Letters to the Editor

• Not all three candidates answered identically

  [Read the article: McCain, Obama, Clinton push dangerous vaccine-autism myth]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  Thank you so much for highlighting this issue and helping to dispel the vaccine myth that many in the progressive media have helped perpetuate. Robert Kennedy Jr.'s pronouncements have gotten way too much attention without appropriate challenge and fact-checking. You are absolutely correct to highlight the cost to society from the decrease in immunization rates because of the panic created around thimerosol.

  Having said that, I don't think it's fair to lump McCain and Obama and Clinton all together as being part of the problem. Based on the statements in your article, yes, all three fail to repudiate the thimeresol myth. But McCain's and Obama's statements actually help perpetuate the myth by seeming to give it credence while Clinton's statement does not. She merely includes vaccines among those areas where further funding for studies would be helpful.

  Why the distinction? Because, having worked in immunizations in public health in the past, I know this issue has been going on for well over a decade and the anti-vaccine forces are well-funded and spread far and wide. Their cause is emotional to many and the government's bungled response to the early concerns didn't help the case. As a result, the fear-mongering has ratcheted up and a rational debate has ceased. The only shot we have in debunking the thimerosol myth once and for all is greater education AND greater funding for all-inclusive studies on the actual causes of autism. We may say that the studies have already been done and have concluded no link but due to the overall underfunding of autism research, these findings are not enough for parents who have lost faith in the government's ability to respond to autism.

  True, Clinton was very politic to include vaccines in her list of things needing more study but, frankly, in the current atmosphere, it's good politics to acknowledge that more study of ALL the potential causes of autism is the only way to regain trust and get back on the path to finding the causes of autism, finding appropriate treatments while keeping immmunization rates up. If she simply shot down the myth, her questioner would remain polarized and untrusting of a rational government response.

  Last, I think it's important for your readers to know that we don't necessarily know for a fact that there is a dramatic increase in the incidence of autism. Awareness of autism and the reclassification of lots of developmental anomalies has increased the actual reporting of autism but that doesn't necessarily mean that it hasn't always been around to the degree that it is currently being monitored. But whether we're simply more aware of autism than we were 30 years ago or if, indeed, the incidence is increasing, Clinton's approach -- more research -- is clearly the best approach and she deserves credit for it. Whether we trust in the current science around thimerosol or we remain suspicious of vaccines, more research can only help.

  Permalink Monday, May 5, 2008 01:26 PM