Sounds like a big corporate CYA, if you ask me.
I have no idea if there is a link or not, but something is causing much higher levels of autism in the past 20 years. I hope they keep searching for a cause, so that some day there may be a cure. Nothing will help my son, but maybe some parents in the future...
There are also much higher levels of Type 1 diabetes than a few years ago (which I and my sons are very, very familiar with). There are also much higher levels of various other auto-immune diseases. Vaccinations have been blamed for those too.
I doubt it. Modern medicine is allowing many more people to survive and pass on their genes (both strengths and weaknesses) than was possible in the past. Is it really any surprise that more and more recessive genes (which would have died out in the past) are getting together and causing problems today.
Back in the 1930's a person with Type 1 diabetes would be dead within a few months. There has been 2 ot 3 generations of people who have that problem and who have lived to breed since then.
The entire world would benefit from a complete understanding of the conditions that lead to autism and of the physical conditions that define autism. Restricting research to the study of the possibility that vaccines are the root cause of autism, may well be channeling limited resources away from much needed research in this area.
Even given that vaccines may turn out to be the missing link in the mystery surrounding the onset of autism, there may still be other events that occur simultaneously with the administration of the vaccine. For instance, are 18-month-old's particularly vulnerable to allergic reactions or to a common virus on surfaces in doctor's offices?
In other words, the vaccine should be viewed as a clue, but the entire circumstances surrounding the onset of autism should be examined. (Incidentally, in order to properly research a brain condition, it is important to narrowly determine the physical or genetic markers that define the disease.)
Sounds like a big corporate CYA, if you ask me. The companies making vaccines rarely profit from vaccine production, except maybe the flu shots. If there is a "CYA" out there, you might be better off looking at the CDC, or the virologists involved in vaccine research. The general theory in most widespread, government programs is this: "the good of the many outweighs the good of the few".
In conclusion, it would behoove all interested parties to push for research that does not focus on one "suspect" cause. Finding the true problem will undoubtedly reveal the causal agents, whichever they may be.
I wonder how many babies surviving early birth add to the numbers. 20 years ago babies born at 25 weeks gestation weren't likely to survive at all, now many survive but after months in an incubator being jabbed, poked, exposed to bright lights 24 hours a day.