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progressoid

(49,827 posts)
Tue Oct 6, 2015, 12:41 AM Oct 2015

Anti-Vaxxers Accidentally Fund a Study Showing No Link Between Autism and Vaccines

Most experts today agree that the belief that childhood vaccines cause autism is based on bunk science. Even still, some advocacy groups claim immunizations are responsible for raising the risk for this neurodevelopmental condition, despite a growing body of research that shows there isn’t a link. (The study that most anti-vaccination groups point to was retracted after it was found to be based on falsified data.)

Despite the science, organizations involved in the anti-vaccine movement still hope to find some evidence that vaccines threaten children’s health. For example, the autism advocacy organization SafeMinds recently funded research it hoped would prove vaccines cause autism in children. But this effort appears to have backfired for the organization—whose mission is to raise awareness about how certain environmental exposures may be linked to autism—since the study SafeMinds supported showed a link between autism and vaccines does not exist.

Between 2003 and 2013, SafeMinds provided scientists from the University of Texas Southwestern School of Medicine, the University of Washington, the Johnson Center for Child Health & Development and other research institutions with approximately $250,000 to conduct a long-term investigation evaluating behavioral and brain changes of baby rhesus macaques that were administered a standard course of childhood vaccines. (The National Autism Association, another organization that has questioned vaccine safety, also provided financial support for this research.) The latest paper in the multiyear project was published Monday in the [iProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). ]In it, the researchers concluded that vaccines did not cause any brain or behavioral changes in the primates.

http://www.newsweek.com/anti-vaxxers-accidentally-fund-study-showing-theres-no-link-between-autism-and-379245

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SwissTony

(2,560 posts)
2. But hasn't thimerasol use been discontinued
Tue Oct 6, 2015, 05:15 AM
Oct 2015

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Is thimerosal still used in vaccines for children?

No. Thimerosal hasn’t been used in vaccines for children since 2001.

However, thimerosal is still used in some flu vaccines. Yearly flu vaccines are recommended for all children. If you are worried about thimerosal, you can ask for a flu vaccine without it.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/thimerosal/faqs.html

So, what was the point of this study? Testing something that's not been used for 14 years.

36 macaques were killed as part of this trial. David Gorski looks at various aspects of the study, including ethics.

https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/antivaccine-activists-fund-a-study-to-show-vaccines-cause-autism-it-backfires-spectacularly/#more-39139

progressoid

(49,827 posts)
3. Sadly, even their own study won't convince the anti-vaccine people
Tue Oct 6, 2015, 08:27 AM
Oct 2015

They are already questioning their study.

SafeMinds, the nonprofit that funded the research, is not happy with the results. Representatives from the group say the findings contradict both an earlier pilot study and interim progress reports the organization received from the researchers.

SafeMinds also believes that the research team behind the new PNAS study may have cherry-picked their data. SafeMinds Director Lyn Redwood, a registered nurse, says she received an email in 2013 from the researchers reporting a “statistically significant” 11 percent reduction in certain types of hippocampal cells in the vaccine groups. But she says the authors did not include these findings in the new paper.

jeff47

(26,549 posts)
4. They already abandoned thimerosal as the cause
Tue Oct 6, 2015, 09:48 AM
Oct 2015

since removing it didn't change the pattern. So they were forced to change from thimerosal as the boogeyman to "too many vaccines too close together". Or more popularly, "It's vaccines because reasons".

SwissTony

(2,560 posts)
5. But the title of the paper is
Tue Oct 6, 2015, 09:53 AM
Oct 2015

"Administration of thimerosal-containing vaccines to infant rhesus macaques does not result in autism-like behavior or neuropathology"

I'm familiar with the "too much, too soon" meme, but I can't see why they'd pay for the study reported.

jeff47

(26,549 posts)
6. They were covering all their theories.
Tue Oct 6, 2015, 10:07 AM
Oct 2015

If it really was thimerosal, then they had that covered. If it was "too many", they had that covered. If it was "because reasons" they had that covered.

SwissTony

(2,560 posts)
7. Fair enough.
Tue Oct 6, 2015, 10:26 AM
Oct 2015

But we still know vaccines are evil. I mean who wouldn't want nice diseases like smallpox and polio around?

Disclosure: I was a young kid in Glasgow in the 1950s. Smallpox wasn't really an option in Glasgow at that time. Thankfully. I had every disease going...except for polio. But I knew people who weren't so lucky. Horrible, horrible disease.

