03.17.08
Autism continues to increase in California: more evidence that thimerosal is not the cause
Previously, autism data from California were published, demonstrating an increase in incidence roughly coinciding with an increase in the number of thimerosal-containing vaccines given to infants. This was interpreted as supporting the notion that thimerosal in vaccines was a cause of autism. Researchers from the California Department of Public Health recently published (Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2008;65(1):19-24) newer data, which shows that autism reports are still increasing rapidly in California, even more than five years after thimerosal is out of infant vaccines there. In addition, they show that both the increase in the absolute number of cases and the rate of increase of autism exceeded the increase in any other reportable developmental disability in the same age range and time period. The latter suggests that the increase isn’t due to a general increase in recognition and reporting of developmental delays.
It’s tragic to see that autism continues to increase. An explicit contradiction to the original indirect evidence that thimerosal was the culprit in autism, however, is reassuring with regard to the safety of vaccines.
ADDENDUM: I owe an apology to my readers and to parents of children with autism. The wording in my original post (since edited) was extremely insensitive and did not accurately convey my intent. I take no pleasure in the increasing rate of autism. I am happy to see evidence that the vaccines we’ve been administering are not at fault. Clearly, some people feel differently, despite a growing mass of evidence to that effect.
Several readers have posted strongly worded comments which I’ve not displayed for two reasons. Some include personal epithets which are not a useful form of dialogue. All include references to various studies purporting to prove an association between thimerosal and autism. These studies don’t address the epidemiological study I refer to in this post, or this approach to the question at all, and thus don’t seem germane. I will probably be writing more about this topic in the near future–stay tuned.