Yes, nrdsb4. The latest research is starting to show that it may even be detected at around the 2nd trimester. Fetuses that became children with Autism have distinctly different features at this stage than their non-Autistic peers.
It’s early research but researchers have already shown a strong correlation.
ETA: A very good NPR piece: http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/03/26/294446735/brain-changes-suggest-autism-starts-in-the-womb
Studies are showing that autism happens during development of the fetus in utero. Pediatricians are screening for autism at 18 months and that is when developmentally the child starts to exhibit autistic behaviors and I have heard plenty of parents say that after the 18 month MMR vaccination the child started showing signs of autism. Pediatricians in our area are now giving the MMR at the 1 yr well child visit.
Palomina, others here have children with autism, know people who do, or work with children on the spectrum. So we are sympathetic to the challenges. But your beliefs are not supported by any evidence, no matter how emphatically you try to make your point.
We spent the first year of our youngest daughter’s life making weekly to the Johns Hopkins Pediatric Cancer Center - we got lucky, and having seen so many kids and parents going through so much worse, I really mean that. Nonetheless, this was just a few years after the anti-vaxx movement really picked up steam in the US and we were terrified that our immune-compromised daughter was going to catch something from the burgeoning unvaccinated populace. Even now it remains an issue.
@Palomina, do you have anything to back this up? Studies have been done all over the world, in just about every possible way, and to my knowledge none of the credible studies, private or government, have found any link between autism and vaccinations.
The whole idea that vaccinations caused autism has been totally blown out of the water, the methodology of the 'study
has been basically found to be as valid as cold fusion was, it didn’t pass muster when push came to shove. Yes, it is very tempting, you have a child you are struggling to care for, trying to figure out why, then you hear that vaccinations had a preservative that is a mercuric compound (mercury being a heavy metal that cause nerve and brain damage), and it all seems clear and simple and straightforward, especially given how jaundiced people are when it comes to the government and the view of big pharma, not surprising.
One of the things that bothered me is MMR and other vaccines have been around for a long time, yet suddenly we have an epidemic of autism? If in fact this caused autism, it should have shown itself back in the day, when baby boom children by the 10’s of millions were being inoculated, would have shown up a long time ago. The other reason people made the false correlation is because the diagnosis of autism is used a lot more now, people who in prior generations would be considered merely troublesome or difficult today would be classified as autistic (and for the record, I also think they are overdiagnosing it, the way they do with ADHD in kids). Among other things, it allows diseases that were all but eradicated to get a foothold and perhaps become virulent enough that innoculated people can get sick from the mutated disease.
People can believe what they want, but if their actions put others at risk, they can’t and shouldn’t expect that they will be allowed to force their choices on others, cause potential harm to others. I hear our dear governor is spouting the BS about parental choice (no doubt, to please the anti government/tea party faction of the GOP), but parental choice cannot be allowed when it hurts others.
Some of the governors tiptoeing around on this are going to have a hard time reconciling their positions on parental choice regarding vaccines with their efforts to take away choice in other areas.
Argh! There is NOT ‘conflicting info’ re vaccines and autism, vaccines and chronic inflammation, vaccines and chronic disease! All scientific evidence supports no relationship (and that’s not something you see often in science-- that you can say ‘all’.) I believe that families believe it. I believe people have anecdotes and believe them. But the science, and the facts in the aggregate, does not support such claims. Stop saying otherwise.
Well, it does have to be one way or the other. Allowing personal exemptions for everything under the sun and then criticizing those who use them makes no sense at all.
That’s not quite true. There are cases where the verdict has come in that vaccines contributed to serious medical situations. I know of one court decision of the sort, and there are also scientists and doctors that will state that there are issues. You can get medical waivers for the vaccines for things like seizures for, say the pertussin vaccine. I think the medical community, scientists, researchers, government have been remiss in not admitting the possibilities, because clearly they are may be there. They have not been proven beyond reasonable doubt. It makes sense that when substances that are used in vaccines are injected in people, that some sort of adverse reaction can occur, and we may not know for years what that might be. It takes over a year for most leukemic transformations to be detected. That I know, and no one knows whether it was a random mutation or caused by an event, stimulus,etc. Viruses, benzine exposure, radiation can exacerbate mutations.
If the power that be would just not adamently insist this is not the case, but show that the statistical harm done over all is more , not to vaccinate, maybe there would be some more compliance and less of a movement. But sadly, I think people are just too selfish. If they believe their children, theirs are at more risk for something by a vaccine than getting the disease that kills the vulnerable, than they will protect their own. With the herd immunity at certain levels, their kids are safer that way. It’s the elderly, infants and those with immune disorders, chemo that are vulnerable and can DIE whereas the chance of that happening to their own preciouses is very low. and that’s all they care about.
