learning disabilities who attended special schools, and 42 children who didn’t have autism, but had a sibling with the condition.
A high concentration of heavy metals including lithium, manganese, cadmium and lead is often blamed for exacerbating a theoretical genetic pre-disposition for vaccination complications. In this study the researchers looked at levels of all those heavy metals and found no differences between the groups.
Researchers could do 100 more similar studies, but it wouldn’t matter. Nothing can change the mind of a parent who believes there’s any chance their child might suffer a permanent learning disability as the result of a vaccine (which is weird because diseases like measles can kill kids). These parents don’t believe in science. They believe in anecdotes from their friends and neighbours. They want something to blame, and the timing of the vaccine and their child’s ailments makes sense to them. Screw the evidence and screw the scientific method.
It will continue that way until someone can pinpoint actual causes of autism. Here’s hoping that will happen before measles outbreaks become even more widespread. [LiveScience]
Image credit: Kid from Shutterstock
Can we not get “refusing to get your child vaccinated for potentially deadly diseases” classified as child abuse. After all these morons are putting the lives of their children in danger, which counts as abuse in my book.
I’m not really sure it should be forced for 2 reasons.
1) What happens when something is believed to benefit everyone, and turns out to screw them up. There should be a choice in the matter. Now I’m not saying that vaccinations will do any bad. But there’s bound to be a point in future where something isn’t going to go to plan e.g. a thalidomide type case and it would br better to have a say in the matter.
2) There’s probably people with different beliefs that go against it, and that should be respected. Similar to the way the Amish live without technology.
Funny – growing up. I had both Measles and Mumps. It was tough and I remember not having much fun. But I am here to tell the tale. We are creating a huge problem for the future, with over immunising every person for every thing.
There’s clearly a lack of knowledge about this, as your post proves.
Some have died and many been permanently damaged by measles. The mortality rate varies between 0.5% and 30+% depending on where you live (surprised?). My baby son got measles because (for reasons I won’t bore you with) he couldn’t get MMR: he was in hospital with pneumonia and has corneal scarring in one eye. Imagine for a moment what it feels like to stand by your infant son’s bed and wonder if he’ll survive the night.
The simple fact of this case is, without one lousy doctor (now struck off) and his arrogant, self-righteous campaign of bullshit which left science on the the shelf and tens if not hundreds of thousand un-immunised, we probably wouldn’t be talking about this at all.
One thought always occurs to me when I see this story. It all started with the MMR vaccine, a combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine. Now the idea of a vaccine is to stimulate the immune system into creating antibodies against the particular disease. This will put a stress on the immune system, so giving 3 vaccines in one go is going to put a far greater stress on the system. What if it is this stress that triggers the autism or allows whatever it is that causes autism in through the back door?
I don’t advocate not vaccinating, but if I had a kid of that age I would be asking for individual vaccines spaced out so their system could recover from each one before being hit with the next. The result is the same, the child is protected, but it would put my mind at ease.
BTW If you remember the Blairs refused to say whether Leo had the MMR or 3 seperate vaccinations at the height of the debate about this. Think about it, if he had been given the MMR they wouldn’t have been so coy…
What all started with the MMR vaccine? Do you have any evidence that hasn’t been retracted / is completly irreproducible?
The whole debate around vaccines causing Autism started with the MMR.
No I don’t have evidence, as I said it is a thought that occurs to me. I’m not in a position to do a clinical trial on my theory and I may be completely wrong anyway.
your immune system will be getting ‘stressed’ thousands of times per day, if not more, so the difference of an extra 1 or 3 stressors in a day is negligible.
i realise this isnt obvious, since i only have a very limited knowledge of the immune system from a year and a bit of doing medicine. i hope this doesnt come accross as me critisising a randomer on the internet. im saying this because we have seen communities who distrust the medical profession, dont get their children the mmr vaccine, and end up with outdreaks of hugely debilitating diseases that the vaccine would have prevented. i know you didnt say you wouldnt have your children have it, it was just for anyone else reading who maybe had those ideas
I agree that your system is stressed a thousand times a day, but a vaccine is probably a more significant size dose than most of them and to have three at once, well it just seems like a bad idea to me.
