Vaccines Cause Autism (Not)
Woah, woah! I can already feel some of you twitching down to the comment section. All set to tell me a really convincing anecdote about how a vaccine did cause autism in a child you know, or know of.
If that is the case, then I can only express my sympathies towards that child. However anecdotal evidence pails into insignificance when measured up against decades of research into the subject.
A CDC whistleblower, Dr. Thompson, came forward in 2016 with the admission that the data in a 2004 study showing no link between the MMR vaccine and autism was tweaked by removing children without a birth certificate in order to hide the >300% increase in autism among black males who received the vaccine under the age of 3. There was no other evidence of a link but, if I had a black son I would delay the vaccine until after age 3. Not a slam-dunk, but it's not correct to say that there is NO link.
I'm afraid not a slam dunk at all, if I were to give you a link back it would be this one https://respectfulinsolence.com/2014/08/28/a-bad-day-for-antivaccinationists-a-retraction-and-the-cdc-whistleblower-issues-a-statement/
However, that is a lot of data right there, let me sum up by saying that this man is a fantasist, and absolutely zero evidence has been brought forward to support his claims, however his lies have fulled the conspiracy theories.
Next, Andrew Wakefield was bankrolled by a rival drug company making an MMR substitute; his original data was taken from a poll with 12 sets of parents, 8 of whom said that they thought that maybe their children had developed autism after vaccination.
These people have been utterly discredited, however most people operate on the 'no smoke without fire' premise, so there must be something in it.
Like I said above, there have been multi-decade long studies, and meta analyses, comparisons, retesting and so on, done by dozens and dozens of different organisations, universities, health organisations, governments, and so on. Not one single link has ever been found.
That for me is overwhelming evidence, and it would take pretty extraordinary evidence to prove otherwise.
Great comment by the way, good to see the debate is alive and kicking! :-)
Cg
@kunschj if anyone's interested in the CDC Autism/MMR Files that Dr. Thompson released, they can be downloaded here.
Tripedia dTaP Insert Page 11 of 13
Queue the disclaimer!
@kunschj if anyone's interested in reading about the 20 year multi-country, millions of person studies that show there is absolutely no link whatsoever you can view them here https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/48/4/456/284219
If anyone is interested in finding out how that CDC report is false and has been redacted by its authors you can read that here
http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c7452
Or of course we could all just ignore the overwhelming evidence and concentrate on a story that satisfies the urge within us to listen to, and enjoy a good story.
Cg