Limbo and Ltr, and others on this thread, seem to be assuming the absolutely untenable position that vaccine damage does not exist. The argument is impossible to maintain.
Vaccine damage exists. The only questions are: what kind of damage is it? and how many children are affected?
As to how many, this is difficult to know. The pro-vaccination brigade maintain it is a tiny minority. Unfortunately it is clear that many vaccine reactions are not reported. Many vaccine reactions are reported but not recorded. Many vaccine reactions are reported and dismissed as coincidence, even when occurring on the very day of the injection. For example, Harry Clark, who'd had his infant injections in the hours before he died. It was said in court that he'd had no reaction to the jab. ..except, of course, that he died. It is not known that it is a tiny minority: there is a great deal of evidence to suggest that the numbers are much greater than officially admitted. So how many are there? How can we find out? It is impossible.
So. There is vaccine damage. We don't know how many children are affected but it's plain that for some reason the numbers are not going to be made available to us. Ever.
Second: what kind of vaccine damage occurs? The pro-vaccination brigade insist that autism is not on the list. No one knows what triggers regressive autism. No one knows why so many children in the last twenty years have developed autism spectrum disorders. But the pro-vaccination brigade know, with absolute certainty, that vaccines are not to blame. They know that mercury is not to blame, they know that MMR is not to blame. It is, of course, impossible for them to know this. So why do they think they know?
There have been many epidemiological studies which purport to show that MMR is not to blame. They are usually heralded with great fanfare. Unfortunately, on reading the paper rather than the press releases, one sees that the findings are not just less than substantive, they're often based on flawed premises and even mendacity.
Examples: the first Finland study, purporting to show that of three million children who took MMR, none were diagnosed with autism. But wait: it seems they didn't look at three million children, they looked at 31, who were reported to outpatient care, mainly with bowel problems after vaccination. Oh, and it was funded by a vaccine manufacturer. Worthless research. Or the study that showed the "autism boom" began before MMR was introduced. But wait: they based that on the ages of people with autism diagnoses and tracked them back to whether they'd been of an age to have MMR. Did they look at vaccination records? No. Did they look at clinical records? No. Most importantly, they ignored a 1994 catch up campaign in which 3.2 million children between 5-16 were vaccinated: thus pushing the "eligible" age of diagnosis to what would now be 32. A worthless study. Then there was the study which followed children over ten years in Denmark and found no difference in autism diagnoses between vaccinated and unvaccinated children. But wait: the age of vaccination wa 18 months: the age of diagnosis approximately four and a half. When the study ended, three years worth of children were counted as vaccinated non-autistic, when they hadn't even reached the age of diagnosis. A worthless study. Then there was Japan. MMR was withdrawn and autism rates rose. But wait: single vaccinations were given within days of each other, sometimes the same day. A worthless study.
None of these studies, which purport to put the issue finally to rest, do anything of the sort. Indeed it's quite the opposite: they simply look like PR campaigns.
Now, the false statement that there is "no evidence", "not a shred of evidence" that MMR might be involved in triggering a gut-ASD reaction.
Remember they 1800 odd children who tried to sue for MMR damage? They had an enormous amount of evidence. Clinical, sub clinical, videographic, photographic, temporal, eventual diagnoses. Enough to secure legal aid for an extended period. Why was legal aid withrawn? Not because they had no evidence. On technical grounds. Because they put all their evidence on the table and were asked to come up with more, by a particular deadline. This during a period when consultants were running scared that what was happening to Wakefield might happen to them. There is plenty of evidence. If you inhabit a world where mothers are lying hysterics, you would deny it. But given that we all know vaccine damage occurs, that mothers are not in general lying hysterics, that all around us the number of children with ASD diagnoses, auto immune disorders and allergies are rising inexorably, it's impossible not to accept that some trauma to the immune system is occurring and that more research into the role of vaccines is needed.
The extreme views that there is no such thing as vaccine damage, that the case against vaccines-autism-auto-immune is proved absolutely, are not only false. They're impossible to take seriously.
Mumps and measles occuring naturally are known to increase the likelihood of an autism diagnoses. Wakefield wanted more research.