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Court Rules Autism Not Caused By Childhood Vaccine
wiredog writes "From The Washington Post comes word that three special masters have decided that MMR vaccines do not cause autism. 'Special master George Hastings said the parents ... had "been misled by physicians who are guilty, in my view, of gross medical misjudgment." ... "the evidence advanced by the petitioners has fallen far short of demonstrating ... a link."'
Maybe now he'll let his poor kids get their polio shots.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Well, you're not blind, are you? Proof enough.
Do we really want courts deciding scientific fact?
Why not? The media industry decides on the law.
Disclaimer: The opinions and actions of the US Gov't are in no way representative of those held by this author or its ci
rtfa
Jack Thompson will come out and say that the bad juju from violent video games is whats causing the surge in autism?
Besides, I was under the impression that it was the combination of vaccines before the age of 2 (36?) that was the leading factor. Specifically MMR+Chicken Pox combination.
Where have you been? Courts have always not only made medical decisions, but ones in various other areas of science, too, when there is a dispute. What exactly do you think forensics are, anyway? They do the same things courts have always done - rely on expert witnesses. As soon as you come up with a better way to correctly solve disputes involving factual claims, please do let the world know.
Not a formal study. But sighted people using the internet make a strong case in favor of "no link".
This is a SPECIAL "vaccine" court specially convened for this kind of thing.
I'd get no exercise.
What do you expect them to do, throw out every case that involves any question of medicine or science? What if they had done that back when defense lawyers and prosecutors first wanted to make DNA admissible?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
It wasn't the courts themselves but a special master appointed by one. Though either way not so much.
Do we really want courts deciding scientific fact?
Why not? The media industry decides on the law.
OK, if I'm following this that means:
Media -> Law -> Courts -> Science
So the Media now defines science?... of course now that I think about it, that's probably not to far from the truth for a distressingly large portion of the population.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
The courts are evaluating methods and conclusions, not doing the actual research. They don't have to have medical degrees or be doctors, just understand enough science to comprehend the scientific method and enough math to follow the statistics. This follows the same argument that one shouldn't have to be a doctor to take medicines correctly, or have to be a lawyer to follow any given law.
No.. Courts make decisions based on evidence. Like in this case where there's no evidence supporting the claim that vaccines cause autism.
I have nothing compelling to say
Good, now maybe that idiot Jenny McCarthy will shut her mouth about this. There are no telling how many kids have been put at risk because they're listing to celebrities harping their pseudo-science.
I think you're absolutely right to question that. I'd take it a step further on child vaccines as well. Recently, my state made the HPV vaccine mandatory, with a moral doubt waiver.
Someone asked me what I thought, and I said with my kids, I'd sign the waiver, and get them the vaccine. I just don't trust the government when it comes to medicine (well, anything really, but especially medicine).
or nativity of some people. Contrary to evidence (e.g. a Danish study showing no adverse effects of the vaccinations, and possibly a reduction of asthma due to them http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/06/bad-science-mmr-vaccine), some folks still prefer urban legends over real science.
I can predict some tags for this story: duh, noshitsherlock, establishedscience, wealreadyknewthat, tellmesomethingididntknow, !news, oldnews
Autism occurs and makes itself known about the same time as the vaccination occurs, which may explain why some people makes that connection.
But even if there was a small risk of autism related to the vaccination the risks involved by not being vaccinated are higher and the risk of an epidemic is higher if there is no vaccination performed.
So if it's possible to get a vaccination - get it. People avoiding vaccination are a breeding ground for diseases like polio and a lot of other nasty things. The only disease successfully erased is smallpox - unless it escapes a laboratory somewhere, in which case we may have a disaster on our hands.
Personally I would call parents that are fighting against vaccinations as irresponsible and a danger to society.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
This demonstrates some of the problems when the media picks up on these things. The CNN article states cnn.com:
... have found no association between vaccines and autism."
However, "the medical and scientific communities
"Hopefully, the determination by the Special Masters will help reassure parents that vaccines do not cause autism," the statement said.
A ruling on a court case doesn't necessarily convince me one way or the other on this. They aren't experts running experiments publishing their findings, they're examining the presented documentation, by both sides of an issue. I'm surprised that the mass media took the time to even present an article with this kind of finding; they're usually good at stirring up muck, but not pointing out when they were wrong.
I will wait for science to show me that the risks of potential side effects are outweighed by the benefits provided from these vaccinations. Until then, show me the MMR.
You are obviously ignorant of both the law and of this story.
The court didn't make a "medical decision", they made a "finding of fact". Deciding facts is the entire reason we have courts.
Let's make vaccine manufacturers as civilly liable for their products as every other manufacturer. Clearly, their products are proven safe now, and there is no possible scientific link between some of these products and serious harm in children, therefore they don't need any extra legal protection.
Funny thing is, I have met people who are very allergic to most vaccines, and my wife knows a woman who lost one or two of her siblings (he was a healthy kid) because of a fatal reaction to one.
This is why I hesitate to let "experts" force major social projects on us. What happens if and when 20 years from now there is serious evidence of a link between autism and some vaccines. The people who mandated them will say "sorry we didn't know," but the parents should be able to say to them "fuck you, you will pay horrifically for what you did to our kids, you miserable social engineers."
Boy I feel better that the courts ruled on this, because Lord knows there's no chance of Corporate-led, Pharmaceutical-grade palm grease being applied 3x/day there to "enhance" someones opinion...
The plaintiffs (parents of children with autism) are required to present evidence that shows that there is a link between the vaccines and autism. The judge ruled that the evidence provided by the plaintiffs did not show such a connection, thus their complaint is dismissed. They can find more conclusive evidence and try again if they wish.
"Court ruled that water is not chemical" ... I would be no surprised by USA anymore.
for people who are interested in topic and pseudo-prove it is vaccine what causes it, http://chetday.com/autismdiet.htm this article could help you (or you may want it to pass it to someone to whom it would help)
No, and they don't. They've used science as evidence in a ruling. Pay attention.
Whether or not there is some sort of god, I'm not supposed to say/god is a word and the argument ends there-Smog
My neighbor believed this, her husband was dumbfounded, but he and the doctor couldn't convince her otherwise. I had never even heard of it before I had talked to her husband. Kind of sad.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
If there is a judicial proceeding that hinges on a scientific question, what else are you going to do?
This wasn't some stupid "And now, we will have a judge decide some science for us!" thing. A bunch of parties sued, alleging that their children had been harmed by vaccines. The only way that those cases could be decided, is by deciding whether or not the vaccines were indeed responsible. The court doesn't "decide scientific fact", it has scientific expert witnesses and research as evidence in deciding whether or not a particular party is responsible for a particular injury. The same way that a court would use eyewitness testimony or DNA forensic evidence.
I think for some reason a lot of people find joy in finding problems with progress. They seem to want every advancement we make as people to have some dark side effect that will lead us to our doom.
There is being vigilant not taking things at face value, then there is going overboard and jumping to conclusions just to prove progress is bad.
Just recently a bill was passed to stop a chemical from being put into children's toys, however there is no evidence that it is actually harmful in that amount. And is being replaced with new chemicals that could be just as bad, if not worse.
Is it that they want to be Hero's saving us from them selfs or do they take joy in preventing progress.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Do we really want courts deciding scientific fact?
I don't know do we?
Because our society has certainly decided that scientists can no longer decide scientific facts. If that were not the case, we wouldn't be in this mess to begin with.
Over the last 10 years, US and UK have spent tens of millions of dollars to provide "negative proof" of something that we had already known, just to quiet down the conspiracy theorists. But instead of quieting them down, this has empowered them, by giving them and their claims legitimacy. Now, we're faced with a situation where childhood vaccination has taken a nosedive, and we're seeing old goodies like measles re-emerge into small (for now) epidemics. And as herd immunity is eroded further, we will see additional diseases make an impressive comeback.
So now that we took the right to make educated judgments about medical and scientific matters, away from doctors and scientists, we've also demonstrated that as a society we're incapable of making rational decisions... which isn't surprising. The only option left seems to be the courts, where reasonably educated judges may or may not rule according to the best data available. Well... at least there's a chance.
And for those who will scream at me about mercury in vaccines, why don't you compare a single or rare exposure to a tiny amount of mercury... to how much mercury you must feed to your children via fish... and corn syrup.
I don't have a medical degree, in fact I'm just a barber, but it is well known already that Autism not caused by vaccines, but by spirits residing in the lower intestine. Sometimes wood nymph bites will also cause this but they are more likely to cause AIDS. And yes, Elves do live in your armpits and cause the funky smell. bleeding with Leeches take care of everything. Unless you're a witch...then of course you float just like a duck.
I wonder if I can get appointed to the Supreme Court?
I tend to lean to the left side of the political spectrum, but two threads of liberal thought piss me off more than just about anything: anti nuke environmentalists and autism/vaccine linkers. Both group are as bad as any anti science fundamentalist, but in a way worse: they think that science and reason backs them up, when really it doesn't. They're just using it as a rationalization for their existing superstitions, mainly of the "don't mess with mother nature" variety.
Do we really want courts deciding scientific fact?
It's arguably better than lawyers and politicians deciding it without an arbitrator.
I also shudder at the thought of Joe Sixpack deciding these things. Fortunately, he hasn't much moved past whether God wants him to believe in evolution or not.
I guess that's settled.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Who else should have the final say in a damage claim? Parents accuse the producer of the vaccine to have done damage to their children by causing their autism with the vaccine. The producer claims to be innocent. That's definitely something for a court to decide.
I didn't know about this until just last week, and I'm fifty! But apparently the evidence is pretty good. Search the Web for "paternal age autism" and you'll find a raft of stuff, such as a Washington Post article that says this:
This hits home for me since there is actually some possibility I might attempt to father a child or two in the next several years. Food for thought.
On the other hand, at worst the risk is less than 1% per child.
Your god may be dead, but mine aren't!
Honestly, it's different in every person. Those who may be built better might not have any issues with the vaccine. Those with weaker immune systems may have issues manifested later in life.
It's honestly really stupid of us to say "It does" or "It doesn't" at this point. We don't know enough about how the human body works on a per case basis. All we can do is make generalizations.
It's like saying AIDS will kill you.. For the majority of us, yes, it will. For the one guy in china that was found to be completely immune to the virus, no, it won't.
Your crazy the best source for rulings on medical, political and scientific data is a celebrity!
In the not too distant future, next Sunday A.D.
The Internet is for Porn.
Yeah, it's funny that once they got rid of the supposedly "bad" stuff in vaccinations (thimerosol), not only did autism rates not go down... they kept getting [i]higher[/i].
Obviously, something in our environment is making autism rates climb. But it doesn't look like it's the thimerosol. Even if it is from mercury (which I don't know of any data showing that it is), it seems to be mercury from some other source, not from thimerosol.
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
I expect follow-up rulings on the religious beliefs of the Pope, and the bathroom habits of bears.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
Fuck, I hate the over use of this term. The widespread popularity of the myth of vaccine problems (I fell for it once myself) should only go to show that common sense is anything BUT common. People are pattern matching machines. We are very good at intuitively understanding the WRONG thing. Anything one person may call "common sense" may be called a "bizarre belief" by another person.
So could we PLEASE just stop using this term altogether? Like "political correctness" it was a once-useful term that has simply become a label for people to throw at other people for political reasons that has no basis in reality.
Concerning scientific matters, judges rely on expert testimony. In this particular case, they relied on three experts appointed by the court that there was very little evidence to support a link between MMR vaccines and autism.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Indeed. And a right mess it is.
http://www.thatsfuckingstupid.com/index.php/2008/11/just-a-quickie-you-wont-feel-a-thing/
(founded 95,000,000 yrs ago, very space opera)
This is one of those issues that directly pits personal rights against the greater public health. It would be nice to allow people to opt out, but when they do they put the remainder of the public at risk of epidemic. It's a herd thing.
Do we really want courts deciding scientific fact?
I'm not seeing this the same way you are. What happened here is the court judged the evidence for vaccines causing autism as insufficient. In same way the court decided that 'intelligent design' was not sufficiently scientific to be taught in science classes, I suppose. The door is still open for the vaccine advocates to prove their case... but they have to do the research.
You are right, that was a 100% flamebait post, not a troll. Except of course, the connotation of a troll is that they are someone who consistantly posts inflamitory crap without bothering to add anything to the topic other than vitrol. So maybe we should see if someone else with mod points can balance it out, 50/50 troll and flamebait.
The one disappointing thing here is that the court blames physicians for the public misconception. In reality, the blame lies more with the mass media, who turned the original claims into a massive health scare.
The vast majority of physicians correctly investigated the claims and determined that the evidence did not stand up to scrutiny. But the media took that and turned it into their beloved "lone rebel" story, with a parents' champion fighting to get the truth out while the sinister establishment tried to suppress it. Result? Massive decrease in vaccine uptake, threatening public health and risking a deadly epidemic. All because "your children are at risk" sells more papers than "oops, we goofed up, turns out vaccines are safe after all".
Best Slashdot Co
If the government required vaccine makers to shoulder the burden of liability claims, absolutely no drug company would ever bother to manufacture them. They take a very long time to develop, sell for a relatively low price, are generally given to jury-friendly and photogenic children, and are difficult to manufacture.
The powers that be have decided that the public health benefit of vaccines existing far outweighs the risk of the govt. having to pay out liability claims.
SirWired
I'm on the losing end of this argument, but I have long believed that special courts such as this one are unconstitutional usurpations of Article 2 courts which have "the Judicial power" and that power cannot be passed onto special courts whose purview is less than the entire judicial power. While this argument is perhaps a century or two too late, unconstitutional acts are still unconstitutional, despite centuries of adherence to them. The stack of people who will disagree with this comment is likely huge, but just because we've always had "Bankruptcy" Courts doesn't mean that their existence directly contradicts the clear meaning of Article 2 which stated that the judicial power would go to the Supreme Court and such inferior courts as Congress shall from time to time create. Yes, Congress could make no courts. But, ANY court created must possess the ENTIRE judicial power and not be a limited or "special" court. When you see "special court", read "unconstitutional court." Tunester
There was no scientific evidence that Silcone Breast implants caused illness either, but that didn't stop them from driving Dow Corning into bankruptcy with claims that they did. People do have a right to their beliefs, even if they are paranoid delusions, they have a right to refuse to get their kids immunized. What they don't have is a right to is compensation for harm that occurred after another event with no evidence that the other event actually caused the harm. In this case, the original claim was that the mercury (Thimerisol?) caused autism; it was quickly removed from vaccines, and then the claim was changed to the vaccination itself caused autism. When that couldn't be proved, then the claim was changed to several different vaccines taken closely together cause autism. (This last claim isn't quite as ridiculous as the other claims, since vaccine safety is tested a single vaccine at a time, not in combinations.) Yeah, I'm sorry about your kids' medical problems, but, like silicone implants, there is no statistical evidence that the medical problems occur any more frequently in kids that have had the vaccinations than kids that have not. Post Hoc, ergo propter hoc is still a logical fallacy.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Don't just read the headline; read the article. Three independent special masters have come to the conclusion that there is little evidence that the MMR vaccine causes autism. This conclusion was backed by a vast amount of scientific data. The masters conclude that the plaintiffs' claims are on shaky ground.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Amish people are far less likely to be involved in automobile accidents than the general population. Amish do not vaccinate, therefore vaccinations cause automobile accidents..
Do I need to spell out the sloppy thinking ?
They've always made decisions but courts sometimes crave a level of certainty that science isn't always able to provide and that is where mistakes can be made IMHO. Not that I think this is the case with the MMR vaccine, this issiue IS actually black-and-white. Others are not.
I think problems can arise when the science is new - e.g. shaken baby syndrome. Forensics thought they could tell when babies where being deliberately shaken to death. Unfourtunately they hadn't calibrated their forensic screens against a large enough sample of accidental trauma injuries to be able to distinguish the two - several innocent parents went to jail as a result.
Europe: 3.5m pounds paid out in vaccine damages
source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4356027.stm
more than $916 MILLION dollars have been paid to people injured by vaccines, not just those claiming autism, because every single case there has been dismissed.
Source: http://newsok.com/high-court-should-reject-vaccine-suits/article/3321176
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
citation?
Did you think before you typed that?
Take DNA for example. The courts have generally accepted that DNA is a unique identifier and that there are equipment out there that can determine if one sample of DNA matches another. Furthermore, the courts have accepted statistical data on the uniqueness of the DNA sample.
The question on whether the DNA evidence was collected and analyzed properly is typically a case by case issue.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frye_test and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daubert_standard
Are you suggesting the courts don't allow scientific evidence and instead rely on ...?
