Monday, February 8, 2010

vaccine-austisim connection rebuked

As an Uncle of a autistic child and having known parents of autistic children who, like many, firmly believe that the preservatives in the vaccines given over the years have somehow had an effect on the number of diagnosed autistic children. Which now seems to be close to an epidemic, leaving scientists, parents and would be parents to wonder, what the hell is going on.

A well know scientist Andrew Wakefield from Britain published a paper 12 years ago, in the Lancet, claiming children were immeasurably harmed by vaccines. For many years, the anti-vaccine crowd around the world held his work as the gospel. And now, the prestigious Lancet has pulled Dr. Wakefield paper, concluding he had shown "callous disregard for the children in his study and had abused his position of trust" in doing his research.

Today we hear on another study, that suggests women over 40 who have children late in life, have an increased chance of having an autistic child.

The scientific community should get their collective act together and find the ROOT cause of this now and not 5 or 10 years down the road. My non scientific opinion is that in the end, they will discover many environmental factors, including the damage to chromosomes, that has caused at least some of the health problems linked to this nightmare for unsuspecting parents. It's so very sad to think, that perhaps many of our health care problems will be related to what we have put into our bodies, where we lived and worked and the air and water we drank and breathed.

2 Comments:

At February 8, 2010 at 4:16 PM , Blogger Always looking said...

Autism and its cause(s) are not going to be determined in the near future. To expect that is unreasonable. What can be done immediately is to stop all the non-factual based information being spread around that has no scientific backing, no statistical support, no basis in science, and no value to the autistic children or their familes. I know you mean well Jim by saying what you suspect the causes are, but you have not medical basis or statistical proof of what you say here. Do I think it might be environmental? Yes I do. Do I think that it is something someone is at fault for? No I don’t. There are almost as many cuases being touted as there are victims of this disease. It has got to stop, and it has got to stop now. Medical people, scientists, should be ashamed and held accoutable for misinforming the community of autistic familes. That is a given. But beyond that, people who know nothing, only have ideas, should also stopped spewing them. It is wrong, and it is hurtful to those of us who keep hoping for a cure for our children.

 
At February 9, 2010 at 12:51 PM , Blogger Jim Pillsbury said...

The report released today, studied 5 million births in the 1990s. 50% more likely to have an autistic child if the women are over 40 and 36% higher if the men are over 41.

Don't shoot the messenger. It's science and seems to make a relevant point and correlation to age.

I apologize Al if I offended you in some way. My intent was to inform, my layman editorial was my own.

 

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