AMEN! My friend prides herself on being socially concious and a bit more evolved than he rest of us. She just had a baby and said she will need to "seriously consider the risks of vaccination before vaccinating her child." What a joke! She doesn't sound enlightened, she sounds moronic!

I believe Oprah is bipolar as is Jenny and Jim. We should fight their delusions with vigor and you certainly did that. I think we should also pity them (Mentally ill) as well, for they know not what they do. Enjoyable post,Sincerely,David

Reliable evidence? Not from Psychology Today and its embarrassing choice to demonize personalities rather than analyze published scientific literature and legal rulings.

No, Thimerosal was NOT removed from vaccines in 1999. Read the FDA website; the mercury-based preservative is still used in vaccine manufacture and is present in many vaccines.
http://www.fda.gov/BiologicsBloodVaccines/SafetyAvailability/VaccineSafe...

The proposed H1N1 and pandemic vaccines will contain 25-50 micrograms, or 50,000-100,000 parts per billion. However toxicology studies from UC-Davis show that Thimerosal damages calcium channels and thus immunity at less than 20 ppb. The EPA limit for drinking water is 4 ppb -- and that's ingested, not injected.

To understand Thimerosal's toxicity, read the research from chemists and toxicologists. Start with former U-Kentucky chemistry chair Boyd Haley.
http://www.iaomt.org/testfoundation/thimerosal.htm
http://www.iaomt.org/testfoundation/thimstudys.htm

Regarding the MMR -- today a press release announced this: "The Press Complaints Commission (PCC) of London, an independent body that oversees journalism fairness in the UK, has issued an interim order calling for the Sunday Times to remove stories written by Brian Deer about Dr. Andrew Wakefield from its web site. Dr. Wakefield had filed an extensive complaint with the PCC regarding errors of fact in Deer’s reportage on the MMR vaccine and its possible relationship to autism."

I know a U.S. child whose lab tests show he has measles in lesions lining his gastrointestinal mucosa. He's just one of many children whose biopsies revealed that agonizing condition; how many more children are suffering because psychologists like Mr. Pigliucci are busy securing grant money to observe sick children's behaviors?

The skeptic bloggers denying vaccine injury are deflecting attention from recent legal cases settled in the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program -- children paradoxically injured such as Hannah Poling, Bailey Banks, Benjamin Zeller and many more. Read here about 3-year-old Julia who won her Federal vaccine injury case.
http://childhealthsafety.wordpress.com/2009/06/14/juliawinsmmrcase/

Also note that in Andreu v. Sec. of Health and Human Services, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit overrode the vaccine court’s findings that the child’s DPT vaccination did not cause a seizure disorder. See The National Law Journal's article here.
http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202431807196&Federal_Circuit_Reve...

Read reports to the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System. These and similar cases have been recorded in the Vaccine Safety Datalink, which -- conveniently for industry -- is off limits to the taxpayers who fund the NVICP program.

Most consumers don't realize that vaccines carry no product warranty. Vaccine manufacturers are free from financial responsibility for the product they sell. Public health administrators won't be there to help if your child is injured, and neither will the underinformed pundits from Psychology Today.

Good grief Becky! You call your friend a moron for researching the risks of vaccines? Each and every biological product/medicine, which includes vaccines, carries risks, especially to newborns and babies!

To say that vaccines do not cause autism is a bunch of bull. Neurological complications from vaccines are well documented. Only someone trying to pull something over on you would tell you different.

There are now documented cases where it has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that vaccines caused autism. I know it's kind of hard for this author and this dying magazine to realize that as the ads for adderall and risperdal have to pay your meager salaries.

Get a clue - Autism has been historically viewed as a mental illness but it is being shown to be a medical illness--so then bye-bye Psychology Today and the DSM. Oh no--what will you do without analyzing the poor parents and then medicating the children?

A Possible Link Between Chemical Exposure And Autism May Have Been Overlooked In The Very Earliest Cases At Johns Hopkins
http://www.citypaper.com/news/story.asp?id=13317

Dad in Autism-Vaccine Case Speaks Ou
http://www.webmd.com/brain/autism/news/20080306/dad-in-autism-vaccine-ca...

FASEB J. 2009 Mar 23. [Epub ahead of print]Click here to read Links
Cellular and mitochondrial glutathione redox imbalance in lymphoblastoid cells derived from children with autism.
James SJ, Rose S, Melnyk S, Jernigan S, Blossom S, Pavliv O, Gaylor DW.

*Department of Pediatrics; andDepartment of Biostatistics, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Arkansas Children's Hospital Research Institute, Little Rock, Arkansas, USA.

Research into the metabolic phenotype of autism has been relatively unexplored despite the fact that metabolic abnormalities have been implicated in the pathophysiology of several other neurobehavioral disorders. Plasma biomarkers of oxidative stress have been reported in autistic children; however, intracellular redox status has not yet been evaluated. Lymphoblastoid cells (LCLs) derived from autistic children and unaffected controls were used to assess relative concentrations of reduced glutathione (GSH) and oxidized disulfide glutathione (GSSG) in cell extracts and isolated mitochondria as a measure of intracellular redox capacity. The results indicated that the GSH/GSSG redox ratio was decreased and percentage oxidized glutathione increased in both cytosol and mitochondria in the autism LCLs. Exposure to oxidative stress via the sulfhydryl reagent thimerosal resulted in a greater decrease in the GSH/GSSG ratio and increase in free radical generation in autism compared to control cells. Acute exposure to physiological levels of nitric oxide decreased mitochondrial membrane potential to a greater extent in the autism LCLs, although GSH/GSSG and ATP concentrations were similarly decreased in both cell lines. These results suggest that the autism LCLs exhibit a reduced glutathione reserve capacity in both cytosol and mitochondria that may compromise antioxidant defense and detoxification capacity under prooxidant conditions.

J Child Neurol. 2007 Sep;22(9):1121-3.Click here to read Links
Autistic disorder in 2 children with mitochondrial disorders.
Tsao CY, Mendell JR.

Department of Pediatrics, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA. tsaoc@pediatrics.ohio-state.edu

Autistic disorder is a heterogeneous disorder. The majority of the cases are idiopathic, and only a small number of the autistic children have associated secondary diagnosis. This article reports 2 children with mitochondrial disorders associated with autistic disorder fulfilling the diagnostic criteria of the American Psychiatric Association Manual of Psychiatric Diseases, 4th edition, and briefly reviews the literature on autistic disorder associated with mitochondrial disorders.

This article is about as non-scientific as you can get and yet the subject is supposed to be about science and proof that vaccines don't cause autism. Where is the proof that vaccines are safe? You provide absolutely nothing. All you are able to do is trash the personalities. Even to the point of stating that Jenny's son was autistic before vaccines. Are you stupid or what? The HepB vaccine is given when the baby is a day old. What about Bernadine healy's statement that more studies on vaccines need to be done? Your comments "the science is in and there is no controversy" is a joke. Those of us who believe that vaccines cause great harm are here to stay and NEVER going away.