TODO: create/find/steal funny sig.
Not necessarily. He could have stopped when he started needing glasses.
Well, maybe not, but Cornell researchers found that autism spiked when cable TV became more widespread. It may or may not be related...of course, there is the factor of affluence and whether autism would be more likely to be diagnosed and treated in households that could afford cable. Maybe there's a statistically significance between whether or not parents of autistic children drive luxury cars or own large houses, too, but who knows. However, there was a difference in autism rates when correlated to television watching.
A study of 10,000 non-Amish people found that none of those people had seizures after the vaccine. To me that is all the evidence I need right there.
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
I find it strange that the court can quantifiably say that something doesn't cause autism when no one really knows what causes it. Doesn't someone have to actually discover what causes autism before other scientists can conclude that another thing *doesn't* cause it? It seems they have the scientific method backwards.
There are two types of vaccines, as far as I know. One has inactive pathogen, the other has a reduced viability. If your "friend's" sibling came down with the disease and died, then correlation of that lot to determine if the vaccine had been properly prepared is in order.
If, on the other hand, they died from reaction to the vaccine carrier (often egg-based, to which some people are allergic), then that suggests that non-vaccine related allergies should have been determined prior to giving the vaccine. Most doctors ask (or have records) about your allergies which helps screen out these occurrences.
Vaccines are, without a doubt, a statistical gamble we as a society make. There will be a very, very small portion of the population which will have a reaction to the event (whether it is to the vaccine, the carrier, infection of injection spot, etc.). The payoff is wide scale reduction of seriously debilitating diseases. Yes, it looks pretty onerous from the hindsight of a parent who's child suffers, but the society as a whole reaps an enormous benefit. 10 children dying is tragic, but 10 million with polio is far, far worse.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
The courts are simply (and fortunately) ruling based on the science. The studies are very clear, these vaccines do not cause autism. I feel very sorry for these families, but they (and their lawyers) have been trumpeting pseudoscience in a vain attempt to find a single target to blame.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Most drugs are toxins, and most toxins have a perfectly safe level of exposure - thats why you don't chomp down handfuls of paracetamol (tylenol I think its called in the US) each time you have a headache...
Oh, and water is also a toxin in the right dosage.
Honestly IS that your solution, to sue the manufacturer? Are you the chip off the same block that says "Let's sue McDonald's because their coffee was too hot and I was an idiot for holding it between my legs while I was driving". Really, if you don't believe in the vaccination then don't take it or have your children take it. However before you make such a rash decision first go over to a 3rd world country and see the disease's effect that non-vaccinated children.
This will likely be modded down for the "American way" comment but that is the only society that I know that has such a "sue them nothing is my fault" mentality.
These people disagree. Both say most Amish do vaccinate, and both agree that the autism rate amongst the Amish is lower than in the general population (though present). It would seem likely that either 1) the Amish hide/do not diagnose autism or 2) there is something else about modern society other than vaccinations that cause autism. Maybe the Amish have children younger (it's known that older fathers have a higher chance of autistic children), or maybe it's something dietary, or maybe it's something chemical. The differences between the lifestyles of the Amish and the rest of the country are so multitudinous that I don't know how you could immediately correlate any health differences with vaccinations.
a court once determined the earth was at the center of the solar system as well..
evidence about autism is not as iron clad but a court cant rule on what causes autism, that's for scientist to worry about.
"Ahh! Arrogance and stupidity in the same package, how efficient of you!" --Londo Molari
Obviously, something in our environment is making autism rates climb.
Not at all. It's a combination of 2 things:
1. the definition of autism has broadened with time so that things that weren't considered autism 50 years ago now count
2. better detection means people with autism are more likely to get counted.
The scientific consensus is that there is no reason to believe that autism is more common now than before.
*sigh* back to work...
But again, my points stand.
1) The way the court acted isn't anything new.
2) We don't have any better way to decide disputes that concern scientific evidence.
And I could add:
3) Courts (in the US, at least) tend to favor a "lack of evidence isn't evidence of lack" approach such that they don't decide scientific fact, they simply decide if you've proven your case. In criminal cases, this is the whole "innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt" idea. You don't ever prove someone innocent, you just fail to make the case that they are guilty. In civil case, this is by preponderance of evidence, meaning that the court simply rules that one side is more likely right than the other based on the evidence. Neither of these are truly cases of black and white.
You aren't allergic to "vaccine" , you are maybe at most allergic to one of the component, and most probably not the one used to pump up your immune system, but highly probably other maybe like preserver, anti fungus etc... Still I would like to see more statistic or evidence of such allergy or how many pro-million of fatal reaction there is.
As for long term consequence, there has been no long term consequence up to now for how many vaccine ? How long will you draw your fear rule you ? 50 years ? 150 years ? 20 years is ALREADY a long time. I got my first shots of MMR far more than 20 years ago FFS. So your 20 years limit is over.
And in the mean time children have died in the UK.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Autism rates are not climbing, the types of 'disabilities' classified as autism are climbing. Like ADHD = autism, shyness = autism.
You know, if you didn't feed your kids a pound of sugar a day and then not let them run around or interact during recess, they probably wouldn't be hyperactive twits with no friends.
I'm a little concerned. Is it possible that a specific batch of vaccines got contaminated due to poor quality assurance practises (sorta like how sometimes food gets contaminated with pathogens) and the contaminated vaccines started something like this? I once saw a hearing on C-SPAN by a congressman who basically accused a company of tainting the vaccines with a chemical that broke down into mercury in the blood resulting in mercury poisoning. But in that instance his complaint was not that the vaccine was the culprit, but that the company had not adhered to the regulations put fourth by the FDA and allowed tainted Vaccines in the wild anyway.
Does anyone else know anything about this?
Disclaimer:
And by the way, I do trash the Christian Fundamentalists in the anti-Vaccine community. Seriously. They piss me off. But then again, Christians piss me off in general. And if they had their way we'd all be back in the dark ages and disease would run rampant.
I'm reminded of an episode of This American Life that discusses vaccines:
http://thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=370
"Stories of people who ruin things for everyone else...or who are accused of that. Like the San Diego parents who didn't vaccinate their child for measles (pictured at left: measles virus). When their seven-year-old caught the disease on an overseas trip, this decision became a whole community's problem. The outbreak infected 11 children and endangered many others."
If the mercury formerly included in vaccines did cause autism, then the incidence of autism should have dropped after the mercury was removed. It didn't.
You make it sound like they put pure mercury into them. Ethylmercury does not bioaccumulate like the more dangerous methylmercury which is NOT in vaccines. Even upon removing it there was no real change in autism rates. The last statement though is a current area of research--there may very well be some environmental factor. Certainly the environment we live in today is far different than that of the past; there are whole hosts of new chemicals ingested by mothers or infants, food sources have different levels of heavy metals in them etc. That is why there is currently a large scale national study getting launched to try and figure out some of these potential environmental factors since the vaccine route was long ago dismissed.
Yes, that's correct. There has never been evidence that thimerosal has ever harmed anybody. The amount in any given dose is incredibly tiny.
They no longer do that mainly to placate paranoid know-nothings like yourself, since it was simpler to just remove it then to try to convince people with no interest in actual evidence.
That huge of an increase would have been screamingly obvious to the first person to glance at the statistics.
"I'm not a researcher, but my girlfriend who's a student met somebody who, well, isn't a trained researcher either..."
Possibly. They haven't been able to pin anything down yet, and a lot of people think it's just that we successfully diagnose autism a lot more now (100 years ago, your average GP had never even *heard* of autism--effect of no autism, or cause of no autism being found?). The one thing we do know is that it isn't the freaking vaccines, because they've studied them to death.
Why am I modded troll?
Why are you on a different account?
Both have about the same amount of proof either way.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Amish people do not watch television. To me that is all the evidence I need right there.
Wiki :
Before the widespread use of a vaccine against measles, its incidence was so high that infection with measles was felt to be "as inevitable as death and taxes."[3] Today, the incidence of measles has fallen to less than 1% of people under the age of 30 in countries with routine childhood vaccination.[citation needed] The benefit of vaccination against measles in preventing illness, disability, and death has been well-documented. The first 20 years of licensed measles vaccination in the U.S. prevented an estimated 52 million cases of the disease, 17,400 cases of mental retardation, and 5,200 deaths.[4]
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Thimerosal does not need to be in modern vaccines - single dose sterile packaging SHOULD be able to render it unnecessary. This is a good thing, while injecting trace amounts may not be statistically linkable to autism if you can avoid any unnecessary heavy metal exposure then you should. Same with radiation, X-rays or pesticides, each will eat away at your ability to live to 90.
We currently have the technology and economics to avoid thimerosals use, perhaps some poorer countries do not. In the West problems only arise when health staff get sloppy and reuse packs or are unable to notice a seal broken during shipment. Blaming such incidents on the FDA not allowing mercury use is incorrect - its plane old management failure, its harder to fix and most of know it too well.
Also in the context of this court case, the court did not specifically conclude MMR does not cause autism. The three masters decided that the plaintiffs could not meet a minimum burden of proof that a link existed. The plaintiffs did not have to prove that MMR caused autism; all they had to prove was that there is a plausible link. They failed to do that.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
From what I can tell, the media defines pretty much everything.
Problems:
* They stopped putting thimerosol in vaccines because people thought it might cause autism, not because they suspected it actually did.
* They don't put mercury in vaccines, they use thimerosol, a compound containing mercury.
* The fact that something is a toxin (or an element in a compound is a toxin) is of no general relevance to "does it cause X problem".
* If a vaccine changed your risk from 0.006% to 2%, that would be very easy to find with a reasonable sample size of unvaccinated children. (Vaccinated children are trivial to come by in large quantities.)
Fortunately, he hasn't much moved past whether God wants him to believe in evolution or not.
The word is in: here is proof of god's existence and disproof of evolution.
Joking. But hot on the heels of Darwin's birthday is this survey which says that only 39% of Americans believe in evolution.
Mercury isn't used as a preservative. Thiomersal, a mercury containing compound, sometimes is. This isn't a moot point, compare ethylmercury with dimethylmercury if you don't believe me.
Human metabolism is a strange and beautiful thing.
A .006% to 2% change would be easy to detect in a population study. You could detect it with less than a thousand children in a study running less than 10 years.
The fact that such studies have been run, and no such link has been found, indicates that either the risk difference is much, much, much smaller than that, or that there is no such risk at all, or that vaccine makers bribed an unbelievable number of doctors and researchers without detection.
There are also lots of other potential correlates with autism: ... sooooo many choices here).
Environmental (as you mentioned
Conception (lots more babies via the test tube)
Detection (maybe autism level hasn't changed, but detection is better, or simply wrong more often now)
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
If the court is able to resolve complex scientific issues, why did we not bring them a question we want to know the answer to - like is Hawking radiation for real ?
Rather than wasting time with questions we already know the answer to.
Nullius in verba
I think this is a ruling I like, because, among other things, the scientist who wrote the original vaccination/autism link paper misrepresented his data using selective data inclusion or exclusion to support his hypothesis.
But at the same time, courts don't have to make their rulings based on any sense of 'truth'. They don't even have to make them based on best scientific research, and there are many historical cases where they haven't. In Michael Shermer's book "The Borderlands Of Science" he talks about the widespread belief in the 1920's-1950's that local injury caused cancer. While there may be a relationship between injury repair and apperance of cancer, it's pretty weak, but in the '30's people regularly sued their employers for getting hit in the ankle and later developing cancer in the other foot -- and they won. In some cases, the courts even went so far as to say that despite there being no scientific evidence to support these claims, because it was a generally held belief that there was a relationship, they decided in favor of the injured worker.
So, as I said, I *like* the court's decision, but I don't delude myself that they're Correct. They're just making a decision based on what has influenced the judges the most, and we can all hope that the decision turns out to be a good one.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Oh hush you! We all know the toxicity of mercury is inversely proportional to how much profit is being made by using it. So the more money is made by using it, the less dangerous it becomes. Since the drug companies are raking in so much cash then clearly the mercury they use has virtually no risk. I mean we could inject this stuff and not suffer from it...
Now, to be fair, most of the vaccines in question have had that mercury removed, but still. The notion of blindly trusting big pharm companies makes me a little nervous to say the least. Congress critters get mailed anthrax letters, then the military gets mandatory anthrax shots while congress critters refuse the treatment... A few mishaps later then some lawsuits and the mandatory anthrax shots are a bit less mandatory... and battle has raged for a while, but this whole time the number of military members exposed to anthrax is LESS than the number of Congress critters exposed, yet military members got it mandatory and Congress critters refused...
I don't doubt the effectiveness of the vaccines at doing their intended job of protecting from whatever disease. I question how risky they may be as the drug companies involved are certainly less than honest (would hurt their bottom line) and the government critters are more than happy to make it mandatory for others (making for a great test bed before they take it).
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
Special master George Hastings said the parents ... had "been misled by physicians who are guilty, in my view, of gross medical misjudgment." ... "the evidence advanced by the petitioners has fallen far short of demonstrating ... a link.
Does shatner write for the washington post now?
I'm always skeptical of overuse of ellipses. You never know what has been left out.
Or, "I'm always... left out"
stupid valentines day
I think what concerns me is the inability to deal with uncertainty. As you say the scientific-percentages are normally forced into not-proven/proven in criminal proceedings or balance of evidence in civil proceedings.
Science by contrast normally comes with error bars but court judgments not so much. Not sure how you give out a sentence of guilty +/- 30% so perhaps there is no better system. Maybe the law is fine we just need to focus on better diagnostics in the science area.
Except that we can correlate the following:
1. the vast majority of slashdotters don't have children,
2. the dangers of lead are so great that pediatricians advise expectant mothers against eating most types of high-lead fish (such as swordfish,kingfish,non-farmed tuna even) where the lead ppm/ppb is far lower than that in the thimersol
3. which has most assuredly still not worked its way out of the vaccine supply system entirely. The thing is, fair disclosure should be said. The public spazzes out and manufactures have to pull toys off of shelves for lead levels (that in some cases) was lower than what was in vaccines
4. Vaccines are often given to children weighing under 15 lbs. If we prorate exposure to the adult body, would you be willing to tolerate a known teratogenic chemical dosing scaled for the it-beer gut? No consumer in their right mind would.
5. Correlation while not causation is enough to have warning labels on tobacco products, saws (caution blade is sharp) lawn mowers (do not reach under blade while motor is spinning).
Assume people are inherently incompetent -- that's they only way any company can reliably attempt to do business (what gives with the 3 inch pull strings on kids pullalongs?!?!?)
There's just too much to actually follow up fairly in a comment
Watch out -- that's the cancer cluster myth. In any population, random events will not be uniformly distributed throughout the population, but will sometimes cluster. People in the cluster then look for a reason behind the cluster instead of recognizing it for what it is -- a product of randomness.
In answer to the first question, the special masters (3 of them in 3 different cases) said that the current scientific evidence overwhelmingly indicates that there is no link between childhood vaccines and autism.
In the original study that showed some sort of a link, it was later discovered that 7 out of the 8 affected kids showed indications of autism before getting the vacccines.
I've got a 10-year old nephew that says otherwise.
So you either live in Eastern Europe or Eastern Asia...
More like the courts are saying once and for all that the unfounded claims being made by people about vaccines causing autism have no basis in reality, which any good doctor could have told you.
The theory I have had is that autism is a genetic trait. I see it woefully common that people with severe problems are children of one or both parents who had only marginal problems.
I think the rise in autism, then, is 1) increased social acceptance of differences, 2) changes in "mating patterns", 3) the ease of finding like-minded individuals.
Right, because there are no genetic differences between the Amish and the general population. Also, they don't use artificial conception methods. Or as much drugs while carrying their babies. Etc. Etc. The number of differences between the Amish and the general population unrelated to vaccination but relevant to autism is a very long list.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
ha, looks like Jenny McCarthy is just a wrinkled has been playboy slut and not a very bright political activist at all.
Amanda Peet is cuter anyway...
Worrying about the mercury in Thimerosal is like complaining about the poisonous gas - chlorine - in table salt.
"Upon attaching the waterblock to my penis, I began to notice that I know nothing about computers." -- JRockway
Because many vaccines are mandated by law, there was sort of an inusrance fund setup to cover cases of adverse reaction.
From an article:
http://pagingdrgupta.blogs.cnn.com/2009/02/12/court-rules-vaccines-not-to-blame-for-autism/
"It is worth noting the standard the court was using allowed for the petitioners (the parents of the children with autism) to demonstrate âoebiologic plausibilityâ as opposed to direct cause and effect. Scientifically, biological plausibility is an easier standard to meet."
