didn't we know this already?

But it keeps getting restudied due to anti-vaxxer panic. Not that that seems to do much good.

...that people actually blamed "cold" mothers for autistic kids (!) That was back in the late '50's early '60's pop psycology. Poor people (usually of color) weren't taking their autistic kids in to be diagnoised. But newly middle-class white folk were, and so the psychologists began to think that autism was a white-kids-of-middle-class-parents phenonemon. And that the mothers must be the problem. They weren't nuturing enough or whatever.

Same issue here for the anti-vaxers. Find a quick cause for it, and, therefore, not only someone to blame, but a "cure" for it as well. I imagine in 5-10 years this vaccine connection will be looked at the same way we look at the "cold mom's" assertion today. Ridiculous and how could any one have believed that?

Thing is, from what we currently know, autism is not caused by anything so direct as a cold mother or vaccine. Beyond straight up genetic factors (like a baby born with this or that color of eye or left-handed rather than right), baby's time in the womb may also be behind autism. The womb is not a serene bubble where the baby can develop on DNA alone. Chemical changes come and go and affect and alter development.

And that's not to blame the moms either. This isn't about mom (or dad) drinking or taking drugs. Dad could have been healthy, and mom could have eaten right, abstained from anything that might have hurt her child while pregnant, etc. Sometimes, like the kid being left-handed, these things turn up. And it's not through a single, particular cause that could have been avoided. It's just how the chemistry and genetics lined up. But that is aweful hard for parents to accept. That this was the luck of their genetic/chemical draw, not that someone "did this" to their child.

Not exactly.

No offense, but what you wrote sounds like a lot of stuff I read about Autism written by well meaning people who don't really have a clue about Autism.

Most of the real issue here is with parents that are totally freaked out for their kids.

If they're anti vax, they mistakenly see a correlation between the shots and the onset of an Autism diagnosis that happens around 18 months of age.

Having your kid get diagnosed with Autism is like being told your kid is going to die.

Parents are looking for any kind of information on how to help their kids. Anything new that can help them communicate with their kid.

Unfortunately, there's a lot of snake oil salesmen offering bogus science, cures, and odd diets to profit off of scared parents that just got an Autism diagnosis.

That's where the anti vax crowd gets started by buying into it.

Parents of kids that have Autism are worried more about their kid's health and well being than any woe is me BS.

There's nothing quick about Autism and there's no cure for any of it.
It's a lot of work.

FYI: http://www.democraticunderground.com/1016118568#post3

I understand autism. And my kid's health.
But that is beside the point.

This article is about the fact that there is NO link between vaccines and autism. It has nothing to do with "curing" autism.

Really, like getting a fatal diagnosis for you child.

I have had it happen twice, and I never saw it that way.

A lot of work, you bet, but so are a lot of conditions you can be dealt when having a child.

Search for a cause of my child's autism, well that is just a great big waste of my time.

Search for the guilty, no point really, what will that change, they are here to stay?

Cure, not ever going to happen. Besides, how do you cure something that isn't a disease?

anti-vaxxer band of expletives will be along shortly to drip their woo-froth all over this thread..

And she does have an esteemed degree from the Playboy Centerfold Instititute

I mean she really is ground zero with this whole 'Don't vaccinate your kid it causes autism' misinformation because she does have an child with autism. I think she used google, found that discredited research paper and grasped straws assuming it was the vaccines that caused her child to becoming autistic. But what's scary is that people actually started listening to Jenna McCarthy, a woman with absolutely no medical background other than the ability to google, instead of their doctors and this whole Anti-vax stuff exploded.

..saying that her kid was fine. She took him to be vaccinated. And right after he got the shot she saw "the light go out of his eyes..." i.e. he became autistic in that very moment.

I've no doubt this is a total fabrication--one, however, that's she's convinced herself is true, with terrible consequences for us all. However and whenever her kid's autism became apparent to her (there is a kind that comes on "suddenly"--toddler seems to be fine, then one day they're not), that's her story and as she told it on Oprah it had way too much visablity.

In short, I blame Oprah and all the other talk shows that gave her a form to spread this story as much as I blame her and they should all be sued. No talk or news show should be allowed to disseminate misinformation like that.

This may very well have happened. But it doesn't mean the shot is responsible. It coulda been that peanut butter sandwich she made for him an hour before... Or maybe the faulty genes she contributed to his genome upon conception.


Or none of those things....


until there is some establishment of cause and effect beyond "this happened right before....."

