Autism and MMR, report finally puts doubts to bed?

[adl]

I found an interesting article on the BBC website this morning and haven't seen it mentioned here yet.

As this is my second post I can't add a URL but the title on the BBC site is 'Autism rates back MMR jab safety'.

While I've long been convinced that there was little evidence to support the MMR/autism link and recent studies on both sides of the pond seem to have reinforced that view, this report seems particularly conclusive. Helpfully it's very easy to understand and explain, not that that will help convince many doubters. The only issue I see (as I've yet to read the original) is the small sample size.

Thoughts?

[DrS]

As this is my second post I can't add a URL but the title on the BBC site is 'Autism rates back MMR jab safety'.

Linky

Immediate thought is that even with a small sample, an MMR-related increase in autism in children should still be visible if a link had existed.

[Croydon Bob]

not that that will help convince many doubters.

Yes. It's become a religion to some people now. They'll never admit they were wrong and will still be banging on about this in twenty years time. All the evidence will be conspiracy and lies to them.

[jimwalsh]

Yes. It's become a religion to some people now. They'll never admit they were wrong and will still be banging on about this in twenty years time. All the evidence will be conspiracy and lies to them.

There was a very good destruction of all of the autism mmr stuff on science based medicine but they seem to have forgotten to pay their hosting fees and the site is down at the moment.

I summerised it on another bb:

This is a very interesting article about two doctors who have been at the forefront of pushing the mercury autism link.

"they conjured up a “hypothesis” that testosterone somehow bound to mercury, making it harder to chelate. They even claimed that testosterone binds to mercury, leading to a complex that can’t pass the blood-brain barrier and keeps mercury in the body, a complex that the quackery known as chelation therapy won’t chelate (more on that later). They claimed that autistic children were really undergoing premature puberty and had too much testosterone, which was binding to mercury and somehow enhancing its toxicity."

They then set up a protocol for treatment which involved treating autistic children with puberty suppressing drugs at the personal cost of many 10s of thousands of dollars to vulnerable desperate parents.

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=503

[FarSideOfTheMoon]

Give them a couple of days to explain why this latest study is flawed. There's bound to be a reason.

[PhysBang]

The reason it is flawed is obvious: it only looked at the MMR vaccine. Clearly there is something wrong with one component of the vaccine or with vaccines in general. Actually, the study is perfect: it shows that vaccines of the past also caused autism. (I don't actually believe this, of course.)

[Pebble]

The sample size was not that small. 7500 with a prevalence of 1% gives a 95% confidence that the actual result lies between 0.77% and 1.23%.

I suppose one could argue that upto a 23% increase in prevalence has occurred. Alternately, one could argue that they are measuring different things by inlcuding Asperger's syndrome.

[tolman]

Aren't there sufficient people failing to get their children immunised to allow a large enough study to be done comparing the vaccinated children of a given age with the unvaccinated?

Similarly, if MMR actually did cause a significant amount of autism, then should not a decline in early autism diagnoses have become evident fairly soon after Wakefield's scare and a fall in immunisation rates?