Vaccines/Autism/Consequences

A short while back it was announced that the special court denied the claims by the anti-vaccine people as being groundless in science and poorly misinformed. There is an additional serious issue to address. First a little history. Andrew Wakefield first published his paper in the Lancet in 1998 claiming a link between MMR vaccine and autism via inflammation in the colon of children who received the vaccine. Since that time vaccination rates went from as high as 95% to 75% and in some cases to as low as 50% in areas of the UK and US. Scientists know that for immunity to be effective vaccination rates need to be at least 90%. Several facts have come to light since that so called land mark paper of Wakefield’s. No scientist has been able to replicate his results. Next it has been found out that trial lawyers seeking to sue vaccine manufactures paid Wakefield to provide evidence for lawsuits. In England Wakefield is now subject to charges by the General Medical Council of Britain for misconduct due to “shoddy lab methods” in the controls and discovered contamination in his samples. His co-authors withdrew their names at the time of his publication due to falsification of lab results.
Dr. Leo Kanner first described autism in 1943 and stated: “that it is the state of being unto one’s self, or emotionally isolated and incapable of engaging in many social interactions. It is not mental retardation although it was considered as such for years. It has a prevalence of 1 in 150. The so called epidemic is not an epidemic but is the fact of medical science being better able to identify it. It comes in many forms and severity. Some regresses with time. It is know to have genetic causes as shown by epidemiological studies world wide.
Politicians such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Joe Lieberman, Chris Dodd, John Kerry and Arnold Schwarzenegger have jumped on the band wagon and have called for laws of various kinds. In California was able to get thiomersol banned from influenza vaccines. Entertainers have gotten involved, the most famous being Jenny McCarthy. She claims some special knowledge because she is a mother.
Vaccines due have side effects, usually quoted as any where from 1 in 10,000 to 100,000 cases and is usually mild local reactions such redness at the injection site. Thimerosal was used as a preservative in vaccines until the late 1980s early 1990s. It has mercury in its base at extremely low levels. Numerous studies have shown no link with autism. In fact mercury poisoning and autism don’t even have the same symptoms or signs. Since the preservative was taken off the market the rate of autism should have gone down if it was due to that. It didn’t it continued to go up to the stable rate of 1 in 150 now. But what has gone up has been the reemergence of childhood illness and death, which could have been prevented by vaccines. In 1991 a measles epidemic swept through Philadelphia and began in a religious group that did not vaccinate its children. It then spread to the surrounding community before it was contained, but not before 7 children died. In 2007 in Minnesota an out break of meningitis killed 5 including a 7 month old infant because they were not vaccinated. The killer was Hemophilus influenza B bacteria which is totally preventable by the HIb vaccine. In 1950 there were 3 to 4 million cases of measles including 450 deaths. In 1998 it dropped to less than 1 case per million people or about 50 cases per year. But in 2008 there were reported 131 measles cases and all occurred in children not vaccinated.
Autism is a genetic disease of development. The cortex of the brain doesn’t wire itself correctly during the first year of development. Within the last 2 years of scientist in Italy, Giacomo Rizzoletti, discovered a group of neurons called mirror neurons. They reflect in the cortex actions emotions etc. of others which allow one to grasp the minds of others. That is by feeling another person’s emotions, intents, etc. It was discovered at Yale University with in the last year by MRI imaging that autistic brains lack these cells or are poorly developed. We know what causes autism now! And it is not vaccines.
A group of professionals, doctors, chiropractors, lawyers, alternative healer’s etc advise routinely against vaccination. This is criminal! I propose that a law be enacted that would make it a crime to advise against vaccinations by any person of so called authority. If a child cannot be vaccinated then there should be a very good scientific medical reason for doing so. The intent of not vaccinating our children puts their lives at risk, and they are among the most vulnerable as they cannot make that decision for themselves. Enforcement may be hard, but the idea that you may be held to account for your actions may be deterrent enough. It has been tried to educate, but that has done so little good because the so called true believers will not buy it and still want to propagate their poison to society. It is time to put teeth into protecting the welfare of our children, our future.

Peace
Skeptical DoDo