UK Court Orders Two Sisters Must Receive MMR Vaccine
rnws writes "The BBC reports that an English High Court judge has ruled that sisters aged 15 and 11 must have the MMR vaccine even though they and their mother do not want it. The High Court decision, made last month, came after the girls' father brought a case seeking vaccination. When outlining her decision in the latest case, Mrs Justice Theis emphasized it was a specific case 'only concerned with the welfare needs of these children', but lawyers say as one of a series it confirms there is no longer any debate about the benefits of the vaccine."
"The BBC reports that an English High Court judge has ruled that sisters aged 15 and 11 must have the MMR vaccine even though they and their mother do not want it. "
No, the kids don't know any better, and the mother is practicing child abuse, especially against the 11 year old.
Brainwashing your kids against vaccination is particularly evil.
--
BMO
I hope so, I don't know why so many people heard of one study, which was proved false, and not the others which disproved it.
You don't drive through red traffic lights. You don't spread your stupid diseases to innocent Children who for GOOD reasons can't be vaccinated. And you don't waste my taxes trying to treat your sick kids because you're too stupid to understand some basic science.
work in progress
I think you will find that more people die from the preventable disease than die from the vaccine.
bullshit. thanks for kindling the fud and feeding the idiots.
Dad and mom do not agree, kids are minors and thus unable to decide for themselves in the eyes of the law, and thus medical evidence breaks the tie. I really don't see the problem here...
IF mom and dad and kids didn't want it and courts were ordering something, then that would be a different story.
Ah, the perfect is the enemy of the good. Thousands die and are injured in traffic accidents every day, and yet I bet you ride in a car or other form of transportation regularly anyway.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
It's unfortunate they made the issue out to be the efficacy of the vaccine and not the moral implications about forcing medication on people against their will. I, like most, believe the autism-MMR link is pure nonsense, but I do believe it must be every person's right to refuse medical treatment, including vaccines. (In the case of children, parents sometimes need to make decisions on their behalf, of course, but it shouldn't be the government making those decisions.) Of course, an exception to that rule can be made if people want the privilege of traveling to certain foreign countries which are known to harbor specific diseases, but otherwise, it should be up to parents, or adults to make these decisions, wrong though they may be.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
Well duh. I didn't want shots either, but luckily for me my parents were sane people and didn't let a ten-year-old make medical decisions.
References? What was the rate? Also perfectly healthy people have died after contracting measles, mumps or rubella.
"confirms there is no longer any debate about the benefits of the vaccine."
How can anyone be stupid enough to believe that a judge ruling has any effect on medical science?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
The needs of the many outweigh the wishes of the few.
aka Tyranny
The only link that I found between the NNR vaccine and death is in Japan. The issue is that they administered expired vaccines and their vaccine used the Urabe strain which is not used in the UK.
I do believe it must be every person's right to refuse medical treatment, including vaccines.
If you've got an infectious disease that has outbreak potential, most legal systems allow doctors to detain you for treatment.
This isn't the same thing, but there's a similar public health factor. It's not a personal decision, given that there are people who CANNOT be vaccinated for whatever reason, and some of these diseases have no "cure" other than prevention.
Most of these outbreaks happen when unvaccinated people travel to other countries where vaccinations aren't commonplace and the diseases are. And they bring it home. That's half the reason your doctor and the Embassy suggest/strongly recommend getting booster shots before traveling to certain places!
Please help metamoderate.
aka Democracy. Why do you hate democracy?
Learn to love Alaska
Certainly people have adverse reactions to vaccines, as with any medication; I had a penicillin allergy when I was very young that meant I couldn't get certain standard shots, including (I think) MMR. Fortunately medicine is improving so the likelihood of preventable medication-caused harm is reducing. Here is an article on what we know and what alarmists assume.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Given the innuendo of the clip, one might think we're expected to feel outrage about this because the daughters AND mom don't want it. But guess what? Dad gets a say too, and no; that is not outrageous. Mom must have thought he would be a pretty spiffy father because she slept with him at least twice.
Just because one or both of the parents changed their minds does not mean dad loses his "father" status. His opinion is equal to mom's, and I'm glad the court decision reflected that.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
The age is undefined, but revolves around an ability to UNDERSTAND the issues of the medication, and is largely assumed to be around 13 years old.
