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To the best of my knowledge, the original study that was published in the Journal of
Lancid back in 1998 by Andrew Wakefield and his colleagues, showed that there was a link
between Gastro-intestinal distress and symptoms of autism disorders, and also a link between
Gastro-intestinal distress and having received the measles, mumps, rubella vaccine. And what
Andrew Wakefield concluded on the basis of this finding was that because A is linked
to B, in other words, Gastro-intestinal is linked to autism, and because B is linked
to C, Gastro-intestinal is sometimes linked to having received the measles, mumps, rubella
vaccine, that therefore, there must be a causal association with having received the measles,
mumps, rubella vaccine and autism. And one of the biggest problems with that kind of
a conclusion and one of the reason why you cannot make that kind of conclusions is that
in science in general, you can never conclude that an association is a causal mechanism,
that just because A is related to B, you can never conclude that A causes B. And Especially
when you have the case that A is related to B and B is related to C, you can certainly
never say that A causes C, and that is exactly what Andrew Wakefield and his colleagues concluded
in their original study. In science, if a study is published in a reputable journal,
you are always given the opportunity to replicate the findings, in fact, science in general
is a field of replication, one study is never the final answer. In anything to health or
science. So once this finding was established in the medical literature, researchers for
many years were trying to replicate the findings. And nobody was able to replicate the findings,
in fact in several studies that were published in the years following 1998, researchers
actually not only were unable to find a link or association between autism and vaccines
but also showed quite clearly that the level of mercury in children with autism was actually
equivalent to that of children without autism, and in fact there was actually one study or
two studies that actually showed that the levels of mercury in kids with autism was
actually lower than the general population. Medical panels like the Food and Drug Administration
sent out a notice saying that mercury should be removed from most childhood vaccinations
particularly the MMR vaccine and it was. Mercury was removed from the vaccine over ten years
ago, and since that time, the rates of autism have actually been going up. That shows even
further that there is no link. So we just needed time, the scientific community just
needed time to refute this finding. Make sure your child receives proper vaccinations, that
will enable us to continue to have protection against very devastating illnesses like measles,
like mumps, like rubella. If your child does have autism, understand that this is nothing
you have done as a parent. We do not know the cause of autism and that is one of the
most frustrating aspects. This is a developmental disorder that again has an unknown origin
and an unknown cause, probably genetic in nature. And that we are looking as researchers
in clinicians we are looking for interventions that can be started early enough to really
help out so that the course of the development of this disorder is at least if not stopped
, hopefully reversed in the future. We do know that the earlier you get your child into
an intervention, into a well-known behavior and cognitive intervention and social intervention,
the better the outcome. One thing you would want to do is go to local Universities, go
to local hospitals and see if they have local interventions for autism. Luckily for us at
Hofstra, we do have an autism clinic, the clinic is headed by Doctor Kim Gilbert and
she does do interventions with social skills therapy, with cognitive radiation, with behavioral
interventions, and these therapies are known to have effectiveness in many many kids. North
shore hospital and the LIJ health system have what is known as the Linder center for autism,
this is a very well respected autism diagnostic and treatment center in the area. It is a
federally funded center and a center that is funded by the North shore LIJ health system.
The clinical head of that system is Doctor Joel Brayman. These are the centers that you
actually do want to see .