...the sandwich was either. Whatever causes autism (and it's unlikely one thing) it's there from sometime prior to baby's birth.

There are tests they're able to do now that can find out if an infant is likely to be autistic. This is huge, by the way, because the earlier one intervenes the better. The autism can't be "cured" but the autistic can gain ground and become less severely so.

The whole anti-vax movement has done more than cause issues with immunization, it's also undermined real research into autism, both it's causes and what can be done to alleviate it. This includes the diversion of funds from serious research into junk, anti-vax causes.

Currently, there is no pre-natal test for Autism. There's research, but nothing solid yet.

...but almost all tests are still about observing "signs" rather than chemical tests. But, at least, with such a lot of focus on autism, there have been leaps and bounds in recognizing it and working with it.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/102558270

BIOTECH AND PHARMACEUTICALS
4/2/15
Where we stand on autism

http://www.cnbc.com/id/102395826

4/4/15
Interview with Dr Scott Gottlieb, American Enterprise Institute resident fellow
VIDEO- Case closed on vaccine-autism debate

Last edited Tue Apr 21, 2015, 10:53 PM - Edit history (1)

REPOST: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10141070770#post37

"In this large sample of privately insured children with older siblings, receipt of the MMR vaccine was not associated with increased risk of ASD, regardless of whether older siblings had ASD. These findings indicate no harmful association between MMR vaccine receipt and ASD even among children already at higher risk for ASD."

Wild world we live in: http://e-patients.net/archives/2012/03/former-nejm-editors-on-the-corruption-of-american-medicine-ny-times.html

Study design is critical. Was timing a variable in the new JAMA study, as here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/101672031
Dr. Mumper (published, 2013); Dr. Thomas (unpublished, 2015)

This isn't about what I think, incidentally. At the moment, however, I decline further discussion. Guess why.

You don't think JAMA's peer review is sufficient for that?

What do you propose in addition?

And you linked to another DU post you made, using the quack site AgeofAutism as a source?

Funny, same general field.

http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=197969

https://books.google.com/books?id=-UZgBgAAQBAJ
SEARCH INSIDE: JAMA hviid
READ 1) flawed methodologies and 2) significant COI issues as published in other cited peer-reviewed sources

in Thimerosal: Let the Science Speak: Chapter 7 (p 76) - "Findings of Epidemiological Studies"

http://www.fourteenstudies.org/HG_8_details.html
http://www.fourteenstudies.org/ranked.html

http://www.putchildrenfirst.org/media/5.18.pdf

RELATED:

https://localtvkstu.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/robert-kennedy-vaccine-response. jpg (drop the space before jpg to view)

OTOH, the relevance of Dr. Poland's work? Implicit.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=2899161
KARE 11 TV Minneapolis: “1 in 8 kids in the local Somali community are affected (with autism)” (VIDEO)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10592519
Boyle on Minneapolis autism research presented at IACC meeting on 1/14/14, including Somali children

...as it's become much more aware of chemical imbalances and how the brain develops and works, etc. It is a far more science oriented field than it was in the old, Freudian days when it failed to use controls and big enough samples, etc.

A lot more is required in psychiatry for diagnosises. And kid psychologists and therpists are often the first to see an autistic child and so know the signs. There are far more specialists in the field now, and they've learned a great deal, all the way into the womb.

So, please don't disrespect psychiatry on this. It's not your granddad's mistaken notions of Oedipal complexes, etc. They're far more aware of genetic issues and chemical causes behind such disorders than they were even five years ago.

The problem is that those who promote the link base their beliefs on pseudoscience, and how can you compete with that?

Have you ever tried to have a conversation with someone who believes in pseudoscience? It's like talking to a wall somewhere down the rabbit hole. They believe in what they want to believe in and no amount of facts, studies, science, proof, or logic can sway them. I had such a discussion with someone yesterday (not about vaccines, but some other wacky conspiracy theory), and I walked away, shaking my head in disbelief.

Hell, a few dozen more studies (on top of the dozens already done) and maybe we can start to convince some of the idiot anti-vaxxers out there to get their kids their shots

Seriously though, when I think about the millions of dollars and thousands of hours countless researchers have devoted to rehashing this shit over and over and over again in the past 20 years, and what they could have accomplished instead with that time and money, it makes my blood boil.

Fucking Wakefield and his fraudulent papers. That man deserves to be in prison for the damage he's caused.