I can learn from how you systematically and thoroughly approach things - I tend to just muss it all up

Very good breakdown of the situation.

Rahul Parikh ably exemplifies, once again, the astute observation of Upton Sinclair who said, of such a man as The Good Doctor,

"It is hard to get a man to understand something when his livelihood depends on him not understanding it."

Excellent dissection of ill-formed, unscientific arguments promulgated largely by heartbroken parents, searching for any explanation they can find. The parents have my sympathy, but the dangers of eschewing vaccines are monumental.

David Kirby is a wonderful advocate for children with autism. I don't pay much attention to Jenny McCarthy.

I watched my daughter suffer excruciating pain after her vaccine. The next day she was admitted to Westmead Childrens Hospital. She was never the same after it. Stopped reaching milestones, stopped laughing, stopped smiling, stopped eating. She was later diagnosed as autistic. Her metabolic specialists all agree that her autism was caused by her vaccine. She had some kind of predisposition, obviously.

I know my child. I know what she was like before I took her to get immunised, and I know what happened as a direct result of those injections. It has taken us years, the loss of our family home to pay for therapy, and a lot of work to be able to get her to where she is today.

You can say what you like about studies. I've seen it happen with my own eyes. When you deny the connection between vaccines and autism, you deny my daughters pain and suffering and the hell that my ex husband and I have been through to repair the damage that we did.

I know that vaccines are not the only cause of autism, but it is definitely A cause.

Dr. Parikh I sent you a challenge to your email address and received no response as of yet, you are apparently being allowed to say anything you want to the public with out ever being challenged. Surely you can take on a Lil old dad of a vaccine damaged child, on the science. You evidently don't know of the admission of guilt from the Dir. of the CDC, and that is a shame, in this the land of the freedom of the press. You really would think, that the Dir. of the CDC is admitting she was wrong all this time would be news worthy.
But the Pharma dollars have shut off the freedom of the presses.
Just in case you have not read this here it is, and it proves you are lying or I will give you the bennifit of the doubt, you just did not know. Get your head out of the sand, or where ever it is. And learn what you are saying about the parents science, the truth is just the opposite as you have said. please if you can explain this.

“CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding has delivered a potentially explosive report to the powerful House Appropriations Committee, in which she admits to a startling string of errors in the design and methods used in the CDC’s landmark 2003 study that found no link between mercury in vaccines and autism, ADHD, speech delay or tics. Dr. this is the studies the IOM and recently the vaccine compensation special masters used to conclude that vaccines are not associated with autism. It seems that mountain of evidence they claimed they had, was in fact a mirage. Could someone deliver this comment and the congressional report, to the it seems Not So Special Masters and inform them that they have apparently made a huge mistake. Maybe they weren’t privied to this kind of information! These next lines say it all, and proves my point! (what science is the special masters referring that in their words was so overwhelming???

This is the”The head of the CDC saying that its most powerful and convincing piece of exonerating evidence for thimerosal is, in effect, “useless.” Dr. Gerberding wrote in an undated mea culpa to Congress, Dr. I’m not making this up this is real!

Also one of the government CDC witnesses on the toxicity of Thimerosal, had to bail because of a paper that he had written a while back. And it was just the opposite of what they wanted him
to claim, he said he might even be committing purgery.So he bailed on them, and with good reason. The Dir. of the CDC ’s response to the allegations that their flag ship studies were fatally flawed according to congress and the NEIHS “CDC concurs, Dr. I believe that means, she the Dir. of the CDC agrees with the findings of the NIEHS panel ordered by Congress to look at the evidence of the CDC in relation to vaccines as a causation to AUTISM
They have nothing left!!!!. Dr. it seems you are the one, out there spreading mistruths. Dr. this is your science going up in flames, and if you had any integrity you would look at what I wrote and verify it. Also you would have no choice but to agree.

Dr. I believe this says it all, from the chair of the NIEHS panel you do trust the NIH don't you?

