At least that’s what a special US Court ruled yesterday March 12. Loyal readers know that I rarely, if ever, bring up the vaccines being related to autism. But this story twas brought to my attention around 5:30p.m. yesterday and I thought it warranted some attention on the blog-regardless of personal beliefs. I’m not taking a side on this issue right now, but…
This is the fourth ruling against claims that a mercury preservative causes autism. I have to assume this mercury preservative is in one of the many vaccines children are given at a young age. However I’m reading the Reuters article now and it says “Vaccines that contain a mercury-based preservative called thimerosal cannot cause autism on their own”. Vaccines haven’t been ruled out yet, if the court is implying that a potential mixture of thimerosal with other chemicals can bring on autistic tendencies.
Interesting fact jumped out at me in this article. 5,300 individual cases have been “filed by parents who believed vaccines may have caused autism in their children”. Interesting because autism is still such a mystery to our medical field that even being diagnosed with it- which one in 110 child are (I’ve heard as low as 1 in 90), can turn out to be a misdiagnosis. If someone can find out if any of those 5,300 won please let me know!
Personally I care more about the children and their well-being rather than pursuing what is turning out to be quite a fruitless endeavor. Instead why don’t we first understand autism and then we can begin to uncover the possible environmental and/or genetic causes. Vaccines very well could be the problem, but according to the U.S. Institute of Medicine no link can be found between vaccines and autism.
Within minutes of this being released yesterday Autism Speaks said it would not rule out or completely abandon the theory that vaccines might cause autism. “The group also said it was clear that if such a link did exist, it would be rare”. Here is Autism Speaks official press release regarding the US Court ruling yesterday-
“While we have great empathy for all parents of children with autism, it is important to keep in mind that, given the present state of the science, the proven benefits of vaccinating a child to protect them against serious diseases far outweigh the hypothesized risk that vaccinations might cause autism”…Interesting statement from one of the most powerful autism lobby groups in Washington.
How do you feel about this? Is the article Reuters put out being biased? Are vaccines going to become less pursued as a potential cause? Some of the wording is vauge, so I’ll let you read it in it’s entirety here: www.reuters.com/article/idUSN1218720720100312
Hot topic! I’ll be on Twitter to discuss this for a few hours. Account @autblog – look forward to it! I would also like to find out what medical team the court used to come to this conclusion, private or government. Good question.
