Live data from Hacker News

Danish Study: No link between vaccines and autism or other health conditions

en.ssi.dk

101–110 of 140 posts

Re: Danish Study: No link between vaccines and autism or other health conditions

#101
post #46
post #24

Ok, hold up. This study came up on Reddit a few weeks ago and my wife linked it to me. A lot of the comments were similar about how vaccine skeptics will never be convinced by it. So, being a vaccine skeptic, I went and read it. >In this primary analysis, except for Asperger syndrome (hazard ratio, 1.13 [CI, 0.89 to 1.44]) and atypical autism (hazard ratio, 0.94 [CI, 0.79 to 1.12]), estimates for the individual outco…

What exactly is a vaccine skeptic - in your opinion? What are you skeptical of?

The other comment articulates the points much better than I would have, but I have a large number of (tested) food and environmental allergies. It is a very logical explanation that the adjuvants in vaccines would cause the body to also train an immune response to other things.

There is also a massive profit motive for pharma companies and many hospitals, when you couple that with the revolving door between industry and government, it seems like a situation ripe for corruption.

I don't see the harm in removing aluminum adjuvants from vaccines (we all buy aluminum free deodorant!). I don't see the harm in not vaccinating children for things they are unlikely to come into contact with (i.e. hepatitis B). In fact, I think it would be good to make the change and see what the health outcomes are over the next 30 years. That is how we will learn.

Re: Danish Study: No link between vaccines and autism or other health conditions

#102

I am an autism researcher. While we cannot say 'vaccines never cause autism' we can say with confidence 'Other potential causes of autism have much better theoretical foundations, empirical evidence, prevalence, and effect sizes. With limited research budgets, we have better research targets to pursue first before further investigating vaccines."

That’s not a helpful way to communicate with the public. Instead you should follow the standards we hold for everyday occurrences, which is if there’s no compelling evidence, it’s safe to say it doesn’t happen.

[flagged]

Re: Danish Study: No link between vaccines and autism or other health conditions

#103
post #28

The people who dont believe in vaccines or that they cause autism dont really get science. Wasting hard work trying to convince them is useless. These people truly are idiots, at best a burden on society and at worse a threat to public health. Its one thing to have a skepticism of the pharmaceutical industry, its not ill founded but if their entire personality is based on denying science I dont think we should waste…

There seems to be something special about vaccines that really sets these people off, and it goes way way back. Vaccine paranoia is as old as vaccines and they’ve always drawn a special ire from believers in naturopathy, natural medicine, faith healing, new thought, and similar strands of thinking. I don’t quite get it.

There is no need to treat vaccine scepticism as something special.

Most of the denialism is rooted in the logic of "truth of the world is what you can see and observe". This worked fine for centuries but once there was rapid progress lot of things could no longer be explained through "see and observe". This mostly happened in late 1800s and early 1900s when there was a huge leap in scientific understanding. Lot of scepticism comes from this era. In the conspiracy theory lore - Before 5G was causing COVID, electricity was causing influenza outbreak in late 1800s.

"Natural" or faith healing are thought to be observable facts. You can see a plant growing but not the vaccine produced in a lab.

Couple this with general distrust of governments - monarchy or democracy you have people doubting vaccines.

Re: Danish Study: No link between vaccines and autism or other health conditions

#104
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There seems to be something special about vaccines that really sets these people off, and it goes way way back. Vaccine paranoia is as old as vaccines and they’ve always drawn a special ire from believers in naturopathy, natural medicine, faith healing, new thought, and similar strands of thinking. I don’t quite get it.

There is no need to treat vaccine scepticism as something special. Most of the denialism is rooted in the logic of "truth of the world is what you can see and observe". This worked fine for centuries but once there was rapid progress lot of things could no longer be explained through "see and observe". This mostly happened in late 1800s and early 1900s when there was a huge leap in scientific understanding. Lot of sc…

> In the conspiracy theory lore - Before 5G was causing COVID, electricity was causing influenza outbreak in late 1800s.

Wow. Any book/paper recommendations ? Fascinating stuff.

Re: Danish Study: No link between vaccines and autism or other health conditions

#105
post #61

I am an autism researcher. While we cannot say 'vaccines never cause autism' we can say with confidence 'Other potential causes of autism have much better theoretical foundations, empirical evidence, prevalence, and effect sizes. With limited research budgets, we have better research targets to pursue first before further investigating vaccines."

