I have two children. I also have a 10% hearing loss in one ear, because I was not vaccinated against measles.
But I do not believe that the government would conspire to cover up some real health risk with the pharmaceutical companies. Consider, if you like, the recent case of Vioxx and Celebrex, both of which drugs returned large profits to the companies who produce them. Yet when evidence emerged linking them with increased risk of heart disease, both drugs were immediately pulled from the market - the evidence was not covered up or ignored.
And I don’t work for a pharmaceutical company.
The Mars thing is an open question.
We are a hard-headed bunch here on the SDMB. If you would like to try to prove your case against vaccines, well, good luck, and I strongly recommend you consider your case carefully before you begin.
Wow. This urban legend is back? This is like the cat exploding in the microwave, myths that will not die. I guess it shows how desperate the immunization conspiricy theorists are that they cannot find another vaccine on the grassy knoll and are now recycling already debunked claims that are moot to boot.
Other than influenza vaccine in multidose vials only (the pediatric single dose vial is thimerosal-free), the American vaccine supply has been sans thimerosal for about four years now. Funny. If thimerosal had been at all contributory to the “autism epidemic” then we’d be seeing a dramatic decrease in new cases by now. What? There has been no decrease? Who’d have guessed?
Autism is a complex polygenic common phenotype, a state that the brain settles into when its networks are imbalanced in various ways early in development. The genes that result in autism seem to result in a range of behaviors in lesser combinations and loads such that there is a specrum of autistic spectrum disorders into a sometimes functionally beneficial Broad Autistic Phenotype in family members.
Retrospective reviews of home movies by blinded observers can identify subtle signs of autism in children later diagnosed with autism as early as six months.
Research identifying the specific genes and elucidating how the brains networks become imbalanced and how to use such knowledge to foster earlier identification and more effective intervention is in progress. Meanwhile good research money is diverted defending good medicine from bad science and (perhaps well intended) loons.
You’re overstating things here DSeid, and are quite wrong to equate the immunisation/autism scare with an urban legend such as an exploding cat in a microwave oven.
You point out that autism is poorly understood, particularly with regard to the causal factors of the condition. Well, given that autism diagnoses have risen significantly in recent times, and that children’s vacines did contain thimerosal, a preservative featuring a known neurotoxin, it stands to reason that any potential link between the two would warrant careful scrutiny. When one such study is published in the Lancet, from respected (at the time) authorities on childrens medicine, saying that yes, actually we think there is a link between the MMR vaccine and autism, what are parents of autistic children supposed to think?
Let me emphasise that last bit, I heard about a cat exploding in a microwave from a friend of a friend down at the boozer; I heard about a possible link between childrens vaccines and autism from the Lancet, one of the most prestigous medical journals in the world.
Now, as has been clearly pointed out in this thread, the Lancet study turned out to be spurious, if not outright fraudulent (some details here ), repreated tests on thimerosal have shown that it is apparently fine to ingest chelated ethylmercury at the very low concentrations found in vaccines, and removing thimerosal from vaccines hasn’t altered autism diagnosis rates at all. The whole idea is simply wrong, basically. That is of little comfort to families coming to terms with autism who have been jerked around by bogus pronouncements from scientists and doctors, who they rely upon for their understanding and interpretation of autism. In light of this, it is completely understandable that people will get the wrong end of the stick wrt the mercury/autism issue.
Ah but Myler those are exactly the reasons that most urban legends persist.
Urban legends need details that create believability. They usually contain the smidgen of truth. They capitalize on fears of the time. They work best if if think you know someone who vouches for its truth and they have ususally been reported in the media as rumor or as truth.
Microwaves are poorly understood by most people but we’ve all had things explode in them. The possibility of a pet exploding seemed reasonable. That legend began when people were scared of it as a new technology, and so on.
Likewise immunization and autism both are poorly understood by most, and autism is a fear of our time. People often believe this whopper because they “know someone who knows someone who had a child become autistic from the shot.” (I’m a pediatrician, you can’t imagine how often I hear that.) And having been reported in reputable media, even though retracted later, is par for urban legend course. The internet and the eagerness to believe in conspiricies between organized medical establishments, governments, and whoever, make it just that much more likely to spread and persist despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The fact that media still gives it play now, even after the evidence is so overwhelming that is just another fiction, enters it into true urban leged heights.
How long has it been since the range of what was considered autism has been so broad? As I recall, thirty years ago the range was narrow and only kids who were called “autistic” were nearly catatonic while most of those who are called autistic today would have been dumped in the catch-all classes of “retarded” or “odd,” which was broken down further into “a little odd,” “pretty odd,” “a real oddball,” pronounced with the appropriate facial expressions. Is this expansion of the definition the cause of the increased number of autism diagnoses?
The opening of the autistic umbrella has occurred over the past fifteen or so years. The age of diagnosis has also gotten younger too. Let’s face it, convince us that we can do some good by identifying something and the earlier the better, and we will look a lot harder. And since autism blends into normal, we’ll go a bit farther into where it gets fuzzy edged if we think that doing so is more likely to do good than harm. Likewise there is institutional incentive to use the label if at all appropriate; the label “autism” opens doors for services. It is indeed entirely unclear if there really is more autism or just more diagnosis of autism. And it may all be appropriate use of the label.
There’s an article about this in Saturday’s New York Times. And colleagues tell me that earlier this week ABC and Good morning America were going to do a “ditto” piece about the Kennedy article in Rolling Stone, but got slammed down when a medical producer looked at what was written.
The autistic diagnosis has shot way up (it’s now 1 in 166 according to the Times article, which is a change of what, two orders of magnitude in 20 years?) and I’m not sure I believe it. When I hear about autistic kids who play soccer, read books, and do other social activities, I know this isn’t the same definition of autism that I have.
Have childhood vaccines really changed that much in 20 years? I don’t think so-- but I can point out a whole bunch of environmental changes during that period, including the rise of cable TV, VCRs, children’s cartoons based on toys, Teflon, artificial insemination, IVF, women over 35 having kids, MTBE, etc…
I winced when I saw that my copy of the Times contained a story on the alleged vaccine-mercury-autism connection, but they really did a fine job debunking the Kennedy-Geier claims and explaining the science.
You would think that the evidence showing autism rates actually rising in countries after they eliminated thimerosal in vaccines would shake believers loose from this fixation - but I’m afraid we’ll be hearing about it from fringe advocates and opportunistic politicians like Dan Burton for a long time to come.
For more insight on some of the insatiable paranoiac looniness about vaccines that exists out there (and will never be convinced by science and reason), sample this site.
“Others see a link between vaccinations and satanic rituals or witchcraft, where animals are sacrificed and their organs brewed in a hellish concoction of horrid substances: voodoo medicine by 21st century mad scientists. Sadly, our children are their unwilling subjects as society is slowly devoured by their insatiable appetite for human experimentation.” :eek:
