The Mmr Vaccine And Autism
Many people confuse the controversy over the vaccine for measles, mumps, and rubella with that of thimerosal, but the two have always been totally separate issues. In fact, MMR vaccines have never even contained thimerosal.
The link between MMR and autism gained traction following the publication of a very small British study published in a British medical journal, The Lancet. The study was lead by Dr. Andrew Wakefield and it concluded that children developed autism soon after they received the MMR vaccine. The theory: The measles portion of the shot causes inflammation and infection of the intestines, which can then spread dangerous proteins to the brain, causing damage that may lead to autism.
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Was The Moon Landing Faked
Ever a thorn in NASAs side, some proponents of this conspiracy theory claim that the 1969 moon landing was faked by the U.S. in order to strike a blow to the Soviets in the space race, or for other dubious reasons.
Arguments for the theory include that some photos of shadows on the moon are not parallel, suggesting studio lighting that the U.S. flag set up on the moon appears to be waving in photos despite no wind on the moon and that no stars are visible in the sky in photos from the lunar surface.
All of these can be explained. The shadows on the moon are not parallel because the moons surface isnt perfectly flat. This effect can be reproduced here on Earth.
The U.S. flag appears to be waving but is not the top of the flag is supported by a pole in order to make it look as though its flying, and it looks wrinkled because its literally been screwed up for four days en route to the moon, explained Anu Ojha, discovery director of the U.K.s National Space Centre, in a lecture at Royal Museums Greenwich in London.
And there are no stars in the lunar landing photos because the surface of the moon is brightly lit by the sun. As keen photographers will know, capturing brightlylit situations requires a fast shutter speed and a small aperture.
This means the camera will take good photos of bright things but relatively dim things wont show up. Try taking a night-sky photograph on a phone camera without giving it any exposure time to see this effect on Earth.
Mercury And Autism Spectrum Disorder: Another Discredited Theory
Blood contains several different chemicals in small amounts. But certain chemicals like mercury can be poisonous if the levels are too high. Some people claim that autism is caused by excess mercury in the blood, which the childs body cant get rid of naturally.
Supporters of this theory also suggest that the excess mercury comes from vaccines. This is because in the past, thiomersal was used as a preservative to make some vaccines. But in any case, the mercury in this preservative was not the type that accumulates in the body and causes difficulties.
Thiomersal-based vaccines are no longer used. None of the National Immunisation Program vaccines used in Australia contain thiomersal. In Australia, thiomersal has been removed from all routine childhood vaccines since 2000.
A large-scale study found that children who had not been exposed to thiomersal had more cases of PDD. Another study found there was no reduction in the rates of autism after thiomersal was removed from vaccines in California.
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Mmr And Autism: Discredited Theories
In 1998, researcher Andrew Wakefield and his colleagues published a paper in the medical journal The Lancet describing an apparently new syndrome linking developmental disorders and bowel problems in children who had previously been developing typically.
In 8 of only 12 cases studied, parents linked the beginning of the behaviour difficulties with the MMR vaccination.
The researchers stated that they did not prove a link between the MMR vaccine and the new syndrome. But their paper discussed the proposed link extensively. The paper suggested that the combined MMR vaccine was implicated in the development of autism, although the single measles vaccine was not.
After the paper was published, Dr Wakefield publicly discussed the link. He suggested there was a case for splitting the vaccine into its component parts.
Criticism of the research Since 1998, Dr Wakefields research has been criticised for several reasons, including the following:
- The research applied measures meant for adults to test results from children. This means that some of the findings about bowel disorders in these children were in fact normal for children.
- The paper published an unproven link between the new syndrome that Dr Wakefield described and the MMR vaccine.
Ten of the papers authors issued a partial retraction in 2004. They suggested that the link between autism and bowel disorders is worthy of further investigation. But they admitted they did not find that the MMR vaccine caused autism.
Why Were Vaccines Linked To Autism
In the late 1990s, some researchers raised concerns over the amount of thimerosala mercury-containing preservativefound in many children’s vaccines. Although thimerosal had been used as an anti-contamination agent for decades, the diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis vaccination was the only thimerosal-containing shot recommended for infants and children until 1991.
The researchers hypothesized that, as more thimerosal-containing vaccines like hepatitis B and Hib were added to the recommended schedule, babies were receiving too much of the chemical in too short a timeframe, which could potentially impact brain development.
In a totally separate issue around this time, another group of researchers lead by a British doctor named Andrew Wakefield theorized that children who received the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine were more likely to develop autism than those who did not receive it. By January 2011, however, Dr. Wakefield’s study was discredited by the British Medical Journal.
Today, scientists and experts are confident that vaccines play no role in the onset of this developmental disorder. “More than a dozen studies across researchers, study designs, and populations have all concluded that there’s no relation between vaccines and autism,” says Matthew Daley, M.D., a pediatrician for Kaiser Permanente in Colorado and a researcher who studies vaccine topics. Read on to find out more about these studies.
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What About All Vaccinations Combined
Researchers have also looked to see if all the vaccines required before age 2 somehow together triggered autism. Children receive 25 shots in the first 15 months of life. Some people feared that getting all those shots so early in life could lead to the development of autism, but there is no evidence that this is true.
But the CDC compared groups of children who received vaccines on the recommended schedule and those whose vaccines were delayed or didnât get them at all. There was no difference in the autism rate between the two groups.
In 2004, the Immunization Safety Review Committee of the Institute of Medicine published a report on the topic. The group looked at all the studies on vaccines and autism, both published and unpublished. It released a 200-page report stating there was no evidence to support a link between vaccines and autism.
Still, studies continue to look at the issue. In 2019, the largest study to date looked at almost 660-thousand children over a course of 11 years and found no link between the vaccine and autism.
Indian Journal of Psychiatry: âThe MMR Vaccine and Autism: Sensation, Refutation, Retraction, and Fraud.â
Offit, P., and Moser, C., Vaccines and Your Child: Separating Fact from Fiction, Columbia University Press, 2011.
American Journal of Medical Genetics: âComorbidity of Intellectual Disability Confounds Ascertainment of Autism: Implications for Genetic Diagnosis.â
BMJ: âHow the Case Against the MMR Vaccine Was Fixed.â
Professor Who Claims Vaccines Linked To Autism Funded Through University Portal
Chris Exley, who says aluminium in vaccines may cause autism, has raised more than £22,000
A British professor who has claimed that aluminium in vaccines is linked to autism has raised more than £22,000 to support his work through a Keele University online donations portal, the Guardian can reveal.
Prof Chris Exley angered health experts for claiming that tiny amounts of aluminium in inactivated vaccines, such as the HPV and whooping cough inoculations, may cause the more severe and disabling form of autism.
In 2017, the professor of bioinorganic chemistry published a paper on aluminium found in the brain tissue of five autistic patients that has been shared tens of thousands of times by vaccine skeptics online despite criticism from health experts over its lack of controls and small sample size.
The research was part-funded by a grant from the Childrens Medical Safety Research Institute, a US-based organisation that challenges vaccine safety.
A Freedom of Information Act request by the Guardian has found that Exley received £22,173.88 in donations since October 2015 to help support his work, ranging from £2 to £5,000. More than £11,000 of contributions were made between January and April 2019. The majority of donations are less than £100.
Exley told the Guardian: support basic running costs of my lab and are not associated with any specific project. This is the nature of a donation as compared to a grant.
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Vaccination Rates Among Younger Siblings Of Children With Autism
The relationship between adverse reactions to vaccine and autism spectrum disorder has received little attention in research as of this writing. At the public health level, a better understanding of the relationship between perceived adverse reactions to vaccine and autism spectrum disorder is necessary in order to more effectively address concerns about vaccination.
