Oh good Lord, I need sleep! Thank God for back buttons.
Beachcomber - the study in question found that a condition combining epilepsy with autistic features was more common in the Amish population, not less. Levels of ASD depend, critically, upon definitions - excluding those that don't fit your hypothesis is poor science.
You haven't answered my question as to why a fringe group of oddities are worth listening to, when the WHO, NIC and CDC are not. You haven't explained why you sneer at Goldacre yet trust Wakefield, when he personally benefited, prior to conducting the famous study (which 10 of the 13 scientists involved later renounced), from almost half a million pounds he was paid from legal aid funds to argue that vaccinations were unsafe. You haven't explained why you can on the one hand acknowledge that a version of the MMR that has even very tentative question marks on safety is being being withdrawn swiftly pending further examination, and not grasp that that doesn't support your own insistence that the powers that be don't withdraw vaccinations if there are any concerns whatsoever. You haven't explained why, if vaccinations are about money for pharma or adult convenience, the NIH decided against universal varicella coverage in this country on public health grounds. Nor why, given there's been blanket coverage of the MMR for almost two decades now so increase of any linked conditions should have plateaued (or even fallen, given the drop in coverage), yet the diagnosed incidences of autism still inexorably keep on rising. You've not explained why the goal posts of concern keep shifting, either: previously it was thimerosol. Since the Danish government moved solely to thimerosol-free vaccines and autism kept rising; the MMR never contained thimerosol, and the US Court of Federal Claims comprehensively dismissed the issue (an article discussing that decision states that "Bustin?s revelations follow a series of studies, using the most rigorous analysis techniques, which have failed to replicate O?Leary?s results, while other researchers have disputed the existence of ?autistic enterocolitis? as a distinctive disease entity (see footnotes 1-3). All these results are reassuring to parents of autistic children, whose anxieties have been needlessly provoked by the Wakefield campaign. Parents facing decisions about immunisation can also be reassured that the MMR-autism scare has been shown to have no basis in science."). Now the anti-vax focus has moved to the mumps component. You've not explained why the Cochrane review on vaccination - the most focused, detailed and comprehensive survey of data imaginable - concluded that there was no risk of autism, and the millions of pounds of NHS funding should be dedicated to vaccination. You've not dealt with the fact that not only has identification of ASD massively improved, the diagnostic criteria has altered out of all recognition - if a child has to meet 6/6 criteria, you'll get a smaller number of diagnoses compared to an 8/16 range, no? You've not explained why you think Wakefield et al was unflawed and unmistaken when the majority of the researchers involved have themselves said it was; yet you simultaneously arguing that the Japanese research (which should be of evident usefulness given that you couldn't intentionally create such conditions, ethically speaking, by refusing coverage to huge numbers of children), is flawed. Flawed? It's a total population study in a first world country where MMR coverage was abruptly withdrawn. How much more useful a contribution to the debate can there possibly be? Yet that's somehow less valuable than Wakefield conducting a tiny, observational study on 12 kids? How on this earth can that be so? And what of the Danish cohort study, showing no greater levels of autism amongst children who had the MMR than those who did not? 537,303 is a pretty respectable sample size.
It's a bizarre double standard. Anyone who supports the position you do not (and let's face it, that's almost everyone in a position to understand the science) is in some way compromised or acting less than honestly - yet those you agree with are not subjected to the same scrutiny. Why? Why isn't it relevant that Halversen runs a private clinic selling single vaccines? That Wakefield was paid a great deal of money by lawyers seeking to win damages for parents who believed vaccine damage had occurred? That he was also censured by a High Court judge for trying to use the libel laws to shut off criticism of his scientific methodology?
For vaccination to be dangerous and the information on this to be readily available to anyone who can google, there would have to be a huge, ruthless and blatant conspiracy at every level, internationally, involving every public heath body in existence and many levels of health care research and provision. Because to argue as you do, that is what you must, genuinely, swallow. Do you honestly think that the overwhelming majority of epidemiologists involved are that venal, dishonest and self-seeking? That Bill Gates wants to dedicate his billions to propping up big pharma, and doesn't give a damn about the developing world? Or is it that measles kills a million children worldwide each and every year, and he wants to extend the protection our children are freely offered to those less blessed by an accident of birth? Isn't it more probable that epidemiologists enter a career in science because the subject fascinates them and they actually want to help people? There are far more lucrative areas for money-motivated scientists, after all.
The most recent study, entitled "Lack of Association between Measles Virus Vaccine and Autism with Enteropathy: A Case-Control Study" was conducted by researchers from Columbia University, Harvard Medical School, the Departments of Neurology and Pediatrics and Learning and Developmental Disabilities Evaluation and Rehabilitation Services at the Department of Pathology of Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, the Measles, Mumps, Rubella, and Herpesvirus Laboratory Branch at the CDC; the Department of Histopathology, Trinity College Dublin; the American Academy of Pediatrics; and the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the CDC. Yet you prefer to trust Olmsted.
You can of course prefer to trust the writers of Autism Matters, and believe all those research bodies are in some way corrupt, compromised, and trying to create false data to ensure the vaccination industry keeps on rolling. If you prefer to believe batshit conspiracy theories rather than the science, that's absolutely your prerogative. But for most of us, the message is quite simple: Measles is back, and it's because your kids aren't vaccinated.