Your comment is untrue. As the author of the submitted article notes about a related proposed explanation for autism incidence, "First, in the broadest sense, the epidemiology doesn’t jibe." And that has always been the problem with the lawyer-profit-motivated hypothesis about vaccines and autism: it never matched the epidemiological evidence.
I'm merely arguing that vaccines could possibly bring out or affect the severity of the symptoms of autism. None of the studies seem to study the severeness of autisms... just the rates, which would be unaffected if autism is already determined by a different factor (apparently age of the father may be one).
It's so scary to see how many people refuse to open their minds to possibilities outside their preconceived notions. The responses in this thread are a prime example.
"You should have an open mind, but not so open all your brains run out."
In fact, the "hygiene hypothesis" is almost the diametric opposite; vaccines, by challenging our immune systems, would reduce the risk of autism. Not that it does that either, studies have repeatedly found no correlation between vaccination and autism.
Question: What of the chemical load that a vaccine or schedule of vaccines might carry? What if immune dysregulation has a tipping point? The tipping point could be a variety of things, including a vaccine. A second question: What if we need the full blown disease, along with the fever to properly train our immune systems? Mr. Manoff's article may have been well-written and fascinating and short on citations but it will raise important questions that need to be asked and answered without fear that everybody will skip their vaccines and we will all die of polio. I am certainly NOT directing this last sentence at you Mr. Swift. I am generally noting with a view to the entire discussion above that sometimes the scientific guild, like all of us, has allowed fear of what might happen to shape their answers to important questions.
> If this is true, then it makes sense that vaccines could trigger the symptoms of autism.
No, that is false. That theory has been demolished by the many studies designed to compare outcomes between those who do, and do not, receive modern vaccinations:
A quote: "In early January, the British Medical Journal called the 1998 study by Andrew Wakefield, which proposed a link between the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine, gastrointestinal problems and autism, 'an elaborate fraud.' According to Fiona Godlee, the journal's editor-in-chief, 'It's one thing to have a bad study... In this case we have a very different picture of what seems to be a deliberate attempt to create an impression that there was a link by falsifying the data.'"
I ask you to educate yourself on this issue before posting discredited claims in a public forum.
With an account created within an hour of this submission I have to ask if you are trolling this forum?
Everyone is entitled to opinion, but when discussing articles like this it's fact and science that matter.
Comments like your cost lives.
We're already seeing increase in measles rates in the UK from the fallout of the MMR scare mongering around 10 years ago.
Please understand that parents who perceive any risk to their children will always err on the side of caution. When that perceived risk is based on lies and assumptions you stand the chance of exposing that child to other known and proven risks.
Those studies simply compared rates of autism in vaccinated populations... so if vaccines are merely bringing out the symptoms in people who already have autism then it still makes sense.
This is false, because many careful studies have compared populations, otherwise identical, that differed in one particular -- one received vaccinations, the other didn't. The outcome is that there is no difference between them.
Think about this in everyday terms -- consider the financial advantage, the scientific prestige, that would accrue to someone who located such a link. Wealth, fame, the unrequited love of women. But even though this issue has been studied repeatedly, no one has been able to show a scientific correlation between vaccines and autism.
Andrew Wakefield pretended to show a link, but his motives are now obvious -- he received thousands of dollars in consulting fees from a group of lawyers trying cases related to this issue, and he sought a patent on a vaccine of his own design, a vaccine that would have enriched him if there was such a link. These facts call his objectivity into question. And examination of his "scientific" work shows a repeated pattern of fraud and deception.
I suggest that you think like a scientist. Scientists don't say what you have, in essence: "if it hasn't been disproven, that's an argument in its favor." Scientists only count positive evidence as support for a hypothesis, and there is none for this issue. Indeed all the studies come to the same conclusion -- there is no link between vaccines and autism.
If autism was something we had genetic or biological tests for, this would be a valid concern. Presently, however, we don't have a biomarker for autism - the studies determine whether children have autism by looking at their symptoms. If vaccines did cause a significant increase in symptoms, we should expect it to move some number of individuals from "undetectable" to "detectable" and we'd see that in the numbers.
There is the narrow possibility, which may well have been looked at but hasn't been discussed, that vaccines could make autism worse only when it is significant to begin with, so nothing is crossing the threshold between not-quite-autism to autism, but I don't think we have any more evidence cause us to expect that relative to the simpler hypothesis that vaccines have roughly the same impact at any degree of autism: none.
Thank you for being the only one to understand my point (which you pointed out in your second paragraph) and not just knee-jerk down voting. My account was automatically censored by the HN algorithm for exploring a controversial viewpoint.
As for the bio-marker there are a number of things that could be looked at: flue/bascterial infection during pregnancy, age of father, anti bodies in mother, rheumatoid arthritis genetic markers in mother, asthma markers.
I have to disagree that it is a narrow possibility. So much of the future of a child is determined during the formative years. Intentionally aggravating an at-risk child's immune system over and over again is something that needs to be very closely researched. To not do so at this point given all that we know seems very unethical.
I think what you're trying to say is not just a direct "stuff in vaccines triggers autism" but more to the point that if the lack of exposure to germs/diseases/pathogens can lead to an immune system response that can cause autism, then vaccines contribute to creating that "too clean" environment, by eliminating those diseases.
That's not how vaccines work, though. They create immunity through controlled exposure to the virus. If they were contributing to the "super clean" environment, then they would be preventing exposure.
I could see how one might think they're potentially related, but it's quite a jump to suggest that you shouldn't vaccinate for that reason. Besides, the article is talking about in-womb development, which is a much more plausible vector for autism, considering what we know about it.
If you say that, people will hate you. (and all that goes with it)
But, I think it's a range of epigenetic factors that trigger an auto-immune response to have autism expressed according to some genetic program. Vaccines with their adjuvants are but one trigger - and it should be patently obvious that this might well be the case from the article.
