I have an eight year old autistic child. I have blogged about autism news and science for over five years now. I can state with some degree of confidence that there is no link whatsoever between autism and vaccines.

I want to address a few canards I can see floating about.

The question of the vaccine ingredients: take formaldehyde as an example. There is more formaldehyde in one slice of a banana than there is in the combined total of formaldehyde in all vaccines administered from ages 0 - 6 of the US and UK schedule.

The argument that the schedule is too much for a child to handle is equally fallacious. Research has established that theoretically, a childs immune system could cope with upwards of 10,000 vaccines administered at once. The issue is really one of antigens and teh fact is that simply being alive subjects a person to more antigens than the entire vaccine schedule.

Its true that thiomersal is still in the optional, seasonal flu vaccine. But being logical it should be plain to see that when vaccines were largely removed from vaccines in 2001 we should’ve had a large, easy to see drop in the rate of autism diagnoses. This has not occurred.

The various vaccine aetiology hypotheses have been around for over 10 years now and so far there is not one piece of valid, peer reviewed, journal published science that supports any of them.

As parent to an autistic child myself, I would very much like to see research monies allocated to things that will make a tangible difference in my childs life. Education, adult housing, job creation, communication therapies. This cannot happen whilst we are still centred on these damaging and misleading hypotheses.

Isn’t, never was, mercury containing thimerosal in the MMR vaccines.

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I never gave autism a second thought, until my close friends’ son was diagnosed with it. That was when I started reading, and reading, and reading. Now that I’ve got a child… it scares the crap out of me.

While I don’t disagree with the studies about MMR/Autism, I find myself wondering if studies have been done regarding “all vaccines combined”/autism. There are lots of ingredients, and it’s anyone’s guess if a combination of them can cause a regression into autism.

Maybe MMR can be considered safe, but by the time a child receives the MMR shot, they will (according to AAP Vaccine Schedule) already have received 22 other vaccinations. All that, within their first 12 months of life, is a lot for the system to handle. Sure, maybe they don’t cause autism, but could there be a trigger somewhere in there?

There’s all this talk about the fact that Thimerosal has been removed from vaccines since 2001, but that’s not 100% true. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, babies should be given the flu vaccine at 6 months of age. The flu vaccine still has mercury containing Thimerosal as a preservative.

I know this post is really focusing on MMR/Autism, and I’m trying to tread very lightly, so I don’t come across as argumentative. I just wanted to throw my 2 pennies out there.

I commend you for making posts on controversial topics, and I double commend you on having references to backup your comments. 2 thumbs up here.

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