Autism

A few stories in the news lately about autism.

First, a fascinating story in WIRED about an autistic girl who uses technology to communicate. Probably. She made a video of herself being very autistic, acting in ways that seem very wild and strange. And then captioned it with an inner monologue that makes a kind of sense. Autistic people tell us that they live in a different world from the rest of us, but one with just as much internal consistency and reason as our own. This girl advocates for acceptance of that other way of knowing as equally legitimate.

And then there's the parents who are freaked out by their kids becoming autistic around the time they get vaccinated. I'm sorry for their anguish and pain, but I get frustrated by their inability to recognize that vaccines don't cause autism. And more frustrated when NPR reports on a recent court settlement where parents are getting money in compensation for autism, but don't report the bare fact that vaccines don't cause autism. I wish we knew what the cause was. But we do know it's not vaccines.

These parents allege that the mercury-based preservative thimerosal is to blame. In Denmark in 1992, thimerosal was removed from all vaccines. Autism continued to increase. In 1999, thimerosal was removed from US vaccines. Autism has continued to increase. It ain't the thimerosal.