Comment Vaccines improve health. Better uses of research $ (Score 1) 594
My heart goes out to all of the families with children with Autism or Aspergers. I cannot imagine how difficult it must be to come to terms with the fact that your child has one of these conditions, and then to fight to ensure that your child gets the education and care needed for them to live a rich, fulfilling life.
Blaming vaccinations is not the answer, however. There have been a wealth of impartial studies performed, and the results overwhelmingly show that autism is NOT caused by vaccinations. For example, there was an extensive review performed in 2004 by the Institute of Medicine, an organization chartered by the National Academy of Sciences in 1970 to serve as an adviser to the federal government on issues affecting the public's health, as well as to act *independently* in identifying important issues of medical care, research, and education. (see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20669467)
By falsely linking autism and vaccines, parents have been hesitant to vaccinate their children. The lack of vaccinations has resulted in unnecessary illnesses, complications, and deaths due to diseases that are 100% avoidable. (For over a hundred real-life accounts of people who have suffered or died from vaccine-preventable diseases, you can visit http://www.immunize.org/reports/. The main body of the site is pretty interesting, too.) I cannot imagine how a parent must feel, knowing that their child is disabled or dead because they weren't immunized. I'm betting it's 1,000x worse than the parent of an autistic child who was immunized, since there is absolutely no question that the (in)action of the parent is to blame.
Calling for more studies to prove what has already been established - that vaccines do not cause autism - diverts funds away from research that can try to establish what *does* cause the disease and develop more effective treatment methods. I think that we all would be better served by putting funds towards this kind of research.