Although in some cases people never seem to UNDERSTAND....
How old are you again?
It's about time all exemptions were removed. It's idiotic to allow them.
Step right this way citizen for your retroviral DNA tagging. Let's see, you're male, so you get this one. The batches are rotated such that if we need to control the population we can release one or more plagues to achieve the desired ratio of males to females or northerners to southerners, etc.
Oh, you want to opt out? Too bad. We got you years ago, this is just a patch for a more efficient marker; Your kids? Oh, you don't get to decide what's best for them. We call that child abuse if you refuse their virus cocktail.
Not saying this shit is going down, but removing exemptions isn't going to limit the spread as much as you think, and the potential cost to freedom is far greater.
Don't want to be around me? Stay the hell indoors then you scared little moron. I accept that Life is a bit Dangerous, and drive my car every day anyway; I even eat at the occasional fast food joint. When the risk to life gets greater than that of auto accidents, then I'll give a fuck about folks opting out of vaccines, or banishing fast food. This blind devotion to prevention of all danger is how PRISM happened, you twit. Live free or die, I say.
Just make the vaccinations mandatory under law. If the parents hide the children or otherwise prevent the vaccinations, fine them. If that doesn't help, fine them severely. If that still doesn't work, remove the children for a period. If the situation happens again with another vaccination, go directly to removing the children again, this time permanently.
It's just like school. It's mandatory and if you try to keep the children at home or otherwise fail to send them to school - you will be punished and the kids will attend school, one way or another.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
There's always a risk. But the risks from getting the vaccine are dramatically lower than the risks from not getting it, and with recent outbreaks of these diseases the risk from not being vaccinated is going up sharply because of the increased risk of exposure. Even if you have a reaction to the vaccine, you're reacting to the disease agent so you'll have an even more severe reaction to actually being exposed to the disease and again your risk of exposure is going up due to an increased risk of exposure caused by people who refused vaccination.
Mumps, measles and rubella are in a completely different class than say the flu in both severity and ability to target a vaccine.
The problem there is that the "studies" have been pretty thoroughly discredited. They're in the same category as a "study" that looks at a number of criminals, finds that the majority of them drank coffee within a day or two of committing their crimes, and concludes that drinking coffee causes you to become a criminal. The fallacy becomes obvious when you take a group of people who regularly drink coffee and another similar group who don't, look at how many in each group went on to become criminals and notice that there's no statistical difference between the two.
A more likely explanation is simply that a) most children get the vaccinations so most children who go on to develop autism will have gotten vaccinations, and b) children are likely to be diagnosed with autism shortly after a visit to the doctor (to, for instance, get vaccinated) who notices indications and recommends further testing resulting in the diagnosis.
why does David Cameron hate democracy? We're still waiting for our fucking in/out referendum on Europe!
Why do family court judges in England hate democracy? There's usually only the one on the bench, and he makes ALL the decisions. Often based on *his uninformed and unqualified opinion* rather than *established fact* and *uncontested truth*!
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
what rights??
Refer CA1989 Section 2 Para. 4: The rule of law that a father is the natural guardian of his legitimate child is abolished.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
and she has seen perfectly healthy people die solely as a result of receiving the vaccine.
in this case if adverse effects happen to these girls, the judge needs to be prosecuted.
If the judge made the opposite decision and ordered that the kids *not* be vaccinated, and then one of them caught measles and died, what would your attitude to the judge be then? Prosecute him for endangering their lives?
http://blog.nexusuk.org
So should we all line up to put our heads on the block in front of Charlie Manson with an axe?
Now do you get how utterly stupid your statement was?
Society is there precisely because a civilised society can only exist if people band together to protect each other from dangerous individuals.
New Hampshire sounds like a haven for antivaccination nutcases. I wonder if it shows up in their epidemiology studies.
Show me a vaccine which is part of the regular child schedule where the risk of harm from the shot is even remotely comparable to the risk of harm from the disease it prevents. No doctor or "vaccine advocate" as you put it, would ever claim there is zero risk. In fact the documentation you get with a shot explains the potential side effects complete with their known rates of occurrence.
The supposed link between autism and vaccination has been exhaustively studied and dismissed. There isn't one.
