The vaccine-autism would remain a silly nonsense, driven by ignorance, hysteria and scandal-prone media, if not for the real threat to public health. Thus in UK the measles vaccination levels dropped over the past few years to dangerously low 85%, which as expected has brought a sharp upsurge in new cases. WHO expected to eradicate it by 2010.
Yet worse things are happening now, it spreads not only in the measles-free Europe, but they manage to bring it to some 3rd world countries (in Latin America), which undermines big strides they made to get rid of it. Isn’t that a shame that a rich “civilized” nation pretending to care about well being of others, serves a principal source of dangerous pathogen. The change.org  should also be ashamed of bringing up this dangerous nonsense as “topical issue”.

I'm hopeful too------one of my new year's resolutions is not to give over-much attention to this topic.


Measles has been on the rise, and "fear of vaccines" if often mentioned by parents who have chosen not to vaccinate a child.
http://www.autismvox.com/measles-cases-and-fear-of-autism-on-the-rise/

Oh, please.  There are plenty of reports of measles outbreaks occurring in fully-vaccinated populations.  It is thus deceptive to blame measles outbreaks on lack of vaccinations...  http://tinyurl.com/a2zmkx

My kids were fully vaccinated.  They were sick all the time.  I really resented the other kids in their classes for 'taking advantage of the herd immunity my children provided.'  In retrospect, do you know how I could have most easily identified the unvaccinated children???  THey were the kids who were NEVER SICK.

I don't think vaccines are the sole cause of autism, but I also do not believe they have been completely exhonerated.  What is that saying?  "Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me."

There's reason to be apprehensive about an upcoming Brody column on autism and "cures."  She writes in the style of a journalist, sounding objective.  In actuality, she's a highly opinionated writer who takes a side and then promotes it.  I've taken more than one of her columns to task on the NDY blog.

Of course, we could get really lucky, and she'll take the position that this "cure" obsession is out of proportion to supports/services that are really needed.  If she does take that position, she won't bother to present a contrary view.

But I wouldn't bet a measurable percentage of a dollar on that being her position.

I'm very disappointed that the "anti-vaccinationists" allowed the issue of the mercury that was in the vaccines, to be thrown out of the debate, as mercury is the only thing in vaccines that could lead to or exacerbate autism.  It should never have been considered that the vaccines themselves had anything to do with such harm.  What a waste of time of time this anti-vaccination hysteria is, and it's awful that it has gotten so out of hand where it may have led to lower vaccination rates. 

I doubt Offit really minds this anti-vaccine controversy which will go nowhere, considering all of the time and attention the pointless vaccine hysteria takes away from the thimerosal still in flu vaccines, the thimerosal still in vaccines that are used in 3rd world countries, the large amounts of mercury in the environment, and genetic susceptibilities in autism which may lead to decreased detoxification of mercury and other toxic substances.

@Diana,There were recent increases of measles in the UK and in the US. In the US, this was "due to pockets of imported or importation-associated disease in unvaccinated individuals," as noted by the doctor who writes Pathophilia

http://bmartinmd.com/2008/12/top-10-medical-stories-of-2008-7.html

@Kristina - Below is the bio for the doctor who writes pathophilia, copied from her own website.  She says she works for pharmaceutical marketing and pharma-supported continuing education.  I found little more than opinion to support the claims that increases of measles were caused by 'pockets of imported or importation-associated disease in unvaccinated individuals.'  I for one am growing very weary of 'experts' attempting to gaslight me.  I even found the tagline of her website interesting "for the love of disease".  Indeed.  Bio follows.

A native East Tennessean, Barbara Martin is a formerly practicing board-certified neurologist who received her BS and MD from Duke University before completing her postgraduate training at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. She worked in academic medicine and private practice before migrating to the intriguing world of pharmaceutical marketing and pharma-supported continuing medical education (CME). She is now a full-time writer. To contact Barbara, use this e-mail address: barbara dot martin at bmartinmd dot com.