I hate anti-vaxxers.

Warpy

(110,913 posts)
8. Yes, it was discontinued in everything but the injectable flu shot
Tue Oct 6, 2015, 03:11 PM
Oct 2015

and nervous Nellie parents can get around that by requesting the nasal vaccine. Pointing out there hasn't been a sharp drop in new autism diagnoses since the removal of thimerosal just makes them move the goalposts. Um, it's the MMR (which never had thimerosal in the first place), no, it's the fact that they get so many shots at once (never mind they're exposed to a hundred times more antigens when they eat dirt), no, it's the fact that their little immune systems aren't built to cope with vaccines (in which case, they'd all die in the first few weeks outside the womb), and so on and so forth.

Antivaxers are simply neither educated nor rational, nor will they listen to people who are. The only thing that can be done about them is pass public health laws with serious teeth in them to protect the rest of us against their unvaccinated little darlings.

About the only ones I can stand are the Amish, who have their own schools to keep their kids separate. Even they lined up for the MMR, children and adults alike, when there was a measles epidemic among them. They might want to go natural, but they aint stupid about it.

mhatrw

(10,786 posts)
10. Thimerosal is in all multi-dose vials.
Tue Oct 6, 2015, 04:22 PM
Oct 2015

Because it saves about 17 cents per dose in wholesale pricing to use multi-dose rather than single dose vials.

Make sure your and your kids' vaccines are single dose if you would rather avoid an unnecessary dose of mercury in your vaccines.

Warpy

(110,913 posts)
11. Or educate yourself about bio available versus non bio available mercury compounds
Tue Oct 6, 2015, 05:17 PM
Oct 2015

and stop worrying about thimerosal. Also realize you are writing about flu vaccine, only, which I already addressed.

Also realize Wakefield is a quack and a crank and so is his acolyte Mercola.

mhatrw

(10,786 posts)
13. Yeah, just take that unnecessary mercury with your vaccine!
Tue Oct 6, 2015, 08:34 PM
Oct 2015

You just saved your vaccine provider 17 cents with your "educated" decision making!

mhatrw

(10,786 posts)
9. How is it that anti-vaccination groups have to fund these studies?
Tue Oct 6, 2015, 04:10 PM
Oct 2015

How is it that those who determine the recommended vaccine schedule for our infants are not required to do any rudimentary testing on analog primates?

Isn't the assumption that adding more an more vaccines to the schedule will be perfectly safe a case of scientists presupposing what they should be proving?

progressoid

(49,827 posts)
12. They didn't have to fund it.
Tue Oct 6, 2015, 05:35 PM
Oct 2015

There are multiple studies showing no link between vaccines and autism which they chose to ignore. And now they are even questioning their own study.

Of course the primary cause of the increase of autism spectrum disorder is actually due to changes in how the disease is diagnosed.

“This study is important because it shows a large part of the increase has nothing to do with the environment, but rather administrative decisions,” says study author Stefan Hansen of Aarhus University in Denmark.

The researchers followed 677,915 Danish children born between 1980 and 1991 and tracked them until they either had an autism diagnosis or reached the study end date of Dec. 31, 2011. Hansen and his team looked specifically at changes that occurred before and after the year 1994, when criteria for psychiatric diagnoses changed in Denmark so that autism became a spectrum of disorders, broadening the criteria for diagnosis. The researchers found significantly more children were diagnosed with autism in 1995 and on, and the team was able to determine that 60% of the increase could be attributed to these criteria changes.

“I am not saying it explains everything,” says Hansen. “There’s the remaining 40%, so we shouldn’t stop here.” That 40% is important if researchers want to understand all the contributing factors to the disease he says.

http://time.com/3652619/autism-diagnosis/

mhatrw

(10,786 posts)
14. This is the first study to subject monkeys to the 2008 vaccination regime.
Tue Oct 6, 2015, 08:41 PM
Oct 2015

Last edited Thu Oct 8, 2015, 02:27 AM - Edit history (1)

There are no studies that have subjected any infant monkeys to the 2012, 2013, or 2015 recommended vaccination regimes.

Why not?

Could it because that the regime is presumed to be safe (or at least safer than the alternative of not following the regime), and thus testing whether it actually is safe is not required or funded by the vaccine industry or our Big Pharma controlled corpocracy?

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