It just so happens that diagnosis follows vaccination, but why blame vaccination when it might so easily (in the absence of evidence to say otherwise) be - second or first hand smoking during development, or alcohol, or perfume / makeup of the mother, or audio frequencies coming from the TV into the womb, or vibrations during driving, or electro magnetic interference from powerlines, or too much / little sunshine, or vitamin / mineral deficiency, or radon gas, or lack of stimulus or over stimulus etc.
Anti vaxxers have latched onto vaccination because of Andrew Wakefield. Ironically Wakefield was fraudulently attempting to discredit MMR because he had his own measles vaccine which he hope to cash-in on in the aftermath. The one good thing to come from it is that the supposed link between Autism and vaccination was exhaustively studied and no link was found. It's safe to say there isn't one and never was. It's far more likely that improved diagnosis, earlier screening and a lack of critical thinking has created the link in some people's minds.
That might be what happens in some cases, but probably not that many. In some cases, it can be due to a bad experience with a needle. That's part of the reason why I still hate needles to this day. When I was a teenager, I had plantar warts. Regular treatments failed to remove or control them, so I had to get them removed by electrolysis. The doctor that did it was "not very skilled" to put it mildly. Having the Novocain putting my feet was the sole most painful thing I've ever had happen. I was literally screaming at the top of my lungs it hurt so much. This is part of the reason why I don't like needles even now. I've never had another experience like that, in fact all my more recent experiences with needles have been incredibly non-painful. However, that still sticks with me and I still hate needles and have to look away.
In other cases it's a simple phobia, something that doesn't really have a logical reason but you're afraid of it anyway. It probably starts with the fact that having something poked into your skin is normally not a good thing, so you have a natural aversion to it. From that you can develop a full-blown phobia. It isn't based on anything logical, it isn't based on anything that happened to you, that's what a phobia is an irrational fear. You even know it's irrational, but that doesn't make you any less afraid of it. It's like other phobias such as fear of spiders, public speaking, that sort of thing.
I'm not saying it's useful to lie to kids about the fact that getting a shot might hurt a little, but I don't think that's where it comes from at least not in most cases.
Also those for whom the vaccination does not work. It turns out that vaccinations are NOT 100% effective. In some people, the vaccination will not provide immunity for whatever reason. Well, there's not really any good way to test this. It's not like we can go in infect people with potentially deadly diseases, just to see if they in fact are immune to those diseases. However, when a large percentage of the population has been vaccinated, the herd immunity acts such that basically nobody gets it since the disease can't find hosts to spread from.
However as the term "herd immunity" implies, it requires a large part of the "herd" to be vaccinated. When too few people are vaccinated, diseases can find enough vectors to spread.
As you note, this isn't just an individual issue this affect society as a whole. There are people who cannot be vaccinated, for various reasons, and there are people who will choose to be vaccinated but the vaccination won't work for, and they don't know. As such is important for as many people as possible to be vaccinated against disease to make sure that it does not spread.
New Hampshire recognizes a right of conscience to opt out of vaccines.
Yes, except that these children can't give informed consent. Also, does New Hampshire recognize a right of conscience to drive recklessly? Must be a wonderful place (for non-pedestrians).
Ezekiel 23:20
"During the Gloucester Smallpox Epidemic"
Smallpox? You mean the disease that disappeared because of world-wide vaccination? Now that's a great argument against it, I'm sure. ;-)
Ezekiel 23:20
The vegan child is against the vaccine due to its production using animal product (eggs).
But admitted they knew nothing about the drugs used to treat the diseases if they contracted them without the vaccine.
So avoiding the vaccine produced with eggs might result in a greater exposure to animal sourced products.
I am not an expert when it comes to vaccines, so I cannot say for sure whether there is or isn't a relationship between vaccines and autism. But everything I read so far leads me to believe that if there IS a relationship, it is very very small. And I also know that I would rather choose the very small risk of having an autistic child than the LARGE risk of having my child suffer from the serious consequences of not being vaccinated against nasty diseases. Read about the things measles can do to you and then tell me you would prefer that over autism.
We get all these people who think that vaccines are linked to autism because one discredited scientsts said it was, so we get all this controvercy over vaccines. But what about all the other crap we're putting into our bodies? Hormones in the water supply. Industrial pollutants. Even intentional fluoridation, which has been correlated with lower IQ. But do these people rally against this stuff? No, because it takes too much work. It's easier to go on about government conspiracies and skip going to the doctor.
