AlbertaChickensEtc

That's certainly been my understanding, which is why I asked for the link to contrary evidence.

I would never dream to be so naive as to think that vaccines are all evil.  We vaccinate our children selectively and with much research on both sides of the fence.   I don't want to be wearing blinders for anyone's agenda.

This was one of the studies I believe...
An abstract of the study was published in the September, 2009 issue of the respected journal Annals of Epidemiology. In it, Carolyn Gallagher and Melody Goodman of the Graduate Program in Public Health at Stony Brook University Medical Center, NY, wrote that, “Boys who received the hepatitis B vaccine during the first month of life had 2.94 greater odds for ASD compared to later- or unvaccinated boys.” The authors used U.S. probability samples obtained from National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) 1997–2002 datasets.

The conclusion states that: “Findings suggest that U.S. male neonates vaccinated with hepatitis B vaccine had a 3-fold greater risk of ASD; risk was greatest for non-white boys.”


The authors noted that an earlier study by them found that hepatitis B vaccination was associated with receipt of early intervention/special education services (EIS); in probability samples of U.S. children, and that “children with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) comprise a growing caseload for EIS.”
The author’s new study used a different database than their earlier study (NHIS vs. NHANES) and they found same thing, suggesting a validation of their findings.

Critics will point out that this sample was limited to boys born before 1999, so the results are only applicable to that U.S. male birth cohort, and that the study’s cross-sectional design limits inferences on causality. Another weakness is that the autism diagnoses were parent reported.

On the other hand, these results are generalizable to US boys age 3-17 born prior to 1999; vaccination status was confirmed through medical records; and there was controlling for confounders that may be associated with care seeking behaviors. (The P-value equaled 0.032)  The full manuscript is currently under review by another journal.

Assuming that the full manuscript is published in a peer-reviewed journal, it will be among the first university-based population studies to suggest an association between a vaccine and an increased risk for autism. And that would be in direct contradiction to all those MMR and thimerosal studies that purportedly found no such link.

Does that mean that Hepatitis B vaccine causes autism? Of course not (though any relative risk above 2.0 is general considered to prove causation in a US court of law).

But there are other studies, both published and greatly anticipated, which might support a hypothesized causal association between HepB vaccine and ASD, at least in boys.
Any day now, data culled from CDC's Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring network  (ADDM), is expected to be published in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, and the numbers are expected to put the rate of autism at around 1 in 100, or higher.
ADDM researchers examine the education and (when possible) medical records of all eight-year-old children in selected US cities and states. They look only at eight-year-old cohorts to allow time for all diagnoses to be made, reported and counted.

So far, ADDM has published data from just two birth cohorts: children born in 1992 (eight-year-olds in 2000) and those born in 1994 (eight-year-olds in 2002). The 1992 cohort revealed an estimated ASD rate of one in 166, or 60-per-10,000. (This has since been revised to 67-per-10,000, or one in 150).

But CDC data for the same six ADDM locations showed an increase in ASD from 6.7 for 1992 births to 7.4 for 1994 births.

And now the total average number expected to exceed 100-per-10,000 for the 1996 birth cohort, born just two years later. The overarching question, of course, will be, "why?"

There are many possible explanations, though a 50% increase in just two years is astonishing, no matter what its cause.

One possible answer is the Hepatitis B vaccine, (which also contained 25 micrograms of mercury containing thimerosal up until 2002). Introduced in 1991, it was the first vaccine ever given on a population basis to newborn babies (within the first three hours after delivery) in human history.

But according to the CDC's  National Immunization Survey, only 8% of infant children received the Hep B vaccine in 1992, when that birth cohort showed an ASD rate of 1-in-150.

By 1994, the number of children receiving Hep B vaccine at birth had reached just 27% --and the same cohort showed a 10% ASD increase in locations where both years were measured.

But by 1996, Hep B coverage rate had risen to 82%. And that is the cohort whose ASD rate rose to around 100-per-10,000 or more.

Correlation, obviously, does not equal causation. But the uptake rate of that particular immunization is at least one environmental factor that did demonstrably change during the period in question.

In addition, some recent studies and vaccine court decisions have supported the contention that Hepatitis B vaccine can damage myelin -- the nervous system's main insulating component -- at least in certain genetically susceptible adults and infants.

A study published last October in the journal Neurology found that children who received the Hepatitis B vaccine series were 50% more likely to develop "central nervous system inflammatory demyelination" than children who did not receive the vaccine.
Most of this increase was due to the Engerix B brand of the vaccine, manufactured by the UK's GlaxoSmithKline. That brand increased the risk of demyelination by 74%, and patients with confirmed multiple sclerosis were nearly three times more likely to develop the disorder.
"Hepatitis B vaccination does not generally increase the risk of CNS inflammatory demyelination in childhood," the authors concluded. "However, the Engerix B vaccine appears to increase this risk, particularly for confirmed multiple sclerosis, in the longer term. Our results require confirmation in future studies."

I will look again for more when I get the chance. I wish I had written down the citations!

Sorry for the overposting. I have 12 Autisitc children of various levels whom I teach, and those in the classroom as all floored at what we are seeing , it is a hot topic.

Im not agaisnt, and I use them myself... however...

My appologies for overposting. I will stick to chicken stuff!

Yes, very interesting, thanks. There is no doubt that autism rates have increased dramatically. There is also speculation that it might be linked to diet. Human studies are so complicated.
Until articles are published in refereed journals they aren't really accepted by the scientific community as being reasonably certan to be correct; tThe publication of the abstract alone doesn't necessarily constitute acceptance by the sci comm. The article in  http://www.annalsofepidemiology.org is only an abstract, as far as I can tell; what isn't clear to me is whether the whole article had been peer reviewed.

I forgot... I asked my wife about this subject to make sure I wasn't saying anything out of line.

She said that my writing was fine, basically. She did say that there was one study that showed a correlation between vaccines and Autism. The problem was when they tried to have it peer reviewed it got rejected because it could not be repeated. The results were questioned. The team that did the study then tried to repeat it themselves. Apparently they failed. They could not repeat the results in any statistically significant way. Because of that failure, those same researchers retracted the original study.

I am sure there was more to it then just that, but she said that was the basic scenario.

I  work in an ICU.  In all honesty, initially I was a bit reticent about getting the vaccine.  However, for the past month now, we have been barraged by an influx of previously well, youngish people who have contracted H1N1 and who in fact have been made very ill by it.  We are rapidly running out of ventilators and staff to look after these folks.

We had two patients admitted just last week - a father and daughter.  Both previously well.  Now both with life threatening pneumonia and both on ventilators.

There is nothing like working with a whole ICU of ventilated people and staff garbed up to the eyeballs in isolation gear to convince one that the vaccine is a good idea...

Personally, I am not willing to take the chance.   Got my vaccine on Monday.