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Oh, goodness, not this again. (Picture graphic of man face-palming here.)

The author of the original study linking vaccines to autism is now being subject to disciplinary measures. The original article has been withdrawn by the editors of Lancet (where it was published), although some of the authors had already retracted their names from the paper. The only real link between vaccines and autism is temporal: children are typically vaccinated at an age where symptoms of autism begin to manifest.

The amount of harm done by this study has been immense. Children die every year whose deaths could have been prevented by vaccines. Although the fear-mongering about vaccines existed before that fraudulent study was published, that study did not help the situation any.

In considering the increase in autism rates, one should take into account that the same criteria are not being used to diagnose autism as were being used 50 or more years ago. Now we have “autism spectrum disorder”, which yields far more autism diagnoses than previously. We also have a situation where it is profitable for school districts to increase the numbers of “special needs” children. Furthermore, there has been a huge effort to blame poor performance in school on some “disorder”, instead of taking more time to address individual learning styles. To compare apples to apples, the numbers of autistic children diagnosed by the exact same criteria must be compared. I suspect that a comparison made on that standard would show that there has been no increase in autism rates.

Many attribute the increase in the rate of ASDs to children's being exposed to significant quantities of thimerosal, a mercury-based compound that has been used since the 1930s as a preservative in certain vaccines and pharmaceutical products to prevent bacterial and fungal contamination.

Now that thimersal has been removed from vaccines, has autism declined? No.

Next theory, this one is broken.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1 in 110 children have autism spectrum disorders, which is strikingly more than just two decades ago.

"Autism spectrum disorder" as a classification hasn't even made it into the DSM-V, though it'll be in the 2013 edition. Two decades ago no one was talking about "autism spectrum disorder." Back then there was:

Autistic Disorder,
Asperger’s Disorder,
Childhood Disintegrative Disorder, and
Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified.

It's this last one that is a catch-all for everything else that doesn't meet the more rigidly defined categories above. It may very well be that the "big increase" in autism is reflective of a greater willingness of doctors and others to stick something they can't otherwise categorize into this "Not Otherwise Specified" category. That doesn't at all mean there is a growing number of children "with" a Not Otherwise Specified disorder but that there are more that are being assigned to that category. People used to refer to someone suffering from a "wasting disease." This descriptive category is now replaced by various types of cancer and other diseases that cause "wasting." Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified is such a category. The number of people in it depend on how often something is described as a "pervasive developmental disorder."

The increase of vaccines given to infants who don’t have a mature immune system yet borders on criminal to me...The infant cannot handle the vaccines that now they are by law given...just like vaccination against hepatitis, which has zero chance of getting hepatitis...If I had small children today I would refuse quite a few of those vaccinations...Polio-yes, it is a childhood disease. Pertussion yes, it can be fatal in a child...Tetanus yes, easy for a baby to get a puncture wound. Diphtheria yes it is a child killer. DPT plus polio are good, all are child killers...Every vaccine carries some risk, the risk of getting those disease's causing death, are greater than the risk of untoward side effects that are a rare exception, yet they occur and its sad for that child..