General Medicine

» Alicia Mae Prater - Do you believe in a connection?

Actually a study from California released in January showed that removing thimerosal from vaccines has had NO effect on the number autism diagnoses.

I think the preservatives in vaccines are an issue that should be looked at, but studies have repeatedly found that the MMR vaccine (the one believed to be the culprit) causes no biological mechanism that would account for the development of neurological problems.

Since we give vaccines around the same age that autism symptoms appear then there will seem to be a correlation, but I don't think there is. If anything, the new definitions of autistic spectrum disorders are so broad that they're being overdiagnosed.

The most recent decision to financially award the family of a Georgia girl from the "vaccine victim fund" was because she had a mitochondrial disorder that was aggravated by the vaccines she was given. I think pediatricians need to be better educated so they can in turn educate parents about the risks of vaccines, particularly for high risk kids. We've become complacent about our health, just expecting everything to work!