He has also promoted the notion that vaccines cause autism, a claim that has been widely debunked by doctors and scientists. “Just the other day, 2 years old, 2-and-a-half-years old, a child, a beautiful child went to have the vaccine, and came back, and a week later got a tremendous fever, got very, very sick, now is autistic,” Mr. Trump said at a Republican debate in September. When another presidential candidate, Michele Bachmann, then a Minnesota congresswoman, made a similar claim in the 2012 campaign, she was savaged by news media commentators for the remarks; Mr. Trump received little serious blowback.

Trump must be crazy. He believes in all these paranoid conspiratorial plots......including that vaccine somehow cause autism. And where did that slam about autism NOT being an epidemic come from? There is no proof of that. Overwhelmingly autism affects CHILDREN, since no one has ever shown us a comparable rate among adults--especially adults with severe, regressive autism.  (Still waiting for ABC's John Donvan and Caren Zucker to show us the lost generations of ASD adults. They spent 15 years researching their book...Where are they?)

The New York Times needs to go back into their archives and look at their coverage of the Hannah Poling concession by HHS medical experts. Government doctors agreed that the nine vaccines Hannah received in a single doctor's visit caused her autism. They even printed a letter from Terry Poling, Hannah's mother, in response to Dr. Paul Offit criticism of the decision.

Response from Terry Poling to Paul Offit, New York Times, April 5, 2008

To the Editor:

Re “Inoculated Against Facts,” by Paul A. Offit (Op-Ed, March 31):

Our daughter, Hannah, developed normally until receiving nine vaccines at once. She immediately developed a fever and encephalopathy, deteriorating into what was diagnosed, based on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or D.S.M. IV, as autism.

The federal government, not an “unusual court,” made the concession. The decision wasn’t “careless,” as your subheading called it. It was based on a thorough review of Hannah’s records by Health and Human Services doctors.

The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program does rely on a “preponderance of evidence” standard, which Hannah’s case met. It doesn’t necessarily compensate families “quickly, generously and fairly.” We filed our claim six years ago, pain and suffering are capped at $250,000, and Hannah has yet to receive compensation.

Dr. Offit’s assertion that “even five vaccines at once would not place an unusually high burden on a child’s immune system” is theory and risky practice for a toddler’s developing brain. No one knows if Hannah’s mitochondrial dysfunction existed before receiving vaccines. Dr. Offit’s claim that Hannah had “already weakened cells” is unfounded.

We support a safe vaccination program against critical infectious diseases. We need straight facts, serious science and speedy answers on these important issues. Jon Poling

Terry Poling
Athens, Ga., April 3, 2008

Anne Dachel is Media Editor for Age of Autism.