Survey: One in four Americans thinks vaccines cause autism
October 4th, 2008From Florida Today, tcpalm.com:
A survey commissioned by the Florida Institute of Technology found that 24 percent of Americans believes autism is caused by vaccines, even though no scientific evidence supports such a link.
Sixty percent of those polled said the presidential candidates should include a plan for curing autism in their platforms, and eighty-three percent said that finding the cause and cure for autism should be a national priority. The survey was based on telephone interviews with 1,000 randomly selected adults across the country, conducted by GDA Education Research of Mount Pleasant, S.C.
Results of the survey were released to kick off Florida Tech’s second annual autism conference, “The Many Faces of Autism.”
Mary Beth Kunkel, dean of Florida Tech’s College of Psychology and Liberal Arts, described the finding as a surprise given the number of federal studies exonerating the mercury preservative thimerosal, once used widely in children’s vaccines, but rarely, if ever, included in vaccines today.
See also: Press release from Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Florida.
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October 5th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
I came across this site today and thought, “wow this is going to be a great resource for our family” since 2 of our 3 kids are on the Autism Spectrum, and disability rights are a passion of ours, even more so that our children are directly affected.
Then I saw this post.It saddened me because again, this is a case of the media being so naive about this issue.
If a journalist cannot take the time to investigate the facts about a subject, it should not be listed as an informative resource for people, but only an opinion article.
This article for instance, states that “A survey commissioned by the Florida Institute of Technology found that 24 percent of Americans believes autism is caused by vaccines, even though no scientific evidence supports such a link.”
This is untrue, outright untrue. There are hundreds, if not thousands of studies out there about this subject that do show cause that vaccines are a factor in autism. In fact, the studies that the CDC/AAP/etc claim are ‘proof’ that vaccines do not cause autism actually, when read, state that more studies are needed because they have not been able to tell one way or the other…so if that means proof that theyare 100% sure, wow, thats pretty opinionated to me, rather than fact.
I think the survey does bring out that 1 in 4 parents believe vaccines play a role in Autism…sure, because the rates of Autism are sky-rocketing, from 1 in 10,000 kids in the 80s to now 1 in 150. That is outrageous, the more children with autism, the more parents are seeing for their own eyes what damage the unsafe vaccines are doing to our children…for thier own eyes.
If anyone cared to really listen to us parents, you would see that our stories are almost exactly the same …its scary…and even more scary that there are journalists that continue to spread lies like this article, when, if even taken a few minutes to investigate, would have realized that there are real scientific studies that do link vaccines to autism! Yes there are.
Shame to those that do not investigate important things like this…its not helping by spreading lies and continuing to spread this garbage some call ‘information’, especially since the higher ups at the NIH/CDC/etc are even starting to admit that their studies are inconclusive! Come on!
October 5th, 2008 at 12:18 am
Perhaps some of these parents have finally become aware that the federal studies were funded by the purveyors of these vaccines and related agencies. Not only is thimerosal a neurotoxin, but so is aluminum which is used in many vaccines as an adjuvant. Even today, pregnant women are urged to get flu vaccines, most of which still contain thimerosal. The mercury in the flu vaccines crosses the placenta and sequesters in fatty tissues and organs (including the brain) in the fetus.
October 4th, 2008 at 11:48 pm
Someone should inform Mary Beth Kunkel that vaccines do have mercury- even trace amounts in a small child can have effects on a small child with a compromised immune system. The flu shot still has a huge amount of mercury. It is surprising that people are not aware of this.