Dr. Irva Hertz-Picciotto, Professor of Public Health at UC Davis Medical School and Chair of the NIEHS panel, told reporter Dan Olmsted at UPI.

That leaves very little for the CDC to go on in terms of proving that thimerosal and autism are not associated in any way.

Dr. you just read, that the CDCs highest officer agrees they have basically been perpetrating a hoax or she the Dir. is a world class incompatant. either way we do not need that in vaccine safety.

Definitions of mea culpa on the Web: an acknowledgment of your error or guilt wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

Mea culpa is a Latin phrase that translates into English as “my fault”, or “my own fault”.

Where is the out cries from our congress and senate and the Peds. and the anger for this very apparent Fraud, or world class incompetence????

Here is the rest of it, the statement from the chair of the NIEHS panel ordered by congress to look at the evidence of the CDC. Dr. Irva Hertz-Picciotto, "As questionable as the US thimerosal study was, “it was an improvement on other studies, including the two in Denmark, (Dr. you remember Denmark the country that removed THIMEROSAL and the numbers of AUTISM actually went up)
This is the NIH declaring that study useless, so please in the future
do not quote that study as being a good quality study, for now Dr. you are no longer ignorant of the truth.

both of which had serious weaknesses in their designs,” Dr. Irva Hertz-Picciotto, Professor of Public Health at UC Davis Medical School and Chair of the NIEHS panel, told reporter Dan Olmsted at UPI. That leaves very little for the CDC to go on in terms of proving that thimerosal and autism are not associated in any way. Everett mom this is the Chair, of the NIEHS panel Stating the CDC has very little science left, that’s a far cry from this;

Officials with the U.S. Court of Claims said they sympathized with the families, but there was little if any evidence to support claims of a vaccine-autism link. (Like I said complete FRAUD) Dr., the deck is stacked and the fix is in as you should be able to see.

The Dir. of the CDC did say, if you give them more time they will produce good quality studies. How doe's that old saying go ?

FOOL ME ONCE.

Thank you, Mr Harris.

In this latest Fraud, I mean research. (Please excuse that slip, it’s just that the two words Fraud and CDC research. Now days seems to be able to be used interchangeably)that was released after that statement. By the CDC Dir. “If you give them more time they will produce good quality studies”

US Research Fraud, Tax Dollars And Italian Vaccine Mercury Study
Worldwide Exclusive
[With thanks to the UK's John Stone for his assistance]

Documents disclosed here under US Freedom of Information show the US Centers for Disease Control [CDC] spends US tax dollars in foreign countries on studies to claim the vaccination programmes they promote for US children are safe when they know the results of the studies will produce false and misleading negative results. In their latest Research released in 2009 it appears they were talking about doing this study several years back! and through the FOIA act we now have proof they had concluded that the Italian children did not get enough of the Thimerosal to show an effect. But they did the Fraudulent study anyway even after saying it would be pointless.( Precious research money wasted to get the result they wanted.) They apparently forgot about the FOIA and how smart the damaged kids parents are, and got caught AGAIN! in the FOIA snare
Just such a study recently published from Italy funded by the US CDC claims to show that the known neurotoxic mercury additive in vaccines, Thimerosal, is not harmful to children and the study has received wide-spread publicity.
Here is some facts about the Italian study;

Mercury is toxic in parts per billion. What the US public were not told is that the study was certain to be unable to detect any effect. The US CDC internal email exchange disclosed here [see more below] obtained under US Freedom of Information shows that to be able to detect any effect in children with the methods used, the dose applied by the age of 3 months had to be at least 50 millionths of a gramme of mercury and at least 100 millionths of a gramme by the age of 6 months.

Table 1 of the paper shows Italian children received by the age of 3 months two thirds of that minimum amount; no more 37.5 millionths of a gramme. By 6 months they had only three quarters of that minimum: 75 millionths of a gramme this was their conclusion.

