Noble Scoble and a Teachable Moment

by Karoli on May 6, 2007 · 3 comments

To Robert Scoble: I appreciated your blog post about autistic children, and know that just by blogging it, awareness will be raised. However, I really hope that you’ll do some thinking and research around this contention/belief:

He personally believes that something about the vaccinations that we’re giving our kids triggers it, or plays a role. He understands that this is a controversial belief, but he says he noticed a major regression after his son had three vaccinations in one day.

This needs some counterbalance to it. I suggest Liz Ditz’ excellent collection of blog posts and links related to autism and junk science relating to autism. After visiting Liz’ place, visit Dr. Flea’s autism collection for more links debunking the vaccination/autism connection, and take a stop by Dr. Parker’s blog for even more reasons not to believe that vaccines cause autism, and some reasons why more kids are diagnosed as autistic.

With regard to the connection your friend is making between his son’s regression post-vaccination and the vaccination itself, I’d suggest that there are other, more obvious reasons for that. Autistic kids can also have sensory integration disorders, and vaccines are invasive by their very nature. What causes us temporary pain can cause far more serious and deep pain in an autistic child. There are also reactions to the vaccine itself which will cause low-grade fever and malaise. Although research is still being done in this field, some theorize that autism gives rise to an intensification of every sense. If that is the case, then something that makes a ‘normal’ (for lack of a better term) child miserable could make an autistic child downright impossible. See where I’m going with this?

Robert, you might wonder why I’m making such a big deal out of this. It’s because you and Maryam are expecting and I do not want you to even consider for a flash of a second NOT vaccinating your child. So please, do your research and learn about what scientists have proven in double-blind clinical studies about vaccinations and autism.

Tags: vaccinations, thimerosol, autism, learning disabilities, Robert Scoble, autism cause

Tagged as: Health, Parenting

http://lizditz.typepad.com Liz Ditz

Thanks for the link. Boy, the mercury-true-believers just got a big boost from Scoble, didn’t they?

And I would like your readers to know about Orac’s indefatigable work on debunking the putative link between vaccination (mercury) and autism:
http://lizditz.typepad.com Liz Ditz

ok, so html does not seem to be permitted.

Index to Orac’s work:

And a starter quote:

Indeed. I first discovered the antivaccination lunacy that is fueled by the scientifically untenable hypothesis that the mercury in thimerosal in childhood vaccines is a major cause of autism back in 2005. You may recall that around then the mercury militia (as I and others like to call antimercury warriors like Mark and David Geier who don’t let lack of evidence or research ethics stop them from pursuing their bête noire, even if they have to force the evidence to show what they want it to. Sadly, dupes like Robert F. Kennedy (for whom I’ve totally lost all respect) fall for this, hook, line, and sinker, as do credulous reporters like Dan Olmsted (who’s busy parroting canards about how the Amish “don’t get autism” and how alternative medical practitioners in Chicago who don’t vaccinate claim on the basis of zero objective evidence that unvaccinated children don’t get autism), and, of course, David Kirby, the less said about whom, given his guzzling of the Kool Aid in his book Evidence of Harm was a major force for popularizing the “thimerosal causes autism” pseudoscience, the better.

The question of whether pseudoscientific doctors like Dr. Mark Geier feed the belief in parents of autistic children that vaccines caused their children’s autism or whether the belief that has spread among these parents, desperate to find a cause for their children’s condition, has attracted such pseudoscientists, some of whom see money to be made serving as “expert witnesses” in litigation alleging “vaccine injury” is very much a “chicken-or-the-egg” sort of a question. However, there is no doubt that they feed upon each other. Similarly there’s no doubt that a not insignificant number of parents have become so convinced that mercury in vaccines cause their child’s autism, despite all the epidemiological and scientific evidence that has failed to find a link between mercury and autism, that it seems that nothing will convince them otherwise. Indeed, the belief that mercury causes autism has led parents to fall for outright quackery like chelation therapy to “remove” the nonexistent mercury, plus a cottage industry of laboratories that exist to provide “evidence” that their autistic children have elevated mercury, even though it is a procedure that can result in death.
http://drumsnwhistles.com karoli

Hi Liz,

Spammers have caused me to really hammer down the number of links in a comment. I should probably make that clearer in the comment template so there’s not confusion. Anyway, I’ve let it out of the spam jail and thanks so much for posting it — I can’t believe I overlooked Orac!