Thank you, I know this and am a regular reader of her blog.
Vaccines don't cause autism.

I guess that is where people can differ- I have felt much more gaslighted by anti-vaxers using anectdotal information (like suggesting that unvaccinated kids don't get sick, vaccines cause autism, etc, etc with very questional sources) than I have from pro-vaxers.  A good friend of mine was not vaccinated, yet she has OCD and Fibromyalgia.  I could use that anecdote to suggest that not getting vaccines caused that.  However, really, it's just a coincidence.

According to that writers bio, she is currently a full-time writer, there is no suggestion that she is currently employed by a pharmecutical.

Lots of people--especially women--who get MDs or PhDs or both go into writing full time because those jobs at pharma places that do CME courses let you telecommute. It doesn't mean the people who  do it are somehow in collusion with Big Pharma to mislead the rest of the world about vaccines. They're really working on slide shows and monographs, etc., to explain the mechanisms, effects, and side effects of pharmaceuticials to a clinician audience. That world *is* intriguing, as a matter of fact.

And "Pathophilia," of course, means "Loves disease." Maybe you have to be one of these folks to appreciate that, but...it's pretty damned funny.

WTH does "gaslight" mean? All I can think of is something boys do in college dorms and end up lighting their asses on fire.

Gaslighing is a term used to refer to withholding facts or telling falshoods in order to gain control over someone.  Like telling parents that vaccines cause autism when, really, you have no substantiated evidence that is true and are just relying on correlations and/or anecdotes.  You excerpt control over the parents decisions to vaccinate by presenting a falsehood, and withholding information that vaccines prevent diseases.  That would be gaslighting.

@Nicole,

The original definition would be -
Gaslight: To manipulate someone into questioning their own sanity; to subtly drive someone crazy.  (A reference to a couple of movies from the 40's.) 

And I'm sure you meant "You *exert* control over the parents'..."

Hi Kristina -

"Certainly, why else would Dr. Offit---who is not a specialist in autism, but in infectious diseases---have written his book?)"

Hehe. A good question indeed.

Be careful though, asking one can lead you to ask another, and another, at which point, you might start asking some difficult questions about how we have reached the level of scientific certainty that is claimed.

You might wonder why he is the one person that every media agency goes to regarding a quote regarding vaccines and autism, when in fact, he is not an expert on autism.

Then, you might ask yourself how we can gain confidence in vaccines as a whole by studying thimerosal or the MMR.

Next, you might wonder why you can't find a single study evaluating vaccines like Hep-B, or DTAP, or Hib, or influenza, or rotavirus with neurological outcomes. Or combinations of such shots. Or the timing of the shots. Or the differences between single vaccines and their 'more convenient' combination equivalents.

You might start to wonder how the scientific case has been settled without a single evaluation of these vaccines, much less their cumulative effect.

You might go on to question why it isn't of interest to evaluate the effect of artificially initiated immune responses during critical phases of neural development in a subset of children who have been shown time and time again to have abnormal immune systems predisposed to poorly regulating immune inflammation.

After that, what if you began to quesiton the validity of the argument that studying unvaccinated populations presents too many confounds to glean meaningful information, but evaluations of a relatively homogenous Danish population with a far less aggressive vaccine schedule than the United States gives us meaningful information for our children.

Well, at least that's what happened to me.

- pD

Was Andrew Wakefield an autism specialist?

Wakefield is right.  And there isn't a safe level of mercury in anything. 

Our public health service is morally bankrupt having been asleep at the switch while two thirds of our population has become overweight or obese and our infants' brains twisted by vaccines.  They're just unsuccessfully covering their backsides and collective incompetence with their blanket condemnation of Wakefield.  I don't believe anything from NIH, CDC or any health department anywhere.

Our second child has never been injected with anything.

Hi Emily -

<i>Was Andrew Wakefield an autism specialist?</i>

When was the last time you saw a quote from Wakefield alongside a quote from Mr. Offit in an article?   He has been pilloried for sure, but actually contacted by the NYT?   [I am told he is in the proces of publishing a book.]  (?)

