nothing so exciting. Just this post
http://leftbrainrightbrain.co......tism-link/

which points out that a prospective study of environmental causation (and gene-environment interactions) is nearing completion. That study, by Columbia University, includes vaccination as a factor to be tracked.

The question is—what does GR hope to do that isn’t being done sooner and better by other groups? Columbia is monitoring a cohort of 10,000 control families and 150-200 autistic kids.

@Sullivan: stay tuned? OOOOOHHHH! Sounds interesting. Does it have something to do with the emails you sent me a few weekds ago?

Please see this link for reference;

http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopS.....es-100609/

The sooner they correct their misinformation, the sooner we can prevent all the deaths that have been caused from preventable illnesses due to parents not having their children immunized because of their false claims.

Please stop Generation Rescue from contributing to so many senseless deaths.

Where can I send the check?

So, right away you would get a group that is either self-selected to have vaccines or not have vaccines. And it would be almost impossible to randomize the groups, so they would not be equal. This would mean a lot of potential confounders that would skew the results.

So, you look at retrospective groups – those who didn’t have vaccinations vs those who did. However, you still have to control for confounders. And you need to randomize from groups that are different than those listed in the study. Face it. Most homeschooling families are going to be middle-to-upper income families. (Please – I didn’t say ALL, don’t start a flame war!) And yes,the Healthfirst families are well matched for that. But you are ignoring the fact that, as was pointed out, families with autism/PDD-NOS may not be well represented in either group which again will skew the results.

I know Prometheus had a good post about how he would do a study.

Of course, if I had limitless funds and people (and could get this past an IRB - highly doubtful, actually -, here is how I would do it:
Enroll EVERY child born in a 3 year period throughout the world.
At every doctor visit, if any, record what care the infant receives and why they are in for a visit (well care, vaccines, ear infection, etc). The recorder will also document exactly what is any vaccines the child gets by listing all ingredients (barring the fetal monkey parts and other gross things…LOL!)
The child is videotaped monthly at the office or at home for visual documentation of growth and development.
Follow those children for 5 years (of course, in my ideal world, everyone participates and there are no drop outs…except for deaths. Even in my ideal world, I am rational enough to realize children will die…from disease – vaccine preventable or not, from murder, from accidents, from war…)
Tally those children and see who has more autism…IF either group has more.

(End dream world!)

Wouldn’t a grant be more likely to attract real experts to design and conduct the study? Via a grant process, GR could ensure the study design was to their liking and relatively free of the COIs they object to in other research.