So the courts ruled that it is not even plausible that the vaccines caused autism.
Of course one day there might be a theory and some evidence that changes this ruling.
TODO: create/find/steal funny sig.
But with today's laws it is very difficult to follow them all without being a lawyer.
Sugar does not cause hyperactivity!
http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=52516
Obviously, something in our environment is making autism rates climb.
Not at all. It's a combination of 2 things: 1. the definition of autism has broadened with time so that things that weren't considered autism 50 years ago now count 2. better detection means people with autism are more likely to get counted.
The scientific consensus is that there is no reason to believe that autism is more common now than before.
If only I had mod points...
Having worked in autism research for 5 years, just determining which potential research subjects were "autistic" enough was a challenge. Using all the standard measures (ADI, ADOS, language abilities tests, etc.) wasn't always enough. Clincal judgement plays a huge role.
I wouldn't say that the definition of autism has broadened, but rather autism is now considered a spectrum of disorders. It's more of a catch-all rather than a disorder in and of itself.
In my time in autism research, I also saw that people were pushing hard to get their mildly affected kids officially diagnosed so that they would be able to get special services. The problem here is that the schools would refuse to provide services to kids who didn't get the diagnosis, and then kick the kids out of school when they would be disruptive. So the parents were left with no alternative but seek a doctor that would give them what they wanted.
Given the above, I see this ruling to be the result of straight-up rear orifice covering by the drug companies. To rule that the autism was definitely NOT caused by vaccine when the cause in unknown is very suspicious. I wouldn't have a problem with them saying "We will not hear any more cases until you come up with real proof", but for them to say "Nothing to see here, please move along" raises the my TFH (Tin Foil Hat) level up a notch.
Disclaimer: My brother has Aspergers.
You idiots rated this guy insightful? He's just a troll. Autism is not about sugar. My son has autism, (but not ADHD) and it has nothing to do with sugar. Spend sometime with these kids and watch them struggle through life, before you spout your idiotic nonsense.
Damn, I wish I had some moderation points today..
Have you ever seen an autistic kid? They might be a bit hyperactive, but for the most part, they could completely care less about whether they are friends with other kids or not. IT was explained to me thus: if a deaf kid or a blind kid took the autism communications diagnostic tests, they'd still pass because they do something to compensate for their communications shortcomings. The autistic kid doesn't even care.
This is my sig.
Don't forget the study showing that older parents are more likely to produce offspring with autism. Oh, and fertility treatments seem to be linked as well.
So increased detection, better understanding of the disease, people having children later in life, and increased use of fertility treatments would all seem to have some effect.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
What else could they do? It's their job to determine if so-n-so is legally liable for this-n-that. This isn't necessarily a scientific statement that the vaccine doesn't cause autism (though the decision is based on such statements), but is a legal statement that if you blame autism on the vaccine, the government isn't going to be on your side. And making such statements is what the court is for.
Ben Goldacre writes for the Guardian in the UK with his excellent Bad Science column. http://www.badscience.net/2009/02/bad-science-bingo/
He recently highlighted an ill informed rant by Jeni Barnett from LBC Radio on this issue of the MMR vaccine. They seem to be unaware of the Streisand effect in trying to shut him up and remove the clip from his website.
Amish men have beards, and no known cases of HIV. I also have a beard, and therefore am immune to HIV.
Autism rates went UP after the mercury containing compound (you didn't think it was metallic mercury, did you?) usage in vaccines was reduced.
Furthermore, Autism itself has no objective test. It's a "spectrum disorder" and diagnosis is based on symptoms. Historical numbers may not be comparable.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Wrong! It is pretty clear that autism is more common than before and it seems to be something in the environment, but we do not know what, from Scientific American:
Read more here: New Study:>Autism Linked to Environment: Scientific American
The amish get autism. See here:
http://autism-news-beat.com/?p=29
Actually, the Amish do have an autism problem. The Clinic for Special Children in Strausberg treats some of them. They're prone to some genetic problems, too; it's an inbred society.
I have a friend that won the lottery right after getting vaccinated. Now I get vaccinated for diseases that don't even affect my gender.
The family of 5 down the street has no autistic people. The family down the street doesn't eat dairy. To me that is all the evidence I need right there.
Seriously, why do people with math and logic skills this bad read slashdot? Did they get lost on the way to a gossip site?
Wait, what is the problem? Either the kids actually have Autism and doctors should have diagnosed them, or parents of disruptive kids without Autism need get their kids to behave. Maybe you worded it wrongly, but it sounds like you are saying the problem is that schools are refusing to provide services to kids who don't need those services. That's not a problem. If the kid isn't Autistic, he shouldn't be treated as if he is. If a kid isn't Autistic and is being disruptive, he should be kicked out and the parents should be told to deal with that, not shop around for a doctor willing to misdiagnose just so the parents can claim that their non-Autistic kid isn't really a bad person.
Or are your really suggesting that the problem is doctors need to do a better job of detecting earlier so that autistic kids can get the services they need? I'm really not sure. Please clarify.
Stop Global Warming!
Just say no to irreversible processes!
Well, I had an MMR vaccine and am not autistic, so my anecdote counters yours.
Unless you have some sort of evidence that actually links the disease to the disorder...?
Thats what peer reviews are for. Both peers and courts can be wrong, but I trust the peers more.
People have suggested a "Science Court" with science-savy judges and officiers as a possibility.
The Amish harness their autistic young to pull plows in the fields. By the age of 5 they're indistinguishable from the average rhesus monkey.
Not to mention the dangerously reactive metal sodium.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Dude, calm down. I never said autism is a joke or that all autism is ADHD.
I'll re-phrase it for you...Many other 'disorders' that aren't really disorders have been lumped into the 'autism' category. That is the cause of the 'rise' in autism cases.
Sadly, he's not a troll. What he's referring to is the new batch of what has suddenly become 'autism spectrum disorders'; seems to be the disease-du-jour especially amongst the self-diagnosing crowd. The point is that labeling children with mild difficulties as 'autistic', specifically difficulties that are really more social issues than legitimate medical problems, does not in fact indicate an autism epidemic.
No-one is blindly trusting big pharma companies. Research has been done, studies have been run, and no link has been found. Pharma companies aren't exactly altruistic, but if you are going to make accusations of mass manipulation and cover-ups then you need to show some friggen evidence, rather than just spew unsupported paranoia.
You're misunderstanding. Autism is generally regarded as a spectrum of disorder, from those with mild behavioural difficulties all the way to those who cannot function independently in society. It's not something that can be an 'is or is not' like, e.g. Down's Syndrome.
At the mild end of the spectrum it can be really difficult, and quite subjective, to differentiate mild autism from simple naughty behaviour, and it is often when the child gets a bit older that the diagnosis is much clearer because their level of social functioning becomes much more apparent compared to those around them.
'Braver' doctors will overdiagnose and get the occasional complaint from parents saying "you labelled my child and now they're fine" because they had non-autistic spectrum behaviour problems that they grew out of. More conservative doctors will choose to watch and wait then get occasional complaints that they should have seen something subtle earlier - in fact, they probably did but decided to hold off.
+5 is not enough! One piece of anecdotal evidence does not disprove hundreds of studies.
Why is it so hard to understand that someone could have both received an MMR vaccine and been diagnosed with autism without there being any relation between the two? Most people with autism have had an MMR vaccine, just as most people without autism have had an MMR vaccine.
Where is the supposed plausible evidence?
Obviously, something in our environment is making autism rates climb. But it doesn't look like it's the thimerosol. Even if it is from mercury (which I don't know of any data showing that it is), it seems to be mercury from some other source, not from thimerosol.
Well, there are some people in the medical community claiming that fetal diagnostic ultra sounds, whose usage has increased significantly in recent years, may in fact account for increased incidence of autism in children.
The theory is based on thermal effects of ultra sounds. Presumably heating neural tissue in early development phases by even 1 degree is quite bad. This is actually confirmed on mice studies.
However, on the other hand, there are other people in the medical community who do not buy this argument and claim that ultra sounds are 100% safe, and that human fetuses (unlike mice) are well protected by inches of mother's tissue, and larger amount of amniotic fluid, and that ultra sounds are not focused narrowly enough to actually heat the fetus (or embryo).
I guess Google search on the topic could be interesting but inconclusive.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
A study of 10,000 non-Amish people found that none of those people had seizures after the vaccine. To me that is all the evidence I need right there.
That is life! There will ALWAYS be some poor schmuck or schmucket that will get screwed over in some fashion.
Some kid will always have a food allergy, someone will always have a down syndrome, someone will always have bone cancer, get beaten to death by their parents, have an allergic reaction to a vaccine, lose their job and die freeze to death in a box under a bridge. You will never be able to insulate yourself from the anything bad happening.
http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2009/02/autism_and_the_mmr_vaccine.html A psychiatrist explains why the original link between autism and the MMR vaccine was absolute junk science of the worst sort. It was a career jump for someone who made a fake link, and had already fudged the underlying data to boot. The fact that the guy isn't in jail is kind of amazing.
Indeed, your evidence is quite sound. Because there's no other way that the Amish differ from the general population.
Ooh...wait. Maybe riding in horse-drawn carriages prevents autism. Maybe television causes autism. Maybe the internet causes autism. Maybe telephones cause autism. Maybe windmills prevent autism. Maybe barn-raisings prevent autism. Maybe limiting your genetic material to an extremely limited, closed breeding population prevents autism. Maybe wearing suspenders prevents autism. Maybe hormones in meat cause autism. Maybe car exhaust causes autism.
I think you see where I'm going with this. Doof.
Oh, man! So if I get this for my newborn, he'll skip right from "toddler" to "young adult"? That would certainly make the parenting process easier! Thanks, Special master Hastings!
PS: uh, "special master"? Man, these new prescriptions are awesome!
So the government says their vaccines don't cause Autism and you can't sue the crap out of their friends in the pharmaceutical industry. No? Merck has been trying to make Gardasil mandatory. God know how much they spend on lobbying.
Yeah, I get why the court ruled the way they did. The thing I don't understand here is.. if vaccines actually work.. then why is it that the people who take them get all freaked out when you tell them you don't. If you believe they work and your child got one then you believe your child is safe from one that didn't get one right? Why mandate by law that every child get them?
I don't want to argue if they work or not.. I don't know, I'm not that smart.. all I want to ask is why can't people have a choice in the matter? What's with you anti-freedom Nazi's pushing vaccines on peoples children?
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
Your 10-year old nephew knows nothing about medicine.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
Citation please.
Many other 'disorders' that aren't really disorders have been lumped into the 'autism' category. That is the cause of the 'rise' in autism cases.
The Autism spectrum generally includes classic Autism, Asberger's, Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD), and PDD-NOS.
Yes, the spectrum has grown, but it's not arbitrary. ADHD is not included in the spectrum, nor are a whole host of other disorders that produce behavioral problems.
http://www.mhall119.com
I've started to wonder if the reason earlier cultures had some of those bad evil non-pc ideas wasn't to just be mean evil patriarchal societies.
Maybe they figured out that bad things tended to happen if they had too many engineers having kids with other engineers. That it was better keep similar occupation men and women apart so you'd get the mathematically minded engineer procreating with the socially orientated receptionist. Like the shallow/deep roller spiel in Red Dragon (or was it Hannibal?). Shallow/Shallow or Shallow/Deep was okay. Deep/Deep, not so much...
a "state study"(?)(Statens beredning för medicinsk utvärdering.) concludes childrens vaccine "Safe and efficient". No link to autism. News stub in swedish: http://svt.se/svt/jsp/Crosslink.jsp?d=58360&a=1440032&printerfriendly=true So, I'd urge believers of a link between autism and vaccination to start picketing the Swedish government, demanding some answers. Maybe that would get more debate into more homes, since as it is now, some parents are putting my child at risk (vaccines don't give 100% protection). Measels can make you retarded and/or dead.
Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.
It is a commonly accepted theory among psychiatrists that autism is caused by genetic causes, and not by external causes like upbringing or other factors (like vaccines).
What is truly troubling about all of the comments being posted on this miss-understood topic is the difference between a vaccination and an immunization. Somewhere along the way it seems that most of the people here have lost the understanding of the differences and impacts that both vaccinations and immunizations can have. First, its not the vaccine's that are causing Autism it is a common mercury-based preservative Thimerosal that people need to concern themselves with. Most people have common sense enough to not break open a mercury thermometer and drink the contents as we understand mercury will KILL you. Oddly though, when it comes to vaccinations we don't think twice about giving our kids a vaccine that contains enough mercury to drop a 200LB man. Quite simply, we need to have our eyes open and be aware of the shift in language (from Immunizations to Vaccinations.) Educate yourself on the differences between them (most notably the side-effects of Vaccines.) Immunization is a key to health care but we seem to have forgotten that they are different from what we are giving our kids today.
Many moons ago I worked at Chuck E. Cheese's as a door checker, guess how many times I got the flu over one winter even though I had the vaccine.
I think perhaps this is not a case of either-or, but rather a sliding scale. Mildly affected kids may not need the full range of specialised services provided by schools but may instead only need more patience and understanding from their teachers. In a similar situation, my sister is completely deaf in one ear and partially deaf in the other, but she operates just about normally and only sometimes will she need things repeated or said a little louder for her. Invariably, when informed of her minor problem teachers would either ignore her needs or else treat her like she was retarded. She had more than one teacher ask her "DOO... YOOU... UUNDDERRR-STAAAND MEEE?". One school refused to have her as a student at all (because they "couldn't provide disability services") until my parents insisted they meet her face to face and actually find out that she was not, in fact, severely disabled.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
We don't know what causes autism, but a COURT DECIDED that this isn't what does it.
Whew! I was so worried that those rogue scientists and their foolish experiments might get a say in this. I'm glad the level headed non political process of the courts had the final say instead.
Next on the docket: I creationism a valid theory?
I didn't make accusations of mass manipulation and cover ups. My problem is with all of the people mocking the parents for saying something isn't right. Did you know there were studies that "scientifically proved" that black's couldn't be fighter pilots. Seems that the Tuskegee Airmen being all black and one of the best fighter units should have been "scientifically impossible" based on the research that had been done, and the studies that were run, and the link that was found that said black's were incapable of being fighter pilots.
I'm not even saying that the vaccines are a bad idea. I am saying that people cling to science as often as they cling to religion and resorting to mocking the people who dare question the "authority". Science is about skepticism, not belief. Smoking used to be good for your health...
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
Am I the only one to think, "Wait a second, the court doesn't get to decide this."
Vaccines either did or didn't cause autism, and that's determined scientifically by looking at the evidence. What the court rules has no impact on whether or not vaccines cause autism.
That said, I'm glad to see a courtroom see reason for a change instead of finding in favor of the party with the best lawyers.
Question everything
They stopped using thimerosal in the MMR vaccine *years* ago. In fact, that is what makes it so trivially easy to show that mercury from thimerosal in the MMR vaccine was unrelated to autism. They removed it, and nothing changed.
(And by nothing, I mean not even the anti-vaccination rhetoric. It's about as bad as the buffoons who claim that Coke is addictive because they surreptitiously still add cocaine -- undetectable cocaine, even!)
No you don't. You just think you do. Welcome to the world of anecdotal evidence and the logical fallacy of "post hoc ergo propter hoc".
I don't know the validity of this one way or another, but what business does a court have in ruling the outcome of science? Isn't it based on facts? Isn't it the science that shows that this happens or it doesn't as a direct or indirect cause? Courts present opinions...
WRONG!!!!
First, nobody knows the underlying causes of autism. One of the exacerbating circumstances with this issue is that autism is a "spectrum disorder" -- there are probably multiple causes, and no particular treatment will work across the board.
Second, vaccines are tested much the same as any other medication -- a population is selected, (assuming a double blind study) some of the population is given the actual medication while the remainder is given a placebo, statistical methods are then applied to determine the safety level. While this method validates (or invalidates) the safety of any particular medication, it says nothing about the safety of medical cocktails. Young children (less than 2 years old) are often given multiple vaccinations during a single "well" visit. Nobody has even attempted to determine if these multiple, simultaneous vaccinations are safe.
