Autism generally strikes after the child passes the age when all vaccinations would be completed...this is simply the course of the disease...one could just as simply say autism is caused by teething which also usually occurs after all the initial vaccinations are received. Thimerosol has been used for many years in many drugs administered by injection. Thorough research has been unable to replicate any connection to any vaccinations received by children. It is natural to want to find something to point a finger at when your child develops such a devastating condition as autism, but it is illogical to make a connection with no fact. To stop administering vaccines just because autism is increasing among children is to place millions of children at risk for death producing childhood diseases. That would be a criminal act in and of itself. There is ongoing research to try to identify the reasons why some children develop autism...it could also be due to the rampant use of preservatives in foods, far more common than in the past. But again...there is no definitive research to demonstrate even that as a contributing cause. The one hope lies with genetic research and the hope that at some point it may be able to do genetic manipulation to eradicate childhood autism.

This is another case of lawyers driving decisions instead of science. Numerous studies have shown that there is only a correlation between the two. That does not equal causation. See Ozy's post above. A perfect example is that almost every infant that has died in a hospital has been given oxygen, so oxygen in hospitals must be toxic! Call the lawyers!

If you give a monkey a large dose of mercury then they develop neurological problems, duh. Just like if you give a human a large does of sun exposure they get a sunburn and can develop skin cancer. That doesn't mean the same effects occurs at minimal doses. The results of these types of cases do little than to scare parents into thinking that vaccinations are evil and help in leading us back to the days when thousands of children died from very preventable diseases.