On the Email received through the FOIA
This below is from a 2001 email from the FOIA ;On the study just released in 2009 This study is misleading and was not scientifically worth doing, they said, because the children in Italy do not get enough thimerosal to show an effect. Dr. this is the CDC in 2001
saying the latest study they just released in 2009 was not worth doing Dr. you wrote a while back an article titled (Parents duped by junk science) Dr. it appears you peds. are the ones being duped
by junk science, as I have so proven. Anyway they knew this and decided to deceive the American public and the press and apparently you peds. because they knew most news agency would not challenge them on this or do any digging to see if it was true. So these are their examples of good quality robust science.

This is written out side their building of the National Academy’s Sciences.

“The right to search for truth implies also a duty. One must not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be true.”

Albert Einstein (engraved on National Academy of Sciences building in
Washington, D.C., location of NIH & IOM) Albert Einstein would be appalled if he could see how corrupt & uncaring our government health agency’s and main stream Drs. and Peds. have become today.

America has truly fallen!When you see them sacrificing their own children, for the almighty pharma dollar.

In this next example the CDC tries to say it Thimerosal clears the blood in 3 to 7 days Pichichero claims his study of about 200 babies and children, who were injected with vaccines containing ethyl mercury (thimerosal), showed that measurable mercury levels in the blood of the children were gone within 3.7 days. This, says Pichichero, is much quicker than the average 44 days it takes for methyl mercury (found in fish) to be undetectable in the blood. Ergo, he says, exposure to thimerosal does not cause brain damage or autism! The next statement is by Thomas Burbacher the NIH paid for his research on primates. You see this next guy has integrity and apparently cannot be bought.

NIH paid for study back to haunt them!
Not so fast, says Thomsas Brubacher, M.D., a scientist who studies the biological effects of ethyl-mercury on primates. “Just because it came out of the blood doesn’t mean it is excreted from the body. It could have gone to the brain. In primates, you actually get more mercury in the brain after exposure to ethyl-mercury than with methyl mercury - it has an easier time crossing the blood brain barrier.” Did you hear that Dr., the specialist that the NIH hired said that the vaccineal mercury has an easier time crossing the Blood Brain Barrier than the fish mercury. What Dr. Burbacher left out was that his research also found, that the vaccineal mercury not fish mercury went up into the brain by two and a half times that of the fish mercury and turned into INORGANIC mercury the worse! Neurotoxin you can introduce to the Mitochondria, Now that leads us to the Polling child and apparently what we are finding
out that AUTISM is Mitochondria Dysfunction Disorder. Dr. on the MSDS sheet of the mercury based preservitive THIMEROSAL it is stated on the sheet that THIMEROSAL targets the organs of the body in particular the BRAIN and the lining around the BRAIN.

Dr. it seems that the vaccine program and vaccine safety could have been ran better or at least as good by MOE CURLEY and LARRY you know Dr. the three stooges.

In this next example, the executive reluctantly tells us where the neurotoxin ends up!

In a Sigma Aldrich deposition the executives were asked what doe’s thimerosal do in the body, he the executive reluctantly answers; it target the organs of the body, the brain and the lining around the brain. Now Dr. how do you feel about something being in our children's vaccines that targets the organs of the body, the brain and the lining around the brain? Care to comment?

We have all been lied to. and deceived by our health authorities
And our baby’s have been sacrificed,for the greater good.

In my next post you will see that Thimerosal is useless as a antimicrobial they have known it for years. And in the 80's
had a interim plan to remove it.

Dr are you feeling that you have been kept in the dark? about the dangers of thimerosal. If you do not answer your own comments then we can except that I'm right and you are and were wrong!

www.rahulkparikh.com

If that email is correct I wrote you and challenged you to look at the science that the CDC no longer has I even called your office, you are as hard to get a hold of as the President. Please take my call as you can see I am well versed in vaccine damage and I can take apart your argument in one second. You should know by now, You have no science left, you can thank the NIH and Congressional report for that debunking.

