Two new studies again exonerate childhood vaccines and find that autism is NOT linked to vaccinations but that at least some may be linked to a genetic flaw that occurs at conception. One study found a link between the genetic flaw and developmental disorders, including autism. The other study found that autism cases have continued to rise even though thimerosal, the mercury-based preservative formerly used in children’s vaccines, has not been an ingredient of children’s vaccines since 2001.
The New England Journal of Medicine reported on the comprehensive genetic study, which involved over 1500 families with autistic children and more than a dozen researchers at several institutions, most of which were associated with the nonprofit Autism Consortium headquartered in Boston. DNA scans of these families, mostly from the Boston area but also 299 from Iceland, revealed that some of the autistic children had a region on Chromosome 16 that had been deleted even though their parents’ region was intact. Although this abnormality, which would have occurred at conception, was found in only 1% of the autistic children, the abnormality has only been found in .01 percent of the general population; in other words, the genetic flaw occurs in autistic children 100 times more often than it does in non-autistic children.
Meanwhile, the Archives of General Psychiatry reported on another study, based on statistics from the state of California. The California State Public health Department found that the number of autistic children cases rose continuously between 1995 and 2007 even though thimerosal has not been used in children’s vaccines since 2001, except for some flu shots. The researchers, therefore, logically concluded that thimerosal must not cause autism.
Robert Goldberg, DO, President of the Medical Society of the State of New York, said. "We hope that this additional evidence, negating a link between thimerosal exposure and autism risk, will assure parents that vaccines are safe and the best way to protect their children against avoidable illness. The medical society supports appropriate immunization for all age groups as the least expensive, easiest, and most effective way to prevent diseases that can be debilitating, difficult and expensive to treat, and sometimes fatal."
Authors of both studies acknowledge that much more research is necessary to unravel the mystery of what causes the social and learning difficulties associated with autism, which is now reported in one out of every 150 children in the US.
