A lot of people are convinced that vaccines caused their babies to develop autism. The belief is that thimerosal, a vaccine preservative that contains very small amounts of mercury, could damage the brain or the immune system at a crucial time in child development. It’s plausible– but the amouts of mercury are so tiny that they don’t really do anything. And the evidence is against it: countries where thimerosal has been removed from vaccines have not seen any decline in autism. So, the evidence is more or less that babies show signs of autism around the same time they are being vaccinated. Maybe it’s caused by television, or breast-feeding, or sunlight, or solid foods? How about cute little hats? Maybe it’s caused by cute little hats.
Autism is definitely in the news, though, and a lot of people think we’re having some kind of epidemic. Probably not: we’re just diagnosing more severely retarded kids as autistic. Previously, they’d have been given other diagnoses. So, autism isn’t any more widespread than it used to be.
Lesson the First: vaccinate your kids, dumbass. Things like polio and rubella suck and are really caused by not vaccinating, whereas autism is unlikely to be affected by anything you do. People who refuse to vaccinate their kids based on this hysteria are no better than the superstitious folks in the third world who refuse to vaccinate their kids because they believe that the vaccines are a CIA plot to sterilize Arab babies.
I wish there were some kind of superstition about me, one involving me kicking your ass unless you give me lots of money. Not that I’d do it– I just want people to believe that I have supernatural powers and need to be appeased.
Secretly Ironic 