As for you assertion, that their is not enough children unvaccinated to do a vacc. vs un vacc. study you lose doc. a hmo exist that has 30 to 35 thousand unvaccinated and the study appears to already be in conclusion that the unvaccinated don't have Autism. According to the head Doc. at the HMO why do you think they avoid this study like the plague. Because they already know the out come. It's like Dr. verstraeten said this is the study every one said should not be done. Because we already knew the out come. In other words folks, he is saying that we could have already anticipated the damage we have already done, with out the study. Because Mercury is a Neurotoxin and Thimerosal is the worse of the two, and the amount that the children received in the 90's was self evident to have caused a nightmare in damage. Here is just a little example of their incompetence, the children in the 90's some received 32,500 PPB of mercury. Now this really comes into focus when one has learned that 200 PPB is EPA considered liquid hazardous waste. They have always claimed, this was a small amount of mercury. Well I will let one of their own colleagues dispel that piece of CDC misinformation Dr. Hillaman from Merck sent Mercks president a memo saying that on the next vaccine schedule the children will be getting 87 times what the EPA allows to be safe, and he said I am concerned. And then he expresses that this is not daily doses this is Bolus doses all at once. He said when viewed in this manner it's rather a large dose. So goes the myth, this was a very small amount of Mercury as claimed by the CDC and the not so informed Ped's.

Come on Doc. please come out of your hiding,and defend your self.
I hope every one takes note that none of what I have written will most likely not get answered. I hope you expectant mothers and they the Ped's understand that their silence speaks volumes of their ignorance of this important issue.
Sincerely
One pissed off dad

joe harris: it strikes me that you should write your own blog about this rather than completely take over someone else's.

I would like to add to my last post, the 32,500 PPB was on one day at one setting It was children that received 9 vaccines 7 of which contained the mercury = 32,500 PPB and like I said, that is not particularly smart. especially when you factor in that 200 PPB is liquid hazardous waste.

Again I say Dr. it seems that the vaccine program and vaccine safety could have been ran better, or at least as good by MOE CURLY and LARRY you know Dr. the three stooges.

emma peel when super Doc. goes to shooting off his mouth about what he apparently knows little about, then he is doing the public a disservice. By misleading the public into thinking that the current vaccine program and schedule also vaccines are safe. when I have proved if anything they make a mockery of vaccine safety.

emma peel If the Dr. writes something, shouldn't he be able to backup what he wrote with proof. As I have, on an issue of this importance. emma peel after all these are our children that I am
talking about.

I follow this debate and I remember reading about a study done with children whose parents claimed they got autism from vaccines. Experts studied videos these children, children with autism whose parents made no claim of a vaccine cause and normal children.

In the age of video cameras, many parents have hours of footage. The experts looked at the videos blind. They were not told who had autism and when it was diagnosed. They found signs of autism in children whose parents claimed the autism was caused by vaccines BEFORE the kid had the vaccine. So, yes, there have been studies of children whose parents have made this claim.

As I said, I've forgotten where I saw the study. My goal was to inform myself.

Dr. Parik,

I read with interest your recent article. I appreciate your interest in this subject. I have four children, two of whom became autistic two weeks after routine vaccinations.

I hope you have interest in a parent's perspective on the link between autism and vaccines and why we no longer trust the medical profession to always have our children's best interests at heart.

It was interesting that you started your article with a heartbreaking story of a child dying from a vaccine preventable disease in a third world country. Even if every parent in the US stopped vaccinating their children, mortality rates would not be similar to those in the third world because we have access to clean water, soap, sanitation and first world medicine. But I understand that a child sick in a hospital bed in the US hooked up to antibiotics, that probably will recover, does not present as visual an image even if it is more accurate.

