immunizations and autism?

[Nystul]

I read the cover story in Time today about this, and I've heard it before but I've never heard the evidence for the connection between the two...and now that I saw it, I still don't really get the connection. Some guy 50 years ago published a study on like 5 people that showed that they reacted to their immunizations which MIGHT have caused brain damage leading to autism, and the suspicion that mercury in immunizations used as a preservative might be the cause (which is kind of invalidated when you consider that mercury is out of about all immunizations since 2001 or so and there isn't an appreciable drop in autism diagnoses).

Am I missing something on this or are people just really retarded?

[Correction]

It's pretty easy to scare parents into utter retardation.

[BerenTebogo]

People with autism are retards.

[Saga]

we discussed this some in my cognitive psych class last semester, basically these "studies" are purely correlational and right now there's not much concrete evidence to back the "immunizations cause autism" theory. recent increase in autism awareness is likely causing children to be diagnosed at an earlier age than in the past, and those diagnoses are appearing some months after the child is immunized. as i said, it's purely correlational and there's little to no evidence to support these crackpot parents' theory other than "this event followed this other event in the span of x number of months."

[thestalkmore]

People with autism are retards.

Ur an autism. Also, ib4 Jenny McCarthy arguing with a doctor on Larry King.

[Artful Dodger]

its still unproven, but not completely without correlation. there was one case that the judge ruled that the vaccinations a child received played a pivotal role in the child's autism like symptoms, and rare disorder. Thimoseral is a mercury substance that is in some vaccines, which has been removed from child vaccines, which was considered the cause. but autism diagnosis is still on the rise.

the general consensus is that vaccines probably will not directly cause autism, but they may exacerbate a situation where the child may be at a genetic predisposition to develop autism or symptoms/rare conditions like it(which is an insanely small minority).

[Correction]

Judge =\= scientist, or medical researcher.

The vaccination -> autism connection is full of shit. This is a fantasy cooked up by some paranoid parents somewhere and it's feeding off its own publicity. I keep seeing the same 5-6 people interviewed every fucking time this comes up. Suddenly the media exposure to this crackpot theory sounds like a 'medical consensus' to the common mind. Critical thinkers should know better than this.

Never mind that 'stop vaccinating your children' will cause orders of magnitude worse problems for children and future generations.

[Zanz L. Barre The 3rd]

My lil' brother has autism, and based off the research the family has done, etc., the possible correlation between autism and immunizations is the mercury in some immunizations. Wheat diets can also "rid" of autism, if you're at all curious.

[Pirian]

Well think about it; they usually give the babies their immunizations soon after birth when the baby has no immune system of their own yet. My sister and I, and all her kids, have had our immunizations, but we got them 7-9 months after we were born and only 1-2 at a time. You've really got to be insane to give your baby all immunizations at 1 time less than 4 months after they are born and not think it will have some adverse effect. Just think about it, they have no immune system yet and you load them up on infectious diseases. People get brain damage from fevers in their prime, what makes people think its safe for a newly born infant?

Probably the dumbest thing about immunizations is how little say in the matter the parents have. Having seen my sister have to deal with this not too long ago it is just stupid. In short, she had to say that it was against her religion to have the immunizations. I can understand how the government wants people immunizied, but it shouldn't have a say in the matter on when.

Fun fact: the US has the highest infant immunization rate, it also has the highest autism rate.

Now that they are becomming more modernized and stricter regulations are being put in place for infant immunizations, guess who's catching up to us in child autism rates? China.

[alt]

I've always read that the consensus by most professionals and scientists, was that even if there is a correlation between autism and immunizations (which is debatable), the risk of not being immunized far outweighs the very small chance of developing autism if the correlation is assumed true.

[archibaldcrane]

Just think about it, they have no immune system yet and you load them up on infectious diseases.

ITT, people who don't know how vaccines work.

[Talus]

Read here, about autism & immunizations:

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=14

BTW, the way most vaccines work is you're injected with a weakened, dead, or inert version of a typically virulent microorganism, take smallpox for example. Your body's immune system kills the foreign (to the body, anyway) vaccine and adjusts/memorizes its structure and makeup.

If you get infected with a "live" version of something you've been vaccinated against, your body recognizes the protein coating of the pathogen and the immune response ramps up, killing it and any cells it has affected to stop a widespread infection in your body.

[Nystul]

Well think about it; they usually give the babies their immunizations soon after birth when the baby has no immune system of their own yet. My sister and I, and all her kids, have had our immunizations, but we got them 7-9 months after we were born and only 1-2 at a time. You've really got to be insane to give your baby all immunizations at 1 time less than 4 months after they are born and not think it will have some adverse effect. Just think about it, they have no immune system yet and you load them up on infectious diseases. People get brain damage from fevers in their prime, what makes people think its safe for a newly born infant?

