The Medical Thread

[AOII Angel]

Originally Posted by cheerfulgreek

Oh dear GOD!!!!! I am so embarrassed!! Rubella, Rubella, Rubella!! I seriously thought it was "rumbella". (giggling) Thanks? Well, you guys knew what I meant. Right?

o.k. you guys may be right, there is little evidence that vaccines cause autism, but it is possible that vaccines trigger autism in a small subset of children, but if so, that subset has yet to be identified. A study really was done in the 90s that investigated 12 children, and the study did reveal that symptoms of autism did emerge shortly after the MMR vaccine was given to them.

If it can't be proven that vaccines play a role in the increase of autism, can someone explain why the rates of autism continue to rise? Do you think genetic factors play a role? I honestly don't believe that genetic influences alone can account for such an astronomical rise in a disorder's prevalence over a matter of just a few years. Could environmental factors be a potential explanation? AKA_Monet mentioned something about environmental factors in an earlier post. We were discussing a different topic, but could this also fall under environmental factors?

You have to be very careful when evaluating research on this topic since the main proponent of this theory was revealed to have falsified his data. Re-evaluation revealed no causation.