Private Study Links Vaccinations to Neurological Disorders

Thursday, February 14, 2008 by: Heidi Stevenson
Tags: vaccines, health news, Natural News

(NewsTarget) Studies financed by pharmaceutical corporations and government agencies - which are now largely under the control of big pharma - keep stating that there is no link between autism and vaccinations or thimerosal. As a previous News Target article, (http://www.newstarget.com/022237.html) Dissecting A Thimerosal Study demonstrates, these studies are often tainted by their funding. Nonetheless, parents find themselves under tremendous pressure, both overt and subtle, to have their children vaccinated, in spite of little or no documentation showing efficacy, let alone safety. Worse, information produced by the American Medical Association clearly demonstrates that vaccinations have done nothing to increase longevity, and may have caused increases in deaths from disease.

Vaccination's Smoking Gun

More dramatic, though, is a virtual smoking gun - a study showing a clear connection between neurological disorders and vaccinations. The results are dramatic, showing that more than twice the number of vaccinated children had autism than those who had not been vaccinated. Worse, the rates of vaccinated children with other neurological problems are even higher.

Done in June 2007, the study was financed by Generation Rescue, a group of families with autistic children who have been working to find out why this has happened to their youngsters and how to help them. The study itself is a survey of 11,817 California and Oregon households, with a total of 17,674 children, 991 of whom had never been vaccinated. It was produced by SurveyUSA, an independent company.

The SurveyUSA Study

There seems little likelihood of bias in favor of results showing a link between vaccinations and autism, as SurveyUSA includes several pharmaceutical firms among its clientele, including Abbott Laboratories, Alcon Laboratories, AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals, Bayer Corporation, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck Laboratories, Monsanto Company, Nexium, Pfizer, and Schering Plough — all documented in the SurveyUSA list of clients (http://www.surveyusa.com/index.php/who-does-...). If SurveyUSA has a bias, it must be in favor of the pharmaceutical corporations. Yet, this study shows a result that does not benefit any of these businesses.

The Study's Methodology

Nine counties in California and Oregon were selected for the study.

California counties:

San Diego

Sonoma

Orange

Sacramento

Marin

Oregon counties:

Multnomah

Marion

Jackson

Lane

Target households were those with children ages 4 through 17. Data were gathered for 9,175 boys and 8,499 girls. Information elicited whether each child had been vaccinated and, vaccinated or not, whether the child had one or more of the following disorders:

* Attention deficit disorder

* Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

* Asperger's syndrome

* Pervasive developmental disorder - not otherwise specified

* Autism

* Asthma

* Juvenile diabetes

Data were analyzed according to sex and county, and broken down by age ranges 4 through 10 and 11 through 17. Percentages of children with these disorders were noted according to whether they'd been vaccinated or not, and the correlation between the two numbers, called the Risk Ratio (RR), was calculated.

The RR is a simple calculation that compares the percentage of vaccinated to unvaccinated children with each disorder. Thus, if 4.5% of vaccinated children have Asperger's and 2.7% of non-vaccinated children have the same disease, the RR is 4.5% divided by 2.7%, giving an RR value of 1.67. (4.5/2.7 = 1.67) Thus, an RR over 1.0 indicates that vaccinations are related to a higher disease incidence, and an RR under 1.0 indicate that vaccinations are related to a lower disease incidence.

All results of the study were tabulated and have been made available to the public to assure complete transparency (http://www.generationrescue.org/pdf/survey.p...). In other words, no attempt has been made to hide or otherwise manipulate the data.

The survey was automated, thus eliminating any chance that an individual might mislead a respondent. Responses were given via telephone touchpads. This is also the manner that the Centers for Disease Control says is most accurate. The survey questions used in Sonoma County can be found here (http://www.generationrescue.org/pdf/question...). In my reading of the survey, there is no language that could indicate a desired response either for or against vaccinations.

Survey Results

The results are stunning. The data shows dramatic increases in neurological diseases and asthma in vaccinated children. Generation Rescue is cautious in its interpretations. They have taken a humble position, saying that, "We are a small non-profit organization. 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 neurodevelopmental outcomes."

On the other hand, a survey, taken randomly from 17,674 children and focused on nine counties in various areas separated by hundreds of miles, is a significant number by itself. Unless the CDC should do an equivalent study, done with the same rigor, over a larger population, then this one must stand as nothing less than a smoking gun for the link between childhood vaccinations and neurological disorders, plus asthma. The only disease in the survey that did not show an increase associated with vaccination was juvenile diabetes.

Results Summary

Vaccinated boys:

* Neurological disorder, RR = 2.55 (155% more likely to have neurological disorder than unvaccinated boys)

* ADHD, RR = 3.24 (224% more likely to have ADHD than unvaccinated boys)

* Autism, RR = 1.61 (61% more likely to have autism than unvaccinated boys)

Vaccinated boys ages 11-17:

* Neurological disorder, RR = 2.58 (158% more likely to have neurological disorder than unvaccinated boys)

* ADHD, RR = 4.17 (317% more likely to have ADHD than unvaccinated boys)

* Autism, RR = 2.12 (112% more likely to have autism than unvaccinated boys)

The study notes that older children are more likely to have been diagnosed with a neurological disorder, because such diagnoses are often missed in younger children. Therefore, this is likely the more accurate figure.

All vaccinated boys and girls were 120% more likely to have asthma than unvaccinated children (RR = 2.20).

Vaccinated girls showed no significant difference from unvaccinated girls in neurological disorders. Whether this is due to the relatively small number of girls with these same disorders or because of the relatively small number of girls with such disorders in the study is unknown.

Conclusion: Stop Vaccinating Our Children!

What more do you need to know? This study shows a clear link between neurological disorders and vaccinations. It indicates that autism rates may be more than double in vaccinated boys than in those who were not vaccinated.

The question needs to be asked: Why doesn't the CDC or the FDA or the AMA do a large-scale equivalent study to determine whether the pharmaceutically-funded studies are valid? The methodology is simple, and it adheres to the techniques that the CDC has approved. Rather than continuing to spend huge amounts of money on clearly flawed studies to placate the pharmaceutical corporations and give a false sense of security to parents, it's time for these organizations to put their money where their mouth is. It's well past time for them to use Generation Rescue's methods on a national scale. This is the sort of study that can definitively show whether there's a link between neurological disorders and vaccinations.

Until these agencies produce such a study, it's time for them to stop forcing vaccinations on our children. Let them try to prove, using transparent studies in which all children of all families contacted are included, without exception, unlike the recent one documented in Dissecting A Thimerosal Study (http://www.newstarget.com/022237.html), in which the vast majority of children were eliminated for specious reasons. Until they're willing to do this, they must stop destroying the lives of our young for their profits.

About the author

* Heidi Stevenson, BSc, DIHom, FBIH
* Fellow, British Institute of Homeopathy
* Gaia Health (http://www.gaia-health.com)
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* The author is a homeopath who became concerned with medically-induced harm as a result of her own experiences and those of family members. She says that allopathic medicine is the arena that best describes the motto, "Buyer beware."
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* Heidi Stevenson provides information about medically-induced disease and disability, along with incisive well-researched articles on major issues in the modern world, so members of the public can protect themselves.
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She can be reached through her website: www.gaia-health.com