He had at least worked with children with autism at the time of his most dubious publication.  Since that time, he has been working with children with autism; quite possibly close to your physical location, I believe.  He has published several papers on other physiological, and indeed, abnormal immunological  findings in autism other than the now infamous Lancet study.  

As near as I can determine, Mr. Offit has done none of those things.  I may be mistaken.   (?)

This might be an more interesting question if Mr. Wakefield were asked for a quote on vaccine safety everytime a news outlet ran a story; he gave one, while acknowledging that indeed, he isn't an specialist on vaccines. 

In any case, if I were to say that he is a quack and not to be taken seriously, does this in any way help us determine if we should take Mr. Offit seriously? 

- pD

Yes, sadly the charlatan is just down the road from me. Were I to read something in an article quoting him with a straight face, I'd seriously question the sense and research ability of the writer in question and of the publication. Wakefield is an embarrassment to anyone who considers themselves a scientist or a researcher.

As for mercury (this isn't for you, pD), I've said it before and I'll say it again: Google calomel and then get back to me. If you're averring that "Wakefield is right" and linking it to mercury, your leaps of logic defy previous precedent. Anyway, it ain't in your vaccines, and even if it were, it would do far less to your child than polio or whooping cough or diptheria. Your second child may never have been injected with "anything," but if you based that decision on fear of autism or mercury, your cost-benefit analysis is faulty. Our population is obese not because of the NIH or the CDC or any of the other favorite bogeymen of people like you. They're overweight because they sit on their fat asses all day doing nothing but drinking solid-sugar sodas by the gallon and eating garbage.

For some reason, the gullibility of people who believe in some incredible vast conspiracy among literally thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people from institutions often at loggerheads with each other never ceases to amaze me. This conspiracy would have to encompass so many people colluding at so many levels of so many organizations--gee, I wonder why it is that no one has broken THAT story

I bet you'd start believing a health department really quickly if there were a major outbreak of one of our several deadly diseases against which we vaccinate in your area. The specter of encroaching death has a way of making people see more clearly.

Regarding the related subjects of Vaccines and Chelation Therapy:

There are many ways to achieve chelation with natural products, although the amino acid chelations have worked well with many thousands of children.  It has been used for decades to treat lead poisoning in children, and was never labeled as "dangerous" by the medical heirarchy until it became utilized for Autism therapy. I wonder why the medical system wants to scare people away from doing this???  Two main reasons that I can see: 1.) The autistic children are tested for heavy metals whereby the lab tests confirm that there is a significant heavy metal accumulation in these children, which has resulted from the massive vaccine schedule.  2.)  Once the heavy metals are removed these children at the very least improve, some improve dramatically, and some respond with actual recovery. 

It is obviously more important for the pharmaceutical industry and the medical system to protect it's own financial interests than to utilize chelation therapy for autism.  It is standard medical procedure for children with lead poisoning, but that's OK with them because the lead wasn't injected into these children by THEM.  Now the mercury and aluminum is another story because THEY are the responsible parties for this epidemic of over 1 million children in the U.S. alone now.  They need to keep the propaganda and the coverup going. (See attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr. articles including his investigation report regarding this) 

Natural chelation therapies are helping my grandson tremendously, which seems to us very logical to pursue based on the fact that my grandson developed "Regressive Autism" immediately after his last batch of vaccines (9 given at once which is quite common actually so pay attention to what your doctor is doing to your child).  Like so many other thousands of families, we witnessed the demise of my grandson as a direct result of vaccines. 

And yet the "official party line" expects us to believe that there is "no link between Vaccines and Autism"???  I have invested over a thousand hours of research regarding this in the last year, and by the EVIDENCE and FACTS, not only is there a link, but Vaccines are THE link.  The "powers that be" claim that there is "no control group of non-vaccinated for comparison", but they pretend that the Amish do not exist.  These people have refused vaccines due to their religion and Autism is non-existant in their community.  Does 1 + 1 still equal 2??? Yet, this is not considered a legitimate control group to make a comparitive study???  Of course not, because if they ever did the study, no one in their right mind would then ever allow these toxic vaccines to be injected into their innocent children!!!  And then how much MONEY would be lost to Big Pharma and Big Medicine???  The ALMIGHTY DOLLAR takes priority over the massive devastation of lives that they have created and more innocent children will be abandoned by them to the Lost World of Autism.

