Informant38

"The numbers don't appear to be artificial," said Dr. Robert Byrd, the pediatrician and epidemiologist who led the research team at the university's MIND Institute. "And they challenge our understanding of autism as primarily a genetic condition. It should be concerning for all of us."

"Those who have simply refused to believe that we are in the midst of a real autism epidemic no longer can put forth their simplistic explanations and denials," said Rick Rollens, a catalyst for the state's scrutiny of the burgeoning caseload who is convinced that his 12-year-old son is autistic because of vaccines he received as an infant.
...
They did find, however, that more children in the younger group suffered from gastrointestinal problems than in the older group, and that fewer in the younger group also were mentally retarded.

Finally, in a finding that challenges a link between vaccines and autism, Byrd found no difference between the two groups in the percentage of children who had regressed in their development -- for example, by losing the ability to use certain words.

He found that about 30 percent of children in both study groups appeared to have lost developmental milestones. If a vaccine such as the often-blamed measles-mumps-rubella immunization were responsible for the autism increase, Byrd said, researchers would have seen a difference between the two groups in the proportion of parents reporting regression.

"My hope is this would be the beginning of serious federal investigation, at a funding level no private foundation can afford," added Portia Iversen, vice president of the Cure Autism Now Foundation in Los Angeles. "It's a major health issue. It's gigantic."