Realizing that thousands of babies in Italy had been given whooping cough vaccine containing thimerasol in the early 1990s, Italian scientists saw the chance to look within this group for autism, and a possible correlation with infant vaccination. The results, reported earlier this week in the journal, Pediatrics, found only small differences in 2 of 24 brain function measurements taken in 1,403 of these children ten years after their vaccinations. Unlike past autism studies, this recent Italian study randomized the assignment of the test subjects to rule out chance factors such as education or poverty, and thus focused exclusively on a link between thimerasol and autism. No such link was found. Moreover, only one of the 1,403 children actually had autism— a mere fraction of the 1 per 150 autism rate claimed to exist in the childhood population of the U.S.A.
Like the Columbia University study published last summer, this new Italian study will be dismissed by advocacy groups like Autism Speaks, because in their ideology-based belief system, “everyone knows the truth, in spite of those special interests who twist the facts to suit their own agenda,” and the definition of a “special interest” is any scientific group who disproves a vaccine-autism link. It’s like trying to convince a hard-core JFK conspiracy buff that the Warren Report was accurate. Meanwhile, autistic youngsters wait for someone to find the REAL reason for their affliction.
Also see: Vaccine and Autism (7/2/08), The Truth About Autism? (9/6/08)
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