No offense to anyone here, but in my humble, yet growing medical opinion, there is (other than religious) ABSOLUTELY no reason not to vaccinate your children on schedule. I say this as current medical student and future pediatrician.
An admittedly cursory search through abstracts on PubMed with the search term "Immunizations AND autism" yielded no studies in any medical journals which could establish a significant link between immunization status and autism spectrum disorders. Until a study can show that the increased incidence of autism isn't due to increased awareness, increased availability of early intervention services, and a broadening of diagnostic categories, the prudent course of action will continue to be the full course of vaccinations. Seriously, I've had parents come in literally begging for a diagnosis of autism so they can get special services. And yet their children weren't even borderline and acted completely appropriate. This is also not a case of pharmaceutical companies trying to make a profit. Vaccines are much cheaper than courses of treatments for any of the diseases that they prevent. That's the whole point - vaccines not only prevent death but are more cost-efficient than treating the actual disease. For example, the Gardasil vaccines which, are the most expensive vaccines I currently know of, run more than $300 for the sequence...that's A LOT cheaper than having to deal with treatment of cervical cancer! If vaccines weren't cheaper than effective treatments for a disease, it would make zero sense to give the vaccines.
If you're worried about the number of shots your child gets at one time - I can understand that a little better, however there are new combo vaccines being developed by the pharmaceutical companies at this point which I believe are in Phase III clinical trials with good results.
I can't stress it enough that vaccines are important. When sick children present with incomplete vaccination histories, it completely alters the way in which pediatricians think, and leads to decisions that cost families emotionally, physically, and financially due to having to prepare for the worst case scenario.
Finally, Mark Twain said
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"Be careful what you read in health texts, you may die of a misprint".
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I can't stress this enough when you are doing research on the internet. Please, please, please consider the source, not only for bias but also accuracy, completeness and trustworthiness.
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