Ah, here it is:
http://www.quackwatch.org/11Ind/edelson.html

I am shocked and surprised to find such negative posts about parents who have found alternative therapies have helped their children. Curious. Have these parents tried these these alternative therapies and found no results? Why take down other parents who have found alternative interventions that have helped their children?

Don’t we all wish the very best for our kids no matter what form it takes? Can’t we just allow each parent to love in their own way?

Wow.

http://tinyurl.com/4p7bwh

I trust Ms. Clark to have a field day with this.

You and I can have a proper well mannered debate whilst our kids play and see if we still feel the same afterwards. What about it? Got the balls?

I don’t know if I could have a “well-mannered” debate with McCarthy. For one thing, as she demonstrated on Larry King Live, she is incapable of being polite. She aggressively talks over people who disagree with her and then crows that they couldn’t “stand up to her” when in reality they were probably shocked at her boorishness and uncertain how to respond. For another thing, her “arrogance of ignorance” is so profound and unrelenting that nothing I could tell her would be likely to sway her.

Finally, such malignant stupidity as McCarthy routinely demonstrates is simply so offensive to me that righteous anger is an entirely appropriate response.

It’s nice to see you back. You provide a real meaningful service to the community to express their opinions and share information on ASD. My best wishes to you and your family.

I watched the clip and I thought Jenny did a decent job even though she is no rocket scientist. I thought the guy to her left came off as the most credible on the panel, but my guess is that he is her DAN! doctor. At least, he APPEARED to be balanced, which is good for sales. The others on the panel all came off as completely closed minded.

In the end, there are no credible studies for or against vaccine related/induced/contributory autism. The mercury and MMR studies are weak. No study that I have seen has ever been properly baselined. This is an absolute must since the diagnosis is both highly subjective and expanding. The relative trend over time is so important for this type of analysis.

However, the crude data suggests that thimerosal laced vaccines are no more a causative agent than any other vaccine (if at all). The so-called victory in vaccine “court” only proves the deficiencies in the American legal system (if it can be called that).

As I have stated in the past, the only reasonable study at this time would be to compare vaccinated with unvaccinated children over time so I agree with Kirby and McCarthy on this show. If this fails to show a link, the debate should stop right there. It won’t for some people, but it should.

However, if this study does show a link, only then should we begin to look for the specific causative agents. It was always stupid to look for a specific causative agent before a general connection was found.

That’s like trying to find out what agent or ingredient in tobacco causes cancer before any general connection is made. The tobacco industry could have mislead the public for another 10 or 20 years if that was the case.

While the study of twins and siblings shows there is a strong genetic component in autism, it also shows that it is not the only factor in autism. If my memory serves me correct, I don’t think any study of identical twins has shown more than a 60% correlation of common diagnosis and symptoms even though some studies show as many as 90% will share an ASD diagnosis. I believe that some studies have shown much lower correlations.

For me, it seems pretty much genetic. My dad’s on the spectrum, and he has wondered about his parents also on the spectrum as well.

As for Jenny, I think this whole mess is just a reflection of two larger problems in the media. One is the over-emphasis on celebrity figures, and the other is the lack of attention to scientific evidence in favor of the “spicier story” – though unfortunately this may be leading us into epidemic levels of preventable diseases, just because people fear the autism epidemic which doesn’t even have a logical basis of existing, let alone the fact that being autistic is not a terrible burden in itself.

It’s also pretty much impossible to definitively know the cause for any individual, though sometimes there are pretty big clues (a history of autistic relatives, for instance). It’s sort of like probability meets process of elimination: since there’s not evidence for vaccines, then it’s time to look on to other things (such as genetics, which makes sense, as twin studies have confirmed genetic links exist).

Unfortunately, some people look at a personal correlation and take that as meaning that there’s a high probability that the two things are related. Then they hear Jenny McCarthy talking about it as if it’s a legitimate theory, and this lends further credibility to their mistaken notion. It’s especially dangerous, as parents of newly diagnosed children are often not given useful, supportive information and are vulnerable to needing to find something to blame, and of getting into “fix it” mode.