This is exactly why the whole "vaccine causes autism" got started. We need to improve science literacy before we could say things like that to the general public. When a layperson hears this, they'll think that there's a small but possible chance that vaccines do cause autism; when what the scientist means to say is that "it's highly unlikely that vaccines cause autism."

[deleted]

Re: Danish Study: No link between vaccines and autism or other health conditions

#106
post #75
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly why the whole "vaccine causes autism" got started. We need to improve science literacy before we could say things like that to the general public. When a layperson hears this, they'll think that there's a small but possible chance that vaccines do cause autism; when what the scientist means to say is that "it's highly unlikely that vaccines cause autism."

I think it’s okay to mean what you say. Part of improving literacy is also respecting the intelligence of your audience and not talking down to them. Treating everyone like buffoons makes people act like them - treating them as beings capable of thought and reason tends to show the better side.

I find this argument hard to agree with. We are seeing unprecedented levels of buffoonery in many governments of the world and people enthusiastically agreeing with (objectively) idiots. Before anyone that does not know how to understand a statement as we are talking about, they will understand it the wrong way, tell everyone they know, create social media content and form organizations that oppose vaccines. I would say that this is more likely to happen many times over than them actually learning how to understand a statement like OPs properly. So as sad as it is, I think you are wrong.

Re: Danish Study: No link between vaccines and autism or other health conditions

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not a helpful way to communicate with the public. Instead you should follow the standards we hold for everyday occurrences, which is if there’s no compelling evidence, it’s safe to say it doesn’t happen.

"which is if there’s no compelling evidence, it’s safe to say it doesn’t happen." I call BS. Until there was compelling evidence that antidepressants cause suicidal ideation it's safe to say it doesn't Until there was compelling evidence that contaminated water causes cholera it's safe to say it doesn't Until there was compelling evidence that dirty hands cause maternal death it's safe to say it doesn't Until there w…

What is your point? You can't suspect things without evidence or you'd never be able to leave your house afraid of everything.

Re: Danish Study: No link between vaccines and autism or other health conditions

#108
post #75
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly why the whole "vaccine causes autism" got started. We need to improve science literacy before we could say things like that to the general public. When a layperson hears this, they'll think that there's a small but possible chance that vaccines do cause autism; when what the scientist means to say is that "it's highly unlikely that vaccines cause autism."

I think it’s okay to mean what you say. Part of improving literacy is also respecting the intelligence of your audience and not talking down to them. Treating everyone like buffoons makes people act like them - treating them as beings capable of thought and reason tends to show the better side.

So what you're saying is vaccines might cause autism?

;-)

Re: Danish Study: No link between vaccines and autism or other health conditions

#109
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

would you mind answering a couple questions? I'm very curiuous: Have autism rates increased recently (last few decades)? If so, what are the best theories for why?

The book “Neurotribes” goes into this in great detail. The number of diagnoses have increased, primarily due to a widening of the criteria used to diagnose autism as the DSM [1] has gone from version 3 to 5. In the early days of autism research, it used to be necessary to meet multiple criteria (i.e. profound social withdrawal, language peculiarities such as echolalia, resistance to change, repetitive behaviors, etc.…

> widening of the criteria used to diagnose

Seeing some autism influencers on social media, I'm reminded that every childhood friend I ever had was autistic.

Re: Danish Study: No link between vaccines and autism or other health conditions

#110
post #36

> To assess the association between cumulative aluminum exposure from early childhood vaccination and risk for autoimmune, atopic or allergic, and neurodevelopmental disorders. from what I understand about the skepticism toward adjuvants, "cumulative aluminum exposure" was not the hypothesis. It might be a proxy for the hypothesis, which has to do with repeated exposures rolling the dice, but what is the attitude of…

Just to clarify for others reading: Statens Serum Institut (SSI) is a government agency, founded and primarily funded by the Danish Ministry of Health. It’s not a private company profiting from vaccines. In fact, SSI sold its vaccine production business in 2016 to AJ Vaccines and now focuses on public health, disease surveillance, and research.

The claim that their “salaries come from vaccine profits” is simply false. While they conduct vaccine-related research and some of their funding comes from competitive grants, their core operations are state-funded. Saying "Primary funding source: None" in a paper means no external funding for that specific study, not that the authors are secretly paid by pharma.

It’s important to hold science accountable — but misrepresenting basic facts about an institution’s funding just spreads confusion, not clarity.

Post reply on HN