Research Finds Vaccines Are Not Behind the Rise in Autism. So What Is? | Hacker News Reader

Research Finds Vaccines Are Not Behind the Rise in Autism. So What Is?

nytimes.com

17 pointsthelastgallon13 comments

Diagnosis rates?

My wife got diagnosed as an adult where she never would have been as a child - quiet, academically bright, had a group of friends. Had increasing stress at work and depression, saw a psychologist who asked her lots of questions and then said this mat come as a shock but have you ever wondered if you have this? Did all the tests and voila. Seeing her parents it becomes very obvious how strongly it is genetic because in retrospect where I used to think her parents were a little odd, with a bit more understanding it’s clear that they both have traits.

The difference in focus between the linked article and this one is startling to me.

https://www.thefp.com/p/the-autism-surge-lies-conspiracies

It really is important to understand that increased incidence of autism is not, repeat NOT, substantively attributable to an increase in diagnosis. Not at the rates we are talking about.

And there is a bias within polite society against talking about how disabling severe autism is.

I can't read the article. Could someone please point to the research that they are referring to?

https://archive.is/h3RGH

TIL autism has been linked to environmental factors like metabolic syndrome during the first trimester of pregnancy, air pollution, and pesticide exposure. Some of these frequently co-occur with specific gene mutations. [1][2] There's a good argument that everyone has more exposure to everything on that list nowadays. Increased diagnoses would then make a lot of sense.

Teasing out the specifics of how much each of these contribute and separating that out from possible confounders like greater screening and others does seem like a tough study to design.

[1] https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/environmental-auti...

[2] https://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/topics/conditions/autism

computers

Evolution. Linked to computer use quite possible.

Other research claims the opposite. I’m confused.

I'm not sure if you're trolling or not here, so this is the genuine answer to your question.

Peer-reviewed, published research does not support any kind of link between vaccines and autism: not a link by correlation, not a link by cause.

There was a paper a long time ago where the guy who wrote it committed fraud to get published. This paper, which was founded on lies, did claim a link, and did so in a highly influential medical journal - so a lot of people paid attention to what the article said, even though its claims were never true. Retraction is a very definitive way to signal to scientists not to pay attention to a particular paper.

Problem is, the retraction took more than 10 years, and in those years the internet was becoming social and available to everyone. So there was kind of a perfect storm of misinformation propagation about this particular topic.

Fact remains: many many studies have re-examined the possibility of link between vaccines and autism and there just isn't one.

The problem is not only about that author in 1998, it is two-pronged:

- Despite numerous failures in the integrity of the peer review and editorial process (Deer, 2020), the predicted high impact of this article influenced the Lancet decision to publish [0]

- There is no shortage of authors willing to publish weird stuff in scientific journals. Search for example articles about religious content in scientific papers such as these ones: [1-3]

[0] https://acamh.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcpp.14058

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38756930/

[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38952642/

[3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39152043/

These studies are not well formed. There is an easier way to test for vaccine damage leading to autism. Compare children with any dosage of vaccines vs children that never received any dosage of a vaccine. The Amish in a very good study found that no Amish born children had autism. A rate of 0. Compared to those children that had autism all have been vaccinated. This enough is for me to know that while one or a single dose does not lead to autism possibly (though i have doubts here too) that many dosages of various vaccines combined in certain ways may lead to autism. This causal path is complex, for certain, but it is clear it is a non zero probability that you will be autistic (and if you watch that new show, telepathic).

> Amish in a very good study found that no Amish born children had autism. A rate of 0

Source? Are the Amish regularly screened for autism?

Also, the Amish are (a) far from the only unvaccinated population and (b) different from other Americans in other major ways. (The one that comes to mind is air pollution [1].)

[1] https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/air-pollution-linked-with-incr...

The factor that comes to mind for me is genetic isolation, probably a much stronger factor. For instance, the Amish also have a famously higher incidence of Ellis-van Creveld syndrome than the general population.

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