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Has anybody had a chance to read this new paper? (Kim?) I skimmed it on my phone and haven't had a chance to read it closely. I think there are some fishy things about it, for one thing not very many African Americans were in the study. http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2275444 Of course, all the media is lit up with how once again, here is another study that shows no link between MMR and autism..I need to take the time to read the paper more closely....did they look at any other vaccines in the study, or the age at which MMR was actually given to the siblings (1 year vs 4 year?) ? Maybe they were spaced out more, delayed, or other vaccines such as hep B or Chicken Pox were omitted?). Did they allot enough time for the siblings to actually receive an autism diagnosis, or did they "wrap up" the study before enough years had elapsed to see if the siblings were eventually diagnosed? http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/apr/21/no-link-between-mmr-and-autism-major-study-concludes?CMP=share_btn_fb ^^here are some snippets from some of the comments by readers 1) conflicts of interest 2) "As King suggests, there's no signal to suggest a relationship. The sampling on this is way off to make an adequate interpretation with confidence. The group size for unvaccinated kids with ASD siblings is 269. So given the "noisy" results, you'd be similarly valid in arguing the MMR reduces ASD risk." 3) good comments by John_MD (sorry for the weird copy/paste) John_MD 8h ago 34 Can somebody help me out here? I just looked through the paper and the numbers as reported show that kids with autistic siblings who are NOT vaccinated are 39% more likely to get autism that those who are not! So in their attempt to show that vaccines don't cause autism in high risk children, they've it can actually reduce the risk of developing it! I really want this paper to be legitimate, but if the data collection was done at random, such a result would be quite unlikely (and maybe, the vaccines can cure autism, but that is even less believable than the original hypothesis). The numbers are found here: http://amaprod.silverchaircdn.com/data/Journals/JAMA/933762/joi150033t2.png?v=635651498182930000 Reply |Pick Report 100383 John_MD 8h ago 34 I noticed the same thing in the original JAMA article. The relative risk is HIGHEST among the 5-year group kids whose siblings do not have ASD. Reply |Pick Report 6jjjjj John_MD 8h ago 12 Yes, I did not get that either. I raised that question earlier here, and all the people here raised up a ruckus of indignation, but when it came down to it, could not explain it either. I wasn't sure if I go the stats wrong, and got 'no vaccine/ to vaccine' backwards. I was also reading this from the article: "The pattern in RRs across these groups was such that lower RR estimates (commonly extending into the protective range, ie, below 1.0) were observed at younger vs older ages and in children with older siblings with vs without ASD. Although protective estimates tended not to reach statistical significance, this pattern is worth further consideration. It is possible, for example, that this pattern is driven by selective parental decision making around MMR immunization, ie, parents who notice social or communication delays in their children decide to forestall vaccination. Because as a group children with recognized delays are likely to be at higher risk of ASD, such selectivity could result in a tendency for some higher-risk children to be unexposed." The way they are talking about it there, is that parents who DON"T vaccinate the second child, get the protective benefit. Is that right? In that case, according to this study, it means that children who do NOT get vaccinated, and are siblings of ASDs, get a 44% reduction in ASD risk if they don't get vaccinated. I am kind of confused on how they are presenting the data. Reply |Pick Report John_MD 6jjjjj 8h ago 12 I think what they are saying is that vaccines do not reduce the risk of autism, but parents who know their kid is likely going to be autistic (especially knowing that their sibling is), are more likely to shy away from vaccinating their child. BUT here lies the problem: this self-selection makes the study less valid since now we don’t know what would have happened had the high risk children who were not vaccinated and are not autistic been vaccinated (we don’t know how many of them there are, but we know that the samples are not random). Reply |Pick Report Loading… 6jjjjj John_MD 8h ago 12 Yes I think what you are saying makes sense. But I think this study was kind of confusing, as to how it presented its data. It could have made it a little more clear. Reply |Pick Report 100383 John_MD 8h ago 23 Exactly. The cell size is TINY for the unvaccinated child with an ASD sibling.