As the Bible states: "For lack of knowledge the people perish" and "THE TRUTH SHALL SET YOU FREE".

JUST A QUESTION: WHY DO NO RESULTS COME UP WHEN I SEARCH "VACCINES" ON THIS SITE??  I ONLY FOUND THIS PAGE BY THE ONE LINK LISTED IN THE COLUMN BY ANOTHER ARTICLE.

@Evelyn Grady,
This is site about autism, not vaccines.  Thank you.

@Nicole - "gaslighting" is when someone continues to tell you that things you experience for yourself are different than what your senses tell you.  It comes from a movie, where a woman was driven insane by someone who would turn the lights down and tell her they were normal, etc, to the point that she would question what she could see for herself.  NO offense, but you cannot 'feel gaslighted' unless and until someone tries to convince you that something you experienced for yourself was different than it actually was.  "Gaslighted" is a pretty good way to describe how parents of vaccine-injured children are treated.  Instead of trying to see what is genetically different about those children who show marked reactions and regress into autism, the 'experts' twist themselves into pretzels screaming 'it was a coincidence'... and that autism was inevitable and NOT triggered by the vaccines.  Many parents of autistic children are not buying it.  I am among them.
There are a lot A LOT of parents who believe with all their being that their children reacted poorly to their vaccines and then began a downward path in functioning until they were diagnosed as having autism.  Some of those parents are just as convinced that biomedical interventions helped their children to varying degrees.  You will sooner convince those parents that the sun has chance of coming up from the west than you will convince them that they are mistaken in either that vaccines contributed to their child's autism or that biomedical interventions helped their child's autistic symptoms.  And, when the kids 'recover' or lose all their autistic symptoms, the 'experts' pretzel themselves again and scream 'coincidence - they would have gotten better anyway'... Where ARE all these kids who lose diagnoses without any interventions whatsoever?????  

I am reminded of pretzels, and it's not just because they were hypernamechecked in the above post. My brain! My brain!

The thing I think about most is that they say these children have delayed speech.  My daughter was talking fine at 2 years old... mama, daddy, water, bath all the words kids have.

I didn't allow my doctor to give her vaccinations for sometime.  He talked me into it by telling me she'll never go to public school, college or be able to travel the world if she doesn't have them.

Well, 1 month after her shots she wasn't able to talk again.  I'm not sure if it caused it, but if it's not the cause then the shots are probably a trigger activating it in some children.

http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0022510X07004376

"Wakefield is right." said Scott Singleton.

"No, Wakefield was wrong, very seriously and disruptively wrong, and as a result of his wrongness, we now have measles outbreaks in the UK" says every eminent researcher in the UK. See below :

Baird, G.a j , Pickles, A.b , Simonoff, E.c , Charman, T.d , Sullivan, P.e , Chandler, S.a , Loucas, T.f , Meldrum, D.g , Afzal, M.h , Thomas, B.i , Jin, L.i , Brown, D.i a  Newcomen Centre, Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust, London, United Kingdom
b  Biostatistics Group, Division of Epidemiology and Health Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom
c  Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Institute of Psychiatry, King's College, London, United Kingdom
d  Behavioural and Brain Sciences Unit, UCL Institute of Child Health, London, United Kingdom
e  Department of Paediatrics, John Radcliffe Hospital, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
f  School of Psychology, Clinical Language Sciences, University of Reading, Reading, United Kingdom
g  Chatswood Assessment Centre, Sydney, NSW, Australia
h  National Institute for Biological Standards and Control, Potters Bar, Hertfordshire, United Kingdom
i  Virus Reference Department, Centre for Infections, Health Protection Agency, London, United Kingdom
j  Newcomen Centre for Child Development, Guy's Hospital, London Bridge, London SE1 9RT, United Kingdom.

