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Long in coming but i'm glad they finally made this official.
Vaccine Study Retracted, and Causes of Autism Remain Elusive - On Parenting (usnews.com)
Seeded on Wed Feb 3, 2010 2:47 PM EST
Article Source: US News & World Report- Enjoy this article? Help vote it up the 'Vine.
- Public Discussion (13)
In 1998, the medical journal The Lancet published a study suggesting that the childhood MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine was tied to autism. On Tuesday, the journal retracted the study, saying in an editorial that key aspects of the paper—in which Andrew Wakefield reported that 12 children he studied had experienced a sudden onset of autism symptoms after getting MMR shots—were false.
This came after years of controversy surrounding the study and after last week's conclusion by Britain's General Medical Council that Wakefield had acted "dishonestly and irresponsibly" in doing his research. Among the findings: Wakefield didn't randomly choose the children studied, he subjected children to painful and unnecessary tests, and he was paid by lawyers for parents who thought their children had been harmed by the MMR vaccine. (Wakefield, who now works for a clinic in Texas that sells autism treatments, disputed that finding, calling it "unfounded and unfair.") British journalist Brian Deer has cataloged other problems with the study, including records indicating that the children's autism symptoms did not coincide with the MMR shot.
- 1 vote
#1 - Wed Feb 3, 2010 2:48 PM ESTThe Wall Street Journal also has a good piece about this here
meanwhile, there's a great guest blog in the new york times today about the false prophets of autism. You can read it directly here and I seeded it here. This was also a big topic of the book denialism which I did an interview on here
- 1 vote
#2 - Wed Feb 3, 2010 2:57 PM ESTThe frustrating part is that there may be some validity to being concerned about the impact vaccines have on a child's health, but the actions of this one 'researcher' and his methods will set back any legitimate concerns.
If the mercury in vaccines truly triggered autism, then rates would have dropped since mercury was removed, not continued to increase.
- 1 vote
#3 - Wed Feb 3, 2010 3:08 PM ESTThe "increase" in autism is directly due to the actual determination of the criteria FOR autism in children which did NOT occur until the mid 1990's. Before that it was a loose diagnosis applied to adults. The first application to a child was in about 1964. It took several years for definitive criteria to be developed. Before that anyone could diagnose "autism" based on their own ideas.
- 2 votes
Oh, absolutely. My son is on the mild end of the spectrum, but conversations with my mother-in-law make it completely clear that my husband,had he been born in 2008 instead of 1968, would have had the same diagnosis.
- 1 vote
The "increase" in autism is directly due to the actual determination of the criteria FOR autism in children which did NOT occur until the mid 1990's
Directly correlated to
- 1 vote
Speaking of autism gretchen and I are going tomorrow night to see a premiere of a movie about one of the most famous people with autism, Temple Grandin, and she'd scheduled to speak too.I'm planning to write something up about it, publishing it about Friday.
MSNBC has a good interview here with Temple that does a good job explaining how she views things differet in her brain.
I've also seeded two pieces to the children of autism group about the movie which airs on hbo this weekend. It was also filmed in the austin area fwiw.
- 1 vote
#5 - Wed Feb 3, 2010 5:45 PM ESTTemple Grandin
Added this to my Saturday show schedule last night, it's airing on HBO this weekend
It looked very good based on the preview
- 2 votes
There's a New York Times piece about the movie here and an Entertaiment Weekly review here.
My reviewof this movie is here
and my news article about Temple's comments after the movie are here
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