Do vaccines have a chance to cause autism? Or is it just a correlation, but not causation situation?
The causes of autism are not well understood, so it is hard to say. OTOH autism is not caused by mercury poisoning or anything like that, so the stuff about thimerosal in vaccines is anti-vaxx BS.
If you slice and dice your figures enough, you can come up with all kinds of apparent correlations. You then need to examine them to see if it is a real correlation, or just statistical anomaly. The story that Brownstein is trying to push is like that - there was one study that found that African American male children seemed to have higher incidence of autism correlated to vaccines. Since there doesn't seem to be any biological explanation as to why only that group should be affected, it appears to be statistical fluctuation. If you flip a coin often enough it might come up tails ten times in a row, but that isn't caused by anything. IYSWIM. And there are lots and lots (LOTS and LOTS) of studies that find no correlation between vaccines and autism. I've linked to a few of them.
The issue is partly driven by two facts - most vaccines are delivered to children who are just beginning to socialize, and autism starts to manifest at about the same time. So people are misled into thinking that the symptoms of autism are caused by the vaccine.
Vaccines don't cause autism. They do prevent all kinds of harm from diseases that should no longer affect children. Measles, for instance - I am old enough that the vaccine was not available, I got the disease from my sister, and as a result I have partial hearing loss in one ear.
Vaccines do not cause autism. Unvaccinated populations suffer from autism at the same rates as vaccinated ones, reduction in vaccination rates do not change autism rates, and the apparent rise in autism is due to increased awareness and diagnosis of the syndrome.
Vaccines do not cause autism.
Regards,
Shodan
