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The Times op-ed page letters today are struggling with how vaccines do or do not cause autism (which they don't).
The Times op-ed page letters today are struggling with how vaccines do or do not cause autism (which they don't).
Someone once said to me, in a discussion about vaccines, "Well, I just guess we agree the the jury's still out on the Autism connection!" No. It's not. There was never a jury, nor was it ever "out".
Other things that do not cause autism include:
Power lines
WiFi
Cell phones
Jury still out on whether following might be involved in autism:
Mountain Dew
Hair cuts
Jean Claude Van Damme
Van Damme doesn't, but if Al Pacino insults a woman who is with child, that child shall be born autistic.
@deepo: On the Wifi thing, you may be right about autism but my Wifi is definitely giving a lot of neighbor kids the cancer. I know because people tack up anonymous threats to that effect.
Careful, people. There's a dissenting voice, and he has a Master's degree.
In science!
In holistic nutrition studies!
Wait, you mean he's a master's student?!! i.e., doesn't even have his bull$#% two-year graduate degree in pseudoscience?
I mean, literally, I am on no one's side in this exchange except the old Bronx coot quoting the founding fathers.
It doesn't even have a .edu domain!
Plus: http://www.hawthornuniversity.org/faq.html
Where is Hawthorn University located?
Hawthorn University has offices in California, New York, and Florida. However, all programs are conducted entirely online and student can study offline in a comfortable place. There is no residency requirement to complete any of Hawthorn’s programs.
Did you see this craziness too?:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/29/world/asia/29pakistan.html?hp
Some American dude, probably CIA (speaks Urdu, carries a gun and just looks like it I guess), shot two guys in Pakistan, Jason Bourne-style. This is going to get interesting…
Did it make them (the two Pakistani guys) autistic? Or did the American guy's Jason Bourne-style training make him autistic?
Or are we trying to vaccinate Afghanistan against Al Qaeda, and are thereby making Pakistan autistic?
This is one of these subjects it's hard to be completely forthright about out loud. Many parents of autistic children are deeply invested not just in the vaccine nonsense but in Wakefield personally; some of them will righteously murder you dead if you say certain things. You are getting between them and their child. And they have a huge number of sympathizers in the health superstition crowd. — Lots of medical doctors, despite the well-known fact that as a group they are either incompetents or in the pocket of drug companies, are careful what they say about autism and vaccines because they don't want to get the loonies in an uproar.
Not good for the public health!
And yet you don't like to hurt your friends' feelings about something like that.
autism vaccines cause polio.
Anyone out here study developmental psych before 1990? I remember being told in the 1980s that a majority of profoundly autistic children also happen to be the first-born male child of working women. I cannot seem to get a confirmation of this notion from the Internet.
It's the refrigerator mother theory. Fucking horrible. ETA: or rather, related to that theory.
I know. I was trolling. But I'd still like to see what the statistical correlation is.
I would really like to see the "fathers well over 40 cause autism with their old spoiled sperm" theory get some traction, just because mothers and external forces (from which mothers did not adequately protect their babies!!) are always blamed for everything. It just doesn't seem fair.
I'd like to see that theory get pushed too. I'd also like to see some kind of definitive diagnosis technique and real understanding of the disease mechanism at play. Right now there's a constellation of symptoms that people call autism. That's it. There are differential diagnoses that are just as poorly understood, but which resolve themselves, giving some people the impression that autism can be cured. This is probably what happened with Jenny McCarthy's kids.
FWIW, my mom, who works with people who have an assortment of "issues" including but not limited to autism, has told me that she often witnesses extremely particular/kinda left-brained fathers. My mom is sometimes a liar though.
She's just confused. Those dads make their sons gay.
I think you're right. I just like to level the parent-blaming field.
The Taliban tell people in tribal areas of Pakistan that polio vaccines are an American plot to sterilize Muslims. Do these people talk?
Like the issue of 'are eggs good or bad for you?' this will simply be readdressed every few years without really going anywhere.