I have studied the issue in far more depth than ANY anti-vaxxer, and furthermore actually understand the biochemical basis of how vaccines work. I have devoted a large part of my professional career as a scientist to understanding this issue.
The "autism-vaccine" meme came about because a money-hungry physician, Andrew Wakefield, managed to get the Lancet, a respectable journal, to publish his "research" that supposedly showed a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. The "research" itself was bogus--I have no idea how it got through the peer-review process, unless the reviewers were asleep when they reviewed the paper. Unlike most papers that are retracted, this one is still available in its entirety, with the word "Retracted" printed in large letters diagonally across each page.
I will not go into all of the details about how Wakefield's "research" was bogus, but I will say that it consisted of subjecting mentally handicapped children to invasive and dangerous procedures. This "research" was never approved by an ethical review board, as is required for all research involving human or animal subjects, and would probably have not passed ethical review.
There are two ways in which Wakefield was hoping to profit from this "research." One is that he was involved in developing a single-component measles vaccine. Since there really is no market for a single-component vaccine, when parents would rather give a 3 in 1 vaccine and spare their children the extra needle pokes, Wakefield needed a way to convince people to use his vaccine. Therefore, in the bogus paper, he concluded that parents should give the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines separately, spaced out over a year. I will point out that he did NOT advocate that parents should stop giving the vaccines--this was a later development. The other way he wanted to profit was through acting as an expert witness in lawsuits. His paper would serve as documentation that there was a link between MMR and autism; thus, he could testify on behalf of parents of autistic children who would file lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers for damages. Oh, and he was in cahoots with a lawyer for that effort; he and his lawyer friend stood to make millions through lawsuits.
Wakefield has been discredited and lost his medical license years ago. His paper has been retracted. I'm surprised that anyone still brings up the bogus vaccine-autism link, but I guess bad pseudoscience never really disappears.
Autism is a genetic disease. Unfortunately, a lot of money was wasted by researchers trying to validate Wakefield's claims (they never could, because the claims were fake). That money could have been better used researching exactly which genes are involved and how genetically altered brain development results in autism.
Thanks by the way for the well thought out return post. I am on my phone and typing is difficult.
I think autism as spoken of today is not just genetic, while genetics plays a part it can do so in more ways than one. One not so obvious way is a common genetic disorder that greatly reduces the ability to handle heavy metals.
Pretty sure you know where I am going with that. The inclusion of a corrosive as a “preservative” is illogical.
The identical symptom sets between mercury poisoning and autistic behaviors, the timing of “flare ups” as the next day after injections from multi dose containers or statistical spike of SIDS right after immunization needs to be directly addressed not shoveled under the rug as it now is.
The only conspiracy I see clearly is the cover up by the big pharma, not the vaccinations themselves. Millions of lives have been destroyed by sloppy medical practice, not by practitioners, but by corporate interests.
Could there be a greater threat? Yes, but let’s address what we can see, and deal with tin foil hat stuff IF it comes crawling from under some rock somewhere.
For now, let’s get the heavy metals out of vaccines, we can address later why they are there in the first place.
As a person with heavy metal occupational hazard issues I have severe reactions to vaccines. I find it difficult to deal with practitioners attitudes about conspiracy theorists with my real world concerns.