The Independent: Italian court rules MMR vaccine did trigger autism

[Ms. Toad]

112. I did not bring up thimerosal.

I responded to your categorical statement that, "thimerosal was totally removed from all childhood vaccines in 2001." That statement is false. There is no reason to make a statement broader than the facts support, other than an attempt to shut off debate. After all, if there is no childhood exposure, then that particular discussion about vaccines is pointless. As I said, what I care about with respect to the specific debate about thimerosal is the use of inaccurate facts to shut down discussion and to imply that anyone who suggests that there is still room for growth in our understanding of these issues is passionate, but scientifically illiterate.

If you really care about looking at things scientifically,and not just shutting down conversation, you might actually want to read my post. We are learning more about the etiology of autoimmune disorders, including that diseases which have looked homogeneous may actually a heterogenous, with many variants. Some variants may impact populations which are small enough that the consequences of exposure to environmental triggers, such as vaccines, may not be statistically significant as part of the larger studies. That means that the studies may be broadly true - even for most people autism, but there may be subpopulations for which the studies fail. Until now (and not yet with autism, from anything I can quickly tell) we have not had the tools to distinguish the variants. But more and more exome or full genome sequencing is done in the relevant populations, those original studies may need to be refined and repeated for variant subpopulations - and the results may be quite different than our current broad understanding.