Vaccine Cleared Again as Autism Culprit

Yet another panel of scientists has found no evidence that a popular vaccine causes autism. But despite the scientists’ best efforts, their report is unlikely to have any impact on the frustrating debate about the safety of these crucial medicines.
“The M.M.R. vaccine doesn’t cause autism, and the evidence is overwhelming that it doesn’t,” Dr. Ellen Wright Clayton, the chairwoman of the panel, assembled by the Institute of Medicine, said in an interview. She was referring to a combination against measles, mumps and rubella that has long been a focus of concern from some parents’ groups.

Parents Unconvinced of Vaccine Safety

No matter how many times the medical community reassures parents that vaccines are safe and necessary to prevent life-threatening diseases, some people remain unconvinced.
"I believe that herd immunity is a complete myth," says J.B. Handley, co-founder of an autism advocacy organization called Generation Rescue that is critical of the way vaccinations are carried out in the U.S. "It's a tactic used to scare the public."
Handley, a father of three in Portland, Ore., has an 8-year-old son with autism. He believes that the cocktail of immunizations his son received when he was 13 months old is to blame

The Dangers of Anti-Vaccine Movement

Q&A from Time.com with Dr. Paul Offit provides some perhaps much-needed perspective on this entire vaccines issue.


Childhood inoculations protect us against deadly infectious diseases like measles, whooping cough and polio. But they are also the source of near constant conflict — most recently in the Feb. 22 Supreme Court decision which ruled in favor of a vaccine manufacturer over the family of a disabled girl. In recent years, some parents have begun to refuse vaccination for their children, influenced by fringe activists who believe it causes autism, brain damage and other ailments. Dr. Paul Offit, Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases and the Director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, has seen the consequences: preventable childhood deaths, community outbreaks of outdated diseases and misinformed, angry parents. In conversation with TIME and in his recent book, Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All, Offit describes the origins of our squeamishness with inoculation and why we should fight against it.

Vaccine Consent Measure Revives Autism Debate

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Earlier this month, the British medical journal The Lancet retracted a famous study that linked vaccines with autism.
Public health experts, worried over an uptick in diseases like mumps and measles in children who weren't vaccinated, breathed a sigh of relief. Numerous studies over several years have found no link between vaccines and autism.
But now, an echo of that controversy is back in the Florida Legislature, and pediatricians are moving quickly to silence it.
Sen. Jeremy Ring, a member of a governor's task force on autism spectrum disorders, and Rep. Kevin Ambler, R-Tampa, are sponsoring legislation that would require parents to give signed consent before their children get vaccines that are needed to enter school.
But opponents say signed consent -- generally reserved for surgery and other major treatments -- will only create needless anxiety. Under federal law, parents must be given written information about vaccines.