12.27.2016

Reminder: Vaccines have nothing to do with autism. Not a single f***ng thing.

A friend recently asked me to join a discussion on autism and vaccines, in which an acquaintance was parroting, much like our ignorant PEOTUS, the misinformation that vaccines are linked to autism -- and also that anyone who says otherwise has been bought by Big Pharma. Here is my response:

Perhaps a personal story might help.

My high-support autistic son is now a teenager. I initially bought into the message that vaccines caused autism, because in the early 2000s it was not easy for laypeople to get past the media hype on the topic, and find reliable mainstream information.

Leo, a preschool-age white boy, next to an outdoor picnic table set
Post-MIND Institute Session
[image: Leo, a preschool-age white boy,
next to an outdoor picnic table set.]
I enrolled my son in a study on autism and regression at the UC Davis MIND Institute, which was founded by parents who sought cures and believed in a vaccine link. The researchers' conclusion, after reviewing my son's infant, toddler, and preschool-age videos, was that he did not regress or react to vaccines, but rather that he followed a typical autistic path of gaining skills and abilities unevenly, and in some cases more slowly than his peers.

In the meantime, researchers have reviewed data involving millions -- literally -- of kids, and found no link between vaccines and autism. Because there is no link in research, only in anecdotes and testimonials that have never once stood up to scrutiny. Not once.

And even the MIND Institute has shifted its focus to understanding and support, and away from its cure-oriented roots, because the founders' theories turned out to be scientifically implausible.

I've since spend much of my time working with autism scientists and researchers as the senior editor of Thinking Person's Guide to Autism, in order to disseminate the most useful autism information possible. I attend International Meeting for Autism Research (IMFAR) every year, and can happily report that, after years of autism-vaccine papers waning in number, the 2016 conference featured only a single poster on how lingering hoax-based vaccine-autism fears affect the immunization status of autistic kids' younger siblings.

So, no. Vaccines have nothing to do with autism. Not a single fucking thing.

P.S. My son is now fully vaccinated.

4 comments:

  1. OMG THANK YOU!!!!!!!! My four children are fully vaccinated, three happen to also be on the autism spectrum, they also all have blue eyes, but vaccines didn't cause that either! My mother and her older brother were paralyzed by polio before the days of vaccines, and my Uncle succumbed to polio related complications at age 18. he was in an iron lung. My mother's vertebrae slowly collapsed as a result of post polio complications in her elder years and suffocated her slowly. Guess what?? NONE OF MY CHILDREN WILL DIE FROM AUTISM. Also, they are fully vaccinated and their autism was not caused by that.

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  2. Two things:

    1) Her parent's jobs have nothing to do with her diagnosis.

    2) Hannah was diagnosed with a mitochondrial disorder that had 'autism-like symptoms'. Her case was split from the autism omnibus because it had nothing to do with autism:

    https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/on-the-rebranding-of-autism-as-a-mitochondrial-disorder-by-antivaccinationists/

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  3. Thank you! Exactly

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