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The nobel prize winner who discovered the structure of DNA, James Watson, agrees with you. And he is researching the genetic factors, along with a lot of other scientists, partly because he has a son who is autistic.
Every peer-reviewed, scientific study that's been done since Wakefield published this nonsense has proven NO link between autism and vaccination, MMR, or thimerosol. Places that had no vaccination at all because of economic factors (certain cities in Japan) had the same rise in autism as everywhere else.
Autism is genetic. I know people don't want to believe that because they think of it as some horrible stigma that might taint their family line... but it is genetic. Twin studies have shown that: when one twin is autistic, it's 90% chance that the other will be too. And in the cases where the other twin isn't autistic, that other twin has a 30% increased chance of learning disabilities and other neurological differences. There are other very strong indicators of the heritability of autism.
But, people who get their pseudoscientific "opinions" from such brilliant researchers as Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey won't believe the scientists who actually follow the scientific method. They'd rather believe in conspiracies. You want a conspiracy - how about the conspiracy between Wakefield, the lawyer who paid him to lie about his findings, and the competitors to the standard vaccines who paid the lawyer? Wakefield's *co-authors* requested their names to be removed from the paper because they found out he'd been falsifying his data! The journal where he published formally retracted the paper. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/7138994/Lancet-formally-retracts-Wakefield-MMR-research.html
My *opinion* is that people are idiots for not vaccinating their kids and that Wakefield should be hung by the neck until dead for endangering so many children's lives - but, like I said, that's my opinion. That's not a scientific finding. The findings on autism being heritable and on there being *NO LINK* between autism and vaccination are not my opinion - they are scientifically-backed findings that have been replicated time and again, across the world.
If you don't want to vaccinate, or you want to spread out the vaccinations, that's your choice. But don't decide based on a bogus link to autism that was discredited AND disproven thoroughly.
The nobel prize winner who discovered the structure of DNA, James Watson, agrees with you. And he is researching the genetic factors, along with a lot of other scientists, partly because he has a son who is autistic.
Every peer-reviewed, scientific study that's been done since Wakefield published this nonsense has proven NO link between autism and vaccination, MMR, or thimerosol. Places that had no vaccination at all because of economic factors (certain cities in Japan) had the same rise in autism as everywhere else.
Autism is genetic. I know people don't want to believe that because they think of it as some horrible stigma that might taint their family line... but it is genetic. Twin studies have shown that: when one twin is autistic, it's 90% chance that the other will be too. And in the cases where the other twin isn't autistic, that other twin has a 30% increased chance of learning disabilities and other neurological differences. There are other very strong indicators of the heritability of autism.
But, people who get their pseudoscientific "opinions" from such brilliant researchers as Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey won't believe the scientists who actually follow the scientific method. They'd rather believe in conspiracies. You want a conspiracy - how about the conspiracy between Wakefield, the lawyer who paid him to lie about his findings, and the competitors to the standard vaccines who paid the lawyer? Wakefield's *co-authors* requested their names to be removed from the paper because they found out he'd been falsifying his data! The journal where he published formally retracted the paper. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/7138994/Lancet-formally-retracts-Wakefield-MMR-research.html
My *opinion* is that people are idiots for not vaccinating their kids and that Wakefield should be hung by the neck until dead for endangering so many children's lives - but, like I said, that's my opinion. That's not a scientific finding. The findings on autism being heritable and on there being *NO LINK* between autism and vaccination are not my opinion - they are scientifically-backed findings that have been replicated time and again, across the world.
If you don't want to vaccinate, or you want to spread out the vaccinations, that's your choice. But don't decide based on a bogus link to autism that was discredited AND disproven thoroughly.