Studies that link Autism to Vaccinations.

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I know many of you have a kind of faith of 100% belief that Vaccines are not linked to Autism, but let's be bit objective - I think those who are against the anti-vaccine cult are being as emotional and irrational as the anti-vaccine parents.

I am in no way promoting against vaccinations, the diseases that vaccinations prevent are more serious than Autism, however there's always room to improve vaccinations, to make them safer, if they find out some toxin element.

The whole propaganda from both sides is harmful.

Today I am criticizing the voices, who most of them are self-labeled Aspies, who say that the Autism-Vaccines link has been debunked ages ago and researchers should stop looking into it, and they often refer to studies that reinforce this claim.

Nope, it is not yet debunked, the studies so far do not dispel doubts; It is also a repeated fallacy that there is no research that supports the supposition that vaccines can cause autism.

There are in fact, you can find more than 30 studies that show a link between Autism and environmental factors (ie. vaccines, metals...etc), here are some:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21623535
http://omsj.org/reports/tomljenovic%202011.pdf
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16151044
http://jcn.sagepub.com/content/21/2/170.abstract
http://jcn.sagepub.com/content/21/2/170.abstract
http://jcn.sagepub.com/content/22/11/1308.abstract
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14745455
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12145534
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF02256592

Only skim read the first one but it is saying they're correlated, which they are. But correlation doesn't mean causation.

If we stopped using vaccine because they supposedly cause autism, we would have epidemics of polio, diphtheria, measles, mumps, even perhaps smallpox again. Read up on those diseases in the time before the vaccines. You'll see what I mean.

It's not worth it.

And it's been debunked for the most part--the association between vaccines and autism.

Yes, this list has been circulating for a while. It's a combination of irrelevant studies and junk science, most of it by people with conflicts of interest. There is a debunk here. http://reasoneddiscussions.com/Categories/Vaccinations/May-2015/30-Scientific-Studies-Showing-the-Link-between-Vaccines-and-Autism

I'm not going to repeat its findings.

Autism is not caused by vaccination.

Because autism isn't that bad. 1 in 68 people with autism is a lot better than worldwide epidemics of deadly diseases that have been put into check because of vaccinations! To me it's a non-argument.

It's also a non-argument that vaccines cause autism. Your statement is true, but not relevant.

The reason that the anti "anti vax" folks get so heated up is only PARTLY because believing something (like that vaccines cause autism) despite the wealth of information showing otherwise is utterly infuriating especially given the alternatives in the scenario (wide spread epidemics of polio and measles).

The bigger issue is that being anti vax makes no sense no matter what stance is taken, regardless of whether vaccines cause autism or not. Even if there was a 1% chance that vaccines cause autism, 1% is high mind you, it's still irrational to be anti vaccine becuase it's like saying we are better off with 10 out of 100 children dying from preventable diseases than we are with 1 out of 100 having autism... because that is the reality of the situation if everyone decided to not vaccinate.

What's even more infuriating is the anti vax folks are clearly placing their children above all others in refusing vaccinces they are clearly relying on "the rest of us" for herd immunity while protecting their precious snowflakes from the evil vaccines. Notice that NONE of them are out lobbying for vaccines to be removed or made illegal, right? No, the attitude literally is "everyone else should get vaccinated except for my kid". That way their kid still benefits from herd immunity while not taking on ANY of the possible bad side effects of the vaccine which is NOT how a social contract like vaccines works. It's a one for all kind of deal, not an all for one kind of deal. Do you see where that might make some people upset?

In science, there will always be research findings that contradict the previous findings. At the moment I think it comes down to which side has the greatest amount of quality evidence. And unless an explanation arises for why vaccines may cause autism, then we can't conclude that there is any sort of causal link. This is why we have to be careful not to come to any concrete conclusions.

I agree with what kraftie said about the disease epidemics and I imagine that would be far worse than any increased likelihood of autism. The benefits and risks must be weighed up.

