Monday, January 07, 2008

Study refutes Autism - Vaccine Link

This has been kind of a pet peeve of mine for quite awhile.

About 15 (maybe more) years ago a bunch of nurses began convincing parents not to have their kids immunized because the vaccines cause autism. They didn't have any real proof but they managed to convince tons of people and vaccination rates began to drop followed by an uptick in childhood diseases. Every study that I am aware of has found no causal relationship between vaccination and autism but somehow the myth persists. Well here is another one:

LOS ANGELES - Autism cases in California continued to climb even after a mercury-based vaccine preservative that some people blame for the neurological disorder was removed from routine childhood shots, a new study found.

Researchers from the state Department of Public Health found the autism rate in children rose continuously during the 12-year study period from 1995 to 2007. The preservative thimerosal hasn’t been used in childhood vaccines since 2001, but is used in some flu shots.

Doctors say the latest study adds to existing evidence refuting a link between thimerosal exposure and autism risk and should reassure parents that the disorder is not caused by vaccinations. If there was a risk, they said, autism rates should have dropped between 2004 and 2007.

...

Autism rate rose over decade
They found the prevalence of autism in children aged 3 to 12 increased throughout the study period. For example, 0.3 per 1,000 children born in 1993 had autism at age 3 compared with 1.3 per 1,000 children born in 2003. Similar trends were found in other age groups.

“These time trends are inconsistent with the hypothesis that thimerosal exposure is a primary cause of autism in California,” the researchers wrote.

Source: MSNBC


more:

National Center for Biotechnology Information
Child: Care, Health, and Development

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