If you believe any of what you wrote then you are a certifiable idiot.
Just because two wolves and a sheep had a democratic vote concerning dinner.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If you have the vaccine you can still get the measles, but you get a milder form of it which does not have the same effects. I was vaccinated and did get a mild form in primary school.
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. ...
The benefit of measles vaccination 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. ...
During 1999–2004, a strategy led by the World Health Organization and UNICEF led to improvements in measles vaccination coverage that averted an estimated 1.4 million measles deaths worldwide.
I like that your concerned enough to ask the question as though its unanswered, but not concerned enough to actually spend 2 minutes to lookup wikipedia.
They don't?
Umm... ok, go to your doc and ask him for a malaria shot. Provided you're not living somewhere near the equator, he'll probably ask you whether you plan a trip to the tropics and if you answer in the negative, he will probably at the very least try to talk you out of it, or flat out refuse to do it. If he does not, it's probably time to consider changing your doc.
I don't know about doctors in your area, but around here they are generally sane and responsible people.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I think you will find that more people die from the preventable disease than die from the vaccine.
Depends on how you define "death" when there are no more cures developed anymore, and patients are left with only expensive treatments that are designed to be never-ending to ensure maximum profits.
Financial death can be sometimes worse than physical death. You may stop beating your Modern Medicine drum. No one gives a fuck when they can't afford to take advantage of it.
Yeah America should really get on and implement an Australian style public health system. Or...well pretty much anywhere in the modern world except America really. But I like our one.
When they gave it to me when I was little, it literally almost killed me. I'm a carrier*. If I were to receive an MMR again it would likely render me extraordinarily ill. She's probably seen the same thing, except in that case the child didn't survive.
* - this means from my understanding that the virus is prevalent in my system but is dormant/inactive. it does not shed, so I am not contagious, but a high dose of whatever it is exactly in that vaccine will "jump-start" it, leading to a massive infection everywhere all at once. Bad juju.
All of this has absolutely nothing with autism though, nor does it have anything to do with the vaccine itself.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Some vaccines rely on herd immunity, others (tetanus vaccine comes to mind) don't.
Measles and rubella I'll grant you. But a college kid who wants to get into electronic health records might experiment with mumps in order to gain skills needed to land a job at a company deploying what Vista meant before Microsoft tarnished the brand in 2006.
.... and if they get Measles, Mumps, or Rubella while under the age of 18, their mother must pay for all doctors bills 100% out of pocket, including hospital stays.
Also it if can be proven they they infect anyone else, they must pay the doctor bills of those that can prove it.
Legal fees alone in the defense will fix that.
If they get these after the age of 18, then they should face the same expenses as their mother would.
It's simple repercussions of one's actions.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
Except that's because the vast majority of people are vaccinated against polio. That results in an almost negligible number of polio cases, which means nobody's exposed to it so they don't get it. It's called "herd immunity", and it's a direct benefit to your child. But it only works if the vast majority of people consider the consequences to your kid of them not being vaccinated. If the majority of people concentrate only on the risks to their own kid and concluded as you have, herd immunity evaporates and the number of polio cases will start to skyrocket as soon as there's any outbreak. And the risk of complications once your kid has contracted polio are, believe me, a lot worse than any risk from the vaccine, especially considering that there is no cure for polio once contracted.
The court is not really forcing the girls to get the vaccine. This is a case of the mother not wanting the vaccine for her daughters, and the father wanting the vaccine for them. If the father hadn't wanted the vaccination either, then the girls wouldn't be vaccinated. More of a custody dispute than a vaccination dispute...
I think see the issue here. You absolutely want vaccines to cause autism. Science says there is no link, but that obviously can't be right (in your mind) so you concoct some vast conspiracy to handwave it all away.
you make no valid point at all.
"things which eveyone uses", no not everyone uses commercial versions of those products, and there are plenty that brag about "not using animal testing". and that contain no animal products whatsoever. You've been brainwashed by big corporations is all.
you list products like beer and inks which not everyone uses, or people can easily make their own without animal products or buy those which do not contain animal products
clothes can be made without animals, easily bought.
Unless it is asserted by the father which the father in this case has. Or unless they where married when they had the children (which they were)
But muh liberties! How can I be free if I'm not free to spread disease!