Third, and to the point, there is scientific evidence that the rate of autism is more common now than in the past. Scientific heresy you say? Consider this: In 1975 a study was performed to look at bleeding during pregnancy as a risk factor for autism and childhood psychosis. Computerized records of 30,000 children born between 1959 and 1965 at 14 university-affiliated medical centers were examined (that is a huge sample). Fourteen children were identified as having autism (by the definition used in 1975) -- a rate of 4.7 children per 10,000. This rate matched perfectly with other contemporary studies. Additionally, 6 other children were labeled as disturbed, psychotic, autistic, or schizophrenic. The remaining children were considered cognitively normal. Labeling all the cognitively non-normal children as autistic gives a rate of 6.7 children per 10,000. This rate is _far_, _far_ below even the low-end estimate of 30 per 10,000 for autistic spectrum disorders today cited by the National Institute of Health. FYI, the study was published in the highly credible Journal of autism and Childhood Schizophrenia in 1975. This is an apples-to-apples comparison folks. The rate of childhood autism is definitely increasing.
Finally, the court can make any ruling it wants. That in no way determines the cause or treatment of autism or any other disease for that matter. What is does do is throw yet another monkey wrench into the lives of families that are already struggling to deal with their situations. Our tax dollars would be better spent on medical research to identify the true causes of diseases and effective treatments.
Thimerosal has not been used in several years, and autism rates have not changed. try some of that medicine, Mr "Educate yourself"
One wonders how many anti-vaxers are two or more generations removed from a threat. I mean, I can point to my parents and say, "My mom got polio as a child, and had rubella while pregnant. Thankfully, my sister was in the lucky unaffected minority; German Measles leads to severe side effects (including brain damage and blindness) in over 50% of affected children. My father lost a sister to measles."
Furthermore, my vaccinated husband caught whooping cough, presumably from someone who wasn't vaccinated. Vaccines do have a failure rate for whatever reason, and we rely on herd immunity to protect those for whom it does not take. My mother-in-law stayed up with him for two weeks, trying to keep him breathing.
Anyone who has heard stories like that when growing up doesn't doubt the need for vaccines. But one wonders if the anti-vaxers are living in a bubble, or never listened to stories like this from their parents or grandparents.
--okay.
One problem I have with trying to convince people about vaccines is explaining how herd immunity works. What I want is a little computer simulation that could be little more than particles moving randomly for a set period of time (equivalent to, say, two weeks.) Into this simulator is introduced a vector, an infected person. The rest of the particles are immunized according to whatever disease this is-- you know, with a particular rate of success of 85-95%. Then you show how it spreads, with the percentages of morbidity and mortality showing up at the end.
The point there is that I'd like this simulation to be adjustable-- you start off with an immunization rate of 95% (with whichever success rate is appropriate for that vaccine) and can change that rate to show what happens to the population as a whole when a portion of the population doesn't get vaccinated. Then you could show people how their "stand on principles" can lead to epidemic or pandemic conditions.
As you might guess, I am not a programmer. Anyone want to rise to the challenge?
Actually I am a lab rat in an elaborate plot to take over the world.
Playing violent video games can cause autism too! Wait 'till Jack Thompson hears about this one!
People are mocking the questioners in this case because they have no evidence. There is no proven link. There have been scientific studies and they have been reproduced and vetted.
Your examples of racist studies are not applicable, because those could be questioned and debated based on their scientific merit, of which there was little. In this case, we have studies that show no link, and rather than question those studies', the people in question are sticking their fingers in their ears, going "Nuh uh!" and regurgitating the SAME DIS-PROVEN ARGUMENTS.
They are not being mocked because they are questioning authority. They are being mocked because they are blatantly, willfully ignorant. They are being mocked because they are encouraging the same blatant, willful ignorance in others, and that ignorance poses a very real and clear danger to others.
Many people have stood up to authority and have not been mocked. These people had evidence. These people did their due diligence in making sure that they knew what they were talking about. The woman in question is not one of these people. People laughed at the Wright brothers, but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown: this woman is the latter, not the former.
If you don't agree with that, then offer some new evidence. Try to make it some that hasn't been disproven repeatedly.
I've got a 10-year old nephew that says otherwise.
What are his credentials?
Comment of the year
This dumb pseudo-science wholistic-alternative-nature-medicine nonsense and scaremongering is the true decadence present in developed societies.
Including those electro-sensitive assholes that trouble children by complaining and scaremongering about 100 mW WiFi hotspots in their kid's school.
I bet the Chinese will laugh their asses off when they hear about U.S. cities having outbreaks of measles. Measles, that the Chinese will have just eradicated by the time the first big outbreaks will hit the U.S.
Please improve science teaching in all levels of school and institute a mandatory insurance of say a few hundred bucks per year that covers treatment and quarantine, that people who are not vaccinated might need later in life.
Thanks for the info. However, if the kid is autistic enough to warrant being kicked out of school for autistim-related disrupions wouldn't that be easy enough for a doctor to detect early on? I assume that if a doctor is weary about diagnosing a kid with autism then the kid is probably not going to be kicked out of school for autism-related disruptions. So either my assumptions are wrong (could very well be) or I'm still misunderstanding what the problem is. The AC I replied to said the problem was school's refusing to offer services to kids who aren't autistic. But I don't see that as a problem. What I do see as a problem is parents shopping around to find a doctor willing to diagnose their kid with autism because their kid got himself kicked out of school because he was disruptive. But, again I'm assuming, if his disruptions were autism-related, you wouldn't need to shop around as any competent doctor would be able to diagnose that.
That's not to say a kid can't have mild autism but still be kicked out for non-autistic spectrum behavior, but if that were the case, it'd still be parents trying to lay the blame on some thing that isn't the real issue (i.e., their kid is disruptive for non-autistic spectrum behavior).
Stop Global Warming!
Just say no to irreversible processes!
Is this the same court system that ruled that cigarettes and nutrasweet don't cause cancer?
I offer you my non-existent mod-points.
I was diagnosed with asperger's disorder 5 or 6 years ago. On the whole, my life has not been affected in any major way. While I can identify some of the signs quite easily, and I definitely have problems socializing, I would not say this somehow makes me all that far off from your usual nerd. Yes, I'm a shut-in, for the most part, with nothing but the cold glow of my LCD monitor to keep me warm, but, again, I'm posting on /. so no surprise.
Kidding aside, the doctor who diagnosed me said it was obvious to see, but that it is not so much a condition as it is a personality trait. He explained how autism is a spectrum and how severe it can be. I wasn't doomed to a life at the end of the short bus nor was I "gifted" with incredible genius the likes of which man has never seen, despite what the average idiot and mother thinks, respectively.
In most places I go, I can't mention the diagnosis without being mocked and told that I think I'm a "special little snowflake" blaming all of his problems and social defects on a made-up disease. It's really annoying.
I guess I'm just trying to say... it's better to be more conservative with the diagnosis as you showed, and to remind people that it's not necessarily a world-shattering condition in many cases.
and your evidence for a link is....
While you're thinking, here are some actual facts.
I feel sorry for your nephew, but you have to accept that autism is naturally occuring and that there isn't always someone you can pin the blame on.
Up until the moment stupid people decide that imaginary man in the sky forbids it or that they just don't need it.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I've got a 10-year old nephew that says otherwise.
I'm sorry to hear about your nephew, but that's evidence of nothing.
Hypothetically, if I had a 10-year old nephew with autism that wasn't vaccinated, would that be proof that the vaccine would have prevented his autism?
Obviously, something in our environment is making autism rates climb.
Not at all. It's a combination of 2 things: 1. the definition of autism has broadened with time so that things that weren't considered autism 50 years ago now count 2. better detection means people with autism are more likely to get counted.
The scientific consensus is that there is no reason to believe that autism is more common now than before.
WRONG!!!!
First, nobody knows the underlying causes of autism. One of the exacerbating circumstances with this issue is that autism is a "spectrum disorder" -- there are probably multiple causes, and no particular treatment will work across the board.
Second, vaccines are tested much the same as any other medication -- a population is selected, (assuming a double blind study) some of the population is given the actual medication while the remainder is given a placebo, statistical methods are then applied to determine the safety level. While this method validates (or invalidates) the safety of any particular medication, it says nothing about the safety of medical cocktails. Young children (less than 2 years old) are often given multiple vaccinations during a single "well" visit. Nobody has even attempted to determine if these multiple, simultaneous vaccinations are safe.
Third, and to the point, there is scientific evidence that the rate of autism is more common now than in the past. Scientific heresy you say? Consider this: In 1975 a study was performed to look at bleeding during pregnancy as a risk factor for autism and childhood psychosis. Computerized records of 30,000 children born between 1959 and 1965 at 14 university-affiliated medical centers were examined (that is a huge sample). Fourteen children were identified as having autism (by the definition used in 1975) -- a rate of 4.7 children per 10,000. This rate matched perfectly with other contemporary studies. Additionally, 6 other children were labeled as disturbed, psychotic, autistic, or schizophrenic. The remaining children were considered cognitively normal. Labeling all the cognitively non-normal children as autistic gives a rate of 6.7 children per 10,000. This rate is _far_, _far_ below even today's low-end estimate of 30 per 10,000 for autistic spectrum disorders cited by the National Institute of Health. FYI, the study was published in the highly credible Journal of Autism and Childhood Schizophrenia in 1975. This is an apples-to-apples comparison folks. The rate of childhood autism is definitely increasing.
Finally, the court can make any ruling it wants. That in no way determines the cause or treatment of autism or any other disease for that matter. What is does do is throw yet another monkey wrench into the lives of families that are already struggling to deal with their situations. Our tax dollars would be better spent on medical research to identify the true causes of diseases and effective treatments.
Sugar does not cause hyperactivity!
Geeze, alright it doesn't, lay off the sugar already.
The enemies of Democracy are
Actually, so long as the unimmunized kids don't cross a certain threshold, population immunity makes it so they're not much of a risk.
Basically, so long as most people are immunized, those few who do get sick won't have anyone to spread the disease to, so it will die out right away, rather than becoming an epidemic.
That said, I think it's a really, really bad idea to skip vaccinations. I'd never do that to my kids if I had any.
I'm no expert, but I don't see how the mothers antibodies could be protecting the child after delivery[...]
From the Merck Manual Home Edition:
Obviously, this is anything but a comprehensive review of the relevant medical literature. I personally wonder how long actual antibodies last (as opposed to the immunity of which they are one facet). Hopefully, this has piqued your interest enough that you'll look deeper yourself.
But I could be wrong, maybe antibodies get through as well, it just doesn't seem likely.
How "likely" does it seem that you would have five classes of antibodies? I'm not going to beat you over the head about being wrong (which would make me, what, a bio-nazi?), but I will call you out for relying on supposition and gut feeling instead of doing even the most basic checking (not even "research") before spouting off.
If we collectively make fun of Ted Stevens for speaking "authoritatively" about things he does not understand in the least (series of tubes!), I would suggest that we are perfectly within our rights to call out each other for spouting equally ill-informed drivel about topics on which we have not bothered to read.
And if evidence does appear, the ruling can be overturned. It's a pretty straightforward system.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
That's one possibility (and it might be a very good one; I'm not disputing that). But, there is another possibility, which is that the rate of incidence of autism has stayed the same, but that our ability to diagnose it has increased. How many people that we call "autistic" today would have just been called "weird" or "slow" 50 years ago?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
"Do we really want courts deciding scientific fact?"
When facts are necessary to rule on cases then the court should collect some facts.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
They work when the vast population takes them, since the disease won't be easily spread. But if there is a large portion of the population that isn't immunized, a lot of children with immunizations will get sick.
I forget the term for this, if there is a term.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Wow, your post is in bold lettering and features and exclamation point, so you must be right. You even quote a page from a "magazine" to support your argument.
I'm curious. What does "Our Unabashed Dictionary" define autim as?
BBH
While it's looking more and more like autism isn't caused by the MMR vaccine it does seem that something that is integral to our modern way of life does cause it. Before I saw Rain Man I had never heard of Autism, now I have an autistic son, my ex has another autistic son, one of my best childhood friends has an autistic son, my GF has a son with asperger's, and there are others I am aware of within my community. This can't be explained by increased diagnosis and I didn't meet any of these people as a result of the condition. There is something that has entered our environment within the past half century or so that is causing an alarming rise in the incidence of autistic spectrum disorders. I don't know what it is, perhaps it's the foam padding in our furniture, or household cleaners, or chlorinated water supplies, or TV, or microwaves, or food additives. Perhaps it is vaccines and the pharmaceutical corporations are covering it up. I simply don't know.
That's nothing. I just drank an entire glass of a highly explosive substance mixed in a 2:1 ratio with an oxygenator!
Wrong! It is pretty clear that autism is more common than before and it seems to be something in the environment, but we do not know what, from Scientific American:
That is a surprisingly content-free article that SciAm put out. It says nothing to warrant a bolded exclamation of "Wrong" to the GP's statement. A couple of other factors that can easily hit the "increased sevenfold" figure stated in the article.
Keep in mind that I'm not convinced the true form of the disorder is anything other than genetic. That may help explain my thought process.
1. In addition to the concessions that earlier detection, reporting of milder cases, and changes in reporting have affected that number, the article fails to disprove or even mention broadening definitions of the diagnosis. Plus, heightened awareness has the downside of false positives as "autism-like symptoms" are analyzed in a vacuum to come up with the diagnosis. Autism is not meant to be a blanket term for other developmental delays, yet in our quest to categorize everything, that's what happens. It's actually a disservice to those who legitimately fall under that banner.
2. Adults who were not diagnosed but are high-functioning enough to blend in with society are having children. These genetic markers have the potential to amplify with each generation. I've met families with autistic children whose relatives seemed a bit "off" but were never diagnosed. Sure, anecdotal evidence is not proof, but I'm not offering it as proof. Studies have shown these markers and my observations are merely explained by those studies.
3. Between 1990 and today, any changes in environment that could possibly "cause autism" have been examined with little conclusive evidence one way or the other.
You are missing the point. Even the FDA says the mercury additive is toxic and has caused documented reactions. I am not even saying these people are correct in this case. However, there have been people that had evidence that stood up and were mocked/ostracized/executed/etc. There is no shortage of things that were once scientifically proven that were later dismised as nonsense either, especially in the medical realm. Here is a fun one.
There has been a huge rise in autism cases as of late. This could be increased diagnosis. This could be other causes. But honestly, until the root cause of the problem is found, everything is still suspect. Maybe the vaccinations do pose no risk...unless coupled with some other enviromental variable. I am sure you are aware that certain chemicals interact, maybe there is a higher risk in these vaccinations when there are other chemicals present in the child's environment. There have been numerous studies that have shown that because of all the chemicals we use in kids junk these days that kids have far higher levels of toxins in their system than their parents did. What about allergies? I can eat peanuts, it kills other people. Are peanuts safe for most people, sure, can they kill some people, absolutely. Since you seem to demand a black and white answer are peanuts dangerous or not? There can't possibly be enough studies to disprove every possible combination in which the contents of these vaccines could have been a player.
Now, I am reasonably certain the reward is greater than the risk by a pretty large margin, but that does not mean that these things may not be linked.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
Second, vaccines are tested much the same as any other medication -- a population is selected, (assuming a double blind study) some of the population is given the actual medication while the remainder is given a placebo, statistical methods are then applied to determine the safety level. While this method validates (or invalidates) the safety of any particular medication, it says nothing about the safety of medical cocktails. Young children (less than 2 years old) are often given multiple vaccinations during a single "well" visit. Nobody has even attempted to determine if these multiple, simultaneous vaccinations are safe.
Third, and to the point, there is scientific evidence that the rate of autism is more common now than in the past. Scientific heresy you say? Consider this: In 1975 a study was performed to look at bleeding during pregnancy as a risk factor for autism and childhood psychosis. Computerized records of 30,000 children born between 1959 and 1965 at 14 university-affiliated medical centers were examined (that is a huge sample). Fourteen children were identified as having autism (by the definition used in 1975) -- a rate of 4.7 children per 10,000. This rate matched perfectly with other contemporary studies. Additionally, 6 other children were labeled as disturbed, psychotic, autistic, or schizophrenic. The remaining children were considered cognitively normal. Labeling all the cognitively non-normal children as autistic gives a rate of 6.7 children per 10,000. This rate is _far_, _far_ below even the low-end estimate of 30 per 10,000 for autistic spectrum disorders today cited by the National Institute of Health. FYI, the study was published in the highly credible Journal of autism and Childhood Schizophrenia in 1975. This is an apples-to-apples comparison folks. The rate of childhood autism is definitely increasing.
Finally, the court can make any ruling it wants. That in no way determines the cause or treatment of autism or any other disease for that matter. What is does do is throw yet another monkey wrench into the lives of families that are already struggling to deal with their situations. Our tax dollars would be better spent on medical research to identify the true causes of diseases and effective treatments.
Only if it is modded +5 Insightful.
