bttt
Namby-pamby tree hugger alert.
Oh, goodness, not this again. (Picture graphic of man face-palming here.)
The author of the original study linking vaccines to autism is now being subject to disciplinary measures. The original article has been withdrawn by the editors of Lancet (where it was published), although some of the authors had already retracted their names from the paper. The only real link between vaccines and autism is temporal: children are typically vaccinated at an age where symptoms of autism begin to manifest.
The amount of harm done by this study has been immense. Children die every year whose deaths could have been prevented by vaccines. Although the fear-mongering about vaccines existed before that fraudulent study was published, that study did not help the situation any.
In considering the increase in autism rates, one should take into account that the same criteria are not being used to diagnose autism as were being used 50 or more years ago. Now we have “autism spectrum disorder”, which yields far more autism diagnoses than previously. We also have a situation where it is profitable for school districts to increase the numbers of “special needs” children. Furthermore, there has been a huge effort to blame poor performance in school on some “disorder”, instead of taking more time to address individual learning styles. To compare apples to apples, the numbers of autistic children diagnosed by the exact same criteria must be compared. I suspect that a comparison made on that standard would show that there has been no increase in autism rates.
Now that thimersal has been removed from vaccines, has autism declined? No.
Next theory, this one is broken.
thermiosol hasn’t been used in vaccines in the US for decades. Stirring people up with old information is not useful
Autistic Disorder,It's this last one that is a catch-all for everything else that doesn't meet the more rigidly defined categories above. It may very well be that the "big increase" in autism is reflective of a greater willingness of doctors and others to stick something they can't otherwise categorize into this "Not Otherwise Specified" category. That doesn't at all mean there is a growing number of children "with" a Not Otherwise Specified disorder but that there are more that are being assigned to that category. People used to refer to someone suffering from a "wasting disease." This descriptive category is now replaced by various types of cancer and other diseases that cause "wasting." Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified is such a category. The number of people in it depend on how often something is described as a "pervasive developmental disorder."
Aspergers Disorder,
Childhood Disintegrative Disorder, and
Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified.
More nuttiness.