Don't forget, the best vaccines are only 90% effective, meaning that the anti-vaxxers are in the same group as the 10%.
Their numbers are fairly small - it's probably better to fix their misconceptions with education than it is to mount an assault on medical liberties.
Why is it that we make sure students cover the Peloponesian Wars in school, but not basic immunology?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
viruses do. But that is besides the point. Vaccines do not contain elements capable of replication so vaccines do not change your DNA
you make no valid point at all.
"things which eveyone uses", no not everyone uses commercial versions of those products, and there are plenty that brag about "not using animal testing". and that contain no animal products whatsoever. You've been brainwashed by big corporations is all.
you list products like beer and inks which not everyone uses, or people can easily make their own without animal products or buy those which do not contain animal products
clothes can be made without animals, easily bought.
You really have no clue.
Animal derived products work their way into many other products you wouldn't think to ask about, and they won't tell you, contain animal products. Again, the color black.....Do you use a checkbook? Black ink in it... Do you have ANYTHING in your home that is black plastic or colored black?
And I said that beer was just one of MANY products in which fish bladders are used as a settling agent. You think beer is the only thing?
Anyway you have really missed the point here. The point is that products you dont associate with food or animals, often either has animal derived ingredients, or was developed with animal testing.
Do you really think the FDA will let something designed for human use or conception be released without being tested? What do you think they're testing it on.
Look it's one thing to say you don't want to wear leather and animal skins and you don't want to eat meat, eggs, fish, or milk products. But complaining about a LIFE SAVING vaccine because it's animal derived (please lookup how vaccines are made if you think there are any other kind) strikes me as being incredibly stupid not to mention naive considering the many other things they already use that has animal products in it.
If you take one thing away from this conversation let it be this. You do not live by yourself in a sterile world and everything you eat, wear, use, see, came from something else. Every bit of your body came from eating other living things because thats what life does, it re-cycles, and if you think you can re-cycle without animals you're sorely mistaken.
So they have to weigh up the risks to their kids compared to the benefits for my kid?
No. They have to weigh the benefits to their kid vs. the risks to their kid. As do you. If you're short-sighted, you'll look only at the direct risks and benefits of the vaccination and your kid in isolation. But that ignores the fact that your kid isn't in isolation, he's going to be exposed to all the other kids around (and they're going to be exposed to him). If you take that short-sighted approach, and everybody else does too, then the risk to your kid increases, due to increased exposure to the disease and increased susceptibility to the disease, by far more than any risk of reaction to the vaccine that you've avoided.
If I "save" $20 but it costs me $200 to do so (that I wouldn't have had to spend if I weren't trying to save that $20), I haven't saved anything at all.
What I find more shocking is the level of outrage and general dismissiveness directed toward these parents.
Ah, but the dismissiveness follows the Cochrane meta-analysis involving 14 million children which found no evidence of a link between MMR and autism: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD004407.pub3/abstract;jsessionid=44093446A596169411BA31145D75B3CA.f02t02 Studies like this are conducted to determine if the anecdotes you allude to have a scientific basis. Turns out they don't seem to.
NOT A SINGLE PUBLIC THEORY ABOUT THE CAUSE OF AUTISM!?! SERIOUSLY?
Bollocks. There are lots of theories. All you have to do is look at the WIkipedia to get started: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism#Causes I work at an institute which is studying autism: people are working on it and doing real research.
soylentnews.org
there is no such qualifier, exemption or exception. S2P(4) is reproduced in my previous post in its entirety.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Addendum: what this means is that the father of his own, legitimate child, has no PR and not even a voice in open hearing unless it suits the court to allow it.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
If you read the rest of the document. http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1989/41/section/2
Fathers do have parental rights. they just do not have natural guardienship rights unless asserted.
read section 2 para 1 and 2
I'm so glad that the everyday person is so overly qualified to know the benefits / harm of vaccinations. I don't care what your person reasons are for not getting vaccinated, the fact is vaccinations are good and in 99.9999999% of all cases harmless. I keep reading posts on Facebook, ABC News, MSN and etc.... about why parents should be careful about vaccinating there kids. I also read posts about parents who speak to the wealth of incorrect information about the link between vaccinations and autism and other mental disorders. The fact is 99.999% of the parents who decide to not vaccinate are completely and udderly unqualified to make that decision, unqualified from the standpoint of evidence, knowledge, research and intelligence.
