Posted on 05/18/2004 11:56:40 PM PDT by neverdem
An examination of scientific studies worldwide has found no convincing evidence that vaccines cause autism, according to a committee of experts appointed by the Institute of Medicine.
In particular, no link was found between autism and the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine or vaccines that contain a mercury preservative called thimerosal. The committee released its eighth and final report yesterday in Washington.
Some parents of autistic children immediately protested. Mark Blaxill, the father of an 8-year-old girl with autism, said the committee's conclusions were premature. Studies are under way that should not be dismissed, said Mr. Blaxill, who is a director of the Coalition for SafeMinds, an advocacy group that finances research on the possible connection between autism and vaccines.
Representative Dave Weldon, a physician and a Republican from Florida who is an advocate for the parents, said the report was "based on preliminary, incomplete information and may ultimately be repudiated."
The report will not "put to rest the concerns of parents who believe their children were harmed" by vaccines, Mr. Weldon said.
Autism is a disorder of brain development that has been the subject of much publicity in recent years as parents and researchers hunt for its underlying cause or causes. The issue has been fueled by a rise in the number of children found to have autistic traits in the last decade, though experts disagree on how large the increase is.
Dr. Marie McCormick, a professor of maternal and child health at Harvard who led the investigation, said that most "parents should be reassured" and should not worry about getting their children vaccinated. In the meantime, she said, research on autism should focus on "more productive" areas, like genetic and environmental factors. The debate over vaccines and autism began five years ago when a British researcher, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, reported that a small number of autistic children had signs of measles infection in their intestines after getting the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine.
A separate dispute soon broke out when researchers noted that many childhood vaccines contained a mercury preservative, though the measles formulation was not among them. Could an increase in the number of mercury-containing vaccines given to infants be an underlying cause of increased rates of autism?
The Immunization Safety Review Committee at the Institute of Medicine, which is affiliated with the National Academy of Sciences, was formed three years ago to examine those issues. The group, composed of expert physicians and scientists with no connections to the pharmaceutical industry, met nine times to gather evidence on the claims.
The committee emphasized that it carried out its mandate from a neutral position: the weight of evidence would indicate only whether it was possible to favor or reject a link between vaccines and autism. "You can never really prove a negative," Dr. McCormick said.
In 2001, the committee issued two reports. The first concluded that the measles vaccine was not likely to cause autism based on the epidemiological evidence. The second found that there was not enough evidence to reject or accept a causal link between vaccines with mercury and neurodevelopmental disorders like autism. To be on the safe side, it recommended that infants get vaccines without mercury preservatives. By 2002, mercury had been removed from most childhood vaccines.
The report released yesterday was based on previous evidence and new studies since 2001, and goes further than ever in discrediting claims that vaccines cause autism. On the subject of vaccines with mercury, five epidemiological studies worldwide show there is no evidence of a link with autism. Three studies found evidence, but the committee said the research methods were flawed.
As for the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine, 14 epidemiological studies have shown no evidence of a link. The committee dismissed two studies that did show a link as flawed. The committee examined a number of possible biological mechanisms to explain how vaccines might cause autism, but said that all were theoretical and that there was not sufficient proof.
Fewer children today receive vaccines that contain mercury, Mr. Blaxill of SafeMinds said, so if the mercury hypothesis holds true, rates of autism should fall in the next couple of years. The number of cases in California, where autistic children are carefully tracked, declined slightly in the last six months, he said, but it is too soon to know if the drop is a trend.
Autism is notoriously complex, Dr. McCormick said. Many scientists believe that it may involve numerous genes that appear to interact with a variety of environmental factors and other nongenetic influences.
An increase in the number of diagnoses vs. the number of cases that exist, is not really the point. We are really more concerned about why some kids are autistic--however many it may be.
There are so many things in our environment that have changed since the 70's, including the levels of estrogens, hormones, food colorings, and preservatives in the diet; the levels of use of electronics and filtered air in the home; the types of chemicals that are used to manufacture building materials, paints and carpets; chemicals that have been removed from the environment like lead in paint and pollution; personal health habits like the use of Advil and acetaminophen rather than aspirin; the increased use of birth control pills, latex condoms, latex gloves, factory-produced vitamins, insecticides; and there is an increase in the routine use of sonograms during pregnancy.
Any one of these things or something completely unrelated could be the culprit.
Keeping in mind that autism affects three times as many boys as girls, it would probably behoove researchers to explore the testosterone connection.
Well, I totally agree with you. I've always thought that in 50 years we'll look back at many of our common practices of today and say "what the hell were we thinking?"
ping
It is almost tautologic: vaccines are given all together because it should be fine to do so. That is no argument.
Vaccines are given together because the medical association wants to achieve maximum vaccination of the population. They know that people are more apt to bring kids in for painful shots if they can get them in early when parents are more worried/focused on their babies, and if the required visits are few.
The other reason they are given so early is to prevent babies in daycare or subpar hygenic conditions from getting the illnesses that are more prevalent in those circumstances.
There have been no definitive long term studies that show that shooting kids with MANY vaccines while VERY young do not cause chronic immune system problems later in life. Something in our lives/environment is causing the high rates of chronic immune system disorders. How do we know it is NOT vaccination? We can't rule it out, so this "misconception busting" is all smoke.
There is no medication for autism. My son has it and the only things that really help are understanding from others about how he might react or behave, and some early social skills practice.
