Vaccines Cause Autism?

It’s actually a very frightening subject if you have small kids. Until the root causes of autism are understood, there is no way to rule out the chemical in the vaccine (it’s a mercury derivative) but my understanding is they’ve quit using it, as well.

I think they have every right to sue the government for this reason: in many states, vaccination is required by law. If you have some evidence that suggests the state is forcing you to take something that might hurt you, the state is responsible. Now, if vaccines were by choice, then fine. But I’ve been amazed in Jersey how the state rams vaccination down the throats of its citizens – no public school for unvaccinated children, for example.

A co-worker of mine had a sister who had a normal, healthy son who, shortly after beginning his round of vaccinations, developed autistic characteristics. It of course could have been latent, caused by something else, etc. – but since I know someone who is now suffering with an autistic child it’s disturbing to me.

Even more disturbing – there is some link between cow’s milk and autism, too.

Oh well – the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. I guess the government figures a few kids with autism is better than a million with smallpox. That’s a whole difficult ethical argument there.

There is no link between vaccines and autism. None. Period. The only biologically plausible link was thimerosol, which has been removed from vaccines (and which babies cleared from their bodies too soon to see an effect anyway). Since then, we have not seen a decrease in the autism rate (actually, we’ve seen an increase). A pregnant mother’s fish consumption is a more likely cause of autism than vaccines.

We don’t know the causes or even the mechanism of autism. Therefore, it’s impossible to make a claim of causality. The only possibly way to do so is through statistical analysis in a population-based study. And all such analysis done so far has shown no link. This girl’s parents are demonstrating a poor knowledge of both science and statistics in making this claim that they “know” what is causing their child’s autism.

As for mandatory vaccines – I’m not going to get up on my soap box. Suffice to say that this is the downside of effective public health. No one notices our successes because our goal is prevention. Mandatory immunization is the reason our kids don’t die of horrible communicable diseases while young.
Ok. That was a little soap box.

Thanks for blogging about this. This is a huge debate among bloggers (and parents) right now. Personally, I’m wary of the fact that vaccinations (including the flu shot) contain mercury.

I linked to this post on Qvisory yesterday.

My wife’s cousin was born 100% normal and had her scheduled DPT shot when she was just months old. She is now 19, has the mental capacity of a 10 – 12 year old and had an operation to split her corpus callosum due to seizures and other complications. She had a reaction to the inoculation and was determined to be the cause of her abnormality. I can see this affecting people in similar ways resulting in autism.

PS: Both my children have had thimerisol-(mercury)-free vaccines.

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I totally agree that families whose children have become autistic after shots should be compensated because we are all forced to give our children these shots or else they cannot attend neither daycare nor school. And I have said for years that there is something in either our food or water sources causing these children to be so hyperactive. Look at young children when you are out; 99% of them are extremely hyper and are having to receive medications for parents to be able to control them. Now they say they are finding medications in our water!!! Imagine that.

Personally, I don’t believe autism is caused by vaccines. However, I do believe it’s possible something in the vaccines may trigger the onset of autism in someone predisposed to it. I still don’t think the benefits offered by vaccines are outweighed by the risks. There’s a great debate about vaccines and autism at http://www.opposingviews.com/questions/are-autism-and-vaccines-linked Several experts from both sides debate the issue and make some interesting points.

Total BS. It’s a much more serious issue not getting ones child vaccinated. Please provide real peer reviewed research that says otherwise. All studies thus far have found no connection.