fisky wrote:
I'm curious to see what data will be presented in September. The gold standard of the scientific method for drug testing is the double-blind clinical trial. Such a trial can't ethically be done with childhood vaccines since it would require a control group. It would also require an observation period long enough to allow autism to develop. That would mean a clinical trial of at least two years.
There are two many variables to get a definitive answer without a double-blind clinical trial. The major variables include environmental (plastics, household cleaners, etc), food additives (chemicals added to food, increased fructose, increased PUFAs, etc), and the change in diagnosing autism itself.
Also, there is the theory that that problem is not the MMR vaccine (or other specific vaccination on the schedule) that is causing autism, but it's the shock to the immune system of giving 20+ vaccines to children in a relatively short period of time. Some of theses vaccines are given enmasse. A double-blind clinical trial would have to be done on the vaccine schedule itself. We somewhat have observational data on this because other nations don't do as many vaccinations nor do they do them enmasse, but we still have the confounding diet, environmental, and food additive differences between the US and these other countries.
What is clear or at least clear to me is that something is happening before age five and even before age 3 that is resulting in more autism diagnoses.
As always, you bring up some good points. Here are some of my responses (even though I don't have all the answers):
- Double blind clinical trials can't be done because it's unethical (also impractical; you'd have to wait 15 years to collect data on your outcomes). But when comparing rates of ASD in countries with low vaccination rates to those with higher rates, there was no difference. When comparing rates of autism in populations exempt from vaccination for religious purposes and those who follow the regular schedule, there was no difference. There are about 24 multinational studies Paul Offit included in his book "Bad Advice" on this topic (and his use of them in his critique of the anti-vax movement) if you want a more detailed reference.
- The second statement in bold about environmental causes is where I would put my money. But expanding the diagnostic criteria is by far the most obvious (I don't think it can account for everything though).
- When vaccines were first made commercially available, the only one children took was the original oral polio vaccine. If you combined all the immunogenic agents in the 20 vaccines on the pediatric schedule today, there would be less antigens IN THE COMBINATION than that single vaccine had. Obviously, microbiology and manufacturing processes are better today. Either way, the immune system of a newborn reacts to about 200 billion antigens when passing through the birth canal, and another several hundred antigens every day for the rest of their life. 20 vaccines won't overwhelm it.
- Features of neurodivergence can't be obvious before 3 years old. The child would have to miss milestones for people to notice something was different about them. That doesn't necessarily mean that they weren't autistic before then. Again, a counterfactual that's impossible to prove or disprove, just an observation.
