Researchers Find No Link between Vaccination and Autism (again)

Not to get too personal on this, but those who believe vaccines cause autism need to take a step back and review their position.

“An evidence-based meta-analysis of case-control and cohort studies”,  a report from Australia published in Vaccines on May 9, 2014, that based upon a review of 10 international studies involving more than one million children, provides additional information that vaccines are not associated with autism.

Autism and its many variants are truly significant health issues but placing the blame on vaccines is evidently not the solution to preventing autism. Given the proven health outcome benefits of vaccines, the message that vaccines are not related to autism has to be spoken and reinforced by the very same people and organizations that promulgated the opposite, but now evidently,  the incorrect position.

The abstract of the article from the Vaccine website:

“We performed a meta-analysis to summarise available evidence from case-control and cohort studies on this topic (MEDLINE, PubMed, EMBASE, Google Scholar up to April, 2014). Eligible studies assessed the relationship between vaccine administration and the subsequent development of autism or autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Two reviewers extracted data on study characteristics, methods, and outcomes. Disagreement was resolved by consensus with another author.

• Five cohort studies involving 1,256,407 children, and five case-control studies involving 9920 children were included in this analysis.
• The cohort data revealed no relationship between vaccination and autism (OR: 0.99; 95% CI: 0.92 to 1.06) or ASD (OR: 0.91; 95% CI: 0.68 to 1.20), or MMR (OR: 0.84; 95% CI: 0.70 to 1.01), or thimerosal (OR: 1.00; 95% CI: 0.77 to 1.31), or mercury (Hg) (OR: 1.00; 95% CI: 0.93 to 1.07).
• Similarly the case-control data found no evidence for increased risk of developing autism or ASD following MMR, Hg, or thimerosal exposure when grouped by condition (OR: 0.90, 95% CI: 0.83 to 0.98; p = 0.02) or grouped by exposure type (OR: 0.85, 95% CI: 0.76 to 0.95; p = 0.01).

Findings of this meta-analysis suggest that vaccinations are not associated with the development of autism or autism spectrum disorder. Furthermore, the components of the vaccines (thimerosal or mercury) or multiple vaccines (MMR) are not associated with the development of autism or autism spectrum disorder.”

Children are indeed society’s most precious assets and it does not serve their, their parents’, nor society’s best interests to delay or abandon critical vaccinations any longer. It would be a cruel outcome should polio or other preventable diseases of childhood  routinely included in immunizations begin to reappear (some reports are indicating such is happening), leaving behind paralyzed, ill, or dead children in the futile belief that denying immunizations prevents autism.  Focusing on immunizations does not serve the needs of those with autism or help in preventing future cases.