Drusilla -no it's not. Thee USA introduced a booster in the teens because of this problem of waning immunity.
Flumpytina- if you are a scientist then you'll understand how weak epidemiological studies are if you looking at very small numbers.
You could wade through the mass of papers. Or you could save yourself the time and read Richard Lathe's book- Autism the brain and the environment. He has his own theories (which I don;t necessarily buy into 100%), but he also summarises very well the research to date. He doesn't talk much about MMR, but what he says backs up what peope working directly with the children are saying.
An extract:
....." It is also important to recognise that measures of ASD rates in immunized versus un-immunized populations fall short of testing the contention that that a sub-proportion (my emphasis) of recent ASD cases might be causally associated with vaccine administation".
Sub-proportion. The papers you are talking about examine when all the increase in autism is triggered by MMR. No-one has ever suggested such a thing.
He continues:
"specifially only 4-20% of families have countenanced apossible link between MMR vaccination and develpment of ASD..."
" A reasonbale hypothesis is that around 5% of cases might be die to MMR vaccination, with impaired immunity a contributing factor."
Elsewhere in the book he recomends vaccination to protect against encephalitis- this man is not anti-vaccine. He himself developed the most widely used rabies vaccine.
He continues:
"The statistical challenge is then to detect an increase in ASD at this level. Population sizes in the order of one million in both the vaccinated and unvaccintated groups are needed, because below this the small increment could never achieve statistical validity. Smaller study groups, but at least 6000, are needed if analsysi is restricted to the ASD population, and if for example ASD rates arfe compared prior or post vaccination. Even so, recent studies on 473 or 5800 subjects fail to address the hypothsis that 5% of cases might be caused by the MMR. One must remember however, that massive loss of previously aquired skills, as in childhood disintegrative disorder, is rather rare- though the data do not exclude that a mild impairment in a child already at risk, for instance because of a weak immune system is subsequently amplified on vaccination."
I've quoted from him because what he says is reasonable, referenced and he could in no way be described as anti-vaccine.
Show me the studies that examine the hypothesis that a sub-group has been affected. Until those studies are done then Wakefield's hypothesis has not been examined. Anyway Wakefield's original hypothesis has changed- as he now works closely with the people working on thimerosal, and thinks that it is the action of a virus (not necessarily vaccine- could be wild- as happened in ds1's case) acting on - for want of a better word a thimerosal sensitive immune system.
If you type autism one into google and follow conference presentations you can get Wakefiled's pp presentation given earlier this year- it brings everything up to date from his point of view.
I'm not scaremongering about my friend's son. Before his MMR he was pointing and talking. 24 hours afterwards he had seizures, he was in ICU, he survived and his paed has said to her that he thinks that MMR triggered his problems. There are no opinions of mine in there- just facts.