Vaccines, autism, and parent advocacy

PedMed (United Press International) is “keeping an eye on autism” in a multi-part series based on “dozens of reports, conferences and interviews.” Today’s installment, Accelerating autism debate, notes how parents in “independent-minded, parent-propelled advocacy groups, many of which promote, provide for and/or produce scientific research,” have challenged the experts—expecially those from the medical profession— “whose word once was undisputed law.” In particular, the PedMed article considers the belief of many parents that their child’s autism was caused by a vaccine—-”one of the most fractious and divisive issues in pediatric medicine.” Some excerpts:

Dismissing adamant assurances to the contrary by those not long ago considered the ultimate authority on such matters, the renegade thinkers — including some scientists and physicians — insist on implicating immunization in the exploding U.S. rates of autism diagnoses.

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What has raised more than a few suspicious eyebrows is that the increase occurred alongside a concurrently rapid rise in the number of vaccines added to the ever-expanding mandatory infant inoculation schedule………

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Carefully skirting the fallacious reasoning of association as proof of causation, those who hold the mercury-based preservative responsible for the rise in autism make it a point to note that’s about the time Kanner started seeing the first of the documented cases of what appeared to him to be a new disorder.

The next installment is to be on “View of vaccine as agent of autism” and I curious to see if PedMed will explain what is described as the “fallacious reasoning of association of proof as causation” in regard to the theory that vaccines can cause autism.