There is already a perfect riposte to this on the web:
http://www.autismobserved.net/

“…we have believed that mercury is seriously implicated in the worldwide epidemic of autism. MMR has been no more than a bit player in this saga. No doubt to the satisfaction of the small coterie of companies who comprise the huge international vaccine cartel which has known all along that the real culprit DTP, given at two, three and four months of age does the real damage.

Unfortunately for parents and babies MMR, given at about twelve to fifteen months, can coincide with the visible onset of autism thus cloaking the true cause of harm. MMR could probably tip the balance in the case of a child seriously harmed by DTP but whom so far has escaped the worst of vaccine damage.”

So, you see, it’s DTP, not MMR, and your whole post actually supports the vaccine-autism link!
How ignorant are you then?

Actually, that is 4 vaccines (measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella)

Elizabeth Moon, in Speed of Dark, has a great line: All babies are autistic; some grow out of it. I think this has some application to the study; you see this divergence of behavior at a certain point. It may correlate to other environmental factors, but they aren’t the cause of it.

Does Wakefield’s Lancet study, claiming regression within days of MMR is incorrect?

One of the key questions Handley claims as a benchmark for his “fourteen studies” website is:

Did the study actually contemplate the real world example of a parent vaccinating their child with 5 or more vaccines and then seeing a regression into autism afterward?

Handley’s day is over. It was before this, and it is even more true now.

You might be interested in knowing that children with autism have been shown time and time again to respond with a much more robust innate immune resonse when compared to their non autistic peers. By way of example, you might consider Enstrom, Jyonouchi, or Ashwood.

The luxury we have always had in the fact that we’ve only really studied the MMR or thimerosal regarding autism is that we really couldn’t think of a mechanism by which other vaccines, given much earlier and in combination, might be affecting our infants in ways that might affect future neurodevelopment outside of immediately obvious, difficult to misinterpret, adverse reactions. It seems, however, that the immune system is to some extent, maleable in during some times of development; for a less controversial example, check out the relationship between getting RSV as an infant and having a asthma or wheezing later in childhood.

It turns out, we have many studies on the effect of immune challenges in animal models that show sublte but real effects on behavior, seizure succeptibility, and immune function. These changes have been shown to have variety of contributory factors, including time dependence, ties to specific inflammatory cytokines, and TLR selectivity. For a good review paper, you might check out Early-life programming of later-life brain and behavior: a critical role for the immune system

- pD

It is exceptionally rare that I hear the story, “my son was 100% fine, and at 2 years old after one vaccine appointment he lost everything.” I have heard that story, but very rarely.
More commonly, I hear from parents about a chronic slide into autism with a progression of health issues accompanying the slide.

Most of the ASD kids were baby siblings of other ASD kids. The families are working with MIND and UCLA.

It is not a stretch to assume that some fraction of these children were alternately or un-vaccinated.

http://www.ageofautism.com/2010/02/dr-steven-novella-makes-the-case-for-vaccine-autism-link-by-mistake.html

Can anyone count the number of fallacious arguments in his post?

Interesting study, but the acrobatics necessary to contend that the ‘majority of the vaccine schedule’ is between two to three years shows either someone didn’t know the first thing about our vaccine schedule, or intentional wordsmithing for purposes unknown.

The bulk of our increase in the vaccination schedule has occurred in at the two, four, and six month appointments over the past two decades. In fact, of the recommended vaccines, only two, MMR and varicella are recommended to start after the six month timeframe; the rest, Hep-B, HIB, DTaP, Rotavirus, Polio, Pneumococcal and Flu have all been given at least once, and up to three times by one year of age. These are simple to validate facts.

Why not just have a discussion of the study without the need to defend the (understudied) vaccine schedule?

- pD

So it’s prospective, but with group categorization taking place at the end of the observation period instead of the beginning.

I’m really unclear on how they’ve selected participants for analysis from the larger study into which this one was nested.

There’s something about this study that gives me pause, and I think I was alerted by your formulation that they “followed 25 children who were later diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD)” alongside the description of the study as prospective.

So, immediately I think “huh? How does one know to follow the 25 children who will be diagnosed with ASD?” Of course, they didn’t: they followed 50 children in a prospective study, 25 of whom happened to later to be diagnosed with ASD. But the weirdly back-to-front description (prospective study….of those later diagnosed) comes from the study authors and not Novella.

The rate of diagnosis (1:2) is very different from the real world, because researchers have drawn from a population where they expected very high rates of ASD diagnosis. But I would like to see some real world data on the likelihood of a younger sibling of someone diagnosed with ASD also being diagnosed with ASD. In real world situations, is it as high as 22:25 (88%)?* If so, that’s reassuring (in terms of the study validity), but if it’s lower than I wonder about the issue of blinding in a study like this. The only mention of blinding is in relation to ASD diagnosis, and only in one validation procedure. There is no mention of blinding researchers assessing children to the risk-group status of the participant children, so I wonder if that is an issue – especially since coding is subjectively perceived (the observer is the instrument). It’s just a thought.

*My back-of-the-envelope stuff also reminds me that confidence intervals are always nice to have.