Vaccines and Brain Disorders
“Is there a link between childhood vaccines and autism? The pendulum keeps swinging in opposite directions as this skin wrenching emotional and scientific national debate continues.
In the meantime, we continue to play risky “cocktail” roulette with the health of our children.
Generation Rescue commissioned SurveyUSA, an independent opinion research team, to interview parents in nine counties in California and Oregon.
Methodology closely mirrored that used by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to establish the national prevalence for neurological disorders such as “Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder,” “Attention Deficit Disorder,” “Asperger’s Syndrome,” “Pervasive Development Disorder,” “Not Otherwise Specified,” or “Autism.”
Roll Call, a leading publication for congressional news and information, recently drew attention to this survey that showed vaccinated boys had a 2.5 times higher risk of neurological disorders than unvaccinated boys, and calling for a national study to explore these disturbing results.
Based on interviews of 11,817 households, involving 17,674 children aged 4­17, the data showed:
Vaccinated boys, compared with unvaccinated boys, were 155 percent more likely to have a neurological disorder (relative risk RR 2.55), 224 percent more likely to have ADHD (RR 3.24, and 61 percent more likely to have autism (RR 1.61).
All vaccinated boys and girls, compared with unvaccinated children, were 120 percent more likely to have asthma (RR 2.20).
Comments J.B. Handley of Generation Rescue, “For less than $200,000, we were able to complete a study that the CDC, with an $8 billion a year budget, has been unable or unwilling to do. We think the results of our survey lend credibility to the urgent need to do a larger scale study to compare vaccinated and unvaccinated children for neuro developmental outcomes.”
At a press conference in summer 2005, Dan Olmsted of United Press International asked CDC Director Julie Geberding whether the government has ever looked at autism rates in the unvaccinated population.
She responded, “In this country, we have very high levels of vaccination . . . and I think this year we have record immunization levels among all of our children, so to (select an unvaccinated group) on a population basis that would be representative to look at incidence in that population compared to the other population would be something that could be done . . .”
Jenny Hatch