The only way that Handley could have a point here is either

Should read: The only way that Handley could have a point here would be if either…

Damn.

But to focus in on the contradiction – he says falsely that only a vaccine-free control group is of any value. But since this is nonsense. If vaccines (or any specific vaccine or vaccine ingredient) caused autism or increased the risk of autism then we would see many correlations – the risk of autism would be greater after the vaccine rather than before, delaying vaccines would likely reduce the risk, and most importantly there would be a dose-response. The greater the exposure to the vaccine, or vaccines in general, or to the ingredient (like thimerosal) the greater the risk of developing autism. The fact that none of these correlations have been found is powerful evidence (not worthless, as Handley would have you believe) against a vaccine-autism link.

The only way that Handley could have a point here is either thimerosal or vaccines were so potent in causing autism that an amount lower than the lowest level examined in these studies causes autism–in other words, if the dose-response curve plateaus before the lowest level of vaccines/thimerosal/whatever studied. However, we already know that that can’t be the case because, if it were the case, the “autism epidemic” would have begun decades before it did (in the 1990s) because that “threshold level” would have been reached long before.

In other words, Handley is clueless. What else is new?

I am JB Handley’s enemy.

YIPPEE!!!

I am reminded of “natural experiments” in psychology where researchers have sought children who were not exposed to language or social interaction for many years in order to study how language and other skills develop, as they obviously couldn’t create such a group themselves to study.

Is there a conceivable way to follow a group of children who’s parents choose not to have them vaccinated? The group would have to be selected before they are scheduled to have their first vaccination in order to avoid later sample biases. Hmmm, and it would have to be a very large sample size to have any meaning. I imagine the effort required to find and track such a group would be hard to justify given it’s a settled question anyway.

That’s what struck me with the Omnibus Autism Proceedings — we know what measles virus will do if reaches the brain, and it isn’t autism.

And that’s probably true of other vaccines. If the actual disease can’t cause the malady and we’ve gotten ridden of thimerosal, that just about does it as far as the vaccine causing autism.

Of course, this is totally irrelevant to the true believers.

The tide seems to be turning against the anti-vaccinationists, and pretty soon it’s no longer going to be any fun sticking it into idiots like JB, because everyone’s going to be agreeing with you and JB is going to be too marginalised to be worth the effort.

At least that’s what I’m hoping.

Whatever happened to his and Eisenstein’s vaccinated/unvaccinated autism study? Why all the bluster if that is in the works?