CNN story about autism and vaccination

[purchasemonkey]

   So I just read Should I vaccinate my baby? on CNN. As you might expect from the title, it's not exactly a fair and balanced look at the subject, but, in my opinion, a horribly irresponsible piece of sensationalistic scare journalism.

Comments

[tamago]

Not to stir up the shit, but Teo's doctor (admittedly, GP, not Pediatrician, but she has kids of her own) has been keeping up on the research and in the last year there were two reasonably reputable studies published that she says show some causal linkage between vaccines and autism (or autism-like symptoms which may or may not be an immune response.) But, she said, incidents of autism or autism-like symptoms diminished greatly on a slighly delayed schedule and advised us to wait until certain fontanelles on Teo's head are closed before starting the vaccines normally started at 18 months (a delay of anywhere from 2-6 months.) Furthermore, this practice has a policy of not giving more than three shots per visit, and spaced out all the baby vaccines that way. Their evidence on this one is anecdotal (but they're trying to get a study funded) but they have much lower rates of vaccine-related "minor" complications like high fevers and seizures.

However, there's a huge leap from "let's delay a few months, monitor reactions closely and start with the really dangerous diseases rather than giving your child eight vaccine shots in one go" to "OMG! U R goin to B teh Stupids if U get shots!!!!!!1!!"

And it pisses me off that journalism has blown off nuanced truth in favor of sensation. It makes it so difficult to get accurate information. Bah.

[tamago]

Teo sees her in August. I'll ask!