Measles vaccination and antibody response in autism spectrum disorders
Objective: To test the hypothesis that measles vaccination was involved in the pathogenesis of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) as evidenced by signs of a persistent measles infection or abnormally persistent immune response shown by circulating measles virus or raised antibody titres in children with ASD who had been vaccinated against measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) compared with controls.

Design: Case-control study, community based.
Methods: A community sample of vaccinated children aged 10-12 years in the UK with ASD (n = 98) and two control groups of similar age, one with special educational needs but no ASD (n = 52) and one typically developing group (n = 90), were tested for measles virus and antibody response to measles in the serum.

Results: No difference was found between cases and controls for measles antibody response. There was no dose-response relationship between autism symptoms and antibody concentrations. Measles virus nucleic acid was amplified by reverse transcriptase-PCR in peripheral blood mononuclear cells from one patient with autism and two typically developing children. There was no evidence of a differential response to measles virus or the measles component of the MMR in children with ASD, with or without regression, and controls who had either one or two doses of MMR. Only one child from the control group had clinical symptoms of possible enterocolitis.

Conclusion: No association between measles vaccination and ASD was shown.
Archives of Disease in Childhood
Volume 93, Issue 10, October 2008, Pages 832-837  

"Wakefield is right." said Scott Singleton.

"No, Wakefield was wrong, very seriously and disruptively wrong, and as a result of his wrongness, we now have measles outbreaks in the UK" says every eminent researcher in the UK. See below :

Baird, G.a j , Pickles, A.b , Simonoff, E.c , Charman, T.d , Sullivan, P.e , Chandler, S.a , Loucas, T.f , Meldrum, D.g , Afzal, M.h , Thomas, B.i , Jin, L.i , Brown, D.i a  Newcomen Centre, Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust, London, United Kingdom
b  Biostatistics Group, Division of Epidemiology and Health Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom
c  Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Institute of Psychiatry, King's College, London, United Kingdom
d  Behavioural and Brain Sciences Unit, UCL Institute of Child Health, London, United Kingdom
e  Department of Paediatrics, John Radcliffe Hospital, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
f  School of Psychology, Clinical Language Sciences, University of Reading, Reading, United Kingdom
g  Chatswood Assessment Centre, Sydney, NSW, Australia
h  National Institute for Biological Standards and Control, Potters Bar, Hertfordshire, United Kingdom
i  Virus Reference Department, Centre for Infections, Health Protection Agency, London, United Kingdom
j  Newcomen Centre for Child Development, Guy's Hospital, London Bridge, London SE1 9RT, United Kingdom.

Measles vaccination and antibody response in autism spectrum disorders
Objective: To test the hypothesis that measles vaccination was involved in the pathogenesis of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) as evidenced by signs of a persistent measles infection or abnormally persistent immune response shown by circulating measles virus or raised antibody titres in children with ASD who had been vaccinated against measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) compared with controls.

Design: Case-control study, community based.
Methods: A community sample of vaccinated children aged 10-12 years in the UK with ASD (n = 98) and two control groups of similar age, one with special educational needs but no ASD (n = 52) and one typically developing group (n = 90), were tested for measles virus and antibody response to measles in the serum.

Results: No difference was found between cases and controls for measles antibody response. There was no dose-response relationship between autism symptoms and antibody concentrations. Measles virus nucleic acid was amplified by reverse transcriptase-PCR in peripheral blood mononuclear cells from one patient with autism and two typically developing children. There was no evidence of a differential response to measles virus or the measles component of the MMR in children with ASD, with or without regression, and controls who had either one or two doses of MMR. Only one child from the control group had clinical symptoms of possible enterocolitis.

Conclusion: No association between measles vaccination and ASD was shown.
Archives of Disease in Childhood
Volume 93, Issue 10, October 2008, Pages 832-837