But in addition to this whole sorry thing leading to parents not getting their kids vaccinated, it feeds into the scam artists and quacks that are feeding on the panic most parents feel when they first learn their child has an autistic spectrum disorder, and unfortuinately too many parents never quite recover from enough to get some perspective. The ‘cure’ people feed on that, promising to ‘cure’ these children of being who they are with treatments that are unpleasant at the very best, and lethal at the worst, and none of them will actually cure autism. One five year old boy died from the affects of chelation treatments that were supposed to remove the mercury from his system and ‘cure’ him of autism because of this panic over vaccinations, and I have had this same ‘cure’ pushed at me so many times I’m getting ready to bite the next person’s head off.

So, yeah, I am all for raising awareness of the quackery and stupidity behind this.

I am the owner of Autism Today. a large web portal dedicated to the latest news about autism.

Your article about Autism and Vaccines is very fair and well researched.

I especially was glad to see you inclusion about the most recent Canadian population study.

As I understood the article she sent me to read on the subject (lost now, alas), the vaccine itself wasn’t the problem, but rather something that was done to it to make it keep longer

That’s undoubtedly thimerosal. Thimerosal’s derived from mercury, and it was used to preserve vaccines for mass production and longer storage. Thimerosal worked really well for that purpose, but there was a lot of question about whether or not it caused autism. Studies like the one I first referenced have shown that there is likely no link between thimerosal and autism. It’s becoming a moot point, though, as thimerosal’s been phased out of kid’s vaccines since 2000.

Life is risk. Nothing is totally safe, and the best thing you can do is play the numbers. In some things (like seat belts and vaccinations) given no further information that I’m unique, the numbers seem to me overwhelmingly in favor of using the protection that’s offered.

Interestingly, Joyce’s friend has past experience that could be interpreted to indicate uniqueness-by-genetics in the case of vaccinations. The hard part is distinguishing true information from plain old bad luck, especially with such a small “sample”.