Autism, like many other diseases/illnesses can be miss-diagnosed so back in ye olden days, a poor autistic child could've been thrown in an asylum, abandoned, or even snuffed out by those unwilling to care for them.
Plus, since autism isn't an inherently genetic trait, there's no 100% accurate test for the illness. You just have observed behaviour of the participant as a sign of illness, so some people who have it will never be diagnosed whereas some who don't have it will be labelled as such if they happen to exhibit similar symptoms. This is much akin to the use of over-diagnosing signs of ADD.
Plus, if an earlier poster was accurate in their correlation that age is a contributing factor, that could also explain a dramatic rise in Autism, since by in large, people are having children at a later age in most western industrial countries.
Bye!
Yes, because N=1 trumps N=10,000 every time.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
Why does it have to be environmental? It could just as easily be behavioral. Having kids at an older age... Partaking in certain activities before/during conception/pregnancy...
Why is the default theory always to blame somebody else?
Do we really want courts deciding scientific fact?
I don't know do we?
Because our society has certainly decided that scientists can no longer decide scientific facts. If that were not the case, we wouldn't be in this mess to begin with.
Over the last 10 years, US and UK have spent tens of millions of dollars to provide "negative proof" of something that we had already known, just to quiet down the conspiracy theorists. But instead of quieting them down, this has empowered them, by giving them and their claims legitimacy. Now, we're faced with a situation where childhood vaccination has taken a nosedive, and we're seeing old goodies like measles re-emerge into small (for now) epidemics. And as herd immunity is eroded further, we will see additional diseases make an impressive comeback.
So now that we took the right to make educated judgments about medical and scientific matters, away from doctors and scientists, we've also demonstrated that as a society we're incapable of making rational decisions... which isn't surprising. The only option left seems to be the courts, where reasonably educated judges may or may not rule according to the best data available. Well... at least there's a chance.
And for those who will scream at me about mercury in vaccines, why don't you compare a single or rare exposure to a tiny amount of mercury... to how much mercury you must feed to your children via fish... and corn syrup.
Wow, maybe you have identified places to look for the "unknown" environmental factor.
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. For example, while there may some uncertainty in individual facts, accepted science is that life evolved on this planet from bacteria to the life we say today, with several very well known steps in between. There's no error bar for that. Similarly with other facts like sodium plus chlorine equals salt. Again, black and white.
Now, if you come in to criminal court and try to convict someone based on a theory that DOES have some significant error bars, it's just not going to fly.
I do have some reservations about the preponderance of doubt standard in civil court. But I think in general, it works as well as the science does that is presented as evidence.
This is also why we need:
1. Strong regulators who are funded to independently research this sort of stuff when needed.
2. To stop fighting out these kinds of issues in lawsuits.
When a medical procedure or drug enters the market the introducer should pay to have it tested to show that it is safe. Once this is accepted, the onus should then be on the government to show that it is not safe (or that there was clear fraud). If a government rules that a product is safe a court should not be able to award damages.
The problem is now that anybody can come up with any theory they'd like and sue for billions of dollars in a class-action. This encourages:
1. Plaintiffs to come out of the woodwork with any crazy theory to make some money.
2. Companies to avoid even researching safety issues - not because the research would cost money but because the outcome would punish them with 20/20 hindsight.
Go ahead and force companies to do safety studies if you must, but the outcome should be products pulled from the market - not lawsuits. And fraud means outright fraud. If a company finds one data point that suggests that there might be a risk, but doesn't pull a product until a study is completed several years later, they shouldn't be punished for this. If you pulled a product every time somebody got sick from it there wouldn't be anything on your pharmacy shelves. Lawyers love 20/20 hindsight. Now, if a company completes a definitive study and buries the results that is fraud. If a company completes a study and there is controversy in the data, and the company honestly reports the data to a regulator and gets the nod to put a product on the market, that isn't fraud.
Okay...lets.
I don't have a source for the quote below but I believe it stands on its own; it brings another point of view to the issue: it isn't a matter of how much mercury is in corn syrup, a can of tuna, a single vaccine dose. It is a matter of dosage relative to weight: vaccines are dosed for *everyone* not 2 day old infants with a weight perhaps 3-5% of what their adult weight would be. This quote captures the essence of the issue with regards to vaccines and mercury content and provides an apt illustration for why it is a good thing that the stuff was removed from vaccines (other than the flu vaccine -- still in there):
And, for the record, this is still being debated even if the Courts believe there is no link:
http://www.usautism.org/USAAA_Newsletter/An_Epidemiological_Analysis_of_the_Autism_as_Mercury_Poisoning_Hypothesis1.pdf
Autism is certainly a complex disorder.
As I said, mercury is still used in the flu vaccine and even after thimerosal was removed from the vaccines it remained in the supply-chain for a number of years while stocks of vaccines were used up. It is also used during the manufacture of the vaccine and then removed at the end -- meaning it is *still* in there though in much lower amounts.
What is *really* funny to me is that most people spouting the value of vaccines have done very little research into the issue themselves; "vaccines" are a sacred cow that you are not supposed to challenge or speak out against. Most people have *never* read a
Your numbers are problematic ... I should point out 4.7+6=10.7. Couple this with the 200% increase according to the study linked by jeorgen, and you get an anticipated autism rate of 10.7+2x10.7=32.1/10k. That is to say, a number slightly higher than what you quote.
Blog
Personally I would call parents that are fighting against vaccinations as irresponsible and a danger to society.
I don't think it's reasonable to make a blanket statement like this as far as all vaccines go. Different vaccines pose different risks, and different diseases also have different risks. Once you get to a point where more people or animals are injured or killed by a vaccine than the disease it's combating, it's probably time to weigh those risks and consider ditching the immunization program.
That said, I'll add that I fully agree with teh sentiment of your statement, in the sense that many immunizations pose negligible risk when administered, while they combat diseases that can be rather dangerous. The MMR vaccine is one of those that EVEN IF THERE WAS A DEFINITE LINK (which of course there is no evidence of), it would STILL be worthwhile. The anti-MMR kooks are no better than any other religious acolytes. Nothing anyone says, no hard science is ever going to dissuade them. They believe, on faith, that autism is caused by the MMR vaccine, and it's impossible to prove a negative in this case, any more than it's possible to prove conclusively that God doesn't exist.
So what is society to do about them? Prosecute the "conscientious objectors" for the harm they cause. If they're making educated decisions, surely they know the risks that the diseases pose to not only their own kids, but also everyone who their kids are around. Having that vaccination paper would absolve them of liability in the event of an outbreak, but those without proof could and should be held liable for everyone's medical bills, parents' lost work, and pain and suffering of everyone involved. If we can hold those religious kooks who let their kids die of trivial conditions because they believe prayer is more powerful than medical attention, surely this is feasible.
I'll just add that I do understand these sorts of risks and liabilities. For example, after research and careful consideration of all the risk factors and so on, I chose to cease vaccinating my animals, which are as much my family as the humans. With the horses, their risk factors are extremely low with no legal repercussions. With my dog, however...rabies is a mandatory vaccination. It's also one of the more dangerous vaccines out there from an adverse reaction standpoint (anaphylaxis resulting in death isn't exactly rare with it). However, in my home state, rabies is a virtually nonexistent threat. It's extremely rare even in non-vaccinated wildlife (aside from bats). There have been maybe a couple dozen documented cases of rabies (in non-bat species) here since 1910 or whenever the records started being kept. That includes wildlife, humans, and domestic animals. The odds of any dog in this state, even that come into contact with wildlife, contracting rabies are negligible. It's a statistic quoted by the animal control people with the large municipalities that compliance with the vaccination/license laws is less than 30%, so it's a bit of a stretch to argue that the vaccinations are keeping the virus in-check (again, consider all the unvaccinated wildlife that don't have rabies, too).
Even in light of all that though, I'm painfully aware that if my dog was to ever bite a human, it would be her death sentence since I don't have her rabies papers, since law enforcement quarantines all non-vaccinated dogs who bite humans for a week or two to see if they manifest symptoms, and then kills them regardless and has their brains shipped off for rabies testing. It's barbaric, but that's the greedy veterinary lobby at work. I choose that risk because the health risks of the vaccine, coupled with the needless expense, just seem so ridiculous in comparison. And I will do everything in my power to make sure it never comes to a test.
I'm not missing the point. Yes all those things may be true, but if they are then there will be evidence for them. Yes, some people have been mocked despite having evidence. In many cases they were eventually proven out. This is not one of those cases. This lady believes that the vaccine causes autism because she wants it to be true. The evidence is not on her side. This unsupported cause is causing ignorant people to stop vaccinations, which is eroding our herd immunity. This is dangerous to society. She deserves to be mocked because of this.
I don't agree that, because some people were not taken seriously in the past, you must take similar people seriously now. Again, the Wright Brothers/Bozo the Clown comment applies. If this woman wants me to take her seriously, she needs to support her claims. She has not, so I won't.
if the kid is autistic enough to warrant being kicked out of school for autistim-related disrupions wouldn't that be easy enough for a doctor to detect early on?
No. Autistic children typically behave very differently in a one-on-one environment than they do in a group, between strangers and people they know, and also between an adult and their peers. Their behaviors are also not consistent, they may be fine in school 99% of the time, but then something will set them off that they can't deal with.
http://www.mhall119.com
Really guys, sometimes I feel glad that I live in a little bit more "socialist" country...
Here in Mexico, we have socialized health care, and all parents get a "national vaccinations card" for their kid along with their birth certificate.
This card has spaces for stamps of all the vaccinations kids have to get, along with the ages when you have to take your kid to get them. As part of the National Vaccination Program, the goverment gives all the vaccinations for free (except for the really new ones, like the HPV vaccine for girls)
"Oh, but I can ignore the card" you say? No, sorry... Your kid will be denied admission in a public school (and basically all the private schools too!) if the parents don't show that the kid has received all of the appropiate vaccinations for his/her age.
No sig for the moment.
I would, but I don't know where the guy lives :)
Introversion is not the same thing as Autism. What you described is introversion.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
What percentage is misdiagnosis?
Now that the drug companies are off the hook we can go after the real cause -- Sin!
If this was about one woman in one isolated case this would all be nonissue. The fact is we don't understand autism very well at all and to say we can prove/disprove causes without understanding it is a little goofy. I have read the weird rantings of the crazed parents about the autism/vaccination thing, I don't take them very seriously. I have also read a lot of it coming from pediatricians or other medically knowledgable people, that don't take such a zealotry approach, suggest there may be a link, and even offer alternate explanations.
The claim and the person making the claim must be separated. In your example, there were a great number of bad attempts at flight, many operated on fundamentally wrong assumptions about how flight worked, but disproving 1, 10, or 100 of those bad ideas did not disprove that manned flight was capable, only that those specific explanations of how to do it were wrong. The guys jumping off of towers with home made wings had the right idea that man could fly, just a really bad approach. The Wright Brothers are only famous because they got it correct. The specific claims of HOW it is linked can be disproven, but that doesn't disprove the potential link itself.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
I can see what you mean, but it's entirely possible for a child to be disruptive and the issue not be autism. It could be sheer naughtiness (which may be a disorder in its own right, but not autism), it could be secondary to something like chronic pain (undiagnosed constipation is a common one), it could even be some sort of home problem or abuse. None of those things are autistic spectrum, and all of them take time to tease out. Until a child reaches an age at which they acquire complex social interactions (or should), characteristic behaviour is difficult to spot.
Think about it this way: if someone says 'my computer keeps crashing' I would assume (as a Slashdot member) you would know how to go about diagnosing that - you would need to see the complex behaviour of interacting with the operating system in order to work it out. If it was a rack in a server farm and you just had a blinking LED telling you it's not working, that wouldn't be enough.
In the meantime schools can be unsympathetic because they just see a naughty child. The nub of the issue is that actually we everyone, including schools, should be sympathetic to any child with behavioural problems, because whatever the issue, the solution is for parents and other responsible adults to provide a supportive environment, not to chuck the child out.
He ran off to America. It's up to you guys to deal with him now.
I suggest releasing Smallpox into his neighbourhood and seeing how fast he changes his mind about vaccines.
But since Wikipedia defines the media, that means we define science!
Stop! Dremel time!
You do realize that different compounds of Mercury have different chemical properties, right? Sure, some are dangerous in small amounts, but not all of them.
By your reasoning, since hydrogen is a toxin, then so is water.
Also, you might be surprised at the resolution of current statistical methods, even with relatively small sample sizes. It's very possible that an increase of 0.006% is detectable depending on the quality and size of the sample and the methods used.
I think it's horrible that the FDA told manufacturers to stop using a particular preservative not based on evidence that it was dangerous, but instead because a small group of vocal and misguided parents complained about it. It was stupid and, of course, seen as an admission that there was something wrong with it (when there's no evidence at all that there is).
*sigh* back to work...
Tying the defendants up and tossing them in lakes. Like in the good old days.
Prior to the 1950's they used to blame the mother's of autistic children. Say that they had not nurtured their kids properly. Also, the common 'fix' for autism, was to lock them away. This was usually considered a bad parenting thing, instead of an actual mental/medical problem.
100 years ago, we just didn't pay attention to Autism the way we do now. Someone might just have been called "moody, extremely shy, quiet."
As opposed to nutcase parents who want to return to the dark ages? Do they have medical degrees?
I say to you, sir, that this here is America and we'll not have any of your personal responsibility nonsense.
Purely out of interest, why was there a need to diagnose anything at all if it did not affect your life in any major way?
Do we really want courts deciding scientific fact?
Who else will?
There's no central board of scientists that declares "X is a scientific consensus and is now declared a scientific fact!", there are occasionally groups like the IPCC that make statements but there's no organization that can speak for the opinion of science as a whole.
The only problem I have is that is would be nice if the judges were also trained scientists. In this case it worked but in general I'm not convinced that judges have the scientific judgment to smell BS.
I stole this Sig
So, why are you even telling people about your "diagnosis", if you're not trying to be a "special little snowflake" and brag about your internet fad disease? Nobody cares.
thimerosal contains mercury, not lead. Also, table salt contains Sodium and Chlorine, both of which are highly toxic. Just because an element is dangerous in some forms, doesn't mean it is dangerous in every compound it is found in.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
If they want to find the results of Vaccs from autism then they need to look in the Colin!!! They are researching the brain! Its the colin thats holding all the mess from Vaccs!! Watch this video!! Ignorance is a shame!!
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7018835240451107552&hl=en
All you're saying is that there's room for uncertainty in what causes autism. That's fine, and I'm not disputing that. What I am disputing is that we should speculate that vaccines cause it without evidence. I have not seen this evidence from knowledgeable people, only bad conclusions drawn from most-likely-coincidental correlation. The current scientific evidence strongly suggests that vaccines do not cause autism. Unless someone has good evidence (as in, researched, and potential for scientific validity) to bring to the table, I am not going to take them seriously. If they try to sway public opinion in a dangerous direction without said evidence, then I'm not going to respect that person in the slightest.
In this case, no-one has managed to show a link. Correlation does not equal causation, and coincidence does not equal correlation. The only proof available is that autism rose at roughly the same time as certain vaccines, and some anecdotes that the autism "started" about when vaccines were taken. The former has been explained, and the latter has not held up to scientific scrutiny. Again, I'm not saying that its impossible for vaccines to cause autism, but that there is no evidence that it does.
Just saying that the science may be wrong is meaningless, especially when its been tested and, according to our best knowledge, it isn't. Scientific knowledge is fluid, and it can change, but you have to bring in the new evidence, formulate new hypothesis or theories, and then test those.
As far as the mother and public safety goes, we have evidence that the vaccine helps. We understand the risk of the vaccine, and its extremely likely that it does not cause autism. The fact that this mother is emotionally distraught over her autistic kid is not evidence to the contrary. I'm certainly not going to respect people who endanger their kids and the public because they're being skeptical for no good reason (and no, distrust of doctors and scientists are not a good reason).
Well, that depend on what is his "shut in" process. An austistic one, like mine, would be that it suddenly becomes hard to perceive other people, that he has difficulties to isolate human voices from background noise, and such socialization related problems.
...against the theory that jerking off causes blindness.
How is this off topic? That's exactly the same logic that these numbskull parents are using to argue their case.
But since Wikipedia defines the media, that means we define science!
[citation needed]
Fair points although why are those the only two options? There's the possibility that there's simply something genetic. There is a certainly a genetic component to autism.
As for technology... It's oversimplifying to suggest the Amish do or do not allow certain things. There are many different amish communities, and while they tend to seek agreement with each other, the specifics of the rules are up to the individual communities.
A study of 10,000 Amish people found there are no autistic Amish people. Amish do not vaccinate. To me that is all the evidence I need right there.