I'm extremely glad that a court stepped in and forced this vaccination, I think more courts need to be stepping in and forcing vaccinations. The point is if you are going to decide not to vaccinate a child then please present your research that will clearly show the negative effects, when you can't do that then please stop playing doctor and listen to the real experts. If a child is hurt from the effects of not being vaccinated then it's child abuse and negligence and I don't see why we should hold the parents responsible.
This is what happens when ignorant people make poor decisions:
http://www.nbcnews.com/health/measles-outbreak-tied-texas-megachurch-sickens-21-8C11009315
To the twat who labeled my post offtopic - the link references a measles (thus part of MMR) outbreak in Texas due to people refusing to get immunized.
Very much on topic.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
Immunity is not absolute, it's relative. It reduces the probability that you will catch the disease, but not all the way to zero. Much of the benefit of vaccination comes from herd immunity. If the average number of people who catch the disease for an infected person is reduced to less than one, then the disease cannot spread through the population and instead dies out. Of course, herd immunity depends upon enough of the population being vaccinated.
So yes, if you don't get vaccinated, you are endangering people other than yourself.
Also, there are some people who cannot be vaccinated, due to immune disorders, for example. The same people are more like to be severely harmed or killed by infections, and their only protection is herd immunity.
BZZT! Try again, he has parental *responsibility*, not parental *rights*. Parental *rights* for both mother and father are in practical terms, abolished under CA1989.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
It ties back to Family Law Reform Act 1987 Parental rights and duties.
You have rights to meet your children (for example). You have responibilities (mostly finacial) to care for them. You do not have automatic guadienship of them. That needs to be asserted in court. You can not give up your Parental rights and responsibilities.
It is complicated. All I can say is that fathers often end up feeling shafted.
The Acts were made as that was most often happened. So a formalisation of judgements made.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/04/22/head-of-cdc-admits-on-cnn-that-vaccines-can-trigger-autism.aspx
"Recently Julie Gerberding, the head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), appeared on Dr. Sanjay Gupta's show House Call and explained that vaccines can trigger autism in a vulnerable subset of children. This is the claim that many parents have been making since at least the 1980s, and they have been dismissed and even mocked for making it."
At three minutes in, specifically, she suggests a stress could trigger autism, and such a stress could be a fever resulting from a vaccination injection, the result of which in children who are predisposed by a mitochondrial disorder could thus set off the symptoms of autism...
See also though, along the lines you suggest, for other more likely and more frequent causes of autism though, such as vitamin D deficiency and food additives and so on:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health-conditions/autism/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/autism-research-discovery_b_794967.html
Dr. Julie Gerberding has since left her position as head of the CDC and is now the president of Merck's Vaccine division. As you point out, people against vaccines also may have financial interests at stake (book sales, medical practices, product sales, etc.). Whatever one can say about vaccines, certainly understanding the conflicts of interest and weasel words pervading the whole field seems like a huge job...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julie_Gerberding
To build on some other suggestions in comments to this article, since getting enough vitamin D, eating more vegetables, avoiding dairy, getting exercise, nursing children past age two, and so on have been proven to often improve health and increase disease resistance in humans, it seems like any family which is not doing all of those things is putting the community at risk. So, the question is, should we legally enforce "BlueZones" and "Nutritarianism" on the world in order to protect those with compromised immune systems because they avoid sunlight, eat poorly, don't exercise, were bottle-fed, and so on?
http://www.bluezones.com/
http://www.drfuhrman.com/children/default.aspx
Maybe we should start by cracking down on luncheonmeat consumers? :-)
http://www.ehow.com/info_8360513_luncheon-meat-dangers.html
http://institutefornaturalhealing.com/2012/04/processed-meats-declared-too-dangerous-for-human-consumption/
At the very least, as a deterrent to creating health hazards for themselves and others, perhaps people who admit to having eaten processed meats (or who otherwise can be identified by credit card purchase records) probably should not have any possibly related medical conditions covered by insurance?
The medical literature is very messy, for lots of reasons, such as expressed in quotes I've collected here:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-about-mainstream-science.html#Some_quotes_on_social_problems_in_science
It would help to have better tools to use to wade through all the muck (including for detecting statistical fallacies as the grandparent post by "Todd Knarr" points out). Some suggestion
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.