NEW RESEARCH REFUTES, AGAIN, LINK TO AUTISM OF THE MMR VACCINE

Research with or without thimerosol finds no link of measles-mumps-rubella vaccine to autism

Just two weeks after candidates for the Republican presidential nomination reprised the allegation that childhood vaccines may be responsible for the dramatic rise in the number of children with autism, new research offers additional evidence against such a link.

Multiple vaccines containing the preservative thimerosal, administered to macaque monkeys on the schedule that pediatricians followed in the 1990s, resulted in none of the key brain or behavioral changes linked to autism, a new study shows.

The same study also administered a wide range of vaccines including the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine–which never contained thimerosal–to rhesus macaques. Again, it found no evidence of changes in brains or behavior that would implicate either the much-maligned MMR vaccine or a combination of many vaccines as a cause of or contributor to autism.

Excerpted from the article by Melissa Healy in Science Now, Los Angeles Times, September 28, 2015. The study was published in the journal PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 9/28/2105))