Personally, I would not go as far as saying the new and greatly increased vaccination regime is not affecting the dramatic rise of Autism cases. And I believe there is a dramatic rise in Autism cases than from when I was a little kid. I believe there is a dramatic rise in lots of things. I think that kids are being exposed to so many more environmental toxins than even we were when I was little that it is not surprising that their neurologies are being so affected. But having said that, I would not say that all of the cases of Autism are attributed to vaccines. As far as I am aware of Autism has been around for a lot longer than vaccines have been.

I also do believe that there are many more Autistic people now than there were before and more people affected by other conditions such as ADHD or Bipolar and other things like that. I know that those things have also been around for a very long time but now we are seeing statistics that say that for example, one in every 68 kids is affected with Autism. That is HUGE. I even read the other day in an article when I was looking up about the breathing issues, that they suspect that in the near future Autism will affect 50% of all kids born. I don't know if that will actually happen or not but to even have that as a thought is pretty astounding.

So whether we can say for sure that vaccines don't play a part at all, I am not entirely convinced. But I do know that they don't play the only part. If they did, Autism would not have existed before the invention of the first vaccine and we are pretty sure that that is not the case.

Increased autism rates are an artifact of improved awareness, better access to diagnosis and more realistic, broadened diagnostic criteria, not an actual increase in autism in the population.

How often do we have to repeat this? It sometimes feels like talking to climate deniers.

I think anti-vaccine people are like people who support facilitated communication.
There is large preponderance of evidence against vaccines causing autism and against facilitated communication.
In vaccine case, there was purposeful fabrication of scientific results.
In FC case, fabrication is perhaps less purposeful in most cases, but wishful thinking is dominant.

Maybe it's for the best that the paranoid conspiracy theory nutjobs refuse vaccinations. Then the already overpopulated world of ignorant human parasites will be more balanced out by the "thinning of the herd", while the so called "sheeple" who got their shots will be safe. Of course, I feel bad that innocent children will suffer and die because and it will all be the fault of their paranoid parents, but the adults can get the diseases as well.

I believe in the necessity of vaccines, so in that light it's a non-issue for me.

However, I also think that autistics are hypersensitive to all sorts of environmental things - including lights, sounds, foods, and chemicals. Overstimulation by any of these things can cause us to go into shutdown.

It makes sense to me that an autistic child who 'passes as NT' in infancy might suffer from a reaction to chemical bombardment from a vaccine - which could trigger a shutdown or general worsening of 'autistic' or PTSD-like behavior, that wasn't observable before.

In that scenario, the child already possessed autistic neurology before the vaccine, but the sudden chemical overload caused their ASD symptoms to become obvious, rather than 'hidden'.

Without the vaccine triggering a shutdown, their autism might have gone undiagnosed until adulthood (assuming they didn't die of any number of worse diseases, from not being vaccinated!)

Maybe this idea has already been proposed by others, and debunked by those who understand the science of it better than I do... But I've never actually seen it brought up before, so thought I'd mention it.

To posit this you need to assume that the neurons in the child's brain were already hyperconnected (in order for them to be hypersensitive in the first place), and for something in the vaccine (what?) to then cause hyperconnection between the neurons in the child's brain.

Obviously, this is a fallacy.

I suppose, in theory, something in the environment might cause some sort of cascade process, with an already hyperconnected brain becoming even more hyperconnected, but you need to identify a causal agent, and explain the processes involved. It seems unlikely.

I don't think those facts can attribute to the amount of Autistic people we have now. I know that those facts are true and that there were many people who were Autistic before who were not found out. I am an example of that. It was purely by chance, or what I believe is God's grace that I was discovered. If I had not been in that building when I was and that one person had not been working there who noticed me I would probably have never found out. But I know that there are environmental factors that we have now that we did not have before and they are affecting people and creating issues that we did not have before.

I don't believe in God's grace. It sounds to me like you found out as a consequence of improved awareness - someone in the building who knew about AS, when that person probably wouldn't have known 20 years ago. There is no need to posit divine intervention.

You "know" about environmental factors. What environmental factors?