Probably the dumbest thing about immunizations is how little say in the matter the parents have. Having seen my sister have to deal with this not too long ago it is just stupid. In short, she had to say that it was against her religion to have the immunizations. I can understand how the government wants people immunizied, but it shouldn't have a say in the matter on when.

Fun fact: the US has the highest infant immunization rate, it also has the highest autism rate.

Now that they are becomming more modernized and stricter regulations are being put in place for infant immunizations, guess who's catching up to us in child autism rates? China.

Correlations and causation are two entirely different things. Is it not possible that with stricter regulations regarding immunizations that children are therefore more frequently seeing doctors, and because of this more frequently being diagnosed, leading to the increase?

Immunizations have been widely used for years- decades. Wouldn't there have been a huge jump years ago with things being level since then if immunizations were the cause? If mercury were the cause, wouldn't diagnosed cases dropped off considerably after it was eliminated? Are there people with autism that were not immunized? How did they get it?

From what I can tell, one guy published saying basically that a high fever may have lead to autism (something that can be caused by a lot of things other than immunizations, and is preventable with proper medical care). In fact, your child is more likely to have high fever and severe illness WITHOUT immunizations than they are with it.

Also, your info on immunization schedules is inaccurate (as well as your understanding of how they work though thats already been pointed out)
http://www.babyzone.com/immunization/de ... e=1/1/2000

[Alleya]

It's 150% bullshit.

[Nystul]

The more I read about this, the more I'm starting to agree with that percentage.

[Saga]

Correlations and causation are two entirely different things. Is it not possible that with stricter regulations regarding immunizations that children are therefore more frequently seeing doctors, and because of this more frequently being diagnosed, leading to the increase?

Pretty sure this is the answer, like I said. Autism awareness has been steadily increasing over the past few years, leading to more diagnoses at an earlier age. All the "evidence" right now is purely correlational. And those wheat-free diets don't seem to do much, I have a friend whose brother has asperger's, he's been on the diet for a long time now and hasn't shown a marked amount of improvement. I also had a kid in my group last year at summer camp where I was a counselor who had a severe case of autism and was on a similar diet. He'd been on it for a while, and while I don't have anything to compare him against previously he was still a tremendous handful. There's still too much they don't know about the disorder, and all these "studies" are bullshit, at least so far.

[Nystul]

They have also widened the definition of what autism is, and they have developed better and simpler diagnostic techniques, both of which will increase the number of diagnoses.

[XanthePandy]

In the UK there has been controversy over the MMR Vaccine linking to Autism. This started in 1998 when Dr. Wakefield and his team published a paper in a medical journal. His research suggested that the MMR vaccine can be linked to the development of autism in some children. The story then got a lot of media coverage and parents started pulling their children out of immunisation schemes. The number of immunisations of children then dropped from 92% to 72% and for the first time in years, two children died of Measles.

What wasn't mentioned in media coverage was that the research had been conducted on only 12 children. Not only that but the scientists had been paid £55,000 by the parents of these children to prepare evidence against the MMR Vaccine in a court case. Furthermore, Dr. Wakefield himself was trying to develop a treatment for measles which would not have been used if parents were confident in the MMR Vaccine.

Although the research has been discredited, there are still some parents who don't want their children immunised and every year, when annual immunisations occur, the media bring up the story once again. Yet they still forget to mention just how full of crap that research was.

To be honest, the risk of actually contracting a disease and also putting those around you at risk of contracting the disease too completely outweighs the 'possibility' of developing autism. Especially since the research done to connect vaccines and autism is so biased.

If you are actually going to discuss anything related to science after looking at a story covered by the media, you need to ask yourself if they actually know what they are publishing and whether or not what they publish is biased in any way.

tl;dr Its bullshit.

[finitek]

Ever looked at the list of inert ingredients on a package of any vaccine?
They put so much crap in those things to preserve them there is a small possibility some section of the population could be having an adverse reaction. (Could that reaction be autism? I dont know and I am not qualified to answer that.) Mercury is not uncommon as a preservative along with other unhealthy crap. Do I think that is a reason to not vaccinate my child? Hell no! I had all the shots my kids will get.

Although Pharma companies are constantly updating the recipe's on vaccination shots to ensure their effectiveness and so they can justify charging more for them. This movement of people to not vaccinate their children is going to ensure the some diseases that were under control in the U.S previously, will slowly work their way back into the general population. Booooo.

Give your kids their shots!

[Nystul]

Ever looked at the list of inert ingredients on a package of any vaccine?
They put so much crap in those things to preserve them there is a small possibility some section of the population could be having an adverse reaction. (Could that reaction be autism? I dont know and I am not qualified to answer that.) Mercury is not uncommon as a preservative along with other unhealthy crap. Do I think that is a reason to not vaccinate my child? Hell no! I had all the shots my kids will get.

Mercury hasn't been used since 2002