Big news in the world of autism

In my job, I often work with students who have autism and their families. Most of you probably know someone who is affected by autism, as it now occurs in 1 of every 150 kids. At the very least, you can't escape the news coverage and publicity.

One thing that is very frustrating is the lack of knowledge about the causes of this disease. No one really knows why it happens, and no one knows what's responsible. It is difficult to treat a condition when you don't know the origin - and the lack of evidence allows people to draw their own conclusions based on personal experiences that may not apply to everyone.

A hot issue in the field of autism has been whether autism is caused by the MMR vaccine, and specifically the thimerosal that had been included in this vaccine in the past. (Side note: thimerosal is no longer in the vaccines required for childhood immunizations). These past couple of weeks have had a couple of major stories on this particular issue.

First of all, this argument originated with one particular study in 1998. You may remember from your science classes that one study isn't sufficient for proof, but multiple studies replicating the same finding are required before something is accepted as scientific fact. This study had not been replicated, however, many people in the "anti-vaccine" camp believed that this was due to government cover-ups or flawed methodology. However, recently it was revealed that the data in the original study had been falsified. See the article here: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article5683671.ece

The other big news this week was that the U.S. Court of Claims made a decision this week stating that the evidence for the vaccine-autism link is not there. See the news article here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29160138/ This is really big news, because these were the first claims to the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.

I feel for these families, and I know they are seeking for something that could have disabled their children so severely. However, the more time and money that we spend investigating claims that have little scientific merit and scaring parents of otherwise healthy children is that much less time and money that we can spend on research to find the true root causes of autism. Is it something environmental? Something genetic? Something else? I don't know. I do know that I'd rather trust the research being done right now than the word of Jenny McCarthy on whether or not to vaccinate my children. I hope that the community will be able to focus less on doctor vs. parent and vaccinate vs. not vaccinate, and focus more on working together towards researching to find a cure.

For more information on autism, visit http://www.autismspeaks.org/ or http://www.autism-society.org/site/PageServer or http://www.autism-society.org/site/PageServer.