The Question No Expert is Asking....

Something is rotten in Denmark.

Parents of children with autism who believe that the condition was caused by vaccines have been routinely written off by the experts. It doesn't matter that these parents saw normal behaviour and development before vaccines and a startling regression after. That is pure coincidence.

So where are the studies that compare vaccinated children with autism with rates of autism in children who are not vaccinated? In other words, where are the controls?

Nowhere according to the "experts".

"There have never been any large, prospective, long-term studies comparing the long-term health of highly vaccinated individuals versus those who have never been vaccinated at all," Barbara Loe Fisher of the National Vaccine Information Center wrote in Mothering Magazine last year.

Therefore, the background rates for ADHD, learning disabilities, autism, seizure disorders, asthma, diabetes, intestinal bowel disorders, rheumatoid arthritis, and other brain and immune-system dysfunction in a genetically diverse unvaccinated population remains unknown."

-- "Why hasn't the most obvious research been done -- that is, assess the incidence of autism in unvaccinated children?" wrote Illinois autism activist Dr. David Ayoub this fall.

-- Kennedy, in a white paper called "Tobacco Science and the Thimerosal Scandal," quotes University of Kentucky chemistry professor Boyd Haley as saying, "If the CDC were really interested in uncovering the truth, it would commission epidemiological studies of cohorts who escaped vaccination, most obviously the children of Jehovah's Witnesses, Christian Scientists or the Amish."

Instead, Kennedy said, the CDC has "worked furiously to quash such studies" and prevent access to its own vaccine safety database -- a charge the CDC denies. Kennedy said he asked an official at the Institute of Medicine -- which last year rejected a vaccines-autism link -- why it didn't encourage those studies rather than recommend research money be redirected.

"That's a great idea, no one has ever suggested it before," Kennedy quoted the official as saying. Kennedy commented: "That statement is incredible. ... The idea of finding an uncontaminated U.S. cohort is Science 101. ... In fact, Dr. Boyd Haley has repeatedly urged IOM and CDC to conduct such a study, including at two public and tape-recorded meetings."

All these people are saying the same thing: Given the stakes, where's the study? This winter the government wants all pregnant women and 6-to-23-month-olds to get flu shots, most of which contain thimerosal.