That Weekend Autism Scare

Well, we seem to have something of a clarification of the stories about Andrew Wakefield and the MMR/autism story:

Two of the seven experts who contributed towards the study, Dr Fiona Scott and Dr Carol Stott, are reported to have said in private that they thought the high figure could be linked to the use of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine. However, last night Dr Scott denied this was the case.

She said the main purpose of the study was to look at how different methods of assessing the prevalence of autism could affect the final outcome.

She said the one in 58 figure was the highest out of three methods tested, and that the other two did not differ significantly from previous findings.

"The figure is one of several we researched," she said. "One of the elements of the research was how different methodologies can affect the result. One of the figures was one in 58. The other figures were lower than that.

"I absolutely do not think that the rise in autism is related to MMR. My own daughter is getting vaccinated with the MMR jab on July 17.

"My position is and always has been that if there are children who have been damaged by the MMR vaccine it is the same proportion of children who have been damaged by other vaccines."

She said she thought the MMR jab could cause a form a brain damage similar to autism in a "very, very small number of children".

Note that comparison to the risks of other vaccines. No one, absolutely no one, thinks that vaccines are 100% safe. They can and do, with regularity, kill or severely damage children. However, the risks are miniscule: and orders of magnitude lower than the risks of disease if not vaccinated. That would seem to leave Dr. Carol Stott as the only one still claiming a link and she is, well, somewhat biased on this matter?