And if you really want to convince anyone that understands science you still have to address the burning question: how did the MMR cause a spike in the autism rate 10 years before the MMR went into common use?
link to graph and info below...
Rising rates of autism in California (long curve) and in U.K. (short curve). Start of MMR vaccination shown by arrows (CA, 1978; U.K., 1988). (Reference on request)
if you look at this graph you will see that after the administration of MMR the rate of autism explodes...
of course this in and of itself will prove nothing to you...
The Autism Explosion
Bernard Rimland, Ph.D.
Autism Research Institute
4182 Adams Avenue
San Diego, CA 92116
"Rubbish!" That is what Bennett Leventhal was quoted in the Chicago Sun-Times as saying in reply to a reporter's question regarding my position. I had said that the increase in autism is real, and that vaccinations are a prime suspect as a cause of the increase (ARRI, 9/3, 1995, 12/1, 1998). Leventhal, who is a professor of child psychiatry and pediatrics at the University of Chicago, says the autism/vaccine link is just a coincidence and "there is increasingly powerful evidence that this is a genetic disorder."
How ironic! "rubbish" is what Leventhal's predecessor at the University of Chicago, Bruno Bettelheim, said in response to my insistence in the mid-1960s that genetics played an important role in causing autism! No doubt genetics do play an important role in some cases of autism. Neither is there any doubt, despite the strange skepticism of Leventhal and many others, that the prevalence of autism is increasing at an alarming rate in the U.S., the U.K. and elsewhere in the world (see graph). The only open question is the role vaccines may play as a potential causal agent in the autism epidemic. There is no plausible alternative to vaccines as the most likely cause. I have never heard of a genetic epidemic disease.