I read that you believe that “doctors like me haven't been very good at communicating with you.” On the contrary, you are extraordinarily good at communicating! I never considered not vaccinating. The problem is that once I started doing my own research rather that accepting everything the medical profession said; I realized the medical profession was lying to me. Fewer than 10% of vaccine adverse reactions are reported. Even as severe, in the case of my own niece, as seizures. When her parents expressed concern to their daughter’s pediatrician he told them a seizure wasn’t a serious reaction and gave her the next shot in the series. This time she seized again and stopped breathing. The risks are understated and the benefits are overstated.

You mentioned the “more than 30 studies vouching for the safety of vaccines.” The problem with the studies is that if one has the motivation to look into them they find tremendous flaws. For instance, through the Freedom of Information Act we found out that in the study the CDC did on the correlation between thimerosal and autism. Initially, they found children who received thimerosal in their vaccines were 2.6 times more likely to be diagnosed with autism. They added 30,000 more 1 year-olds to the study and brought the number down to 1.6. They released the later number. In the frequently mentioned Danish study, two flaws I’m most concerned with are that it was a pharmaceutical company that studied the safety and that the study did not last long enough. There were 3 cohorts in the study. The average age of diagnosis for autism in Denmark over 4 years and over 5 years for Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD); only the oldest cohort reached the average age of diagnosis and the youngest group was the most likely to not have been vaccinated with the MMR because of a widely viewed TV program that linked the MMR with the development of autism. Most doctors read the press releases and look no further.

The CDC has a conflict of interest. They are in charge of promoting vaccines and ensuring they are safe. I read many years ago in the Boston Globe that the AAP recommended that infants receive the Hep. B at 6 months rather than at birth unless their mother is infected. A spokeswoman for the CDC said they were not changing the schedule because they didn’t “want to undermine parental confidence in the vaccination schedule.” My children’s pediatrician was unaware of either statement and was offended when I told him.

Many parents, unfortunately, have the motivation to invest hundreds of hours of study into vaccination.

I believe that pediatricians become doctors because they love children. I understand having a natural aversion to accepting that something you did with the best intentions caused significant harm to a child. I struggled with my guilt that I let my children be vaccinated and thus have life-long disabilities. What’s done is done. Moving forward --let’s first cause no harm.

Pediatricians do make money of vaccinations. That’s ok. I don’t expect you to treat my children for free. I appreciate your education. I appreciate that I can bring my child in for treatment. An article in the Boston Globe mentioned that in the average doctor’s office, proceeds from vaccines pay for the salary of a nurse. In many states, doctors also receive money for having their patients vaccinated. There are financial incentives.

As a parent, I am no longer willing to be patted on the head and sent on my way. That didn’t work out well for me the first time and it won’t happen again. The first step is to open up intellectually honest dialogue. We’ll try to tone down the anger if the medial profession will start taking an honest and independent look at the safety of vaccines.

I have no dog in this fight (yet) but I thank you for the links.

The Larry King show was a travesty. The anti-vaccine crowd was allowed to spew their misinformation with only token resistance from King. People watching it would probably never guess that their case was based on pseudoscience and downright lies.

The media has a job to do here, and clearly, not all reporters are up to it. McCarthy and her rubber-faced boyfriend should have to answer tough questions every time a child dies from preventable diseases because of their campaign.

I had my kids jabbed and stabbed according to corporate pharma guidelines. I remember that BOTH kids contracted the most astounding cases of chicken pox following their being vaccinated against it. Impressive.

When ANY figure of alleged authority tells me ANYTHING, including that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow morning, I'm disinclined to believe it. When any MD (automatically beholden to the AMA and their corporate pharma agenda) recommends ANYTHING, I suspect their opinions.

Where the fuck are all these autistic kids coming from? Given the long, long history of figures of authority lying like rugs on any and every subject under the sun, I naturally side with the alternate point of view.

Corporations make money. They don't care what they do to make it. Pumping crap or poison into our kids "for their own good"? Wouldn't put it past them. Facts? As malleable as clay.

