CDC's Latest Study Finds No Link Between Vaccines and Autism! What a Relief! (What a bunch of crap!)

The big news yesterday... "There is no link found between vaccines and autism."
Wow. What a relief that is. We can all get back to our lives.

Don't celebrate too soon.

Here's the link to the article put out all over the place yesterday.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/13/no-link-found-between-vac_n_715090.html

Here's a link where you can download the full-text article for free:
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/reprint/peds.2010-0309v1

Here are my comments about this "study" after looking at it for about an hour:

Two problems right off the bat:

1. Lower functioning children were excluded because their problems were so severe that it made it tough to assess them.

2. The participants were pre-selected by virtue of mandatory physician's consent before they could be recruited into the study. Their doctors were the gate-keepers. So, if the doctor didn't want a particular kid in the study, he or she denied consent and that child was never recruited. With doctors not reporting vaccine reactions in the first place, and with the serious objections many physicians have to the mere suggestion that there is a link between vaccines and autism, this is a major design flaw. This is not a random sample.

Of 802 potential cases (children with autism diagnoses), physician's consent was refused in 31 cases (3.87%). With recent autism rates at 1 in 100 children (1%), this certainly raises more suspicion about WHY these physicians automatically refused consent for these families to even be contacted about potentially participating in the study.

Of 777 cases (autism diagnoses) whose physicians gave consent, 103 (13.26%) were deemed ineligible for participation. In the Opposing Views article (http://www.opposingviews.com/i/q-a-with-cristofer-price-thimerosal-autism-study-author) the following information provides insight about why these children were deemed "ineligible":

Question: "As to the paper, I see that the results are the same for autism with and without regression. Are there any other issues of severity which were checked (e.g. level of intellectual disability, seizures) which were also monitored?"

Response: "We did do a sub-analysis where AD cases with low cognitive functioning were excluded (see technical report on Monday for full details and results) Analysis of the subgroup of AD cases where children with low cognitive functioning were excluded was motivated by the following concern. Because children who are non-responsive during the assessment process are more difficult to assess, it can sometimes be difficult to determine whether children with severe developmental delay actually have autistic disorder."

MPT: SO... they eliminated a sizable portion of the cases of children with autism on the basis that they were too severely impaired to participate in the assessment. This would DEFINITELY present at least a POTENTIAL for skewed results by eliminating the population of children with the most severe symptoms of mercury poisoning.

In the final analysis, after all of the physicians’ refusals and elimination of children who were "too severe to be assessed" there were only 49 cases (children with autism) that carried the Regressive Autism diagnosis. This represents 19% of the "Case Group" and 6.11% of the original group of 802 children who were potential "Cases" for the study. Ultimately, the exposures to thimerosal of this group of children (n=49) were compared statistically with the exposures of the "Control" group (children who did not have autism diagnoses; n=652), and "no significant differences" were found between groups.

No Shit.

As anyone who has looked at my previous analysis of the MMR study should know by now... The closer your groups are in number, the more powerful your analysis is. When comparing groups of 49 and 652, there is just a tad of inequality in the number of subjects.

This study is bunk.
Try again, CDC.