The strict Amish don't use electricity or computers. Maybe computer dust is causing autism.
Correlation != Causation
The "4.7" is a rate per 10,000 individuals. Study's sample size was 30,000. The "six" you quote was from the entire sample size, or 2 per 10,000 individuals.
That is where the 6.7 came from.
6.7 + (2 * 6.7) gives us the estimated rate of 20.1 per 10,000.
That remains less than the "low-end" estimate. Interesting numbers, AC...
putting Mercury ... Even though now they no longer do that and there is still risk that maybe some shady or ignorant vaccine makers still do that?
Thiomersal is no longer used in children's vaccines and for the elderly. Everybody else still gets vaccines with thiomersal in them.
A study of 10,000 Amish people found there are no autistic Amish people. Amish do not vaccinate. To me that is all the evidence I need right there.
This is a common urban legend. It is wrong at multiple levels. First, Amish do vaccinate albeit not as frequently as the general population. Second Amish do get autism at about the same rate as the general population. . So it fails at both levels. The claim of this sort originally claim from anecodatal evidence from Reporters' Dan Olmsted and David Kirby. See http://autism-news-beat.com/?p=29. Note that the Amish have a different environment from most Americans and have a very small genepool. So even if both claims were made
A court has determined there is no causal link between vaccinations and MMR.
In other news the National Institutes of Health has decided that when both civil and criminal charges are simultaneously brought on a case, if one is in federal court and the other in a state court, it does not constitute double jeapordy.
That would be relevant irony (OK, it's sarcasm) if the title (as in the original) were accurate. It's not. The court was a compensation court. They did not rule there was no causal link, they ruled that one could not be shown conclusively enough to award compensation.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
I'm sorry, but even the rulings of a court can't define facts or reality!
Whether it is caused by the vaccine is solely to be determined trough researching the subject.
Well... I guess if you have enough power/money/religion, you can rule everything.
I should have bought that "Obey gravity! It's the law!" shirt.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
I certainly don't think there is any "proof", just a reason for caution and detailed research. Between the behavior of the companies in question, the uncertaintly of the issue, the political forces at hand, and so on. Correlation certainly does not equal causation else we would be suing icecream makers becaues increased icecream sales coincide with increased rape cases. However, there are plausible reasons for the increase in rape during increased icecream sales (its warmer out). Since there is no plausible explanation for autism other than "well, that is when it is usually diagnosed" vaccines are hardly off the hook because they haven't been proven, or even because they have been disproven in certain circumstance. There is a reason for the increase in autism and noone is totally off the hook until there is a real answer.
Now...a note on Public Safety. Measels and Rubella have been declared eradicated in this part of the world. So this isn't some massive public safety crisis that the detractors like to make it out to be. Which is one more reason that the whole thing is suspect. Fear of autism being used by one side, fear of some epidemic on the other. A whole lot of FUD is being used on both sides of this argument.
To be honest, I suspect if there is any relation it probably is in the mercury link, which is moot point because the mercury containing stuff has all but vanished from modern vaccinations. Even if they can prove the "normal" levels don't cause it, that doesn't mean that there weren't batches with abnormally high levels that did do damage. I have personally had a bad reaction to an MMR shot, and my daughter had to get blood tests to check her liver as an infant because they misprinted the dosage on some medication for her. There have been tons of cases of infants dying in hospitals because of wrong dosing. There are no shortages of human error that could have played a large role. I think it is horribly wrong to laugh these people off just because they can't prove it. I suspect these people know their kid better than any of the pundits commenting. I have known people with autistic kids, and they didn't just magically become autistic overnight. To be perfectly honest we could just be looking at mercury poisoning of these kids and getting away with the technicality of it didn't cause autism because these kids have been diagnosed with autism, even though the symptoms are strikingly similar to mercury poisoning. Aspberger's Syndrome is frequently misdiagnosed as ADD/ADHD.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
One of my grandmother's siblings died as an infant, due to a severe case of the measles. It happens.
Autism has a well-known incidence of about 1-2 people per 10,000.
From a statistical standpoint, the odds that those 10,000 individuals studied were all free of autism simply due to "the luck of the draw" is easily within the realm of possibility.
That all said, it certainly is an interesting statistic. The Amish way of life is extremely different than what most of us are used to. It's certainly possible that other aspects of their lifestyle are responsible for the (alleged) reduced incidence of the disease.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Where have you been? Courts have always not only made medical decisions, but ones in various other areas of science, too, when there is a dispute. What exactly do you think forensics are, anyway? They do the same things courts have always done - rely on expert witnesses. As soon as you come up with a better way to correctly solve disputes involving factual claims, please do let the world know.
The Supreme Court ruled that the Tomato is a Vegetable.
Ok, sure that's just for import/export laws and tariffs, but still.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
Leonard Engel, a popular medical writer, stated in Harper's Magazine in 1954 that "the case against cigarettes is by no means proved" and that cigarettes may have "little or nothing to do with cancer of the lung."
From what I can tell, the media defines pretty much everything.
I heard the same thing on TV, so it must be true.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
The only words I can describe these postings with. There's a strong herd mentality I'm seeing here - that all parents with a fear of autism are not providing vaccination to their children, which is just as ridiculous a claim as the vaccination causing the autism to begin with.
For the record, I am a father of two children, one of which is autistic, and both of my children's vaccinations are up-to-date.
The issue isn't the vaccinations, the issue is the Thimerisol (and more specifically, the mercury component) content in the vaccination. Thimerisol is used as a preservative in the vaccine. The uproar is over the amount of Thimerisol (and hence, the amount of mercury) that a child is subjected to at any one time. Some parents have urged their doctors to stagger the vaccinations slightly as single injections of each type in the MMR vaccine. The net effect is the same, but the cost of doing so is higher, so most doctors (and HMOs) do not offer this - it's their way or the highway, and given you can't get a child into elementary school without vaccination records, most parents don't bother.
Regardless of the psuedo-science surrounding the connection between autism and the MMR vaccination series (and the attendant bad mojo/fallout in the form of increasing outbreaks), it still boggles the mind that we would knowingly inject children with a known toxin. Perhaps, for other reasons unrelated to autism, we should look at a different preservative? Of course, even though I am suggesting it for other reasons, that will be a very, very unpopular opinion.
People have suggested a "Science Court" with science-savy judges and officiers as a possibility.
They already tried a Science Court back in the late 90s but it proved unsuccessful and was canceled after only a year of operation.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Measles and Rubella have been practically eradicated, but there are still isolated cases:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Rubella+cases+2008
This means that there is still a risk of resurgence if herd immunity drops enough. It isn't FUD, because the science is there to quantify the risk.
Someone pointed out this link, which I found illuminating:
http://www.thatsfuckingstupid.com/index.php/2008/11/just-a-quickie-you-wont-feel-a-thing/
There's reason for caution and research if there's evidence. Autism rose along with certain vaccines. Mercury was a concern. We removed the mercury (and subsequently discovered that the autism rates didn't change). We did studies on the vaccines in question. The rise can be explained by simple correlation. Caution was exercised. The evidence suggests that there is no danger of autism from the vaccine.
What we're seeing in the anti-vaccine community is that the evidence is being dismissed, because, by golly they're scared and angry, and they'll be damned if they let evidence stand in the way of that.
As far as general risks from vaccinations, we do know of allergic reactions and other complications. Those risks have been quantified, and a trade-off has been made. There is a fund for the extremely minuscule population of people who suffer bad reactions due to vaccines.
The theory is that autism MAY be caused in some instances by thimerosal.
Newborns are now subjected to multiple vaccinations at birth, including Hepatitis B. Why in the world would you vaccinate a newborn for Hep B which is sexually or blood borne transmitted disease?
It's been documented that the total dosage exceeds the EPA maximum exposure of mercury. Is it a coincidence that the symptoms of autism mimic those of mercury poisoning?
Our family's life has been destroyed by this affliction. We have an 8 year old who is non-verbal, wears a diaper, and has done numerous damage to our house. We love him dearly but will soon have to institutionalize him because we can't handle him anymore.
Sometimes it's amazing to see the lack of compassion and flippant attitudes on this site.
The Skeptical Inquirer ran an article a little over a year ago about the anti-vax movement. Highly recommended reading.
Nice try, but that would imply that somehow parents bear some form of responsibility, which is unthinkable.
Clearly, the evil corporation did it, because someone (else) has to be blamed, right?
Perfect example of them not making up facts but following the existing ones. "Vegetable" is not a scientific term (well, not for plants). It is a traditional term like "bug." They looked at the pre-existing evidence and did not make up anything new. I only wish most other cases were this easy.
I'm sorry about your child's autism... and the tremendous toll it has taken on your family, but I have to tell you - reading your comment has made me ever so sadder for our society.
Sir, the only place where either the value of vaccinations or any causative relationship between vaccines and autism are still debated, is in the public press and on the Internet. Anti-vaccination has become a subculture, that is so far off the chart of what is scientifically substantiated, that it is now the prime example of how people will eagerly buy into only the biggest lies.
I have over 12 years of experience in immunology and virology... I have 2 degrees in biology and biomedical science... and after very carefully examining the peer-reviewed primary literature in the matter of autism vs. vaccines, I have found zero evidence to show a positive causative relationship... not even a strong, statistically-significant correlation.
With regards to vaccines in general, to claim that their benefits are questionable is to render the last 50 years of research null and void. It's simply wrong.
I know that my post hasn't made life any better for your family, but I do hope that it can at least help to get you back on track. Honestly, we in the medical research community have only your interests at heart. We're not all part of a giant conspiracy, and if we knew something to be harmful, we'd have withdrawn it long ago. Not trusting us, simply because there are websites full of hate and stupidity that tell you so, is quite a bit like hating black people after reading Clan literature. Every bit as insane, and may be even more damaging.
If autism is genetically-linked, then the fact that autistic children's fathers seem to be older on average might be explained by the fact that those fathers themselves might have autistic traits which led to not breeding until later in life.
No, the sloppy thinking is clear - we need to blame the Amish.
Not all vaccines are of equal worth. I once got into a long discussion with my kids' pediatrician, in which he eloquently defended vaccines in general, but at the end he shook his head and said, "well, the chicken pox vaccine...that was sort of forced upon us by the pharmaceutical industry". His point was that chicken pox is not that dangerous a disease, and that exposure to it provides better immunization than the vaccine. But it's a lucrative little industry, and the disease itself is a huge inconvenience to working parents. So it became required, but the motivation was questionable.
Vaccines in general are hugely beneficial, but it's also healthy to question each one. The combination of an overly-protective government and a greedy pharmaceutical industry could be dangerous.
A study of 10,000 slashdotters found that none of them have girlfriends. Slashdotters are geeks. To me that is all the evidence I need right there.
In the USA, the medical industry decides on the law, at least as it applies to medicine. The AMA began as an organization founded basically to combat natural medicine. Over time it has risen to a position of absurd power - and it is overwhelmingly controlled by big pharma.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
A study of 10,000 Amish people found that none of them are immortal and all die at some point. Therefore not being vaccinated causes death in 100% of people. To me that is all the evidence I need right there.
The Big Pharmonster strikes again!
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
Actually having an Autistic son, it was quite surprising how little equipped the average doctor was to diagnose him.
While when he started preschool the people there immediately knew there was something different about him the doctors kept just sending us to more specialized specialists until we made quite a few trips to childrens hospital with a lot of testing including MRI's and things before he was diagnosed.
Also when he started school he was not talking and very frustrated with attempting to communicate. The school principal started out not even believing in autism but after the first year agreed that autism was a real disability.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Do I need to spell out the sloppy thinking ?
Yeah! Those damned Amish! If they drove cars like the rest of us, there would never be any automobile accidents!
That is all.
tylenol I think its called in the US
Tylenol is the brand name. The American generic name is acetaminophen.
That is all.
I thought it was obvious.
I was listening to a radio program on Sunday. Someone with the title "Doctor" was saying that what would help this person was a homeopathic remedy and that it was "science based". Later he said that colon clensing products were not very effective in some cases.
With a doctor like this, it is a clear sign that we have entered a period where science education in the US is pointless because people do not understand how to think. So if you think this decision will somehow deter any of the fruitless lawsuits or somehow encourage mothers to get their children vaccinated, you are wrong.
> no autistic Amish people
withdrawn, insular, unable to engage with the rest of society ...
how can you tell?
I've always wondered about the peculiar way in which americans regard autism. Over here in europe it is tought (and taught) as children's psychosis, and treated as such. This news would be roughly equivalent to trying to prove (or even propose!) that schizophrenia is caused by adult vaccinations. Sure, there are developmental theories about chemicals which might possibly alter brain development, but even THOSE theories suggest the effect has to be caused during intrauterine life. And nobody would even dare to put one of those theories'place above plain and simple genetic predisposition. Could anyone in the field help me understand why are these very unlikely theories about autism causes the source of oh so many studies and debates? Does the public not understand very well the disease? Do american psychyatrists see it as something other than children's psycosis or even a very similar schizophrenia?
Or 3, being a more genetically insular population, there may be some genetic component more common outside of Amish communities that within it.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
to get their kids viral infections treated with antibiotics, thus killing people with the beautiful antibiotic resistant strains of diseases they've helped create.
Maybe this is a silly question, but how do antibiotics work on viruses?
Rubella has pretty much been eliminated from the US. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubella#Prevention Of course with idiots like this it'll come back unfortunately.(Just damn sad that if they kept up the vaccine for a little while longer then nobody would need it.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
"Be thankful that people are fighting for right to choose what you do with your children."
Not in this case, not getting a child vaccinated hurts everyone. Non vaccinated children may cause mutations in a virus rendering the vaccines useless. This can not happen in a vaccinated child.
Communities getting sick is bad for economics, overall health.
"That said, the fact that science cannot find a cause for the incredibly rapid increase of autism in industrialized nations isn't helping matters."
That's incorrect. It is the broadening of the term. In fact, the 'increase' follows the broadening of the term exactly. In fact, when the vaccines where changed in 1998 it had NO impact on the 'autism' rate; which was expected.
"People are looking for a common link and keep coming to a solution that is common to these nations and immunization stands out."
It's no more a common link then drinking water is a common link. It was rational to think this 30+ years ago, not any more.
"It may not be true, but it isn't that irrational."
Based on all the evidence, and there is mountains of it, it is irrational to keep thinking vaccines are the cause.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
No, unvaccinated children can be a vector for a mutation that will render current vaccines useless.
Vaccinated kids can not be a vector. t's not possible.
Now when 95% of more of yout population is properly vaccinated, the odds of the vector is very, very low.
Do toy allergies and the fact that sometime(rare) vaccines don't take in some children we can't be at 100%
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Chicken pox isn't that serious in children, but it can be considerably more severe in adults, not to mention the virus becoming dormant and then reappearing later in life as shingles.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Chicken Pox cause death, brain damage, scars, and when your older they come back in the form of shingles. Shingles can be so painful that people have been know to kill themselves.
And the only reason not to give multiple vaccines in one shot is because you are a mean SoB that likes to see kids get poked with needles.
Please get a clue.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
They stopped using thimerosal in the MMR vaccine *years* ago. In fact, that is what makes it so trivially easy to show that mercury from thimerosal in the MMR vaccine was unrelated to autism. They removed it, and nothing changed.
(And by nothing, I mean not even the anti-vaccination rhetoric. It's about as bad as the buffoons who claim that Coke is addictive because they surreptitiously still add cocaine -- undetectable cocaine, even!)
Mod this guy up. Thimerosal hasn't been used in first world vaccines for several years now. If it was the cause, we would have seen a precipitous drop in Autism cases.
Well, to be honest, the fear has never been enough to convince me even beyond having had bad reactions to both Small Pox and MMR. My kids all get stuck and I have probably been stuck with twice as many vaccines as the average person. I am forced to question the thatsfuckingstupid.com link because between the rather inflamatory nature of the source and its lack of citation of where it got the numbers it doesn't exactly look unbiased and objective. I am not anti-vaccine by any stretch, I am anti-pharma company if anything. But, if you look up the history on almost all of those vaccines they came from publicly funded sources such as military medical research, universities, or other public organizations.
If the risk of resurgence is really so bad I think there is actually a much deeper root cause beyond the anti-vaccination crowd. It is the crowd that villifies the science community as elitists or otherwise uses warped science for political agendas. If there is some large crisis number of people not accepting vaccinations it is because either their doctors are not pushing it, or because they have been taught to not trust the doctors (by all means, don't trust one, get second opinions, I did that with some ankle issue and "hey your fine don't worry unless it causes constant pain" turned into "you won't walk in 10 years if we don't correct this surgically" and the second opinion was able to provide me tons of information about what was going wrong and why it was going to get worse). More and more people get trapped between Science always has the right answer at any given time and Science is a bunch of elitists that don't know what they are doing.
