Is There Research?

[ktmama]

Hi mamas! I don't frequent this forum much, but I do know where to come for the best info! FWIW, neither of my kids are vaccinated at all, but I'm not what I would call a anti-vax activist. We made our decisions when our kids were born and were comfortable with them and kind of moved on.

But lately I've been thinking about the issue of the autism/vax connection and wondering if there's been any research done trying to ID autism rates with kids who are exclusively unvaccinated, for comparison to the vaccinated population. If not, why not? For sure it would be easy to find these kids, particularly in some religious communities and other obvious places (like my town). Can anyone point me toward some info so I can educate myself?

TIA!

[alegna]

There are no large scale studies with a totally unvaccinated component.

Among other things, the unvaxed group is always self-selected since the medical community considers it unethical to not vaccinate as part of a study.

-Angela

[ktmama]

Thanks, Angela. I'm having trouble understanding this, though:

Among other things, the unvaxed group is always self-selected since the medical community considers it unethical to not vaccinate as part of a study.

Are you saying that that's what researchers SAY or are you saying that this is a legitimate reason for not studying a certain group? Gosh, it seems that there are plenty of people participating in "unethical" behavior that researchers study all the time. Maybe you're saying to conduct a truly random study with a real control group, they would have to withhold vax, something they consider unethical. OK, that makes sense to me, but I would think they could manage a random sample from the entire universe of unvaxed kids out there - again, I think they do this pretty regularly.

[alegna]

It could *kind of* be done. They would have to take a group of unvaxed, record all possible variables (type of diet, socioeconomic levels, living situations, other health choices, other health factors, etc) and then create a vaxed group that *MATCHED* that data to have a valid comparison.

-Angela

[lirpasirhc]

this study is in survey form but claims to follow the CDC best-practice guidelines. it has a completely unvaxed and vaxed group. it looked at neurological and autoimmune disorders - both were higher in the vaxed group.

[Ophelia]

Yeah, the Generation Rescue study is about the only thing out there right now. We also have:

http://www.homefirst.com/autism_dan_olmstead.html

I know I read somewhere also, that quite a while ago a government agency requested that a study of vaxed/not vaxed be done, but it has never been done. I thought I had the info bookmarked but cannot find it. Why do you think it has never been done, what are they afraid to find?

[Marnica]

Originally Posted by Ophelia

I know I read somewhere also, that quite a while ago a government agency requested that a study of vaxed/not vaxed be done, but it has never been done. I thought I had the info bookmarked but cannot find it. Why do you think it has never been done, what are they afraid to find?

Can you imagine if a study like this was ever funded by the government and actually done?? We all know what it would show and then the powers that be would have to look at the issues and this would ultimately be very bad for their bottom line. It's about $$$$$$; It's always about $$$$$

[xmasbaby7]

Originally Posted by Marnica

Can you imagine if a study like this was ever funded by the government and actually done?? We all know what it would show and then the powers that be would have to look at the issues and this would ultimately be very bad for their bottom line. It's about $$$$$$; It's always about $$$$$

Actually there is a bill to fund this study in the house, introduced by Caroline Mahoney (D-NY) and it got several bipartisan sponsors.

It will take lots of lobbying by parents like us to get this bill passed in the House, though. It strikes me that it would be even harder to get passed in the Senate.

I went to DC and lobbied my congressman and he signed on to the bill.

Everyone here should do the same!

I keep wishing there was a parent organization who would organize the effort to do this. I can't take it on at this time. Anyone know of one?

[interested]

One thing to keep in mind is that the biggest reason that studies like these are not being done is just that - that studies have not been done. While the studies deemed fundable by NIH (who pretty much fund all federal biomedical research) are ostensibly NOT biased for pharmaceutical/corporate/outside interests (I say ostensibly because there are some issues with individual reviewers owning stock in biomedical companies, which NIH has actually recently prohibited), they do rely heavily upon already-published study findings as justification for funding a project. If there is very little research that has been done in the past, you (I!) will have trouble getting funded because you cannot provide evidence that there is a *reason* that you expect to find any interesting results. So you're not funded, and you don't make it possible for future researchers to get funded.

It's a really unfortunate cycle, but one that is not unique to vaccination issues or (necessarily) due to inherent bias.

Ramble over...sorry. It's a very au courant problem in my life.

[Purple Cat]

Read Evidence of Harm by David Kirby. He discusses the studies done to date, and the conferences in which things like "how can we change the data to get rid of the autism link" was discussed by the CDC. He also talks about studies done of the biological-link between vaccines/thimersol (mercury poisoning and presumably other heavy metals still in vaccines) and autism. Most studies are epidemiological and look at relationships between vaccines and autism at the macro-level. But such linkage is notoriously difficult to prove. Think of cancer clusters in people who live on toxic dump sites. Epidemiological studies show no link. But gee if 13 kids in one block have leukemia and they live on a toxic dump, you kinda have to wonder . . .