Whatever way it’s done, vaccinating your kids against these diseases is way more important than not vaccinating.
This subject matter had a huge response on Slashdot yesterday, where a US report stated that some doctors are turning away parents who refuse vaccines for non-medical reasons.
Referring to this article on Giz, the TL:DR is:
Parents who reject vaccines for their kids are bad parents and risk the health of everyone in their society. The risks of side-effects from vaccines are outweighed by the risks that the illnesses the vaccines prevent (including death).
I have also noticed of late that our Yank cousins seem to be easily influenced by idiotic fads/trends/rumors and that this is the tip of the iceberg.
I’m not sure the parents are to blame. They don’t realise that they are leaving their child (and hence all of society, now many places have stopped some vaccinations because the disease has been eradicated) open to diseases that kill.
Blame the doctor who got struck off for taking money from parents desperate for a law-suit and wrote a paper to help them. Blame The Lancet for publishing it, despite it being clearly a tiny group and didn’t prove cause and effect (instead of looking at children who had had MMR and seeing if had higher rates of autism, it looked at children who had autism (15 of them, that’s all!) and saw if they had had MMR, which they all had – BECAUSE before this idiot doctor over 99% of children had the MMR, so in a tiny sample odds were they would have had it).
Finally, blame the media. The doctor is one flawed person. The Lancet published an article they probably shouldn’t, but if you read the article it is clearly about 15 kids and is anecdotal. The Lancet published it thinking anyone reading it would realise that. The media then went out all guns blazing saying MMR CAUSES AUTISM, we have scientific proof, because one idiot journalist either couldn’t read, or was paid by the dodgy doctor, or decided they could make a fortune out of this story and then the rest of the media, being lazy and stupid all jumped on it, not checking the source, but still reporting it as fact.
With all this information appearing to come from trusted sources the parents have difficulty realising what is going on. The stupid ones who should have their kids taken away for abuse are the ones who refuse the MMR on health fears but don’t have the separate jabs as an alternative.
Ah what the heck. If they insist on killing their children, who are we to complain. The gene pool will be all the better for it. Just so long as I can sue their asses off if they give my children diseases.
That’s not really fair. It’s the kids being affected affected by their parents decisions. That’s such a bad thing to say ):
In the college I work in there are a number of morons, who are actually allowed to teach children, that believe that vaccines cause autism. To make matters worse, several of them actually teach health, social and childcare!
I find it hard to believe that anybody could possibly believe that a link exists between vaccines and autism, given that the whole idea was based on a single flawed study (which was withdrawn by the so-called scientist that carried it out) that had numerous opposing studies stating exactly the opposite conclusion.
My fiancee and I are expecting our first child in the next few days and we are going to be giving him every vaccine that is offered.
I personally do not think that there should be a choice in whether children are vaccinated or not, it should just be a matter of course.
Thanks for posting this
I am really glad to see pretty much everyone in the comments agrees how important it is. I remember seeing a similar article on US Giz a while back where there were a fair few people arguing against vaccinations.
Its pretty depressing seeing measles cases on the rise all over the place when we have the ability and technology to beat it
All I know is I had a talkative little brother who was 3 years old, he was happy and he was really getting on with learning to talk. He got his MMR immunisation in 1995 and he didn’t talk again for 4 years.
Very sad, no doubt that was a difficult time for your family. But no-one has uncovered anything other than anecdotal or circumstantial evidence that there is a connection between the two. Autism can onset at different times – it is almost certainly a coincidence.
How is he doing now?
Andrew Wakefield had a financial interest in positive results for his claims MMR causes autism. Which is why he’s no longer Dr Andrew Wakefield:
http://briandeer.com/mmr-lancet.htm