Posted on 01/24/2008 6:05:55 AM PST by Kaslin
Grant the anti-childhood vaccine fanatics this; they are dogged. No amount of data and no number of studies from any array of sources will sway them from their beliefs – or claimed beliefs – that thimerosal, a mercury-containing vaccine preservative once used in many such injections, is causing the so-called “autism epidemic.”
Therefore a California Department of Public Health study in the current Archives of General Psychiatry hasn’t either. Nevertheless, for the rest of us there are two valuable lessons. First, the lack of a thimerosal connection to the developmental disorder has once again been reaffirmed. And second, those fanatics really and truly are fanatical – as a British Medical Journal book reviewer put it, an “angry and paranoid universe.”
These people operate over 150 anti-vaccine web sites that claim not only a thimerosal-vaccine connection but a Massive World Wide Conspiracy to cover up of the alleged link. They are often hateful people who have sent death threats to Public Health Service officials who subsequently quit their jobs in fear.
As a precautionary measure – surely influenced by the anti-vaccinationists – thimerosal was removed from all childhood vaccines as of March 2001 (except flu shots, which contain a trace amount.) The angry paranoids and those who make a living catering to them confidently declared that soon the California data would show a dramatic drop in diagnoses.
Indeed they quickly asserted it had done so, as did former New York Times writer David Kirby, author of the influential 2005 book Evidence of Harm - Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic: A Medical Controversy. Never mind that this alleged peak, in 2002, came far too early to have reflected cessation of thimerosal use. (Huffington now writes for the left-wing Huffington Post blog.)
Later the father-son team of Dr. Mark and David Geier published a study they claimed showed a dramatic 35 percent drop, also beginning in 2002. The Geiers make their living as expert witnesses and consultants for lawyers who make claims against the government’s National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.
But now there has been enough time, and the news is good for parents and bad for the fearmongers. The Archives study evaluated autistic children referred to the state’s Developmental Services System and covered the years 1995 to March of 2007. It included children age three and above. If thimerosal-preserved vaccines cause autism, the researchers said, diagnoses should have started falling in 2004 – not 2002.
But as this chart from the paper shows, there been no plummet, no decline, no leveling. There hasn’t been the least bit of decrease in the increasing number of cases.
Further, the California findings are hardly anomalous. As the Archives paper noted, “Our findings are in concordance with the rigorous 2004 review of at least 12 previous published and unpublished studies by the IOM Immunization Safety Committee, which concluded that the body of evidence rejected a causal relationship between [thimerosal containing vaccines] and autism.”
Included in the IOM review were three studies looking at the entire populations of Sweden, Denmark, and Canada respectively. In all three countries thimerosal-containing vaccines were discontinued in the late 1990s and yet, as in California, autism rates climbed at the same pace.
The main problem with the “angry and paranoid universe” is that its members have terrified parents throughout not only the U.S. but the world into refusing to vaccinate their children. These parents become free riders, relying on those parents who do vaccinate to keep diseases at bay through “herd immunity.” That means that immunization rates in the wider population are high enough (for example, 85 percent for diphtheria) to protect those not immunized.
But if enough people free ride, herd immunity is lost and what follows is the return of childhood diseases we hardly think about anymore. Diseases like pertussis (Whooping cough) have made comebacks in countries as diverse as the U.K., the U.S., Australia, Japan, and Sweden after anti-vaccinationist scares. Pertussis cases went from fewer than 8,000 in the U.S. in 2001 to over 25,000 in 2005.
The anti-vaccine crowd aren’t merely harmless kooks. They harm their own children as well as others. It’s time our Public Health Service starts using publicity campaigns rather than just scientific findings to start fighting back.
So the only kids getting the disease would be the ones not vaccinated. Appropriate.
But don’t you get the irony that the whole REASON the odds are now so very very low is because of that Polio Vaccine almost 50 years ago?
Which begs the question, when is it safe to stop vaccinating for something? If a generation passes unvax’d, you’re back to square one if the disease breaks out again.
I've watched videos of neurons collapsing into NFTs with very low levels of organic mercury present...No thanks...Even if I'm misguided, why not humor me and provide a non-mercury preservative...The net result is more people vaccinated, which is probably a good thing.
Ask John Edwards...
Hey I’m the ultimate individualist. Smoke a crack pipe, see if I care. But when it comes to MY LIFE and your refusal to get a vaccine for a communicable disease, then it concerns me.
My daughter/son-in-law are of the no vaccination until their children are older persuasion. I kinda am, too.
If we don't want the government to tell us not to smoke or eat fatty hamburgers, then why do we want them to force us to inject our children with poisonous mercury?
Vegetarian diets aren’t “healthier” than all other diets.
