Special court rejects vaccine link to autism

A special court that was created to address 5300 law suits related to the preservative thimerosal ruled on Friday that there is not link between thimerosal (used in vaccines) and autism. This ruling mirrored a ruling 13 months ago by the same court that found no link the MMR vaccine and autism.

The federal court was created and three special masters heard the cases and ruled that there was no basis to the lawsuits. This ruling will be appealed, although both legal and medical experts believe that this case and the previous ruling 13 months ago will be upheld.

Given the data coming out of the MIND Institute at UC Davis it seems a more promising angle on the question about the dramatic rise in autistic children may be the age of the mother. The MIND study showed that women who are 40 years old are 50% more likely to have a child with autism than a woman who is 25 years old. This is a very powerful study because of the sample size (4.9 million births) over a 10 year period in California.

With respect to the vaccine argument, I have no doubt that there are many parents who saw a dramatic change in their child's behavior following a vaccination. The question that always puzzled me -- and still remains a puzzle  -- is even if vaccines were implicated in certain cases there would have to be another variable in the mix that would explain why millions of children world wide have received vaccinations without developing autism.

In other words, why did certain children develop autism as a result of being vaccinated and why did other children (the vast majority) did not. Any thoughts? 

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