The Measeles, Mumps & Rubella vaccination debate continues to rage on. The New Scientist has an article about a Japanese study that adds to the mystery. The graph above is from a Japanese study that found that the rate of autism actually INCREASED after the MMR vaccine was dropped. Japan stopped using the MMR vaccine in 1993 after reports that the anti-mumps component was causing meningitis.
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
'Some environmental factors' are 'clearly' causing the increases...but they don't say which. I love the 'other experts' who disagree saying it's just the result of better diagnosis...ask any educator, any psychologist in the field, anyone who actually works with children and they'll tell you point blank we're looking at the leading edges of a tsunami of children on the spectrum.
adam
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