From this article:
Offit and his colleagues also calculate that the infant immune system has the theoretical capacity to respond to 'about 10 000 vaccines at any one time'. Putting this point in another way, they reckon that if all 11 vaccines were given at the same time, 'then about 0.1 percent of the immune system would be "used up"'. They insist that 'young infants have an enormous capacity to respond to multiple vaccines, as well as to the many other challenges present in the environment'.
I know--I was referring more to the mentality of parents who think that getting a dianosis (whether it is accurate or not) will get them some "magic pills" that will just take care of it. They are usually unaware that autism is a lifelong condition that requires lifelong treatment.
Yes I just read the Denmark study you cited (Madsen et al., Sep 2003). The authors also said they could not rule out a causal relationship if infants were exposed to more vaccinations or higher amounts of mercury than in the Danish study.
But that's not really my point, you say mercury doesn't cause autism..OK...but I've never said it did. I'm saying mercury is a poison and there are many scientific studies which say it IS linked to neurological disorders (but maybe not directly to autism), especially in hypersensitive infants.
Headline: No Evidence...
Article: no convincing evidence... not enough proof...
Doesn't convince me. Empirical evidence has value too. Two trends have been observed, one that mercury as a preservative in vaccines has increased, the other an increase in autism diagnoses. The timelines are close, but not conclusive.
Mercury is known to be toxic to the human nervous system, and as far as I know, mercury cannot be eliminated from the bloodstream, like lead and aluminum. Once they get in, they accumulate, and are never eliminated. Regardless of whether a relationship can be proven, it is stupid to inject mercury into an infant.
No corporation is going to admit a fact like that, since to do so would be the death of said company, due to lawsuits and such. Therefore, we may have a very difficult time trying to find the truth. It would be cheaper for vaccine producers to sponsor research studies that disprove the relationship, and enter them into the body of knowledge.
But it DOES rule out thimerosal as a cause for autism, which, after all, is the point of the discussion.
As I have pointed out numerous times, the amount of thimerosal in vaccines has dropped since the mid 90s, to the point of being almost totally eliminated since around 2001. I also cited a Danish study which showed autism increasing without thimerosal in vaccines.
and as far as I know, mercury cannot be eliminated from the bloodstream, like lead and aluminum. Once they get in, they accumulate, and are never eliminated.
That is completely untrue.
Regardless of whether a relationship can be proven, it is stupid to inject mercury into an infant.
While a moot point, using a preservative that contians 25 micrograms of a substance containing ethylmercury isn't quite "injecting mercury into an infant". That is a needlessly inflammatory statement.
OK, I'll jump back into the austism/vaccine discussion.
So you believe the conclusion of one paper? Here is another scientific article with the exact opposite conclusion.
Geier DA. Geier MR. The Genetic Centers of America, 14 Redgate Court, Silver Spring, MD 20905, USA.
An assessment of the impact of thimerosal on childhood neurodevelopmental disorders. Pediatric Rehabilitation. 6(2):97-102, 2003 Apr-Jun.
So which one is correct? Currently, there is no definitive answer, as with many things in science, more study is needed.
I learned a long time ago to keep an open mind when it comes to scientific "conclusions".
Actually, there are multiple papers, but that isn't what I'm arguing. There hasn't been thimerosal in Danish vaccines since 1992, and yet autism rates continue to rise. That rules out, pretty conclusively, the thimerosal/autism link.
What do they know? They're ALL in on the conspiracy!
So which one is correct? Currently, there is no definitive answer, as with many things in science, more study is needed.
How reliable are the conclusions?
It is not possible to tell whether those children who received a mercury-containing vaccine and those who received a mercury-free vaccine were comparable in terms of characteristics that may have influenced outcomes. There was also no information reported on the age at which the children were immunised and the age at which they were diagnosed with the disorders. It was unclear how any of the disorders were defined. The part of the study based on the U.S. Department of Education Report for 2001 had similar weaknesses. Additionally, the accuracy and reliability of the estimates of exposure to mercury-containing vaccination was unclear.
The authors suggested that thiomersal should be removed immediately from all childhood vaccines. Overall, such a strong conclusion cannot be drawn from this evidence due to the nature of the study design and the limited data reported. Although there appeared to be an association between autism, personality disorder and mental retardation and mercury-containing vaccination the study did not demonstrate that this was caused by the mercury containing vaccination.
Like I said in my first post, I'm still skeptical. I tend not to form conclusions until ALL the scientific data points towards the same direction. And currently, it does not. And I'm really not trying to argue with you TomB, I'm just trying to let you see the "other side"
Have a good day.
The Institute of Medicine is part of a cabal?
There is no "other side" to this issue any more. This analysis looked at ALL the data and came to the conclusion that thimerosal does not cause autism. That would follow logically considering the failure of rates to fall in Denmark and other countries where thimerosal has been phased out.
It just so happens that your study showing a link was looked at in the IOM review:
I wonder how many babies surviving early birth add to the numbers. 20 years ago babies born at 25 weeks gestation weren't likely to survive at all, now many survive but after months in an incubator being jabbed, poked, exposed to bright lights 24 hours a day.
Not very long ago, autism was associated with low IQ test performance but more and more you see very bright kids who do perfectly fine on standardized tests including IQ tests being labeled as "autistic" just because they are a little bit square pegs being pushed into round holes. Poor grades shouldn't count for any kind of diagnosis because if a kid does well on standardized tests, he's learning --- even if his grades are very poor. Behavior problems or distraction, mind-wandering to something more interesting can cause bad grades.
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