California autism cases continue to grow (Yahoo!)

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California autism cases continue to grow

By ALICIA CHANG, AP Science Writer
Mon Jan 7, 6:39 PM ET

LOS ANGELES - Autism cases in California continued to climb even after a mercury-based vaccine preservative that some people blame for the neurological disorder was removed from routine childhood shots, a new study found.

Researchers from the state Department of Public Health found the autism rate in children rose continuously during the 12-year study period from 1995 to 2007. The preservative thimerosal hasn't been used in childhood vaccines since 2001, but is used in some flu shots.

Doctors say the latest study adds to existing evidence refuting a link between thimerosal exposure and autism risk and should reassure parents that the disorder is not caused by vaccinations. If there was a risk, they said, autism rates should have dropped between 2004 and 2007.

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these scientific types really ought to get their stories straight... i thought it was pretty much accepted that autism and related conditions are genetically based... so why are people still harping on mercury as a possible cause? It seems to me that if mercury was the cause, then autism would be an observable effect of mercury poisoning... plus we'd have a whole lot of aspie fish swimming around not associating with the other fishies...

Science operates through the exchange of ideas between people with different ways of thinking. If all scientists thought the same way, there would be little scientific progress. Diversity in scientific thought promotes the generation of new ideas, even if some of those thoughts and ideas are eventually discredited.

edited

Either I'm misunderstanding something or the study is biased and created to convince people there isn't a link.

Study results:

Let's look more closely:


It looks like the prevalence of autism in 6 to 12 year olds increased and this is used to try to prove that thimerosal doesn't contribute to autism. Since vaccines are given within days of birth, it means the 6 to 12 year olds were all vaccinated before thimerosal was removed from vaccines. Wouldn't a credible, unbiased researcher have excluded these kids from the study and only looked at prevalence in children under 6?



As the awareness of autism increases, children are diagnosed at an earlier age. The earlier diagnosis is the likely explanation for the increase in autism prevalence among 3 year olds. According to a CDC study published in 2007, "The median age of earliest ASD diagnosis ranged from four years, four months (New Jersey and West Virginia) to four years, eight months (Georgia)." That means the majority of autistics aren't diagnosed until after their 4th birthday. The CDC study looked at 8 year olds. Their reasoning: "All children in the studies were eight years old because previous research has shown that most children with an ASD have been identified by this age for services."

CDC study - http://www.cdc.gov/od/oc/media/pressrel ... 070208.htm

Interestingly, if autism is genetic then how do you explain the following found in the CDC study:


Why is autism (if it's genetic) over 3 times more common in New Jersey? Could it be that New Jersey has the highest rate of mercury pollution in the air?

Last edited by zendell on 10 Jan 2008, 6:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.

What independent researcher has shown that "children receiving Thimerosal-containing vaccines are more likely to be diagnosed with autism ?" What is an independent researcher?

The problem with the mercury-no it's vaccines-no, it's mercury in the air-theories is that the theory du jour keeps adjusting whenever there is evidence that disproves it.

Zendell, why are you so invested in the mercury-causes-autism theory? What compells you? You argue with every thread that I open up. Ironically calling gov't conducted testing as "biased" propaganda.

It's a huge waste of time, imo, to be so attached to the mercury theories. Mercury poisoning is well documented in history. We know what it is. It's not some just discovered element or mystery pollutant that's crept up on us. Autism doesn't resemble mercury-poisoning.

GET THIS - THIMEROSAL WASN'T BANNED IN CA UNTIL JULY 2006!
THE CDC IS RECOMMENDING NEW THIMEROSAL VACCINES TO REPLACE THE BANNED VACCINES!
For the first time, the CDC is now recommending that 6-24 month old children get flu shots which still contain Thimerosal. Why does the government want to inject Thimerosal (50% mercury) into 6-24 month old babies? Is it so they can do another study to conclude Thimerosal and mercury aren't involved because they were removed from some vaccines (while the new study will likely ignore children are now getting Thimerosal from newly recommended vaccines)?

Here's a study by Geier linking Thimerosal to autism: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1576 ... d_RVDocSum



Scientific evidence continues to implicate mercury's involvement in autism. I'm simply agreeing with science. If science proves that mercury isn't invovled, I'll change my opinion and go with whatever the scientific studies implicate is involved in autism.



My problem isn't mercury. My issue is with dishonesty, corruption, and fraud. I value justice and the truth. I'm merely pointing out dishonest research when I find it. I'm not anti-government (Why do you think I quoted the CDC study?). I'm anti-truth.

