No! I have two sons, fraternal twins. They received all of their vaccines at exactly the same time and from exactly the same batches. They were born in 1991. One son is autistic and one is not. I hope that eventually we will move on from this dead end snake oil and concentrate on a cure for autism.
Do Vaccines Cause Autism?
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 41 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
Amen. THE best data out there shows no link whatsoever. I’ve seen a number of children die from diseases that are preventable by vaccines. Never have seen a child who I thought got autism from a vaccine.
If you think that vaccines cause autism, it’s not a very good sign that your biggest advocate is someone who made a career out of being a blonde bimbo (Jenny McCarthy). Repeat after me, Jenny: Correlation does not imply causation.
Let’s put this horrible, unscientific idea out of its misery and move on.
I don’t believe in the vaccine/autism link either. My daughter didn’t really show obvious signs of autism until she was past the age of 3 anyway, and she was not diagnosed until age 4. She received all her vaccinations albeit after some careful thought and consideration on our part.
Unfortunately it isn’t only kooks like Jenny McCarthy who try to promote the vaccine-autism link. Apparently there are now some pro-lifers trying to imply that the use of cell lines in vaccine development that originated with children who were aborted decades ago could be linked to autism:
http://illinoisreview.typepad.com/illinoisreview/2010/04/new-stanek-column-vaccines-made-with-fetal-cells-causing-autism.html
Now, I understand completely the opposition to use of ethically tainted vaccines and I fully support the use of alternatives that have no connection to the destruction of human life.
However, to state that these vaccines “use aborted fetal tissue” is in my opinion far overstating the case. It implies that a continuous supply of tissue from aborted babies is required to produce such vaccines, that it creates a “demand” for ongoing abortions, that use of such vaccines makes one directly complicit in abortion, and that actual fetal tissue is injected into one’s body with the vaccine — which is NOT the case at all.
Now, add on top of that the implication that autism is some kind of consequence, or perhaps even a “punishment,” for such complicity in abortion, and I fear the author may have given pro-aborts yet another reason to write off pro-lifers as fear-mongering anti-science kooks.