Autism - MMR Vaccine Debate

I love how the media manages to put a spin on just about everything. The Avandia story was funnier than hell as they were throwing that drug under the bus, yet nothing was said about its cousin Actos. Strange how that works. Anyways unless you have lived under a rock for the past two months, there have been several reports in the mass media suggesting that the MMR vaccination that children receive can cause autism. For those of you who have not read the story, please feel free to have a drink while you read this.

First off Autism is mainly a genetic disorder affecting as many as ten separate genes. You cannot catch it when someone sneezes on you or when you eat undercooked meat. There are environmental factors which can effectively increases the chances for autism, but those usually only effect the fetus and even then only during selected periods. Even those with a genetic disposition to the disorder sometimes need a type of tipping mechanism to actually cause the disorder propagate.

What is being suggested in that article is that the MMR vaccination that this particular girl received caused her to develop autism. It is also stated that she had a disposition for the disorder already. The vaccination could have merely been what caused her condition to deteriorate more rapidly than would have naturally occurred. It is also equally possible that she never would have developed autism without that said vaccination.

Now what I find funny is how the media and other groups are spinning this into this big web of evil vaccinations. I have read about groups who are suggesting that this is proof that we are messing with the human genome and that this is the price we will pay. So I thought I would clear this up with one simple statement.

THERE IS NO CORRELATION BETWEEN MMR VACCINATIONS AND AUTISM.

None whatsoever. The study that is often reported came from a study from a Wakefield group in England during 1998. In it the study suggested that there was a possible connection between autism rates and MMR vaccinations. This study, however, was flawed in its conclusion. It caused a drop in MMR vaccinations rates in England of up to 50%. Shortly there fter there was the first reported cases of a death from measles in decades. Two years later the report trickled over to the US and a similar outcome appeared. In Indiana there was an outbreak of measles which affected 34 children, 32 of which had not been vaccinated per choice of their parents.

People argue that since autism diagnosis's rose 550% over a five year span, that surely we must be doing something to cause such a rapid increase in autism! What is neglected is during that time span we developed far better techniques to diagnosis the disorder. We were finding it and treating it much earlier. We also discovered that about one-third of autism children and adults also suffer from epilepsy. Instead of misdiagnosing kids we were finding the underlying causes. There was not an increase in autism, we have just improved our methods of diagnosis.

Yet you never hear about this on the news. All you hear about is how this little girl received a settlement and therefore they must be right and we are in essence killing our children. Now hordes of brainwashed parents will not get their children vaccinated and put them at risk.

Believe CNN and Time and Fox News if you want. Fact of the matter is they do not have their stories correct. If you choose to believe them rather the scientific evidence, so be it. Lord knows the next thing that'll happen is a parent will sue one of those media giants upon the death of their child for misconstruing information. I shall laugh my ass off when that day arrives.