Regardless of this man's behavior, the link between autism and vaccinations is still very strong, and the fact that vaccines have toxins in them is beyond debate.

Also beyond debate is the fact that vaccines have caused sudden onsets of very rare diseases and even death in many cases.

This entire episode has been such a disaster for everyone involved, in my opinion.

It has polarized people on the topic of vaccine research in a way that is detrimental to both our own health and our public health.

So much energy has gone into refuting the claims first raised by this man that other, less sensationalized but more well-founded concerns have been neglected.

People in the anti-vaccine camp often seem to forget that the panic actually began with this study, published in one of the pre-eminent "establishment medicine" journals, and refuse to believe anything published by mainstream medicine since. The Lancet may now regret publishing Wakefield's work in 1998, but they did publish it. One of my concerns is that the repercussions of that decision may make them less likely to publish controversial claims in the future, since they have this example of what the media and blogosphere can spin them into.

On the other side, the medical establishment has become so defensive about vaccination that it feeds into the very fears it's trying to squash. The defenders of the MMR vaccination sometimes resort to ad hominem bullying and ridiculing without ever asking themselves to pause and reexamine the issues to see if there's anything to the concerns.

Bad conclusions are the results on both sides, as in the thimerosal-autism link argument. Remove the thimerosal from the MMR vaccine, and we don't see any decline in autism rates. That seems pretty clear. But the two "conclusions" I've seen drawn from this are false conclusions and perpetuate the polarization:

1) even though thimerosal was removed from the final product, mercury is still used in the production process, therefore the removal was a scam and mercury is still causing autism.

2) thimerosal was removed and rates didn't go down, therefore vaccination cannot be involved in autism rates.

Both ignore the possibility that there could be some other connection. I'm not saying there is, personally I'm leaning toward the idea that there are environmental factors where exposure through vaccination may be a very small but still possible route, but where more common exposure through food, air, other products is more important. I'm just saying that the hype has made it seemingly impossible for people to think clearly on any side of the issue.

And of course, on both sides of the issue there are other factors (money, ego) that further muddy the waters.

What a disaster.

Originally posted by americandingbat
The defenders of the MMR vaccination sometimes resort to ad hominem bullying and ridiculing without ever asking themselves to pause and reexamine the issues to see if there's anything to the concerns.

This happens on both sides, not just from defenders of MMR vaccines. It's unfortunate really. Both sides of the debate are so entrenched in their position that they can't do anything but bully and ridicule the other side. The result being that the debate gets nowhere and really ends before it even begins. Threads here on the topic, the ones I've read at any rate, turn into nothing more than an opportunity for people to declare which side their on.

I suspect that there is more than one factor that comes in to play when it comes to the cause of autism. If it were solely vaccines, then everyone who's gotten one should have autism but they don't. In my extended family (roughly 50-60 people) every one of us have had our vaccines, only one has autism. Definitely not a very large sample size, and nowhere near being scientific, but it leads me to believe it's not solely the vaccines or heredity behind it. Perhaps one or both in combination with something else, but not either of them on their own.

I've also wondered how common it actually was before someone gave autism it's name and it became diagnosed more frequently. It's not outside the realm of possibility that it's not something new that popped up recently but has actually been around for centuries. I'd say it's frequency before being named would probably be practically impossible to discover, but it's a thought I've had.

Originally posted by bsbray11
Regardless of this man's behavior, the link between autism and vaccinations is still very strong, and the fact that vaccines have toxins in them is beyond debate.

For that very reason, a homeopathic doctor I know decided in agreement with his wife to not vaccinate their newborn baby girl. He suggested that dangerous substances (mercury?) that the vaccine contains can easily get into the brain, due to the renal system being not fully developed yet. He also said that the right nutrition as well as various supplements enable your kid to grow strongly and thus, minimizing the chance of getting for instance mumps.

I have too little knowledge to judge whether this is irresponsible or not, but it certainly is something I am going to keep track of so that I can consider this myself when I reach the age of considering to have children (that's fortunately far away )

And it only took twelve years.

May I inquire, has there ever been such a retraction and purging from the medical community on any widely propagated and accepted medical report in the past? Can we expect throngs of physicians to scour the 'facts' delivered by the medical society for other such cases; or is it only the vaccine link that merits such scrutiny?

Who from the Lancet made this monumental discovery of hoaxterism and fraud? From whence did the "new" information come, and why did it take twelve years to figure it out.

I find myself wondering if this isn't precisely the kind of revisionism that historians warn us about?

You know, I am not arguing that the link was real or not. Only that the circumstances and execution of the "debunking" to be less than persuasive and irregular to the point of alarm.

Originally posted by americandingbat

Originally posted by georgejetson
americandingbat, sorry if this is hijacking your thread.

Not my thread, Jenna's

Woops, how embarrassing. I'm going to put this one down to trying to walk and chew gum at the same time.

Jena, sorry if I hijacked your thread.

Originally posted by georgejetson
I work in science myself (not medicine though) and I've become quite disillusioned with the peer review process. It seems it's quite common for somebody to get something to review, which they only give a quick glance at and then get on with their own work.

I worked in Research Grants Management for five years and learned to be similarly disappointed myself.

It's not just the relaxed (or effectively inconsequentially nominal) peer-review process; but the financial dynamics are evidently suspect - since the common understanding is that if a system can be abused - it will be by someone.

The academic world is the progenitor of the problem, pure science research, as a formal profession, lacks any reliable degree of trust assurance - and given the nature of the entrenched commercialism approach to institutionalized medicine, no opportunity for profit will go untapped. This is a recipe for abuse.

But I digress.....

Needless to say... regardless of the circumstances ... making the past 'disappear' should not be an option. Instead it should be the cornerstone of a re-examination of the 'trust' factor.

All people needs to do is to weight the facts before the hoard of vaccinations that now plague our new born children's for life and the results.

The truth is in the pudding, if only people will just become more interested in history and historical facts.

We are after all the most vaccinated country in the world, and is a reason why our other developed country partners do not allow the same amount of vaccine as our nation.

Big pharma dominates this nations drugs dispensing and they have plenty of money to burn in propaganda, we are no blind we have seen this everyday, so I take anything this days with a lot of skepticism.



[edit on 5-2-2010 by marg6043]