March 30, 2008 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
Just to repeat:
That’s the first sentence of an op-ed by Ned Calonge, chief state medical officer for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment in the March 30th Denver Post. Read the rest here. I’ll also note that Exposure to thimerosal during childhood is not a primary cause of autism—-and that, when it comes to autism, it’s not the vaccines.
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[...] Vaccinations do not cause autism. [...]
[...] is a presumption that Attkisson has made made before. As I’ve written, my husband Jim and I do not believe that vaccinations caused our son to be autistic and we’re not alone in believing [...]
[...] when she made it very clear to Matt Lauer, there’s no controversy about vaccines and autism. Vaccines don’t cause autism. [ABC News has a story on Dr. Offit that emphasizes how “ugly” the discussion about [...]
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After reading the comments of the article, and speaking to my friends with babies, I think the U.S. is going to change drastically, because people are deciding not to vaccinate their children. I guess we are going to see even more epidemics of illnesses thought vanquished. That said, I worry about my friends that are not vaccinating. I think about people I know crippled by polio, or have heart damage from rubella (or down’s by getting rubella when pregnant), etc. Most of these people are old and no one remembers their affliction causes. We’re entering the third world once again, health-wise. But then again, even evolution is on the table in our country. So it doesn’t surprise me, and it’s sad. I think in the non-vac world we will see tons of autism, and then people will regret it (or not, because they don’t believe in evolution)
I follow the consensus medical and scientific opinion on the role of vaccines and more specifically thimerosal in autism causation. That being said people who do believe that vaccines cause autism, in whole or in part, do so because of their personal experiences and because there remains even today “trace” amounts of thimerosal in vaccines.
You will not convince anyone to reject the vaccine theories by simple repetition ad nauseum. The authoritative research community should demonstrate convincingly to people who believe in the vaccine theories that even a trace amount of a mercury based preservative (thimerosal) can not cause autism or damage the development of a child. They should do so by clear and compelling studies by researchers whose competency and objectivity are beyond serious question.
Epidemiological studies have little in the way of controls and will always be open to challenge but if so many people are not vaccinating their children already then why can’t the autism rates of those children be compared to vaccinated children?
From full text,
“…This study provides three strong arguments against a causal relation between MMR vaccination and autism.
First, the risk of autism was similar in vaccinated and unvaccinated children, in both age-adjusted and fully adjusted analyses.
Second, there was no temporal clustering of cases of autism at any time after immunization.
Third, neither autistic disorder nor other autistic-spectrum disorders were associated with MMR vaccination.
Furthermore, the results were derived from a nationwide cohort study with nearly complete follow-up data…”
Madsen, K.M., Hviid, A., Vestergaard, M., Schendel, D., Wohlfahrt, J., Olsen, J., et al. (2002). A Population-Based Study of Measles, Mumps, and Rubella Vaccination and Autism. NEJM, 347, 1477-1482.
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/347/19/1477
From abstract
“…Results: The MMR vaccination rate in the city of Yokohama declined significantly in the birth cohorts of years 1988 through 1992, and not a single vaccination was administered in 1993 or thereafter. In contrast, cumulative incidence of ASD up to age seven increased significantly in the birth cohorts of years 1988 through 1996 and most notably rose dramatically beginning with the birth cohort of 1993.
Conclusions: The significance of this finding is that MMR vaccination is most unlikely to be a main cause of ASD, that it cannot explain the rise over time in the incidence of ASD, and that withdrawal of MMR in countries where it is still being used cannot be expected to lead to a reduction in the incidence of ASD.”
Honda,H., Shimizu,Y., & Rutter, M. (2005) No effect of MMR withdrawal on the incidence of autism: a total population study
Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 46 (6) , 572–579 doi:10.1111/j.1469-7610.2005.01425.x
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1469-7610.2005.01425.x
Before someone points out that the MMR does not contain thimerosal, I am aware of that.
The point that I was suggesting is that studies for the MMR that suggested that an association was improbable because of 1. comparison of immunized/non-immunized and 2. non-delivery of the vaccine inversely proportional to observed rate increase did not persuade those who were convinced that an MMR-autism connection existed. As other studies come in, the same arguments persist.