And for my last bit of devil's advocate. The herd immunity is all well and good until it is your kid that is negatively affected. That and I don't think we are a herd, that would seem to indicate some type of bovine and I am pretty sure cows are more peaceful than we are. We are some kind of monkey colony.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
It seems there is a lot of anger anger and rage on the part of people that want other
people to give vaccines to their children. This doesn't help people sort out the facts
and risks. There do seem to be some 'big picture' things that are getting over looked,
though not by everyone.
1) Should the courts (or any authoritative body) decide what is scientific fact for everyone
and allow no dissension or discussion? Courts (or authoritative bodies) are not
always right. The easy examples are wrongly convicted people and the fact that the
world is not flat (it's not, right?).
2) Public health decisions are often not in the individual's best interests. When you start
to research what is fact/fiction about vaccines you run into the term "herd protection". The
premiss being, that the vaccination might not be anything you need, but it's given to you
to protect someone else.
3) There are a lot of "non-vaccine" things in the shot. There is still mercury in some vaccines
(aka, Thiomersal), aluminum, etc., that are known toxins (heavy metals) that growing babies
are especially sensitive to.
4) The risks of not giving a particular vaccine may be very much higher or lower then another. A
lot of the fatal and horrendous outcomes that are sited for reasons why all vaccines should be given
are often from decades ago (before improved health care) or from areas where health care isn't
available or utilized. No one wants anyone to get any disease, but the impact of getting Chicken pox
is very different then getting Tetanus, so the decision about one vaccine may be different then for
another. If your child isn't going to be sexually active or an IV drug user in the first 1-6+ years of
life, does it really make sense to give HepB shot at birth just because "there are people that might not
ever see a doctor again"?
No, once you start needing glasses your chances to stop needing to masturbate fall to zero.
Proofs are math only. In the real world you only have evidence. You can't proof that in 2 minutes everything will start floating into the space and gravity vanishes. But we have lots of evidence that this will not happen.
Good scientists know that. That is why scientific argument is less persuasive to normal people. A believer is not that careful about what he says. He will not say "given the evidence we assume" he will say "it is a fact" or "it is well known". A believer insists on being proven wrong before changing his mind and a honest scientist must say that this can't possibly happen.
And who defines the media?
That is what scares me the most.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
So since autism is now considered a spectrum of disorders, where in the past it was not, what you're saying is that, compared to the past, the definition of autism has broadened?
Assuming it's not about the inconvenience to the parents, do they really need to get it at 12 months while their bodies are still in rapid growth? Maybe wait a few years and if they don't get it naturally (thus giving them LIFE long immunity) then give them the vaccine?
I spoke to an autism activist.
I asked does it cluster geographically? No. So it isn't environmental.
I asked does it run in families? No, although parents of an autistic child are more likely to have another. So it isn't genetic.
Is it because of childhood vaccines? No, because Thiomersal has been eliminated from children's vaccines and diagnosis are still rising.
Why is it?
Part is due to people previously being labeled awkward being labeled autistic. Part is due to parents having children too late in life.
No one to sue, except maybe you.
There was some famous one once, about a monkey or something.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
This lady, Mary Tocco, has 5 non-vaccinated children with a husband. They both studied all the vaccines and found them to be of questionable cause. She has been in business for nearly 30 years. She is on the board to remove the "Philosophical Exemption" to not have children vaccinated; why do you suppose that is, or is philosophy and truth indistinguishable in the matter of vaccines having a negative effect?
Your call, visit her biography, buy what she knows for U$25 delivered DVD video that should be more helpful then all the video games that created the illusion that anti-vaccination argumentes are limited to quacks.
I'm pretty sure the media handles that as well.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
By the sound of this board, most people believe vaccinations should be mandatory. If you feel you need the vaccines to protect yourself or your children, by all means get them. But don't go forcing your "the sky is falling" philosophy onto everyone else.
Besides, what does it matter if an epidemic breaks out? You and your children are completely immune. Be happy, there will be less traffic.
What defines the media?
Stop calling truth an unreasonable philosophy.
Dr. Simoncini (http://cancerisafungus.com) remedied all cancer using sodium bicarbonate (Baking Soda). He's in jail for 4 years on unrelated charges.
Mary Tocco (http://www.marytocco.com/marytoccobio.htm) has over 20 years experience on the subject; she and her husband doesn't vaccinate their 5 children, and found philosophy & truth joined that the pre-dominant causes of vaccinating today that have caused all the ill health are in-effect more philosophical from ignorance as yours.
Mike Witort ( http://wakeupwell.org/ ) is perhaps the simplest man in existence yet more effective than all the others, specializing in nutritional remedies to correct the bodies absorption of necessary metals and proper digestion combined with lymphnode/endocrine -activating massage therapy and more knowledge blended of ancient Chinese and competing "theories" that you might not be capable of reasoning. He is constantly harassed, and has spent years in prison for following through in his ministry of good will.
Rick Simpson "Run From The Cure" ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjhT9282-Tw ) has been growing acres of high-THC marijuana on his estate over at Canada and the the Royals arrive to uproot it all without charges; they don't charge him because he has affidavits in place and compurgatorial statements from people that were about to die and his "gamble" saved them; he uses typical "junk" science to refine Hemp oil with THC from the plants, and gives it to whomever is about to die. There were many people with less than 2 weeks estimated to live, and letting their skin absorb the THC oil or just ingest it would kill the nastiest of diseases. The Royal Mounted Police continues to harass because they think the Royals estimated theirselves a street value of $10k worth of plants goes into making half a cup of his thick resin. He doesn't sell it for smoke, and will not get a license because people like your philosophy is what makes the truth such a hindrance to license everything that is free and good.
All these people have 1 thing in common; they don't force anyone to abide, they just wait for you to receive them; free states. If you want to force people to accept innoculations, then you'll undoubtedly accept one of theirs in equal exchange to recompense the damages that occur.
I would login if I could, but Slashdot moderation has slandered (user ID account "nradude") this from being seen.
I approve this message,
without prejudice,
m. Gregory Thomas(tm).
Actually, I think the definition of a true troll should be -polite, -sincere, and +clear. That's on the theory that they fixed the broken moderation system to make it multidimensional. It's actually possible for a troll to say something that is +insightful, but to say it in such a way that no one wants to hear it.
However, that was linked to the suggestion (of course ignored) that karma should also be multi-dimensional, and people who had earned strong karma in a particular dimension would also have the ability to award (or remove) two mod points at a time for posts along the same dimension. For example, someone who had earned a strong +humor rating for making many witty posts (a true rarity on today's /.) would be credited for recognizing humor in other people's comments.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Yes, I was vaccinated against small pox and polio and that was it. Caught measles, mumps and chickenpox. Never caught german measles which is a different disease from regular measles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_measles
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measles
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Well ideally kids that are at-risk for the vaccine shouldn't be given it. I'm not a doctor, so I don't know if there's a way to screen. Herd immunity is all well and good - because if your kid is at risk, he can not take the vaccine and still be safe. It's just when too many people opt-out that there's a problem.
As far as science is concerned, I seem argumentative, but I really agree with you that too many people treat it as a religion. Its not. If the lady had some solid evidence, then by all means we should look into it. Science is a process, and part of that process is to question our conclusions when new evidence comes to light.
I agree with second opinions - but that means you shouldn't trust *a* doctor, not doctors in general. If you are sick, then doctors are your best bet for getting healed. Get a second opinion, or even a third.
Unfortunately, people extend this idea to the point where they don't trust any doctor and think all doctors are elitists. Its the same with scientists. Unfortunately, we have a huge anti-intellectual kick here in the US. A frightening number of people truly believe that the "wisdom of the common man" beats out those years of research and education, and to insist otherwise is elitist.
So yeah, don't treat science as a religion, but don't think it has nothing to offer. I think we agree on that point. My only disagreement is that I don't think that we should humor the autism debate unless they have some new evidence to bring forth.
wow, whatever happened to the famous Slashdot saying "correlation does not equal causation"?
I guess only when you want it too...
It would be nice if it worked that way. Unfortunately the way it actually works is better demonstrated by the 2008 measles outbreak in San Diego. Some of the victims were too young to have gotten their measles vaccination.
The idiot parents who took their unvaccinated child to Switzerland and brought him back with the measles should feel free to stick to their beliefs.
They should also be forced to compensate their victims for any medical care, including lost time at work, and any costs incurred by the city, state, medical facilities, and the airlines because of their beliefs put a lot people at risk and cost the rest of us a lot of money.
Support SETI@home
That's the thing about the fringe -- it's just like the fringe on a jacket hem. Left or right, it doesn't matter: it goes all the way around.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
A smart guy I used to know once said to me ( and this is verbatim ) : "I owe it to the world to reproduce because my
genes are superior".
Well, guess what ? This arrogant jerk had a daughter, and she is profoundly autistic, and completely incapable of surviving without help for the rest of her life.
So much for those "superior genes" ...
And of course this guy is 100% on the "It's all the fault of the MMR vaccine" bandwagon, because of course his genes were
"superior".
And me ? I'm still laughing about it.
Oo, sorry, *double* fail there. Properly spelled (as it is in the OP), nativity is indeed a word in the English language, as evidenced by entries in dictionaries such as, say, Wiktionary, or Merriam-Webster. However, given that it means "birth" (and usually Jesus' birth at that, c.f. Christmas dioramas), you're probably right that the OP meant naïveté instead. :)
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
I think the underlying problem is that diagnosing autism (among other mental disorders) isn't as easy as checking an insulin level or blood pressure. Things are not black and white when it comes to the human mind.
Nobody likes a troll.
The people who are claiming that government mandated vaccinations resulted in their child's autism are typically the same people who would claim that the government is responsible for their child being afflicted with a disease because the vaccination wasn't mandated.
The vaccines themselves don't cause autism.
The mercury in them (and all flu vaccines) do.
That's interesting, though it's anecdotal I do know of a multiple cases where kids with diagnosed ADHD has become better after switching to LCHF food. Ie they cut down on the sugar.
The only research paper I have read about in this area that disproves that sugar leads to hyperactivity was sponsored by the sugar industries...
"This message was brought to you by Sarcasm and Troll Feeders United (or STFU, for you un-hip people)."
It was that study that made me decide against getting one of those 4d movie ultrasounds done of my son - no medical benefit and a possible risk.
Help children born unable to swallow - www.tofs.org.uk
I'm in the same jizzboat too, brother err is it sister(I recently found out that females too can shoot a wad once a month)? Maybe we can make an aquaintence over breakfest. I like eggs, get to work.
Yeah but I define your mom.
You dare devil you!
I can attest to that as I am myself deaf in my right ear, and partly deaf in my left ear. There was a period in my youth when I was evaluated at length by by doctors who thought I may have a mild case of Asperger's Syndrome over and above my hearing difficulty, however, the diagnosis did not prove conclusive with enough evidence. I suspect at times they may have been right, but, the circumstances and lack of clinical research at the time was not enough (bare in mind I live in a so called "third world" country). As for specialised services, my primary school sent me in for a series of test, of which I passed with flying colours and was able to cope with regular schooling with relatively no difficulty. I am thankful for that, I probably would not be where I am were I sent to a specialised school. That being said, there was many occasions when I have been treated as a "retard", simply because I could not hear what was being said. In most cases I have to bring forth my hearing difficulty, to explain why I could not hear, and in most cases people take that into consideration when communicating with me without being overly sensitive. I've also had to undergo speech therapy, which really helped me a bit. Over the years I found ways to disguise my disability with the effect that most people I meet these days are absolutely clueless they are dealing with a deaf person :)
Or that other well known disorder, Slashdotter syndrome.
This is inability to carry on a conversation without excessive condescending remarks, name calling and the strange habit of classifying everyone into one of several categories based on whether or not you agree with them instead of the truth of their remarks.
Of course the "good" news is that since there's a biologically plausible link between a reduction in herd immunity and an increase in epidemic outbreaks, any one whose child is killed or damaged by one of these outbreaks will be able to sue the anti-vaccination groups, right?
I mean, if their activities led to the increased risk, they'll be sure to want to be held responsible. Won't they?
Anything else would be hypocritical.
I am really sick and tired of hearing about how "mercury"/vaccinations caused Autism in my own son. It is something that could have caused it, but I don't care. He is still my son, and I will learn to adapt, improvise and overcome. I will, as a parent, take care of my son, and move on, and continue to find the best schools and care for him. I will ensure that he has is afforded the opportunity to live a fulfilling life. Life always gives you twists and turns. Deal with it and move on.
The media is the science...
Obviously, something in our environment is making autism rates climb. But it doesn't look like it's the thimerosol. Even if it is from mercury (which I don't know of any data showing that it is), it seems to be mercury from some other source, not from thimerosol.
Not to mention, worrying about the mercury in your thimerosol causing autism is like worrying about being poisoned by the chlorine in your table salt, or the flammability of the hydrogen in your tap water. Component elements of compounds undergo a chemical reaction when they combine, and don't retain their original properties.
Does anyone remember an article that was posted here several years ago about higher autism rates in areas with a lot of high-tech companies? It's been a while, but I seem to remember that the rates were higher among children of two parents with autistic tendencies themselves, suggesting that the possibility of a genetic link exists.
"Autism,ADD,ADHD, etc...have always been here but we delt with them without meds and it worked fine."
Worked fine... can you cite anything to that effect?
A related idea: Locking all the "problem people" in jail is a popular "solution" to many social problems, but I would hardly say that option "works fine".
Not everybody who enters the US from a foreign country is an immigrant, illegal or otherwise.
Pretty much by definition.
My older son has a diagnosis of Aspberger's. We had one ultrasound done, and I still have the videotape. What is striking about this video is that he is "stimming" in the video using exactly the mannerisms he does now. At 8 weeks in utero!
To me this says:
* Vaccines did not cause his condition
* Nor did ultrasound
* Nor did anything else we may have done as clueless parents.
So every time I hear of some new theory trying to explain this condition in terms of blame, I get cranky.
It is also very clear to me that there is a likely genetic component - I am not on the spectrum (and my social intuition is fine when I bother to use it ;-) ) but I do have a lot of traits that I can use to help me with insights into his condition and needs.
One poster above mentioned that there is a correlation between age of childbearing and autism. I am wondering now if this is really a correlation between age of marriage/commitment and being on the spectrum? That is, autism disorders are largely genetic and those with them take longer to "settle down and raise a family" because of the social obstacles?
Also, A legal "finding of fact" also does not make it empirically true. Since a court is only able to use the the evidence presented before it (and prior legal rulings) the ultimate truth of a decision can always be in question. Our legal system is a general framework to solve sociological issues, not determine absolute truths.
The best example would be evidence ruled inadmissible for some reason - say a judge rules police didn't have probable cause and didn't get a search warrant so incontrovertible evidence is not allowed to be presented. A court may well find a someone not guilty as a matter of law - but as a matter of absolute truth we can know, and prove otherwise.
Vote Quimby.
Google amish autism. There are a few Amish with autism. They have either been vaccinated or have elevated levels of mercury presumably from an environmental exposure. I am not against vaccination but facts like these carry more weight than "scientific" studies that are funded or at least influenced by drug companies. The difference is Science for profit vs Science for knowledge.
You mean, something to the effect that he was a normal, healthy, happy boy before he got the vaccine. Then he got sick right after the vaccine, and subsequently developed the signs and symptoms associated with autistic behaviour?
From the Canadian public health agency:
"Thimerosal is a mercury-based preservative used in many vaccines. In large concentrations, or over extended periods of exposure, mercury can cause damage to the brain and the kidneys."
"Nevertheless, NACI has recommended a long-term goal of removing thimersol from vaccines, provided that safe alternatives to this preservative can be found. This will help to reduce unnecessary environmental exposure to mercury."
While it is smart PR to state that there is no "proven" link, Kids are nevertheless getting caught in the grip of this poison. It is to me, somewhat telling that the agency is pushing for the removal of Mercury in these drugs. Me, I'm sort of a fan of not having mercury voluntarily injected into either myself or my child.
Autism Rates Drop After Mercury Removed From Childhood Vaccines
Mar 3rd, 2006
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/38784.php
An article in the March 10, 2006 issue of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons shows that since mercury was removed from childhood vaccines, the alarming increase in reported rates of autism and other neurological disorders (NDs) in children not only stopped, but actually dropped sharply - by as much as 35%.
