Vaccines and Autism

For years I've laughed at people like Jenny McCarthy and her claims that vaccines were responsible for autism. It looked like bad psuedoscience, particularly since several studies had cleared thimerosal (and the mercury it contains,) which McCarthy thought was the culprit.

Nevertheless it can't be denied that autism went from 1 in 10,000 live births to 1 in 150. Something had to have changed. Now it looks like McCarthy and company were right all along that vaccines were involved, they just blamed the wrong ingredient.

Pro-life blogger Jill Stanek has suggested in the past that residual DNA from aborted fetuses might be to blame. Truth be told, I thought she was riding a hobby horse just as much as Jenny McCarthy. But today we learn of a new study presented at the International Society for Autism Research The abstract of the study is rather dense, but what it amounts to is that it appears that there is a correlation in autism increases at the time that US and UK vaccines stopped using animal sources and began to use human sources.

The study is explained in plainer language at LifeSiteNews.com.:

The use of such cells means that the vaccine might contain residual human DNA fragments. Dr. Deisher told LSN that "short fragments of human DNA residuals in vaccines present two well-documented potential physiological dangers" and "the possibility for auto-immune reactions." While the immune system recognizes the DNA as foreign, its similarity to an individual’s own DNA can cause the immune system to attack parts of the individual's own body.

Another danger springs from the length of the DNA fragments. Residual DNA fragments consisting of less than 250 base pairs (bp) have been shown to have a higher probability of entering the nucleus of human cells. Once inside the nucleus, short DNA fragments can integrate with the genome of the cell. The probability of integration is 1 billion times greater with DNA from the same species than with DNA from another species, according to the abstract.

The study explained that, as the average human DNA fragment length in the rubella vaccine is 220bp, it would be especially likely to enter the nucleus of a cell. Moreover, 25 of the "recombination hotspots" where the DNA fragment could likely combine are located in some of the autism-associated genes (AAG). Thus, such recombination could be one of the causes of autism.

More details and links can be found at Jill Stanek's blog.