Vaccine - autism link?

[SoonerCoug]

Originally Posted by SoCalCoug

Which is still a link, correct?

No, it's not a link.

To establish a link, you need a larger sample size.

Think about it this way...

If you have cancer and go on chemo and get better, does that mean that the chemo made you get better? Maybe. Maybe not. It might be that the cancer spontaneously went away. If you don't get better, it's possible that the chemo made things even worse. The only way to know whether a particular drug makes people better or worse is to look at many, many patients and to have appropriate controls.

The reason doctors bled people (in the dark ages of medicine) for so many years is because people "got better" or felt like they got better. This isn't evidence-based medicine. There was no link between bleeding and getting better, but people believed there was a link--and that's because they weren't being scientific. It was just faith and personal testimonials. It wasn't until people started applying real science to medicine that things really started improving.

It's like that "Head-on" stuff on TV. That's just wax, but people swear by it.

Speculating that a vaccine aggravated a condition in a single patient is just speculation. It's not scientific--it's guesswork.

Is it possible that a vaccine caused autism in a single patient somewhere on the earth at some point in history? It's possible. But you can't prove that with a single patient.