Journal Title: Journal Volume: Publisher: CATEGORY:TYPE:
Reviews recent controversies surrounding immunizations and ASD .
Corporate Authors: Journal Issue: Journal Title: Journal Volume: Publisher: CATEGORY:TYPE:
Le présent article analyse de récentes controverses entourant limmunisation et les troubles envahissants du développment et conclut quaucune donnée nappuie une association entre ces deux éléments.
Corporate Authors: Journal Issue: Journal Title: Journal Volume: Publisher: CATEGORY:TYPE:
Should My Kid Get Vaccinated
Although the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and many other reputable organizations agree that vaccines do not cause autism, there are still small but vocal groups who believe they do. And amid that conflicting information, some parents might opt not get their children vaccinated“just to be safe,” because they worry about other possible reactions, or because of religious or other beliefs.
“But if you choose not to vaccinate your child, you are increasing his risk of contracting serious diseases that can lead to complications, hospitalization, and even death,” says Dr. Fombonne. For example, after the MMR vaccine was first linked to autism in England, many parents stopped vaccinating their childrenand several children died during a measles outbreak in Ireland soon afterward. And a recent measles outbreak in the United States has infected hundreds of people.
For all the major childhood vaccinations , most experts agree that the many, many benefits from getting vaccinated far outweigh any possible side effects or risks.
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Myth #: Vaccines Contain Unsafe Toxins
People have concerns over the use of formaldehyde, mercury or aluminum in vaccines. It’s true that these chemicals are toxic to the human body in certain levels, but only trace amounts of these chemicals are used in FDA approved vaccines. In fact, according to the FDA and the CDC, formaldehyde is produced at higher rates by our own metabolic systems and there is no scientific evidence that the low levels of this chemical, mercury or aluminum in vaccines can be harmful. See section III of this guide to review safety information about these chemicals and how they are used in vaccines.
Natural Immunity Won’t Protect Your Kids
Some anti-vaxxers think their kids are born equipped to fight these diseases. But in fact, 90 percent of vaccinated kids exposed to measles get infected. Vaccines were game changers. Generations ago, kids did not stand a fighting chance against illnesses like polio. Give your kids the tools they need to protect themselves.
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The Real Science Of Vaccines And Autism
By cherry-picking a handful of poorly designed articles in poor journals, the anti-vaccine religious order tends to find anything that supports the a priori conclusion that vaccines are horrific and they cause autism.
Proper scientifically skeptical thinking says that you review all evidence, giving more weight to the quality and quantity of evidence then you follow that higher quality and quantity of evidence to a conclusion.
These vaccine deniers ignore the vast weight of evidence of real science published in real journals. They search for the evidence that supports their preconceived conclusions.
Real science shows that not only do we lack evidence that autism and vaccines are related, but we also have affirmative evidence that vaccines do not cause autism.
One example, published in the journal Vaccine, is a meta-analysis of five cohort studies involving 1,256,407 children, and five case-control studies involving 9920 children. As Ive written before, meta-analyses are the basis, the deep foundation, of the scientific consensus, and they are the highest quality scientific evidence available. This study is like a gigantic clinical trial because it rolls up the highest quality data from those millions of subjects to develop solid conclusions.
The authors concluded that,
Moreover, a 2019 large, powerful, robust cohort study, with nearly 600,000 subjects, provides nearly unimpeachable evidence that the MMR vaccine and autism are unrelated.
Vaccine Ingredients Do Not Cause Autism
- One vaccine ingredient that has been studied specifically is thimerosal. Thimerosal is a mercury-based preservative used to prevent germs from contaminating multidose vials of vaccines. Research shows that thimerosal does not cause ASD. In fact, a 2004 scientific review by the IOM concluded that the evidence favors rejection of a causal relationship between thimerosalcontaining vaccines and autism.Immunization Safety Review: Vaccines and Autism external icon
Since 2003, there have been nine CDC-funded or conducted studies that have found no link between thimerosal-containing vaccines and ASD. These studies also found no link between the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine and ASD in children. Learn more about the CDC Studies on Thimerosal in Vaccines pdf icon.