Why do you have a problem with me pointing out dishonest research when I see it?

I asked for an independent study. You pick and choose what you call "honest", "dishonest", "bogus" and "independent". Geier, an anti-mercury theorist who makes his living by selling fear-of-mercury biomed treatments is not an independent researcher-unless you mean "independent of scientific standards".

Yes, ask "Science" to prove a negative. Do you know how many speculations there are out there? Way too many to ever study. Prove that tv doesn't cause autism. Prove that breastmilk doesn't cause autism. Prove formula doesn't cause autism. Prove that women who party at some time in their life don't have autistic children.

I already said my problem with the mercury theories, it's a waste of time. Waste-of-time. Waste of money too. I have to hear about the cuts in education all the time. While conspiracy theorists want to continue to waste valuable monies for researching mercury and vaccines.

I don't know anyone who has said that autism is purely genetic. It's likely a combination of things, with a heavy genetic factor.

I checked Wikipedia and he seems reliable. "He [Mark Geier] was a researcher at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for ten years, and previously was a professor at Johns Hopkins University. He has studied the subject of vaccines for more than 30 years and has published over 50 peer-reviewed papers on vaccine safety, efficacy, contamination and policy." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Geier

What exactly is Geier selling? I don't think he's getting rich off of research.

I'm not asking to disprove mercury. Every year more studies find a link between mercury and autism which warrants further research. If the further research doesn't find a link, then I think they should look at something else.

No one can answer this: Why created a bogus study on Thimerosal if it's not involved? People are usually dishonest when they want to cover-up something. It's the dishonesty that convinces me that Thimerosal may somehow be related to autism.

No can answer that because it doesn't make sense.

Wikipedia should never be used as a primary source to check someone's references. BTW, there were problems with Geier's page, lack of citations and such. Anyhow, the guy has a vested interest in the mercury-as-cause because, as you would know if you've read about him, he is a biomed practioner. He and his son have a whole special corner on the market for chelating and introducing hormone treatments in an effort to cure autism. patent application

Thanks for the citation KimJ. Wikipedia is a great first place to start for fact checking, but not as your only source. I teach that in my journo 101 course

Please keep this stuff to your own mercury threads. Some of us have read the studies and aren't buying. It's simply spam and annoying to have to keep scrolling past.

Can anyone answer these questions about the study?

Why did the researcher compare the prevalence of autism in 6 to 12 year olds knowing that they all received Thimerosal? Why did they use the increase in prevalence among 6 to 12 year olds to conclude removing Thimerosal didn't cause autism rates to decrease?

Why did they look at 3 year olds knowing that children are diagnosed earlier now and that the earlier diagnoses could easily explain the increased prevalence among 3 year olds? Why not compare rates in 5 year olds since the recent CDC study says most aren't diagnosed until after their 4th birthday?

Also, why is the CDC recommending new Thimerosal-containing vaccines for 6-24 month old children to replace the Thimerosal from the ones where it's now banned? It will be difficult to tell whether Thimerosal is involved in autism because these children will still get it from the newly recommended vaccines. If Thimerosal is causing autism, then rates should decrease after it's removed. However, this can't be looked at because new Thimerosal vaccines are going to be given to children to replace the Thimerosal in the banned vaccines.

See my earlier post for more information.

Read the article yourself. It refers to children 3-12, not children 6-12; it shows no decrease in children born in 2003, after thimerosol had been phased out.
quote:
They found the prevalence of autism in children aged 3 to 12 increased throughout the study period. For example, 0.3 per 1,000 children born in 1993 had autism at age 3 compared with 1.3 per 1,000 children born in 2003.

I know. I quoted that section of the story. The purpose of the study was to see whether autism prevalence would decrease after thimerosal was removed. If thimerosal was banned in 2001 as the study claims (which is a lie btw, it wasn't banned until 2006), then anyone over 6 would have received thimerosal. An honest researcher would ONLY look at children under 6 years old. There was absolutely no reason to look at 6-12 year olds since all of them received thimerosal and the study was looking at the effects of removing thimerosal from vaccines. The prevalence increased in the 6-12 year olds even though they all received thimerosal and the increase was used to conclude that autism continued to increase after thimerosal was removed. That's dishonest.

Let's summarize that quote
Autism rate in 1993 - 1 in 3,333 (0.3 per 1,000)
Autism rate in 2003 - 1 in 769 (1.3 per 1,000)
Autism prevalence increased 333% in 10 years.

Do they think it's a genetic epidemic?