Vaccines Don't Cause Autism

 
David Kirby is one of the most prominent proponents of the claim that autism is really mercury poisoning and it's caused by childhood vaccines. This isn't my field but I can recognize woo when I see it. Fortunately for the side of rationality, there are some smart people who know how to deal with the purveyors of ignorance. One of these is Orac at Respectful Insolence.

The US government recently settled a court case that appears to concede a role for vaccines in autism. Orac dissects that claim in a really excellent posting, David Kirby and the government "concession that vaccines cause autism": The incredible shrinking causation claim. Here's the bottom line ...
Orac is the nom de blog of a humble pseudonymous surgeon/scientist with an ego just big enough to delude himself that someone, somewhere might actually give a rodent's posterior about his miscellaneous verbal meanderings, but just barely small enough to admit to himself that few will. (Continued here, along with a DISCLAIMER that you should read before reading any medical discussions here.)¹

One thing that you should remember about Kirby's pretty rhetorical flourishes and speculation. It's all there to distract you from the utter failure of science to support the original claims of the mercury militia, namely that mercury in vaccines was the cause for most cases of autism, or, as Generation Rescue puts it, that autism is a "misdiagnosis for mercury poisoning." Multiple large and well-designed epidemiological studies have utterly failed to find a link between mercury in vaccines or vaccines in general and autism. Indeed, the idea that vaccines cause autism is the incredible shrinking hypothesis. It's gone from confident claims that mercury or vaccines cause nearly all cases of autism to a lot of handwaving based on one case conceded by the government in which the plaintiff had a rare mitochondrial disease which may have been aggravated by vaccines plus multiple bouts of inflammation due to otitis media, a far cry from previous cries blaming vaccines for an "autism tsunami." Is it possible that in rare cases vaccines can aggravate a preexisting condition and lead to injury that resembles autism or ASD? Despite all the studies cited by Kirby in is speculations, what we really have is one documented case of a child in which childhood vaccines probably exacerbated a preexisting mitochondrial disease who later went on to meet the diagnostic criteria for mild autism; so it's possible. It's also a far cry from the original claims of the mercury militia. Don't forget that. Also don't forget that, no matter what new physiologic alterations or abnormalities are found in autistic children, antivaccinationists always--and I mean always--manage to find a rationale to link it to vaccines, no matter how tortured that rationale is.

This is a serious issue. It's part of a much bigger picture including the attack on science by creationists. The issue is not only science vs. religion: it's rationalism vs. superstition. David Kirby is just as dangerous to the cause of science as Jonathan Wells of any or the other creationists.

Other Links: Rebecca on Skepchick: Vaccines don’t cause autism. Okay?

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1. This is one of those times when I refer to an anonymous blogger because, as Orac himself admits, his identity is an open secret.