The arguments currently ongoing that the existence of thimerosal-containing vaccines of any kind will be responsible do not persuade me that a convincing demonstration would necessarily convince if one is not prepared to allow the presented results. In the 3+ years that I have been following it, the progression has been if not the thimerosal, then the adjuvants; if not the adjuvants, then the cellular components; if not the cellular components, then the toxoid; if not the toxoid, then the number of vaccinations; if not the number, then the timing…
Etc.
There’s a study coming out of Italy sometime this year comparing levels of thimerosal and autism rates. I guess we’ll see what the feedback is when it is published or we’ll simply run our societal ad hoc experiment and find out whether we have the same experience as Sweden, Italy, Japan and the UK, which is outbreaks of illnesses AND a continuing rate of increase in autism diagnoses.
Vaccinations do not cause autism.
Regan, do you know at what university/institute/etc. the vaccination study in Italy is being carried out?
A friend noted that one of her friends is the parent of one of the children—a baby—who got measles from another unvaccinated in San Diego. Now the parents are worried about the baby’s development.
Vaccinations do not cause autism. When will people “get it” and move on to finding ways to help families with Autistic children? Using funding to provide respite and therapies for families in need would be great.
Kristina,
I do not. I read about this awhile back and recall the study topic but not the particulars. If I locate the details I’ll post it.
Just to say something really controversial, it would be ironic if in this intense focus on a point, if there was a significant environmental contributor and it turned out to be something unrelated? (I have my own set of wonderings but I think I’ll keep them to myself.)
In the meantime Marla’s point about respite and day-to-day is well taken.
@Regan,
do you mean if there is some other environmental factor out there and, due to the excessive attention on this particular issue, it gets overlooked?
Kristina, I think that is exactly what is happening with nitric oxide. The focus on the “trees” of genes, vaccines, toxins, mercury, testosterone, mitochondria, fevers, oxidative stress, gut motility, seizures, and oxytocin ignores the “forest” that is nitric oxide, a factor common to all of them.
“do you mean if there is some other environmental factor out there and, due to the excessive attention on this particular issue, it gets overlooked?”
Yes. In a former life my interest was environmental chemistry. Musing on some of that and the Wigler stuff got some synapses firing. But it’s just musing and armchair speculation and could be hooey. The point is, with all of the changes of the past 50-100 years and various inputs (also including the factors of diagnostic expansion and criteria change)–why vaccines in particular; are there no other possibilities or issues that might be considered? (Actually, I suspect that there are researchers examining some of the things that I am thinking about, but the press seems to be on the vaccines.)
Vaccinations do not cause autism.
Regan, there are researchers pursuing what appear to be more fruitful avenues of research into environmental triggers. If only the energy that’s been put into the vaccine thing could have gone to these more likely candidates, we’d be a lot further along with some of the evidence. And when I say “more likely,” I mean that have been shown to affect pathways that likely are involved in the mechanisms that lead to autism.
Thanks Emily.
Having heard that people are concerned that their pediatricians are not getting enough time to read the information or assimilating it–here it is for your convenience.
A page of vaccines, the diseases they were developed for, the whys of the choice of the vaccination period, ingredients, contraindicated populations.
Other pages on the site discuss the research, reviews of the research, etc., etc.
http://www.immunizationinfo.org/vaccineInfo/index.cfm
Apologies for typo–people are concerned that their pediatricians are not GIVING enough time.
FWIW–this has not been a problem with ours and she has been a great doctor to the girls and flexible with the accommodations we’ve needed for Eleanor.
Dr Ned Calonga is wrong. Vaccination does cause autism and is probably the only cause of autism.
Unvaccinated populations do not get autism, not the two/three million Brits who were not vaccinated nor the Amish, Nor the Homefirst group from Chicago. I warrant too that the Nevada County population of California get very little autism.
It’s not science, cut the blather it’s arithmetic. No vaccinations no autism.
What has gone before cannot be changed the data is on the record show me an unvaccinated autistic person and I will show you a medical mystery.
Tony Bateson UK
“Nobody knows LESS than the person who thinks they know it ALL. (FDA lap dog doctors, aka, scum bags) I like the way the good Doc Dr Mercola puts it with regards to the fact that the Amish who don’t get vaccinated don’t get Autism:
Does anyone out there really need more evidence than this?
Admittedly, this was not a placebo-controlled scientific trial but an evidence-based fact analysis that, in my mind, provides an irrefutable link to a lifestyle and, most likely, mercury-containing vaccine connection to autism.
