Vaccines Causing Autism - Still a Hoax

The assertions and rumors still persist. I still get questions about the link between childhood vaccines and the link to autism. There still are parent refusing vaccines. The are concerned about the link to autism. As reported by the Wall Street Journal  a study of Connecticut pediatricians published last year, some 30% of 133 doctors said they had asked a family to leave their practice for vaccine refusal, and a recent survey of 909 Midwestern pediatricians found that 21% reported discharging families for the same reason. According to the CDC, lower immunization rates have been blamed as a factor in U.S. outbreaks of whooping cough and measles in recent years.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203315804577209230884246636.html?KEYWORDS=SHIRLEY+S+WANG

I get the comments and questions because I'm on the board of Focus Center for Autism. Many still believe the link. I believed the doctors and scientists who said there was no link long before it was revealed that Dr. Andrew Wakefield  had actually perpetrated a hoax. 


It's one thing to have a bad study, a study full of error, and for the authors then to admit that they made errors," Fiona Godlee, BMJ's editor-in-chief, told CNN. "But in this case, we have a very different picture of what seems to be a deliberate attempt to create an impression that there was a link by falsifying the data."  Britain stripped Wakefield of his medical license in May.


http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/01/06/autism.vaccines/index.html

Part of the problem was the way the research was covered by the media. Part of the problem was with the way parents heard the reporting.

There still are parent refusing vaccines. The are concerned about the link to autism. As reported by the Wall Street Jouranl;

There are remarkable advances being made by researchers. The cause is not yet known. Recent research using MRI's might detect autism long before the symptoms manifest themselves. Here's the tricky part that many people seem to miss...

"The findings need to be repeated by other researchers before doctors can begin to create a reliable early detection system.The study has other limitations, says Charles Nelson, a professor of pediatrics and neuroscience at Harvard Medical School. The findings would be stronger if researchers compared them to those of a control group of normal-risk children, who don't come from families with other autistic children. He questioned why 30% of the high-risk children were diagnosed with autism, a rate that's 50% higher than expected. Nelson also notes that it can be hard to definitively diagnose autism at age 2, and that a child's diagnosis can change over time."

http://www.digtriad.com/news/health/article/215107/8/Study-Autistic-Brains-Show-Changes-Months-Before-Symptoms