Where Is Carney On Autism?

The Age of Autism is reporting that Chris Carney will be attending Rep. Carolyn Maloney's (D-NY) briefing on vaccines and autism this coming Wednesday.

Rep. Maloney has long been focused on autism, and her intention to address autism is certainly admirable--one that most members of Congress have not highlighted. Yet, Maloney has been fighting the wrong team on this issue by continuing to attack vaccines and encouraging parents to question their effects. Maloney has said, "I remain committed to passing vaccine safety legislation and to fighting to ensure that the voices of all the parents and children who participated in today’s rally [Green Our Vaccines Rally] are heard within the halls of Congress."

In the scientific community, study after study (also good information here) has demonstrated that there is no causal relationship between vaccines and autism.

From the CDC's own website:

"Many studies have looked at whether there is a relationship between vaccines and autism. The weight of the evidence indicates that vaccines are not associated with autism."

The questioning of vaccines by prominent leaders and groups in the autism circle appears to have already produced unintended, negative consequences. For instance, take the recent outbreak of measles across the country, infecting 131 children to date, over half of whom were not vaccinated by their parents. Even though the MMR vaccine is proven to have no connection to autism in children, resident experts largely cited parents concerns about autism with their failure to get children vaccinated.

This is not productive to the overall autism debate. While this debate has been settled in the scientific arena, it is still causing damage to our children's health.

I would be extremely interested in hearing more about Chris Carney's views on this issue because it is important and largely underdiscussed.

Carney's website makes note of the fact that he is committed "to increase research funding and raise awareness of autism." I would argue that if Carney is earnestly trying to help on this issue, he must break from the Maloney crowd and take this issue in a different direction rather than rehashing debates of the past.