I just read this article at the Huffington Post which makes this claim.
Is this true (particularly the last part)? It seems like a relatively simple study to do, and assuming unvaccinated kids have the same incidence of autism that vaccinated ones do, perhaps it could convince parents to vaccinate.
Recent fmri studies showed significantly different processing in autistic brains than normal. It would appear to be something physical in brain, not “behavioral”.
I’m not using them as a source for science news, I just saw the article and read it, then looked for studies comparing the rates of the two populations…and can’t find one. But it seems pretty strange that such a study does not exist. So, where is it?
Well, no, not really. There are lots of people who don’t vaccinate their children who aren’t Amish, and according to that article, the Amish do vaccinate–so what are the autism rates in people who have never been vaccinated?
One of the difficulties is the ethical problems of denying enough children the known benefits of vaccination in order to test a theory for which there is no evidence, and against which there is considerable evidence.
Unfortunately, the anti-vax folks are immune to evidence rather than measles. So it probably wouldn’t do much good.
This study looked at differences in autism rates in children exposed to thimerasol in vaccines vs. children who received vaccines without thimerasol, and found that rates of pervasive developmental disorders were significnatly higher in the latter group than the former.
They also found a steady decrease in rates of vaccines in children, with older cohorts having higher rates of vaccination than younger cohorts. The younger cohorts (with lower vaccination rates) had higher rates of diagnosis of pervasive developmental disorder.
cold, but back in my EMT days we called this “a problem that would eventually solve itself”
the evil little Darwinist in me says let them skip out, my kids are immunized, once a couple thousand kids die from measles, the anti vaxxer propensity should find itself burned out of the population in a few generations.
Having crossed paths with this bunch a few times, they are rarely the smart cookies. It’s more like the same crowd that think you get AIDS from being homosexual.
Except that vaccinations aren’t perfect; some number of kids who get vaccinated are still going to be susceptible to measles or polio. This is OK in a good system where everybody gets vaccinated, because almost nobody gets exposed, as an enough people are resistant so that an epidemic can’t get going. But if there’s a bunch of non-vaccinated pepple, you can get an epidemic, exposing lots of people.
In other words, even though your child has been vaccinated, they might end up getting measles when the anti-vaccinators-caused epidemic happens.
I wouldn’t use Wikipedia as my primary source for science information, either.
Or maybe they have learned from the numerous studies that showed that it does not increase autism, but does dramatically improve vaccine safety (in it’s role as preservative).
PZ Myers wants them to curl up and die and he’s said other mean things about them as well.