Using the government's own databases, independent researchers analyzed reports of childhood NDs, including autism, before and after removal of mercury-based preservatives. Authors David A. Geier, B.A. and Mark R. Geier, M.D., Ph.D. analyze data from the CDC's Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) and the California Department of Developmental Services (CDDS) in "Early Downward Trends in Neurodevelopmental Disorders Following Removal of Thimerosal-Containing Vaccines."
The numbers from California show that reported autism rates hit a high of 800 in May 2003. If that trend had continued, the reports would have skyrocketed to more than 1000 by the beginning of 2006. But in fact, the Geiers report that the number actually went down to only 620, a real decrease of 22%, and a decrease from the projections of 35%.
This analysis directly contradicts 2004 recommendations of the Institute of Medicine which examined vaccine safety data from the National Immunization Program (NIP) of the CDC.
Quick question. What's so bad about measles anyway ?
When I was a kid I had chicken pox, measles, mumps, impetigo etc. etc. You name it I had it. Us kids used to be actively sent to play at the house of the local "kid who had disease X" just so we'd get it too. Similarly we also used to play out in the dirt on our local farm and were no strangers to riding on cows, horses etc.
In later life I seem to do quite well regarding diseases and very rarely get any of the colds/flu etc. that "go round" from time to time. Personally I've always put this down to my immune system having been toughened up by all the childhood diseases.
Full disclosure: In case you haven't guessed, I'm the parent of an autistic child and my wife and I have chosen *not* to vaccinate. It is an informed decision arrived at after much research and consideration.
The problem here is that a large part of the research families of autistic (and not autistic) children have been given was gathered around the work of Andrew Wakefield, who has recently been found to have outright fabricated his evidence linking the MMR vaccine to autism.
Why his story isn't being reported louder, I don't know, but this is the unethical and immoral tool who has convinced so many families to put the health of their children and of society's children as a whole, at risk.
You were lied to. It's not your fault, but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't re-examine the situation.
Didn't they just announce the presence of mercury in High Fructose Corn Syrup, which is in almost every processed food and drink today?
Well, even if the theory was right, it would still not imply that ALL cases are caused by ultra sound. No one is claiming that only one thing causes it. Important distinction.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
At one point, we were worried that our child had Austism-like symptoms. We took him to a doctor that specialized in that sort of thing. At the end of his tests, he drew a line. He pointed to the right side of the line. "This is Austism." Then he moved to the middle of the line. "This is Asberger's." (A kind of "mild autism.") Then he pointed a little to the left of that. "This is where your son is." In other words, he was on the spectrum but not enough to be diagnosed with Asberger's and definitely not enough to be diagnosed with Autism.
Now, my son exhibits a lot of things that I did as a child. I was never diagnosed with anything, but I think that's more because we're better able to identify the whole spectrum now than we were 25 years ago.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
My son (age 5) began this school year very disruptive. He couldn't sit still, he was hitting kids, crying for no reason, etc. We got him tested but was told he didn't have autism. Then we did some research and came upon the solution. He has allergies and was taking Singular. They completely cleared up his allergies but we had noticed some personality changes. Those changes slowly got worse until we had a little monster on our hands. Our doctor ordered him off the Singular and within 2 weeks he was back to our normal son. We've heard anecdotal evidence of other parents in the same situation (include one mother of a 5 year old whose story at first I thought my wife wrote until I saw the name). Yes, this is anecdotal evidence and not a proper scientific study, but it was quite clear to us what caused it. Using the "computer keeps crashing" analogy you gave, it would be like having your computer keep crashing, uninstalling a piece of software, and then having the system running fine. You might not know 100% for sure that that software caused the crashes, but it's quite likely that it did.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Worrying about the mercury in Thimerosal is like complaining about the poisonous gas - chlorine - in table salt.
It's exactly like that, except that you can bathe in seas of salt with no ill effects. Try bathing in Thiomersol if you think it's so safe.
In case you didn't know, Thiomersol is toxic in any quantities. The LD50 is high enough that it can be used to preserve vaccines, but any quantity causes harm.
No, it just means that we need to get Science to define Media. Then the circle will be complete.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
FWIW, I would be very interested in the research you conducted when arriving at your conclusion to not vaccinate. I will be having children soon, and have read the anti-vaccine stories. However research has dictated there is no correlation between vaccines and autism, and I believe it.
Disclosure: I am a scientist in the medical field and while I don't work on vaccines and toxins, I am familiar with statistical methods used to arrive at these conclusions.
When you were a kid, they didn't make a point of telling you, "You could die or suffer permanent brain damage from this disease." It was unavoidable, so why scare the kid? Just cross your fingers and hope he comes through it OK. Better to get it early, because the risk rises with age.
Here is a software analogy to vaccination, thinking of a vaccine like a software patch. These are the sorts of meta issues that are rarely discussed when focusing on pseudo-arguments about the results of specific studies.
Vaccinations are like software patches that are proprietary closed-source products, that companies make money off of selling, and that patch installation service providers use to drive business throughput for their other services. Much of the regulation of these patches is done by people who have a direct or indirect commercial stake in this industry and convincing people they need the patch.
Vaccinations are like software patches that are generally released with only testing against a small population of software environments; this is like Microsoft releasing a single patch for everyone which modifies *all* x86 PC software in the world (including everything on GNU/Linux) after having tested it on a few versions of Windows and looking at the performance afterwards of a few major applications over a few months or a couple years. Anything a few years down the road is considered not to be related to the patch and in any case would be hard to prove.
Vaccinations are like software patches that you can't back out -- ever.
Vaccinations are like software patches that change their code (formulation and quality control) year to year even if they are said to be to prevent the same problem, with claims for the "safe and effective" nature of previous patches being used to justify claims about new untested patches from this year's batch.
Vaccinations are like software patches that claim to be effective against last years trojan or worm or virus, ignoring the fact that trojans and worms and viruses mutate.
Vaccinations are like software patches that usually only work in a positive way for ten years or so.
Vaccination are like software patches that might be pushing some unknown limit of total patches that can be accepted and still have decent computing performance in the face of new demands on the system.
Vaccinations are like software patches that are built on a culture of patching security vulnerabilities without ever emphasizing basic security precautions like using encryption or administrator-level authentication. For example, extended breastfeeding through the toddler years promotes the general immunological wellbeing of a person for life: :-)
http://www.llli.org//NB/NBextended.html
Thus, one might think infant formula should be prescription only (for rare special cases) since formula decreases "herd immunity", but formula is available everywhere without a prescription, showing a double standard here. Chances are about half of US slashdotters were raised entirely on formula and will create a lifetime infection risk for everyone around them as well as suffer from worse health. Yet, formula feeding is supposedly "a matter of personal choice" and was promoted by the medical care community in the past and continues to be heavily promoted among new parents by that industry. Similarly, good nutrition, enough sleep, avoiding bad stress but having enough good stress, having face-to-face friends, and similar things, promote wellness, but junk food, allnighters, programming death marches, and spending too much time on slashdot are all legal.
There are a bunch more analogies one could make, thought they are more abstract, related to co-evolution or auto-immune disorders.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9115571
Anyway, the bigger picture is being missed here it seems to me. That is why it is so hard to assess risk versus reward. That is not to argue that any specific vaccine or schedule has any specific consequence, although administering HepB vaccine at birth to children of non-positive mothers certainly seems questionable to me.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Thankfully there is a cure for Autism, it's called spanking.
Now, to be fair, most of the vaccines in question have had that mercury removed, but still. The notion of blindly trusting big pharm companies makes me a little nervous to say the least.
You're right about not trusting corp's to do anything but make money. And don't be so sure about those vaccines being mercury free:
http://www.whale.to/a/mercury7.html
----
During an investigation into the mercury issue, HAPI learned that
Thimerosal, a 50% mercury compound, is still being used to produce
most vaccines and that the manufacturers are simply "filtering it
out" of the final product. However, according to Boyd Haley, PhD,
Chemistry Department Chair, University of Kentucky, mercury binds to
the antigenic protein in the vaccine and cannot be completely, 100%
filtered out.
All four vaccine vials tested contained mercury despite manufacturer
claims that two of the vials were completely mercury free. All four
vials also contained aluminum, one nine times more than the other
three, which tremendously enhances the toxicity of mercury causing
neuronal death in the brain.
----
I think the point might be that perhaps the school should deal with a disruptive child in a more constructive fashion than kicking them out without needing a full-blown autism diagnosis. How 'bout a little middle ground?
OTOH, not knowing the details, perhaps they already did. Certainly, at some point they need to consider the other children in the class and take action.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Argumentative is fun even when it gets a little confrontational so long as it doesn't completely turn into poo flinging flame nonsense. Ultimately that is part of my gripe with the many of the comments here is that the vast majority of people here are just pointing and laughing at these people and then pointing at someone else's research as evidence. I almost hope they find a link just so these folks get to say "Wow...I was real asshole about that and I was wrong". Hell, I don't have a problem with people even saying "but evidence here, here and here shows X". It is the "these parents are stupid and dangers to society" angle that bothers me because the people really screaming about it are just armchair quarterbacking the issue and don't actually have expertise themselves on the subject.
In terms of the vaccination/autism thing the evidence I have seen is circumstantial. Holding anyone responsible at this point is very premature, but it certainly warrants continued investigation along multiple paths rather than totally discounting the general claim. There could be some weight to the circumstantial evidence even if a solid link has not been identified. Of course, I also think that throwing on the blinders and focusing only on vaccines is a horrible idea as well. Until the case is solved everyone is a suspect.
I think the Scientific community is at least partially at fault for the current state of affairs. There is very little effort made to communicate information outside of their circles or to make it understood that science is an everchanging patchwork of best guesses and not rigid unchanging belief. Atomic theory has gone through monumental changes over time, it all roughly represents the same ideas, but the specifics of it have shifted dramatically. The only time science really ever makes the news is in cases like this where it is being beaten, abused, and warped by all sides in political/economic debate. Science is being used more and more as a means to prove that preconcieved idea X is right/wrong rather than as building blocks to form ideas.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
Didn't that woman with 8 new kids, 14 total, get fertility treatments? And isn't 3 of her previous childern on disability, one specifically for autism?
Makes me wonder how many of the 8 will end up disabled in some way or other.
And she has the gall to talk about wanting more [fertility treatment multiplied] children...
Women over 30 impart increased risks to their children as far as other ailments and diseases go. Has Autism been investigated as having anything to do with the mother's age when the baby is delivered?
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
I'm not an autism researcher, but consider that recent research has implicated a set of genes in autism.
It's quite possibly (likely even) that our modern society is selecting for these genes in reproduction, causing the rate of people catching the right combination (autism) to climb.
Interestingly enough, people who postpone having kids until they're older, and have the money for fertility treatments, would correspond highly with "intelligent high-income professionals".
Potentially goes great with a hypothesis where asperger's and autism come genetically from a combination of "intelligence" genes being selected for by society rewarding people with these genes with higher salaries, doing well in school, etc.
(again, just a hypothesis, I am not an autism researcher)
Sadly most people don't know whats in vaccines. Most of you who keep saying that vaccines are completely safe are sadly ignorant to the fact that one of the most poisonous substances known is a preservative in most if not all vaccines. Thiomersal which is ethyl mercury, is the main preservative found in vaccines. Some people think this preservative was taken out but Bush never signed the mercury ban from vaccines. Ive even seen news reports on TV about how they say mercury is good for you and the vaccines are nothing to worry about. Thats a bunch of shi- to me.
The MMR shots are worthless anyway. Those diseases are harmless childhood diseases like chicken pox. You would get them as a kid and develop an immunity naturally and never get them again.
Another deception is the fact that the schools and state governments try and tell you that vaccines are mandatory for school attendance. This is complete and utter trash. All you need to do is sign a waiver and your child doesn't need to take the vaccination. But they never inform you of this.
Its a whole lot of lies and bullshit.
I don't think that's likely. In my state, the rate of autism has gone up twenty times in twenty years. That's not the sort of increase you see if some dudes start liking chicks who can't look them in the eyes during sex...
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
You may be right, and/or it may be a combination of nerdsex and increased awareness/diagnosis. I saw some thread talking about a researcher's estimate of how much of the increase is from increased diagnosis and how much isn't, but too lazy to find it and link it here. It's down there somewhere
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I have a theory too. My theory is that all Brontosauruses are thin on one end, thick in the middle, and thin again on the other end.
bump
Picking up on this conversation late, but wanted to chip in anyway...
My eldest son is also diagnosed autistic - and like yours, communication is his main problem. He'll be 8 in March and is still communicating with us in very basic ways. Very sweet natured and quite capable/responsible, but lacks speech.
Unlike you, the situation was picked up by his teacher's at pre-school (trying to think back - he would have been about 3?), but our doctor was pushing it back and saying it was just a normal symptom for boy's in multi-lingual environments (I am a native English speaker, my wife speaks Flemish) to fall behind in this area.
His younger brother is babbling away like he swallowed two dictionaries - just turned 2 a month back - maybe doesn't say a lot, but I guess not all doctor's and teacher's are equal? That's not to disparage our doctor, but really just to emphasise the difficulties involved in diagnosing it I guess.
Anyway, don't really have anything to add to the conversation :-), but just wanted to say you're not alone :-).
The judges did not make any claims about what does or does not cause autism. They just ruled that the people suing had no proof that vacines caused autism. But if any proof appears in the future, they are free to open their case back up then.
And as well all know, that was the exact moment the American civilization tumbled into chaos, never to rise again.
I'm sorry my nine-byte, one-line, hand-typed, sig without so much as a hyperlink or inane quote is so disturbing to you. I'll make sure to fix that right away. And I'll talk to Taco to ensure my decade's worth of posts here are edited to remove this offense to the eyes.
Or maybe I won't.
SirWired
You do realize that a single medical study is not nearly enough to establish a trend, right? Even if it appears to give statistically significant results, if it isn't correlated to another study with similar results, it could just be an outlier, or the result of bad controls, etc.
I am scientifically inaccurate.
It's not like diagnosing it was what I came there for. I was seeing a therapist to deal with depression and stress. It just turned out the guy was something of a specialist in autism research as well and saw it.
Besides, it's not like diagnosing something has any special implications or requirements.
"Well, this is probably a reason why you act like you do, which is fine."
"Ok, cool."
Well, despite my desire to not feed trolls, I'll bite:
Sometimes, you know, it can be relevant to a conversation already in progress.
...but not the figure.
So how did they arrive at the figure for the "herd immunity threshold"...
There is also the small fact of increased population.
Double the population of a city and you, roughly, double the amount of people with autism in that city.
/.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)
Yeah, well, if that's the case, maybe you men-folk would like to shoulder the burden this time of the underpaid, powerless secretary position.
Either the kids actually have Autism and doctors should have diagnosed them, or parents of disruptive kids without Autism need get their kids to behave.
And how do you get a diagnosis? My nephew isn't autistic, but does have a learning disability. He was ordered to have an assessment, and it was never done (well, not until the court case about it). The School district spent about $50,000 in order to deny a student $2,000 in additional services, and when they lost the court case, the court ruled that it's too late to make up for the past services rendered so that even though the school district lost, they didn't need to provide any services anyway because it's too late.
So how are these children supposed to get services and diagnostics? The trained professionals are instructed to ignore disabilities because identifying them costs the district money (and will be fired for pointing them out, as they are not trained doctors and as such should not be making any judgements about such things and to do so opens the school to liability and is therefore banned). And when asked and required to by law, they don't do it and won't do it until taken to court, and when they lose in court, their "punishment" is to be told that they should have done it but it's too late now. The trained professionals will not help the children and go out of their way to harm them. So what are the parents supposed to do?
Learn to love Alaska
Wait, I'm confused. Didn't the government concede that some kids (Hannah Polling specifically, and in general those with mitochondrial disorders) can have such adverse reactions to vaccines as to induce or contribute to Autism. Isn't there a government "vaccination injury compensation" program? Didn't the Polling family get compensated from this program for her autism? I'm getting conflicting messages here. One court rules one way, another court rules another. Both sides point to the ruling that they previously believed in. That doesn't sound very scientific to me. The AAP says that it is "unproven" that there is a link between autism and vaccines. That is very different than saying that it is proven that there is not link. Also, haven't children died from vaccines? Yes, there are plenty of merits to vaccinations. But please, don't claim that they're safe or that we know all of the consequences of them. If you want to claim acceptable loses. That is fine too; at least that's honest. Since we have proven (err. I mean the courts have ruled) that vaccines can be too much for kids with mitochondrial disorders, wouldn't it be better if we tested for mitochondrial disorders before administering vaccines?