It's a question of trust. And I have a deep and growing mistrust of anyone and everyone in a position of authority. No one acts in the public good and makes money doing it.

@ Emma Peel

And I don't think OS should be constitute itself as a vehicle for the thimersol apologist lobby by putting POarikh's every misinformed word on the cover. So if Mr. Harris wishes to take over Parikh's blog with his challenges it's ot alright by me and should serve as a lesson to the editors.

I'm a fifth-year grad student in biology, and I'm always interested in the best way to communicate science to non-scientists. Right now, in this debate, we seem to be failing utterly. Reading the comments here just brings me to despair.

How can we do this better? I believe that the major underlying issue is that most people have no idea how science is done. Surely this indicates a failure in education, but for the adult population that ship has sailed.

More responsible science journalism may be one answer. Most news blurbs on big findings over-simplify to the point of creating a caricature of the work in question. These caricatures justly invite ridicule, yet the original work (read by no one but the experts) is usually thoughtful, nuanced, and carefully controlled. If a person only ever read the caricatures, he would be justified in a low opinion of modern science. I know I can never get a good feel for a science topic by reading the popular media--I always head straight to PubMed.

Dr Parikh, I don't have an answer here, but I appreciate that you are trying to fight the good fight. Keep it up!

Here's another way of looking at it: if vaccination causes Autism, and the vast majority of children are vaccinated, why aren't the vast majority of children Autistic?

I wonder what effect today's story on our water supply being polluted by pharmaceutical companies has to do with this subject.

My 2nd daughter has been severely developmentally disabled by autism since she was about 9 months old, at least. Of course it is very difficult to determine when her symptoms became evident, since our pediatrician did not recognize them, and in fact brushed aside our concerns until we went over his head and booked our own appointment with a neurologist.

When our third child was born, 8 years later, in 2000, we decided that we would forgo vaccination until she was 24 months old. At that point the initial studies linking autism and vaccination had not been contradicted, and it seemed in our case, since we were obviously at high risk, that it was easier to mediate the known risk of infectious disease than the unknown risk of mysteriously compromised brain development.

Until the medical community has an actual explanation for the development of autism they will be in these shouting matches with every crackpot in town. That's because, at the root, they are crackpots too. They don't know what it is. They don't know where it comes from. They don't know how many kids have it. They don't know how to treat it.

We kept our daughter at home for two years, as isolated as we could from possible infection, and today she is a happy, typical kid. At this point, I doubt that we would do it again, but we'd look hard at it.

I have a well-earned respect for the idiosyncratic as well as the large-scale ill effects of pharmaceuticals as well as a somewhat sophisticated understanding of how Big Pharma operates (from working as a free lance medical writer.) Regarding vaccines, like any other medication, it's a question of comparing the risks of using drug X versus the risks of not using drug X. In the case of vaccines, the individual risk of not vaccinating a child is miniscule in the US where we still have herd immunity, but the larger public health risks are quite profound, as we see lethal infections such as rubella making a come-back, usually in poor communities. I think Americans who don't vaccinate are ignoring the public good, which they have the right to do. However, the public's willingness to ignore the Public's good is why we do not have universal health care, and why our health care system is so broken. Just one woman's opinion.

Joe Harris,

Your posts would have far greater credibility if you cited the sources of all of your quotes and facts. As we all know, it is very easy to twist facts when those "facts" are taken out of the context in which they were genereated. I am very interested in the etiology of autism, but your style and tone of writing makes it difficult to believe your arguments and does a disservice to the points you are trying to make. Being passionate about a position does not validate a position.

dr parikh, i don't see what the point is of breaking down this letter unless you respond to the specific criticisms that individuals are bringing in your comments.

it's difficult to have trust in entities that do not grant access. you're responding to a letter from as you say, a well-armed, vocal minority. you have an opportunity now to respond to the people who find them compelling and help them understand your view. will you take it?

Thank you for continuing to fight the good fight Dr.Parikh!

