As to the risk of the Gardasil vaccine, “young girls experiencing severe headaches, dizziness, temporary loss of vision and loss of consciousness” is another way of saying they are fainting after being poked with a needle. For a summary of the current data on adverse events related to this vaccine, which has to date been given to over 20 million patients, see this link http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/vaers/gardasil.htm.

I can only say that I consider myself very rational, a
libertarian, mother of three, take good care of myself etc. Regarding the whole topic of vaccines…
When the doctors came to me the day after giving birth wanting to
give my baby a shot for Hep B and smear Eurethromyacin in her eyes- I was shocked. I asked the nurse what this was about- she said it’s ” a public health measure to prevent babies from getting serious eye infections from gonorrhea/chlamydia bacteria.”

I said I’d been tested during my pregnancy, niether my husband or I
visited any prostitutes, I knew we didn’t have it. She said it was
hospital policy.

Thus began my journey at questioning what the AMA/FDA tell us is
right.

I’m not a crunchy granola woman, I’m not Jenny McCarthy, but the amount of aluminum and formaldehyde used to preserve vaccines is far above what they tell us an ADULT should have in their system, let alone a child.

This is not to say that I don’t believe in vaccinations or big
medicine. I think the’re very valuable. I also think that someone
somewhere is making a great deal of money off of them, as there are
now three times the amount of vaccinations than what I received in the late 60’s. So what I’ve done is spaced the immunizations out a bit more, waiting for my children to hit at least 50 pounds before I
start- and then stretching it out longer over the years. We haven’t
visited darkest Africa (yet) or the streets of Tehran- our little
community in Larchmont is fairly isolated and safe. And my children are happy and healthy, as am I.

Blind trust in any organization is always dangerous- do your own research and come to your own conclusions. Remember Gardasil? Here are some interesting things that have happened with it in the last few years;

“The National Vaccine Information Center yesterday warned state
officials to investigate the safety of a breakthrough cancer vaccine
as Texas became the first state to make the vaccine mandatory for
school-age girls. Negative side effects of GARDASIL, a new Merck
vaccine to prevent the sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical
cancer, are being reported in the District of Columbia and 20 states,
including Virginia. The reactions range from loss of consciousness to seizures. “Young girls are experiencing severe headaches, dizziness, temporary loss of vision and some girls have lost consciousness during what appear to be seizures,” said Vicky Debold, health policy analyst for the National Vaccine Information Center, a nonprofit watchdog organization that was created in the early 1980s to prevent vaccine injuries.” – Gregory Lopes, The Washington Times, Feb. 3, 2007

“Lawmakers should have been allowed to hear from doctors, scientists and patients before the state implemented such a sweeping mandate, said state Sen. Jane Nelson, chairwoman of the health and human services committee. “This is not an emergency,” said Nelson, adding that she plans to ask Attorney General Greg Abbott for an opinion on the legality of Perry’s order. “It needs to be discussed and debated.”
Three other Republican lawmakers filed bills that would override the mandate, and several others were working on similar legislation.” -
Liz Austin Peterson, Associated Press, Feb. 5, 2007

“Dr. Patricia Sulak, a professor of obstetrics-gynecology at the Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine, said health-care providers she knows were shocked by the order. “It’s such a new vaccine — they haven’t had time to explain it to patients,” said
Sulak. “I think everyone was happy with the CDC’s Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices’ recommendation that it be routinely given.
But this makes it seem like it’s being shoved down people’s throats.”
Hinchey [president- elect of Texas Medical Association] and others
emphasized that although the vaccine is considered safe, there are
questions of whether there is enough experience with it to warrant a
mandate. They say that some girls eventually may experience rare
adverse effects not yet identified.” – Todd Ackerman, Houston
Chronicle, Feb. 7, 2007

Read this link;

http://www.fwdailynews.com/articles/2007/03/14/online_features/hpv_vaccine/hpv01.txt

Also, the primary reason thimerosal was removed from vaccines was to reduce the total lifetime exposure to mercury, not necessarily due to the autism scare. In addition, the birth dose of Hepatitis B vaccine exceeded the government determined safe exposure level to mercury.

KrisV said ” I have read about the Thimerosal in MMR vaccines in so many places that I didn’t question it. Bad practice for skeptics, isn’t it?”

It is a very common mistake. I usually figure that those who say “the thimerosal in MMR” are not as immersed in the issue as many of us are. :-p … Which is probably a good thing.

A good way to get up to speed, and to have a good read is to pick up a copy of the book recently discussed on Scienceblogs:
http://scienceblogs.com/bookclub/autisms_false_prophets/

I was one of the lucky 50 who got a free copy, which I hope to give away at our local skeptic meetup.

It is a very common mistake, and sometimes I figure someone has not looked into the issue much when they make that mistake. :-p

A good quick way to get up to speed is to read this book that was part of the Scienceblogs book discussion:
http://scienceblogs.com/bookclub/autisms_false_prophets/

I was one of the lucky 50 to get a free copy, but I am sure it is in your local library.

The Mainstream Parenting blog http://mainstreamparenting.wordpress.com/)–which was how I heard about y’all–has some excellent, and easy-for-us-liberal-arts-types-to-understand explanations of the issues.

If you are correct (and you sound like you know your stuff, but having learned a lesson here, I will follow up on the history of the Wakefield article to convince myself), the logic of the counterargument remains essentially unchanged. Autism rates have increased while the formulation of the MMR vaccine remained the same, and while Thimerosal was removed from other childhood vaccines. There is no way to draw from that pattern the conclusion that either the MMR vaccine, or the Thimerosal in other vaccines, is causing autism. One argument might be that cases are now being diagnosed for children who, a few decades ago, would not have been labeled autistic. But generally the people who fear a vaccine-autism link predicate their arguments on the belief that the real incidence of autism, not just the rate of diagnosis, is rising. If that is true, we certainly need to address it, but not by chasing phantoms.

The MMR-autism controversy may have been the spark that set off the race to connect vaccination to autism, and led to the subsequent focus on Thimerosol. (And antivaccinationists’ new bugaboo, aluminum.)

To follow on to your last point, it’s also unfortunate that the angry parents who believe vaccines made their kids autistic keep lobbying for more research into what they insist is a plausible idea – and this diverts money from being spent on research that could actually help autistics. I know CDC itself has done at least four studies (two of them still in process), and there have been scores of others.