Vaccinate your kids people!!!! Study after study has proven that vaccines are not causing autism!!! (Forgive the exclamations, but it is something I feel strongly about).
Autism rises despite MMR ban in Japan
Parents need have no more fears about the triple vaccine against measles, mumps and rubella. A study of more than 30,000 children in Japan should put the final nail in the coffin of the claim that the MMR vaccine is responsible for the apparent rise in autism in recent years.
The study shows that in the city of Yokohama the number of children with autism continued to rise after the MMR vaccine was replaced with single vaccines. "The findings are resoundingly negative," says Hideo Honda of the Yokohama Rehabilitation Center.
In the UK, parents panicked and vaccination rates plummeted after gastroenterologist Andrew Wakefield claimed in a 1998 study that MMR might trigger autism, although the study was based on just 12 children and later retracted by most of its co authors.
Soon the vaccine was being blamed for the apparent rise in autism, with Wakefield citing data from California, US (see graph). In some parts of the UK, the proportion of children receiving both doses of the MMR vaccine has dropped to 60%. This has led to a rise in measles outbreaks and fears of an epidemic.
Not one epidemiological study has revealed a link between the vaccine and autism. But until now they have all concentrated on what happened after MMR vaccination for children was introduced. Honda's is the first to look at the autism rate after the MMR vaccine has been withdrawn. Japan withdrew it in April 1993 following reports that the anti-mumps component was causing meningitis (it plans to introduce another version).
Sudden regression
With his colleagues Yasuo Shimizu and Michael Rutter of the Institute of Psychiatry in London, UK, Honda looked at the records of 31,426 children born in one district of Yokohama between 1988 and 1996. The team counted children diagnosed as autistic by the age of 7.
They found the cases continued to multiply after the vaccine withdrawal, ranging from 48 to 86 cases per 10,000 children before withdrawal to 97 to 161 per 10,000 afterwards. The same pattern was seen with a particular form of autism in which children appear to develop normally and then suddenly regress - the form linked to MMR by Wakefield.
The study cannot rule out the possibility that MMR triggers autism in a tiny number of children, as some claim, but it does show there is no large-scale effect. The vaccine "cannot have caused autism in the many children with autism spectrum disorders in Japan who were born and grew up in the era when MMR was not available", Honda concludes.
So if the vaccine is not responsible for the rising rates of autism, what is? "Clearly some environmental factors are causing the increases," says Irva Hertz-Picciotto of the University of California at Davis, US. Other experts disagree, saying the apparent rise could be the result of changing diagnostic criteria and the rising profile of the disorder (New Scientist print edition, 17 February 2001).
Journal reference: Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry (DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-7610.2005.01425.x)
My favorite shot of the day (above). Is he super fly or what?
The final scores. I for Isaac, L for Lisa, Middle G is Grandma (and yes, she did lose to Isaac), UJ is Uncle Joe and the last one is Grandpa, who, of course, killed us all. Isaac was a total pro at bowling. I think we may go more often because he really enjoyed it.
* Isaac had a bad cough, runny nose and my mom noticed his eyes seemed red. Sure enough, he has pinkeye in both eyes. He has to have drops in his eyes three times a day which he hates. The first time it took me, my mom, my dad and my brother Joe holding him down to do it. He has improved slightly since then.
* My parents are definitely moving. Most likely to Connecticut, although there is a possibility Lancaster. This means my life is about to change dramatically in many ways. Most noteably, I will be hurled into the world of "real adulthood" that I have not really been a part of. It's fine, and it's time but it is also scary. Major change soon the horizon.
* The exciting part of it is I am buying a townhouse, most likely a brand new one in Pottstown (off 724). Nothing is finalized yet but it is new construction, three floors 1.5 baths, 1 car garage. I would (of course) be getting the bottom of the barrel model with no options and living (essentially) in the middle of no where. But that is the price I am willing to pay to not live in a glorified shoe box, which is what I would get for the same price anywhere closer to civilization. So it looks I in about June I will be moving to the country! But the downside is it is a lot worrying about budgets and credit scores and down payments and what can I afford and not be eating cat food. Stressful.
More later. How are all of you?
