AIBU to remind everyone that the MMR vaccine does NOT cause autism?

[TheHodgeoftheHedge]

Seeing as this worry comes up so many times on MN and in wider life, I feel obliged to post this and remind everyone that MMR has not link to autism whatsoever, as yet another HUGE study has found.

www.independent.co.uk/news/health/mmr-vaccine-autism-antivax-measles-study-andrew-wakefield-a8808086.html

Thanks.

cathmidson I've seen you post on other vaccination threads and I'm yet to see you post a link to any credible evidence. Most of what you do post is overtly anti-vaxx or is biased towards the anti-vaxx movement..... sometimes it's not always clear but if you dig a little it doesn't take long to find an anti-vaxx link.

cathmidson I've seen you post on other vaccination threads and I'm yet to see you post a link to any credible evidence. Most of what you do post is overtly anti-vaxx or is biased towards the anti-vaxx movement..... sometimes it's not always clear but if you dig a little it doesn't take long to find an anti-vaxx link.

That is because I am antivax... clearly .... it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work that one out
Just like you are pro vax and provide only links to pro vax data

NCMC
OP
You trivialised it the minute you started comparing it to death. (Which you implied through your second post)

Seeing as my post talked about German Measles causing death (which is true!) and didn’t even mention autism, I don’t know how you can come to that conclusion but hey ho. I can’t help you when you continue to see something that literally isn’t there.

Which is kind of the point of this entire thread. MMR does NOT cause autism. A fear of autism should NOT prevent anyone vaccinating their kids because it has nothing to do with it. Autism should be utterly irrelevant to any conversation about MMR, but thanks to The utterly corrupt and immoral Andrew Wakefield, it is.

I agree with your post lougle. I usually try to avoid these threads despite being very much a vaccine advocate as they highly unlikely to change anyone's mind on the issue and often end up being a dumping ground for anti vaccine spam (which might have the exact opposite effect to what the op was setting out to do). For a few reasons this one dragged me in and I don't feel better for it.

No. I'm a researcher who is trained to look at evidence in an unbiased, impartial manner. Yes you're clearly anti-vaxx but you provide 'evidence' to support your standpoint. I've looked at that evidence - not one bit has given me cause to question the evidence presented by qualified immunologists.

@CoolJule43

We all seem to hear so much about autism these days and I know of a number of people who are on the autistic spectrum. It seems to be on the increase over the past 20+ years. It would be great to know what does cause it.

Yeah this in spades.

As a child/teen in the late 1970s and 1980s, I hardly knew ANYone who was autistic/on the spectrum/a special needs child. Now it seems that every 3rd of 4th child is on the spectrum, or has ADHD, or aspergers, or is classed as a special needs child.

Why? SOMEthing is causing it. So what is it?

@CoolJule43

We all seem to hear so much about autism these days and I know of a number of people who are on the autistic spectrum. It seems to be on the increase over the past 20+ years. It would be great to know what does cause it.

Yeah this in spades.

As a child/teen in the late 1970s and 1980s, I hardly knew ANYone who was autistic/on the spectrum/a special needs child. Now it seems that every 3rd or 4th child is on the spectrum, or has ADHD, or aspergers, or is classed as a special needs child.

Why? SOMEthing is causing it. So what is it?

So Hodge... what does cause autism then ...given that it has an environmental component... what is that environmental component exactly?
I’m guessing you have no idea? But are absolutely certain that it is nothing to do with vaccines?

To be quite frank there aren’t enough studies comparing vaccinated and completely unvaccinated children to make any statement of the sort

@NCMC
Did you read my post correctly? I most certainly wasn't trivialising it!
I said I have seen from first hand experience what measles can do. It left my youngest brother completely blind, deaf and dependent on care for the rest of his life!
Don't ever accuse me of trivialising. Thank you.

There was no bloody medical definition of autism to diagnose until recently! The so called increase in cases of autism, is simply an increase in diagnoses of autism. Asperger was working in the 40s and his work didn’t even get noticed for decades. Kanner’s work was published in the 40’s but took a while to become influential and then took a wrong turn with his reliance on a psychoanalytic cause for autism.

The distinct traits displayed by girls and women with autism have only been recognized in the last decade or so.