Folks, you don’t have to be a medical doctor, hold advanced epidemiology degrees or teach molecular genetics to figure this one out. You don’t even need a degree in rocket science. How much more obvious could it be?
The link between autism and vaccines is certainly not a new idea. In fact, suggestions of this link have been in the national news for at least six years now. Just last year a study, that reviewed data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Vaccine Data Link, concluded that children who receive thimerosal-containing vaccinations are 27 times more likely to develop autism than children who do not.
That’s a 2,700 percent increase. The numbers just don’t lie.
Considering how important this issue is for nearly everyone you know, it might be a good one to forward to your friends and relatives.
This most recent investigation simply provides the proverbial icing on the cake. There aren’t too many other places, if any, in America where you can find large groups of children who haven’t been vaccinated.
The reporter found three children with autism. One child was adopted and previously vaccinated, another was one of the few Amish children who were vaccinated, and the third had an unclear vaccine history. That leaves, at most, potentially one child out of an expected 200 (from national statistics) with autism. The odds of this being mere coincidence are slim to none.
At Least Change the Rules Concerning the Hepatitis B Vaccine
Because of their religious beliefs, the Amish community chooses not to give their children any vaccines. Understandably, many of you may not choose such a radical approach. However, if you were to focus on just one vaccine, I would encourage you to look at the issues surrounding the hepatitis B vaccine.
The multi-dose version of this vaccine, which is typically administered to newborns before they leave the hospital, still contains thimerosal. This is reprehensible, irresponsible negligence of the highest magnitude.
The immature central nervous systems of these helpless newborns are particularly susceptible to toxic insults, and thimerosal, the mercury-containing preservative used in these vaccines, is one of the worst.
It would be much easier to understand if the hepatitis B vaccine had some value, but most natural health experts who study this are convinced that this is nearly always an absolutely unnecessary vaccine.
There are only about 5,000 people a year who develop the most serious consequence of hepatitis B infection, liver cancer. That means we are immunizing tens of millions of infants and causing brain injury that has caused an epidemic of autism to protect liver cancer in 5,000 adults. And, many of these adults have serious social problems like IV drug abuse, alcoholism and poor nutrition that seriously increases their risk for this disease.
If you’re a young parent weighing the pros and cons of vaccines, I strongly urge you to learn more about the toxicity of thimerosal, which, again, is still present in multi-dose hepatitis B vaccines, and nearly all the mandated flu vaccine for infants.
The original study, in Britain and reported in teh Lancet, that started all this vaccine nonsense in the early 90’s was 1) run by researchers being paid BY PARENTS looking for someone to sue and 2) retracted, in the original reporting journal, in 2004. It was also based on 12 autistic children, 8 of whom had been vaccinated. How much less convincing can you get? Not one study since has backed up this finding, yet people still hawk it. Why? because parents not only want the cause, they want it to be sue-able.
The paper from Italy has just come out in the Feb 2009 issue of Pediatrics.
Tozzi, A.E., Bisiacchi, P., Tarantino, V., De Mei, B., D’Elia, L., et. al. (2009). Neuropsychological performance 10 years after immunization in infancy with thimerosal-containing vaccines. Pediatrics, 123, 475-482.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1542/peds.2008-0795
A news story on the paper,
Study adds to evidence of vaccine safety
Associated Press
“…In the early 1990s, thousands of healthy Italian babies in a study of whooping cough vaccines got two different amounts of the preservative thimerosal (pronounced thih-MEHR’-uh-sawl) from all their routine shots.
Ten years later, 1,403 of those children took a battery of brain function tests. Researchers found small differences in only two of 24 measurements and those “might be attributable to chance,” they wrote in the February issue of the journal Pediatrics, which was released Monday.
Only one case of autism was found, and that was in the group that got the lower level of thimerosal…”
That makes sense given the fact thimerosal doesn’t cause autism, vaccines do. In particular the MMR. Even more particular the virus in the measles vaccine. Here’s a study that has never been refuted (just ignored) that proves as much:
A highly respected and well-published scientist at the Utah State University, Vijendra K. Singh has further linked autism to the MMR vaccine. His study published in New Foundation of Biology, Elsevier Science BV 2001: 447-58 titled Neuro-immunopathogenesis in Autism provides brain autoantibody and virus serology evidence that links autism to MMR and postulates autism as a neuroautoimmune response that occurs at the neuroimmune biological interface.
