The Examination of the Evidence

Both the scientific community and the autism community has been examining the evidence for many years now. You can read their responses to the American Academy of Pediatrics below.

Irva Hertz-Picciotto, PhD, MPH, Chief of the Division of Environmental and Occupational Health, University of California, Davis School of Medicine –

“Several large studies finding no association are far from robust, as they suffer from numerous biases that seriously limit their definitiveness. These include: noncomparable sources for ascertainment of cases, uncontrolled confounding, unrepresentative sample due to selective exclusions, and an as-yet unexplained pattern whereby children with earliest vaccines are the least likely to have developmental deficits. Thus, the body of evidence at this point is inadequate to draw conclusions… Several investigations have been ecologic studies, widely known to be the weakest possible epidemiologic design. Even restricting discussion to the individual-level designs, published studies conducted in Denmark, the UK, and the US are characterized by serious, even fatal, flaws. To regain the confidence that we in the medical/public health/scientific community need in order to fulfill our mandate to protect health, we cannot avoid facing these tough scientific questions head-on. This means funding solid scientific research into vaccines, thimerosal, and the related issues of susceptibility at the population level.”