As the mother of two autistic children, I must say this: all of the parents who run around whining about vaccines, and whining about what "made" their children autistic-these parents are complete jackasses. They refuse to accept and love their children as they are. Calling autism "horrific", saying that it "destroys" lives, etc-they make me sick. My girls each have severe, CLASSIC autism btw-they would have been easily diagnosed as autistic forty years ago. They're different. Their lives are different than the lives we all expect for our children. But my girls are happy, and healthy, and loved. That's all that matters.

Running around looking for an environmental cause to BLAME for your childs unique neurological makeup isn't exactly conducive to loving and accepting your child.

I really find it sad that this debate has turned to the idiocy that it has. For God's sake, the FDA told us a year ago that OTC cold medicine could be dangerous to toddlers, pediatricians state that solid foods should be introduced after six months of age and slowly (so as not to cause allergies) yet vaccines with toxins and that are grown on eggs and other biological matter are introduced on the first day of life...and then we see news stories aboout the incredible upswing in the incidences of food allergies in our children!
It is absolutely ignorant to think that there are no children that can be adversely affected (and yes, this includes autism) by the current vaccine protocol. And then we have total idiots that claim that if vaccines cause autism, why aren't all vaccinated kids autistic...are you serious? How ignorant of a sheeple do you have to be?! Why don't ALL smokers die of lung cancer you idiot!? Because certain people have a genetic predisposition to cancer and others don't ...it's that simple.
treating children like cattle..as opposed to indiviuals with differing levels of immune problems is absolutely ignorant and Dr. parikh has clearly stated that our children should all be treated as such.
as far as the idiot "scientist" that claims that parents of autistic children should read the actual studies and not rely on the media...sorry...I've got them the vast majority, I've read them and your science won't hold a candle to what we know. That's why Dr. Offit, or Snyderman, or Parikh for that matter will never stand on a stage debating dr's like Wakefield, Haley, or any of the others...because they don't want to lose what little credability they have left.
Dr. Wakefield stated publically on my Autism One Radio show that he would debate Dr. Offit at any time....crickets........
yoou have no credabilty dr P....sorry...

You want proof? Some kind of a study of the children alleged to have been damaged by vaccines.

Big Pharma surely wouldn't pay for that study, now would they? Who would pay
for this study? Perhaps you could get a grant and study that for us Doc. Please get some people on your team that don't own stock in a pharmaceutical company though, OK.

At one time there wasn't scientific evidence that the world was round. But it still was. There just were no studies to confirm it.

All you can really say now is "to the best of our current knowledge" this is the case.

Science is always evolving. New things are discovered all the time.

Did you really put "Go Lakers" as an author tag for key words!? Crass.

The problem here is that the scientific method forces one to focus on what's provable. And to discount what there is no evidence for. As valuable as science is, it takes a really long time to prove a theory. And it's almost impossible to prove that something ISN'T true.

Doctors and scientists also tend to deal with probabilities and really don't like it when someone inexplicably falls into a minority. Non scientists are not restricted in this way and are free to see themselves and their children as individuals that may be pre-disposed to certain bad reactions. It's a lottery, really. And it's not fair to expect people to gamble with their children's health lightly. I don't really care that most children don't have a bad reaction to a vaccine, I only care that there seems to be growing evidence that many children do- even if that evidence is anecdotal or refuted by science. If the fear of autism is greater than the fear of rubella or measles what else do you expect parents to choose, based on the limited information we have about the causes of autism? It's not fair to expect people to trust you because you adhered to the scientific method yet can't provide them with any answers. As soon as more doctors understand that, maybe we can have some real dialog instead of being talked down to and berated for not worshipping the scientific method.

Logic only works when you have all the facts.

As a mom of 3 young boys and from Berkeley, where lots of parents choose not to vaccinate their kids, I am so grateful to Dr. Parikh for his much needed article. There is so much misinformation out there!