Singh found that autoantibodies to myelin basic proteins were present in 80% of autistic children but that none were found in the normal children control group and only rarely in all other controls. These autoantibodies attack the basic proteins that constitute myelin, which surrounds the sheaths of nerve fibers. Regarding the virus serology, autistic children had a significantly higher level of measles virus antibodies as compared to controls, which suggests a temporal link of measles virus with autoimmunity in autism.
Furthermore, Singh found a very important serological association between measles antibody level and antiMBP, which showed that the higher the measles antibody titer the greater the chance of autoantibodies to myelin basic protein. The shocking fact is that none of the children had a wild-type measles infection, but they all had the measles mumps rubella (MMR) vaccine.
Singh also offers hope. He notes an open label trial of oral Sphingolin (myelin containing autoantigen) is being assessed. Preliminary results show significant improvement in autistic people, which further support the neuroimmune pathogenesis in autism.
Vijendra K. Singh, Department of Biology and Biotechnology Center, Utah State University,
Also, one should read AN EPIDEMIC OF GENOCIDE by by Dr. Rebecca Carley, M.D. which explains how bypassing the natural path for viruses into the body (lungs) causes auto-antibody diseases such as autism.
http://www.liquidzeoliteplus.com/vaccination_dangers.html#genocide
Worthy for discussion I’d say, but the medical establishment wants nothing to do with these two medical experts who have no monetary motivation (unlike the drug company research) to lie.
I have a child with Autism and I don’t know much about the vaccines CAUSING the autism, but things definitely get worse for a few weeks (sometimes more) after my son has any sort of shots… and for some reason it is worse after the MMR shots. Maybe if the kids didn’t have to have multiple shots at a time things might be different… we would have a better idea about EXACTLY which shot was causing the problems. We break all the shots up now into single doses.
You must expect it though, by now.. Autistic children are extra sensitive to almost everything, so of course they’re going to be sensitive to the shots as well. It would be wonderful to find a way to vaccinate them without the shot though (the actual process is difficult in itself, even apart from the additives inside the vaccine).
Hello, Here we go again. I will be surprised if at any time we ever reach useful conclusions about vaccines and autism by discussing the science. I would not give a row of beans for nearly all of the so called scientific studies either.
What I can’t get over or begin to understand is that in the UK where up to 15% or thereabouts of all infants do not receive infants vaccines there are virtually no known cases of autism amongst this group. It is not science it is arithmetic.
Several newspaper articles (thirty plus), several newspaper letters (thirty plus) attendance at conferences aggregate numbers 2,000 parents and professionals over ten years have only brought forward two/three instances of autistic kids coming from this group. Examination of those few suggests that not one case is clearly provable to be wholly unvaccinated.
I say vaccines are the cause of autism and perhaps the only cause.
Tony Bateson
My daughter and I witnessed my grandson’s autism as a direct result of NINE vaccines given at once. (The doctor purposely deceived my daughter by assuring her that he was getting only two, however the shot record shows each of the two injections contained 4-5 multiple vaccines which is quite common so pay attention people)
My grandson developed horrific reactions to these vaccines IMMEDIATELY: high fever, continual crying and screaming, thrashing from severe intestinal pain, acidic diarrhea that literally ate his skin away, refusal to drink his formula or eat food, jerking and muscle rigidity. He could no longer walk or maintain his balance. By the next day he was entirely covered with a severe rash and remained exhausted from lack of sleep due to his continual pain and suffering. He turned into a “zombie”, no longer any recognition or interaction with us, and then came the head banging, arm flapping, biting and hitting us instead of his previous hugs and kisses…
We just got his heavy metals test results and his aluminum is off the charts at 1,260 (100 being the normal range). In researching aluminum toxicity the neurological and other resulting damages are quite similar to mercury toxicity. So don’t breathe any sigh of relief just because most of the mercury has been removed.
Aluminum Toxicity Medical Research and Studies:
http://www.hbci.com/~wenonah/hydro/al.htm
Over 7,000 reference articles on aluminum toxicity existed in various data bases as of 1936, (Today, there are more than a million) all recognizing the toxicity.