They make a moral stand. They oppose eating honey because it exploits the bees to take their barf.
It is kooky.
Did your vaccine wear off?
People, you heard it here first. The debate is over. There is consensus in the medical community. Every credible doctor/scientist agrees. Now is the time is for action.
Oh wait, that sounds alot like global warming nut jobs - so tell me what hospital or medical study did you run/participate in that told you so?
Be very thankful.
My nephew was severely brain-damaged by his DPT shot.
He’s 24 and functions at the level of a two year old.
There is no “medication” in vaccines. They contain killed or fragmented samples of the pathogen to trigger the immune system to produce antibodies as if the real, functioning pathogen had invaded their bodies. There’s no reason to think a different amount would be appropriate for an infant vs. an older child. When they’re exposed to the real pathogen, they get the same amount. Viruses and bacteria that are present in someone’s environment do not adjust their level of contact with the person based on the person’s size or age. Picture a colony of bacteria, with it’s leader bellowing “No, no, only send a few of the troops over to that one because it’s very small”. Not too plausible, eh?
I don’t believe the vaccines-cause-autism nutjobs for the same reason I don’t believe the global warming nutjobs. Both groups systematically ignore blatant evidence that their theories don’t hold water.
NO, I was thinking it was more that it is “vaccines-cant-cause-autism” are the nutjobs. Sorry, but for all your evidence, there is most likely equal evidence showing it can.
My daughter will never be vaccinated with gardasil.
No, it didn’t wear off. I deliberately injected myself with the Measles last week just to be sure...:)
Vaccines do not cause autism, period.
You are DEAD wrong. I am in the middle of this, and my background in biology, my study of the biology of mercury, the astonishing clinical parallels between outright mercury poisoning and autism all leave you with an obvious conclusion. There has to be a connection.
Moreover, Merck has within it’s own archives, data going back to the 30s and 40s detailing the harm caused by thimersol. The only claim that could be made is that it is in quantities small enough to be harmless. Then 40 years later, enter stage left the Office of Vaccine Safety at the FDA, stumbling with every step they take. THEY NEVER CALCULATED THE TOTAL MERCURY LOAD FROM THE 20-30 VACCINATIONS CHILDREN GET. Only when the “angry paranoid” parent groups pounded on their door did they realize their mistake. It is amazing there are not more health problems as a result. Moreover, the EPA and FDA never got together on that whole how-much-mercury-really-is-safe question. That the EPA had AMBIENT standards lower than what the FDA deemed safe for internal use should raise suspicions all over the place.
Bald assertions of no link between thimerosal and autism are just PIG IGNORANT. Even a casual reading of the vast scientific literature on the subject will make it abundantly clear there is an issue. The epidemiological studies that cite no connection are not worth the paper they are written on. They are exercises in the systematic exclusion of statistically significant information. I will never forget this one paper put out by a medical research council in the UK. They had isolated a group that was clearly significant but blatantly waved it off because it did not meet their “criteria”. What a joke. It’s like watching a bad call by a bribed basketball referee. Oh, wait. Oh, that Never Happens. RIGHT?
You pseudo-scientific pin heads who demand exact proof do not understand either science or biology. Fie on all of you.
Autism is a multi-factorial disease, with multiple causes. The other thing people don’t like to talk about the the MMR vaccine with respect to the measles component. The evidence that the measles viral fragment populate the intestinal lining of autistic children and not normal children has been replicated with even better studies.
Also, 10% of autistic kids have elevated titers of Herpes II, suggesting that may be a factor.
The people who are the leading researchers in autism clearly see mercury as one of many factors. So, governmentshrinker, time to expand your reading list.
Vaccinations are not foolproof. They don't always work for everyone. But, they have generally worked well enough, that most people remained healthy.
“Vegetarian diets aren’t “healthier” than all other diets.
They make a moral stand. They oppose eating honey because it exploits the bees to take their barf.
It is kooky.”
I have vegetarians in my family and among my friends. Every single one of them eats honey. I’m not claiming a vegetarian diet is healthier, but there’s simply no question whatsoever that some people feel better physically not eating meat.
Just as some people who eat meat are kooky, some people who are vegetarians are kooky. I guarantee you there are vegetarians here on FR.
There’s a difference between “mercury” and vaccines containing thimerosal. It’s the vaccines which have been shown not to correlate with autism. There are a lot of sources of exposure to mercury compounds. So many that if a child is genetically predisposed to develop autism from exposure to amounts of mercury which have no discernable effect on normal people, the emergence of autism is virtually a foregone conclusion, regardless of exposure to thimerosal-containing vaccines. Which is why there hasn’t been a significant drop in autism rates since thimerosal was removed from vaccines.
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