Court Ruling on MMR and Autism

http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/02/12/autism.vaccines/?iref=mpstoryview

Federal courts ruled today that there is no link between the MMR vaccine and Autism. Something that is easily proven if you look at the science on record for the vaccine and stop listening to people like Jenny McCarthy (even as hot as she is) who is not educated in chemistry enough to know the difference between anti-freeze and preservatives.

For example, they either ignorantly or willfully confuse ethylene glycol (antifreeze, which is not in vaccines) with polyethylene glycol (a polymer of ethylene glycol, a chemically different compound which is in some vaccines and is also in a number of skin creams, toothpaste, and medications, including laxatives) or ethyl ether (a flammable liquid that was one of the first anaesthetics but has long since been supplanted by much safer agents) with polyethylene glycol pisooctylphenyl ether (Triton X-100, a kind of soap/detergent).  –http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=139

In response to a comment on Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s blog:

This is why: Have you ever taken a medication for High Blood Pressure or an infection, have you read the information packet that comes with the medication. All medications have a risk for a possible side effect. So why do they continue to say that the vaccines have no possible side effects, I find that hard to believe. No amount of money will give me back my child so I will never put my sons name behind a law suit.
All I want is for them to find a way that no other parent will have to go thru what my daughter and I go thru on a day to day basis. Having a family member with autism is not an easy life.
Somebody has to stop this. If not for my family but for the family who is today being blessed with the most precious gift of all a son or a daughter.
Thank You For Letting Me Have My Say On This Matter
Proud Mom,
Gloria Rosario

I wrote:

The reason that they can say that the vaccines don’t cause this is because in no trial EVER have there been a case of a child developing Autism as a result of these vaccines.

See your High Blood Pressure medicine went through medical trial and when it was doing so there were a few patients that developed whatever side effects are listed that information packet. It might have been as little as one person (depending on the statistics of the trial), but the side effects were deemed low risk in comparison to the reward of the medicine.

In the case of the MMR vaccine there have been no _credible_ results that show that there are Autism effects from these vaccines. This is after the original trials and when the first poorly done research came out, they were rigorously retested for effect and found to have none.

I would also like to say that I am sorry for your child’s condition and I wish that there was something to do for them that would correct the problems. My sister has a mild form of Autism so I have a small idea of how trying it can be.

With that being said, the diseases that these vaccines are preventing are _FAR_ _FAR_ worse for extremely large numbers of the population. EVEN if there was an autism trigger in these (and there isn’t, there just isn’t), in my opinion the millions of lives that the vaccines save outweigh the costs of having less than 1% of the children taking them develop Autism. I am sorry to say that, but I feel it is the truth.
If all parents were forced to watch a video of what these diseases do to children before they were allowed to not give their child the vaccines, the number of parents that choose to not vaccinate their children would be almost zero. These are horrible horrible diseases, and to willingly allow them to have a chance to _KILL_ your child should be a form of child abuse.

I really do feel that this is the truth.  You don’t have to go any farther than the wikipedia articles on these diseases to find out how awful they are.

Measles

Complications with measles are relatively common, ranging from relatively mild and less serious diarrhea, to pneumonia and encephalitis (subacute sclerosing panencephalitis), corneal ulceration leading to corneal scarring^[3] Complications are usually more severe amongst adults who catch the virus.

The fatality rate from measles for otherwise healthy people in developed countries is 3 deaths per thousand cases. ^[4] In underdeveloped nations with high rates of malnutrition and poor healthcare, fatality rates have been as high as 28%. ^[4]In immunocompromised patients, the fatality rate is approximately 30 percent.^[5]

Mumps

Painful swelling of the salivary glands (classically the parotid gland) is the most typical presentation.^[2] Painful testicular swelling and rash may also occur. The symptoms are generally not severe in children. In teenage males and men, complications such as infertility or subfertility are more common, although still rare in absolute terms.

Known complications of mumps include:

• Infection of other organ systems
• Sterility in men (this is quite rare, and mostly occurs in older men)
• Mild forms of meningitis (rare, 40% of cases occur without parotid swelling)
• Encephalitis (very rare, rarely fatal)
• Profound (91 dB or more) but rare sensorineural hearing loss, uni- or bilateral
• Pancreatitis manifesting as abdominal pain and vomiting
• Oophoritis (inflammation of ovaries) but fertility is rarely affected.
• Though rare, spontaneous abortion can occur if infection happens in the first trimester of pregnancy.^[16]

Rubella

During the epidemic in the US between 1962-1965, Rubella virus infections during pregnancy were estimated to have caused 30,000 still births and 20,000 children to be born impaired or disabled as a result of CRS.^[19][20] Universal immunisation producing a high level of herd immunity is important in the control of epidemics of rubella.^[21]

These things are awful and it is amazing to live in a country where they have been predominately wiped out.  It is too scary though to think that people who have no real knowledge about these diseases and their horrible effects are going around and telling people that they shouldn’t immunize their children because of one poorly done, lawsuit funded, discredited study that has since be refuted numerous times.