The aluminum levels in vaccines are way above and beyond the safe ranges as published in the medical literature as well as much other scientific evidence. Now add up the totals of NINE given at once. Then add up all of the other known and published toxic ingredients and do the math. If you wish to play Russian Roulette with your precious children, that is your choice, but it was not our choice and now we have AUTISM.
The Pharmaceutical and Medical Industry continually presents their mantra of the official party line: “Vaccines are Safe” and “There is no connection between the quadrupled vaccine schedule and the explosion of Autism” even though the Autism increase directly correlates to the vaccine increase, along with a mountain of accumulating evidence the size of Mt. Everest. Nevermind that thousands upon thousands of parents have witnessed the regression of their children into autism following vaccines.
These people are ALL imagining this, and they “Just want something to blame”? In any court of law this many eye witnesses to any event would be considered totally valid evidence of fact. But NOT in the medical system. Oh NO all these people are totally delusional and conspiracy theorists? We shouldn’t believe our own eyes just because so many others are ignorant of the factual reality, or in denial or in the case of pharmaceutical propaganda, outright LYING. Yes it is a huge coverup by the $650 million dollar drug cartel. An industry whose toxic concoctions kill a minimum of 100,000 people per year according to admitted and published medical statistics…Yes, we should believe these people when they tell us that all these Vaccines are “safe”, just like all these drugs are “safe”….But whenever a drug is finally discovered to be irrefutably dangerous and deadly, prior the the official FDA announcement and withdrawal, all kinds of shenanagins and fraudent cover up has been perpetuated as long as possible in order to maintain the profit margin as long as possible.
We human beings are simply written off in the Risk to Benefit ratio, with the bottom line being the Almighty Dollar. This information is all over the place and every day more shit is hitting the fan with more and more people figuring out the truth. The truth is being revealed day by day. It is only a matter of time before the shit REALLY hits the fan, and I look forward to that day when this fan is reversed and this shit is all over the vaccine industry. Sadly for the time being, their shit has landed on over a million children with autism in the U.S. alone, not to mention 1 in 6 children now with neurological/developmental disabilities.
It would be easy to prove that vaccines are responsible for this by simply doing a comparative study between the vaccinated and unvaccinated populations. There are quite a few religious groups to chose from in addition to home schooled children, the Amish, Christian Scientists, Scientologists, etc. But the pharmaceutical and medical industries have resisted this all along and refuse to conduct these studies for some reason….Hmmmm wonder why? Without even doing this study, there are currently available statistics throughout the world regarding countries with the most vaccines graduating down to countries with the least. This information is already demonstrating that the autism rates are directly proportional to the vaccine rates, but…. Oh I forgot, that really doesn’t matter does it? Because all of this is supposedly just a big fat coincidence!!! And it is just a coincidence that America is now 34th in mortality from birth to age 5.
I met a young man from Cuba at my garage sale. He had a newborn child so I asked him if he knew anything about the vaccine risks or autism. “Oh yes”, he said, “We have only a few vaccines in Cuba and autism there is unheard of.” He immigrated here to the U.S. to make a better life for himself. But as much as I wouldn’t really want to live in a poor country like Cuba, my grandson wouldn’t be autistic now if we were living there.
Thank you “Liquid Zeolite” for posting this scientific study…just one of so very many that have been ignored. By your name, I am assuming you must be a proponent of Liquid Zeolite. I have been researching this information all month long and have become convinced that it has the ability to safely remove heavy metals and other toxins. Therefore we just ordered this product for my grandson because his aluminum levels are off the charts. We have never used any aluminum cookware, do not drink aluminum canned soda, and don’t even use aluminum deodorant because we have always been conscious of the aluminum toxicity issues. So how did all of this aluminum end up in my grandson? The only logical conclusion is the vaccines based on the listing of the amount of aluminum in each of the 27 vaccines that he received before going over the cliff into autism.
“Vaccinations do not cause autism How many times does one need to say this?”
Repeating the same phrase over and over and over again is a well known brainwashing and propaganda technique and can be quite effective judging from all of the people who are parroting this statement, However continually repeating the same thing does not make it true. Example: Hitler continually repeated that the “Jews were an inferior race” and that the “Jews were the cause of Germany’s problems” and that the “Jews needed to be exterminated.” This continual repetition of the Nazi Party Line was indeed quite effective in causing many people to believe that this was the “truth”, however obviously it is NOT THE TRUTH.