The link between autism and the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine has recently been the topic of much debate. The rate of autism appears to have risen along with the number of children who have received the vaccine, leading researchers to question whether the vaccine plays a role in causing the condition.

However, a recent study found no evidence that the MMR vaccine causes autism.

Using medical records, researchers determined whether children born in Denmark between January 1991 and December 1998 had received the MMR vaccine and/or developed autism.

Findings indicated that unvaccinated children developed autism at the same rate as those given the MMR vaccine. Also, children who had been vaccinated were just as likely to develop the condition before the vaccine as after.

The study involved over 500,000 children, 82 percent of which received the MMR vaccine. Out of the entire group, 738 children were diagnosed with an autistic disorder.

Autism is a neurological disorder that impairs social, communication and imagination skills. Symptoms often become apparent during the primary school years, around the same time that children typically receive vaccinations.

Researchers stated that the fear of autism should not stop parents from having their children vaccinated with the MMR vaccine.

The New England Journal of Medicine November 7, 2002;347:1477-1482

While the study methodology appears to be good, and there is much to learn from the informative findings, there are some significant shortcomings in the conclusions drawn. The study results raise more questions than they answer and underscore the importance for more research.

For example, one important factor that the study failed to consider was the absence of thimerosal in the other infant vaccines the children of the Danish study received prior to getting their MMR vaccine.

The mercury-based preservative, under legal fire for triggering autism, was removed from vaccines on the market in Denmark prior to the birth dates of the children studied. American children, on the other hand, have potential cumulative mercury exposures, sometimes at neurotoxic levels, from prenatal exposures, which include maternal vaccination, immune globulin preparations, environmental pollution and infant vaccinations. These create a significantly different set of circumstances when the MMR vaccine, which does not contain mercury, is administered.

We at PROVE feel strongly that it is erroneous for the study's authors to conclude that since the children in the Danish study did not show an increased incidence of autism after MMR vaccine, the same would hold true for all children. They have not satisfied the question of the MMR vaccine's potential role as a trigger of autism amidst other environmental factors such as previously administered mercury-containing vaccines that have been given to children outside of their population.

It is entirely possible, but not yet studied by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that a child's immune response, inhibited by the elevated mercury levels from thimerosal-containing vaccinations, has less ability to respond to the measles virus in the MMR vaccine. This might be an explanation for the presence of the measles virus cultured from the brains and insides of 80 percent of autistic children. However, PROVE is grateful for their epidemiological research and hopeful that it will spur the absent, yet much needed, biological mechanism research here in the United States.

For a more detailed analysis of this study you can go www.safeminds.org.

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