The controversy over an alleged, but disproven, link between various vaccines and autism recently erupted again in Minnesota after some Somali immigrants chose to listen to some mistaken activists and denied vaccines to their children. The result, easily predictable, was a measles outbreak, but the supposed connection between vaccinations and autism continues to be publicized despite the many studies performed and analyzed by scientists that found no connection between the two.
Now, in a bit of consilience, another study shoots down the supposed connection, but in an independent manner. NewScientist (17 June 2017) reports:
BRAIN scans of 6-month-old babies may now be able to predict who will show signs of autism by the age of 2. This means it could become possible to intervene to try to reduce the impact of some more difficult autistic behaviours before symptoms emerge.
“We have been trying to identify autism as early as possible… before the behavioural symptoms appear,” says Robert Emerson at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
And then they used machine learning to train an algorithm to use brain scans to predict which children will show symptoms of autism, and with quite some success. And the byproduct of this study?
“The study confirms that autism has a biological basis, manifest in the brain before behavioural symptoms appear, and that autism is not due to environmental effects that occur after 6 months, for example, vaccinations,” says Uta Frith of University College London. “This still needs pointing out.”
It does occur to me to wonder if the anti-vaccination forces have thought to connect vaccinations of the parents to the autism of their children.
