An update on autism and inoculations

A team of researchers from Columbia University, Massachusetts General Hospital and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently tried to replicate the ten-year old Lancet study that originally suggested a link between vaccines and autism.  They could not reproduce Lancet's findings and found no statistical causal link. 

That the recent study found no statistical link may not be surprising, since the original publisher, Britain's most respected medical journal, complained in 2004 that the lead author of the original study had concealed a conflict of interest; ten of the study's co-authors have since retracted the implication of a causative link; three of the authors are currently defending themselves in fitness-to-practice charges related to autism research; and the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, the Center for Disease Control and the World Health Organization have since performed studies that found no causative link. Sadly, however, this original study--however discredited--has created questions that still trouble many parents who are struggling with autistic children.