I don’t have a question, and I don’t want to Pit anyone. Just wanted to update the evidence against the thimerosal/autism connection. New study just backs up what most scientist have found. Again.
From the article in the NY Times,
Well, now that I think about it, I’ll mildly Pit Jenny McCarthy/Opra and people of “star” status who continue to promote a connection. Money doesn’t seem to buy you wisdom.
Ooh, I dare you to say that on a parenting board for people with autistic children. They will tear you limb from limb.
I didn’t even have a kid until 2001, so I’m fairly certain he was never vaccinated before that. And he’s autistic. Yet I’m told almost every day that I shouldn’t have vaccinated, should switch to a GF/CF diet (gluten-free, casein-free, for those who are less obsessed about it, or do chelation therapy. Or join the Church of Scientology, or give him mega-doses of certain vitamins, or whatever the bullshit is this week.)
Oprah doesn’t bother me much; she has no kids, and doesn’t pretend to know much about them, other than what she’s read or been told. Jenny McCarthy is, as always, a raving idiot. I’m sad and embarrassed to see her acting as a spokesperson for parents of autistic children.
Ok, my little personal rant on the topic is now over. You may return to your more entertaining reading material.
And now that I enter two terms into Google-- autism and thimerosal, the first link is to a national site that says
It’s taking longer than we thought. :rolleyes:
I’ve encountered more than my fair share of vaccine nutters on the Internet, and the really sad thing is that even the ones who buy that there’s no link between autism and thimerosal still think vaccines cause autism. Just through some other route. Some other, totally unproven, totally mysterious, unknowable by science route. Because vaccines are teh devil. They just are! Stop hassling me, man!
This has been bugging me ever since I heard about it. I have the same gut reaction to it as 9/11 conspiracy theories, JKR “grassy knoll”, and things like that- I just want to hit someone.
I actually just finished reading a book about vaccination that I really enjoyed. I’d recommend it to anyone with any interest in the subject. It was Vaccine: The Controversial Story of Medicine’s Greatest Lifesaver by Arthur Allen.
On the bright side, since this thread is in the Pit (and not in one of the comments forums, as is usually the case), if any anti-vaccine nutcases register as guests and try to ‘argue’ with us, it is permissible for us to tell them to go get fucked with a gas-powered post hole digger.
The thimerosal/autism link has been clearly debunked. I am a firm believer in vaccination, and have had my daughter vaccinated. My sister-in-law is in the strident anti-vaccination camp, and she and I have frequent debates, both in person and via email. The new contention from this camp is that the measles virus causes autism, not the preservative. There appears to be enough evidence to give some pause. From here:
“It looked at tissue samples of 91 children from the Royal Free Hospital, London, who had both autism and inflammatory bowel disease. Seventy five of the samples tested positive for the presence of measles virus in intestinal tissue, compared with five of 70 controls.”
Now I am the first to say that every study looking at a link between the MMR and autism have confirmed the safety of the vaccine. However, trying to argue with someone providing a decent cite like the one in this post is difficult for me. I believe in science, but am not a scientist, and in this google age intelligently sifting through the myriad whorl of seemingly credible studies that greet a “measles autism” search is beyond the reach of most caring yet ignorant parents (such as myself).
Skeptics and those who love them should abandon gloating over the victory over thimerosal, and focus instead on debunking any link between “measles in the gut” and autism/IBD. While I realize that the debunking of the MMR/Thimerosal/Autism connection should obviously include a debunking of any measles/autism connection, somehow in the eyes of the converted it does not. The thimerosal debate is for the most part over, but the new scapegoat is “measles in the gut”.
I guess I can sum up what I’m saying with “Help me!”.
The thing is, the parents are the fucking morons by not getting their kids vaccinated, yet the children are the ones that die from measles, or suffer from something else totally preventable. Yeah, you’re really helping out your kids by not getting them vaccinated.
Fuckers should be charged with child abuse, or child negligence, or something along those lines.
Check that cite more closely. The title of the article is “New research on autism and measles “proves nothing”.” Also, if you follow the link to the article summary, there are some interesting points like “The study does not look at whether the children were vaccinated with the triple mumps measles and rubella (MMR) vaccine,” or “But the authors say that several critical questions need to be answered before any potential link with MMR can be proved, including whether the measles virus was the same strain as that used in the vaccine.” If a lot of the parents of the autistic children don’t believe in vaccination, maybe they didn’t get the vaccines done and their kids picked up some wild strain that wasn’t enough to actually cause symptoms? A lot more research needs to be done before anyone knows if that research means anything at all.
In other words, “correlation does not equal causation.” There’s a claim that as hemlines drop, the stock market falls, but that doesn’t mean the fashion industry has Wall Street at its mercy!
I just love Recent Studies. I think I might go back to university and get myself a degree in Recent Studies.
Holy – JK Rowling was the shooter on the grassy knoll? :eek:
(I’m so sorry. I don’t always like doing that, but the mental image… 
)
Holy fuck - the bullet really WAS magic!
Oh, go ahead and pit Jenny McCarthy. She wants to be the valiant, suffering mom on all the women’s magazine covers, instead of the centerfold who outrageously admits to flatulence. Either way, she’s bound to stink up some congressional hearing or another.
Incidentally, I had an opportunity to discuss this issue with a true believer (He barged in on a conversation I was having with someone else). How does he explain the fact Autism diagnoses haven’t fallen? “They never took thimerosal out of any of the vaccines.” How, exactly do you argue with that?
Of course she wasn’t- That’s why it is conspiracy.
It really was J. R. Tolkien. Everyone knows that.
:smack:
I think it’s patently obvious that autism is caused by controlled demolition.
Really? I’m going to guess that it is caused be High Fructose Corn Syrup.
Nah. Abortion. Abortions cause autism.
Ditto. My autistic son was born in 2002. But just try and reason with some of these people… it’s worse than the Young Earthers…
:rolleyes:
Totally with you on that one. The improbable lunatic idea that thimerosol causes autism pales against the symptoms of the diseases that are prevented by vaccination. Any parent who does not vaccinate is guilty of abuse and neglect.
Autism is a baffling, frustrating condition. It would be nice to know what causes it, but blaming an ingredient in vaccines is purely irresponsible. Thimerosol is no more the culprit than strange planetary alignments or UFO abductions.