That's an excellent article, well-researched and reasonably neutral in its approach and presentation.
The thing that individual families find hard to accept (and I would also if I were in an affected family) is that the way you get at an issue like this is through large epidemiological studies. Those studies do not bear out the assertion.
As for the thimerosal issue, the article points out on page 3 that thimerosal is no longer present in any recommended childhood vaccines save the inactivated influenza vaccine—and hasn’t been, beyond trace amounts, since 2001—but rates of autism are not declining. That could NOT be the case if thimerosal was actually the causative gent.
I will concede that it's possible that there is some group which is genetically / developmentally pre-disposed toward reactions to vaccines. However, that's not a reason not to vaccinate. As the article points out on page 2, the odds still strongly favor vaccination:
"The CDC estimates that thanks to vaccines, we have reduced morbidity by 99 percent or more for smallpox, diphtheria, measles, polio, and rubella. Averaged over the course of the 20th century, these five diseases killed nearly 650,000 people annually. They now kill fewer than 100. That is not to say vaccines are perfectly safe; in rare cases they can cause serious, well-known adverse side effects. But what researchers consider unequivocally unsafe is to avoid them. As scientists at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health recently found while investigating whooping cough outbreaks in and around Michigan, “geographic pockets of vaccine exemptors pose a risk to the whole community.'”
In fact, those who don't vaccinate children pose a public health risk to people around them. It's that kind of behavior that allows some diseases to linger rather than being suppressed or wiped out. note this comment from page 3:
"Even before the recent spike in attention to thimerosal, members of the public were alarmingly skeptical of vaccines. In a 1999 survey, 25 percent felt their children’s immune systems could be harmed by too many vaccinations, and 23 percent shared the sentiment that children receive more vaccinations than are healthy. There is every reason to think that those numbers—gathered before the vaccine-autism controversy reached anything like its current intensity—have risen since."
For some reason, people act stupid. They think that because no kid in the neighborhood has whopping cough, they don't need to vaccinate. Not so - that condition is caused because the LAST generation of kids were all vaccinated. Those parents have the responsibility both to their kids and to the NEXT generation to get all their vaccinations.
There is a huge number of environmental factors which might contribute to an increase in autism - everything from formaldehyde in paneling and carpet - to smog - to children traveling with parents and being exposed to substances they've never before encountered. As I've said before, more research is needed - but the research already done says that looking at vaccines is looking in the wrong direction. It's time to look at other factors.
I realize that if it happens in your family, the incidence to you is 100%. But that's also true for teen suicide, drunk driving, cancer and lots of other bad stuff. The individual case neither proves nor supports the general assertion.