Even before studies showed that thimerosal was not harmful, there was a national effort to reduce all types of mercury exposures in children. As precaution, thimerosal was removed or reduced to trace amounts in all childhood vaccines between 1999 and 2001. Currently, the only type of vaccine that contain thimerosal are flu vaccines packaged in multidose vials. There are thimerosal-free alternatives available for flu vaccine. For more information, see the Timeline for Thimerosal in Vaccines.
Besides thimerosal, some people have had concerns about other vaccine ingredients in relation to ASD. However, no links have been found between any vaccine ingredients and ASD.
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Autism And Vaccines 159 Peer
Autism and vaccines are not linked or associated according to real science, published in real scientific journals written by real scientists and physicians. But this false claim that vaccines and autism are related is repeated by anti-vaxxers nearly every day.
Lets be clear the lack of a link between vaccines and autism is settled science. There is overwhelming evidence, as listed in this article, that there is no link. Outside of anecdotes, internet memes, misinformation, and VAERS dumpster-diving, there is no evidence that there is a link.
Ever since Mr. Andrew Wakefield published his fraudulent, and subsequently retracted, study that seemed to show a link between the MMR vaccine and autism spectrum disorder , the anti-vaccine crowd has embraced it as if it were a scientific fact.
This Wakefield chicanery has spawned a cottage industry of other anti-vaccine zealots like Del Bigtree and his fraudumentary Vaxxed, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Christopher Exley, Christopher Shaw, James Lyons-Weiler, Tetyana Obukhanych, and many others.
This article presents 159 scientific articles, published in high-quality, peer-reviewed journals. Almost all of them are either primary studies that include large clinical trials or case-control or cohort studies. They also include numerous systematic reviews, which represent the pinnacle of biomedical research.
Contents
Autism And Vaccines In The Media
A Journalists Guide to Covering Outbreaks of Vaccine-Preventable DiseaseFrom the producers of the PBS-NOVA special VaccinesCalling the Shots.
On January 21st, 2011, Dr. Paul Offit was on The Colbert Report speaking about his new book, Deadly Choices: How The Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All..
On September 9, 2014, ASF President Alison Singer was on The Leonard Lopate Show to talk about the risks of not vaccinating.
Whats Next?
If we ask the same questions well get the same answers. Weve asked the autism vaccine question over two dozen times and each time we get the same response: no relationship. We need to move on. We need to invest in studying genetics, the brain structures of children with autism, and environmental factors that may be playing a role.
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Do Vaccines Cause Autism
Hi everyone, Leyla this week! So for this post, I thought we might delve into the topic of autism as promised in our intro blog. My mother’s a clinical psychologist, so I’ve been hearing about this topic–and autism in general–for a while. Autism is a disorder that strikes very early in life, and it affects social cognition and interaction. Most often, it is accompanied by mental retardation, but the two don’t go hand in hand, which is a common misconception.
There’s been a lot of controversy in the news lately about the recent discovery that the study linking autism and vaccines was apparently invalid. According to the British Medical Journal the study’s author, Andrew Wakefield, knowingly tampered with the results he garnered in his study–possibly due to unsavory ulterior motives. One may expect that parents across the world may now breathe a sigh of relief however, it appears as though Andrew Wakefield’s study has caused some long-lasting damage to families world wide.
Despite the news that Wakefield’s claims were invalid, recent polls reveal that 18% of Americans still believe that there is a link between MMR and autism, while 30% aren’t sure what to believe. While 92% of American children are still fully vaccinated, there was a shocking number of measles cases in 2008, and, according to the CDC, over 90% of these children hadn’t been vaccinated. This was 10 years after Andrew Wakefield’s study had been published. Coincidence? I think not.
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