I don’t think there are more people with autism these days, I think we just see more of them because thankfully we’ve stopped hiding them away and locking them up in asylums. We’ve discovered that with some adjustments children with autism can do well in mainstream school where before they would have been excluded for ‘poor behaivour’ or hidden away in a ‘special’ school out of sight and mind, before continuing to be hidden away in residential homes and asylums. Now they can go through mainstream education with support and go on to find employment and live semi independent or fully independently.

Even those who are much more severely affected are thankfully now able to access their communities more fully with more support and services.

Also more and more people are being diagnosed as being on the autistic spectrum when before they would have just been viewed as ‘odd’.

avn.org.au/2018/10/vaccinated-vs-unvaccinated/

Dr William Thompson ...lead CDC researcher is on record explaining how they scewed the data to remove a link between the MMR and autism in one of their studies ...

Fact check!

www.snopes.com/fact-check/bad-medicine/

Spoiler: it's absolute bullshit and the actual statement made by Thompson was cherry picked from and edited to suit the anti-vaxx documentary makers.

I know, I know. I'm as shocked as you are that a prominent anti-vaxx poster got her facts wrong again

"Facts" from anti-vaxx websites are not facts.

You can say 'it wasn't diagnosed' and so on as much as you like, but the fact is, there were nowhere NEAR as many children with special needs 30+ years ago. There just wasn't.

Has to be a reason for it. I have my own theories but they won't go down very well on here.

I’m interested in hearing your theories @Summerisgone

@ETwits www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2016/12/22/the-daily-mail-snopes-story-and-fact-checking-the-fact-checkers/#7a24fd92227f

Some of the autism increase is undoubtedly down to better identification of it. In the past, people who could pass in any way were simply left to struggle. The rest... I wonder, with no medical background... it is a social disorder, could Britain's very weird social conditions be the cause of an apparent increase? In a time when when it is more important to be polite and nice about liberal topics than pragmatically realistic, in a time when socialising is openly declared to be more important, and justly so, for life success than intelligence and competence, it makes me wonder.

I think it is a shame that the many-times-disproven link between autism and MMR is making headlines again. As Ben Goldacre said, the media was more at fault for spreading this misinformation than Wakefield himself. www.badscience.net/2008/08/the-medias-mmr-hoax/

Reasons why autism is "more common now":

• diagnostic criteria have improved and become more refined, the scope of what can be diagnosed has also widened so there is more recognition of autistic spectrum disorders

• children are less likely to be written off as naughty or disruptive and shunted off into remedial classes as we now recognise that children with ASD may act out when their needs are not met and we are getting better at meeting those needs

• autism is becoming more visible as more autistic children are educated in mainstream settings, venues and events offer sessions specifically for people with autism, it is talked about more, etc

• people with autism raised in an integrated society, given opportunities and experiences they may not have had 2-3 generations ago, and so on meeting, forming relationships, and having children of their own are more likely to have children with autism given that there is a genetic link

• children with complex needs at birth (e.g., very premature) are now more likely to survive and grow into autistic children/adults (with other potential co-morbidities)

• population growth, more people means more of everything associated with people including more autistic people

There are other reasons but these are the main ones.

Two things are very clear though:

1. Autism has a strong genetic link

and

1. There is absolutely no link between vaccines and autism.

@ETwits www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2016/12/22/the-daily-mail-snopes-story-and-fact-checking-the-fact-checkers/#7a24fd92227f

Unfortunately I don't read any links you post as I presume them to be bullshit based on past evidence of you continually posting links to bullshit.

I’m interested in hearing your theories @Summerisgone**

Fifty quid says she'll blame mothers (probably working ones)

Fifty quid says she'll blame mothers (probably working ones)

A hundred quid says she'll post something really offensive and untrue.

Is it not just that diagnosis is better these days. I was at school in the 80s/90s. I struggled hugely with maths to the point it was like a foreign language to me. I was an A grade english student bright and articulate but I could not comprehend simple maths, I still can't. I failed maths gcse twice. Not a profound difficulty but I sat in class unable to understand anything. I'm pretty sure if I was at school now there would have been some kind of support maybe even a diagnosis.

Times have changed, we are far more aware of difficulties that were once ignored. Children were considered odd, badly behaved, stupid. Thank goodness we have moved on. So are there more children with issues or are they just diagnosed more now?

To be honest I am thankful that there is more diagnosis as my teenage son is on the autism pathway at the moment. We are very fortunate that he is not profoundly affected but life can be difficult at times. I feel plenty of guilt about lots going on in his life but I don't feel guilt for getting him immunised.