Vaccine Autism Controversy
Just last week, a respected international, independent consortium of scientists called the Cochrane Review published a huge paper saying once and for all, there's no credible evidence behind the theory that autism is triggered by the measles-mumps-rubella, or MMR vaccine.
This was the conclusion after reviewing 31 studies.
But still, not everyone is convinced.
The group gets together to evaluate, with good sound science, medical research, to determine whether certain treatments indeed work and are safe.
This time, they tackled the MMR-autism link, something already dismissed in several major articles.
But if you listen to the speakers and the audience at one town hall meeting this week, you’ll come to realize, this is not a clear cut issue, especially in the public’s mind.
It would seem to be a no-brainer--study after study—in reputable journals, including a huge one last week put out by an independent consortium, the Cochran Review, saying, absolutely, that there is no vaccine-autism link.
But yet, parents and experts at this town hall meeting over this very issue, held by the disability advocacy organization DDI, say the jury is still out.
Many believe the mercury in the preservative thimerosol, since removed from most vaccines, is the damaging agent.
The conclusions among those here fly in the face of the best published research.
Much of the focus was on what author and journalist David Kirby had to say. His book, evidence of harm, raises the question over whether data on the vaccine issue have been spin doctored and covered up, and whether the government and pharmaceutical industry are in cahoots in what would be one of the biggest medical conspiracies of all time.
There was a generally consensus here there is a genetic component to autism combined with something in the environment. Whether or not that environmental factor was mercury and whether or not there’s a conspiracy remains to be answered.
“There is still a long list of unanswered questions that still remain. The CDC refused to talk to me, the FDA wouldn’t let me interview their people. I desperately wanted to tell both sides of the story,” says Kirby.
It’s a story that concerns Jeanette Stuart, who has a 23 year old son with autism. “I definitely feel there is something behind…I think there should more investigation into what happened,” she says.
Autism expert Mary Beth Koslap-Petraco, a nurse practitioner with the Suffolk County department of health, argues the data does not support a thimerosol-autism link. “The study done at the University of Rochester compared the urine blood and stools of children who got vaccines containing thimerosol with thimerosol free vaccines and they concluded all children had mercury levels well below the EPA’s stringent safety standards,” she says.
But Dr. David Tegay, Co-Director of the Division of Medical Genetics at Stony Brook University Hospital, says autism is not a completely inherited problem. “The key thing here is it’s not 100 percent, that’s about a 90 percent heritability factor, so then clearly that must indicate that there is some environmental component, and then the question becomes what?”
“If the CDC which knows more or less what’s in the data, if they truly believe that there was nothing incriminating in there, and thimerosol could be completely cleared by examining this data, why wouldn’t they allow someone in look at the data, declare thimerosol safe, and close the book and look for other culprits,” states Kirby.
Much of the stink comes because of a rider snuck on to the Homeland Security Bill which would protect drug companies from being sued by parents of autistic children over the thimerosol issue.
No one knows who added the rider.
And suspiciously, the CDC has remained quiet on the issue, in particular, pertaining to important data that many believe is being hidden from public view. They were invited to be represented at the town hall meeting, but did not respond.
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