What besides vaccinations are personal exemptions permitted for? It is NOT allowed for “everything under the sun”. Thats ridiculous. Personal exemptions are for vaccinations. If its allowed for anything else, please share.
Communication problems again. Sigh. The everything under the sun was a reference to reasons not shots. Of course, there are plenty of other accommodations for this or that going on out there but they are irrelevant to this discussion.
Then it sounds like we agree that exemptions should be very tightly limited and only given for very specific, justifiable reasons. Then we wouldnt be in this situation of an unnecessary outbreak.
Of course there are plenty others? Name one please.I assume we are not talking about educational accommodations or ADA accommodations.
re #1790
Those court decisions are about adverse effects, and are not scientific evidence-based, they’re on a case by case basis and largely judgement calls. Kind of like the difference between burden of proof in criminal v civil cases.
No one should dispute that individual people have been harmed by vaccines’ adverse effects. I’m talking about scientific proof that a vaccine in general is proved to cause a certain disease or disorder unequivocally.
Personal exemptions which harm no one, fine.
Personal exemptions which have the potential harm many people-I’ll criticize away. I couldn’t care less if it “doesn’t make sense” to some people.
It doesn’t make sense as public policy. Criticize away.
Thank you, jaylynn for saying what I was just about to. There is a big difference between potential side effects of a medication or treatment vs there being a causality between a medication or vaccine and a significant adverse outcome in a large population sample. If there was, the med would be quickly pulled from the market, as has happened on several occasions
Any time a study is done, particularly when it makes a new claim not previously supported by research, its conclusions are NEVER proof of anything. The only thing it does is make further study advisable. The “further studies” must be able to replicate the results in order to even begin to start drawing solid conclusions from them.
Forget the fact that the study claiming to link MMR to autism was discredited due to multiple instances of fraud and ethical breaches, the mere fact that this study only had 12 subjects is HUGE with regard to being able to draw conclusions and recommend huge changes in public health policies.
Every other study which was conducted on this subject, especially ones which adhered to sound scientific method and research study ethics and policies, FAILED to find any cause/effect whatsoever between autism and vaccines. If vaccines caused autism, these results should have been reproduced in study after study. DIDN’T happen.
The very large Institutes of Medicine meta-study of 2004, which looked at all studies done after Wakefield’s original (very flawed study, as Nrdsb4 mentions) really put the autism/MMR question to rest for physicians and scientists and anyone who understands the science of the issue.
I know people who are exempt from getting their kids vaccinated at all citing propensity to seizures in the family. That is a fact. Their kids are going to public school and are at large in the pubic with no restrictions.
My son was exempt from vaccinations for a while after he finished his chemo. I was jumpy about getting him revaccinated because a number of relapses seemed to have occured after the revax process and the rumors were a jumping and medical literature on leukemias pretty clearly does not exempt any kind of injections including the chemo itself which is often carcinogenic. The leeway I was given was very generous and I could have probably pushed if for a long time, but I didn’t. As I studied the stats (that 's my field by the way, statistcall analysis), I got a real life wake up call. My son’s best friend, yes, the one he hung around with all the time, came down with whooping cough. A strapping healthy young man WITH all of his innoculations still got the whooping cough and it knocked him out for half a year, and though never in life threatening straits, it was quite the ordeal. That he was not an infant, that he was in good health, and that he had been innoculated blunted the blow. I had panic attacks all over the place as my son tends to get heavy duty bronchial coughs after any cold. We ended up in the hospital for check ups about three times in less than that many months–I was sure he was getting the same. So he was revaccinated, because High risk leukemia treatment can knock out the protection fo the vaccine. Titres checked and we did it.
But because I was “in” the exempt crowd, I knew a lot of people who are exempt for medical reasons that are rather generous,and getting a doctor to sign off is not difficult, in getting out of vaccinations.
There no personal exemptions that are guaranteed not to hurt anyone unless that person is kept in isolation from other people. It is not possible. There is an incubation period for a lot of these diseases after exposure and a contagious period before there is confirmation that a person is affected. Two babies died of the whooping cough that made its rounds. A baby died of the chicken pox that made its rounds in 1984 in my area. My son infected over 30 kids in a day before I realized he was infected, and I had no idea he was exposed.
But there are a lot of people out there exempt from vaccinations, more than you would think.