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In reply to the discussion: Guess the number of comments @ NJ.COM on "Autism continues to climb, with NJ rates now the highest" [View all]Spider Jerusalem
(21,786 posts)are people claiming a mitochondrial disorder is autism (it isn't) and people claiming there is any connection between vaccinations and autism (there isn't). Please note that even your link cites the cause of Hannah Poling's disability as an underlying mitochondrial disorder which may have been aggravated by a reaction to vacination; this is not autism, as classically understood, nor has it anything to do with thimerosal (which isn't present in childhood vaccines and wasn't when Poling was vaccinated) or with the mooted mechanism of "vaccine-induced autism" posited by the quack Wakefield in his debunked and retracted paper (on the basis of falsified research while he held the patent to a single measles vaccine and was receiving money from a group seeking a link between vaccination and autism and thus had substantial conflicts of interest).