OK, let's do some critical analysis on this article.
Firstly, it is well known (and pretty obvious) that naturalnews.com is a seriously questionable source when it comes to professional medical advice. You only need to look at how much they rely on dodgy ads (and a specific demographic of readers that lap up this anti-establishment/alternative medicine/anti Big Pharma journalism) to get an idea of how they make money. Just look at the sidebar ads on this page alone.
But let's give them the benefit of the doubt this time, and actually check the sources for the article. It claims, that a doctor (Jennifer Margulis, PhD) claims, that a paper was published in the journal "Frontiers in Public Health", and then removed without explanation. OK, so now we check what sort of a "doctor" Jennifer Margulis is.
Margulis has a B.A. in English literature and Russian language from Cornell University, a Master’s in Comparative Literature from the University of California at Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in English
source:
http://kindredmedia.org/author/jennifer-margulis-phd/Right, the plot thickens... she's not a medical doctor at all, just a journalist with a BA in Engish and Russian, and a doctorate in English. Hmm, this is where alarm bells start to ring.
Then we can look up some information on the journal itself, "Frontiers in Public Health". While it is a peer-reviewed journal, it has had many criticisms and even been added (albeit controversially) to a "blacklist of questionable publications" by another academic, Jeffrey Beall. source:
http://www.nature.com/news/backlash-after-frontiers-journals-added-to-list-of-questionable-publishers-1.18639So both the "doctor" and the journal are now both sounding less reputable than the article implies. But, lets give them both the benefit of the doubt and look at the details given on the paper itself:
the abstract described a study comparing health outcomes of 660 fully vaccinated or fully unvaccinated children between the ages of 6 and 12 living in Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Oregon. Information was collected via parental survey in 2012.
Ding ding ding!! This is where we start to really see how unreliable the source for the article is. Any bonafide medical doctor or scientist will tell you that "parental surveys" are an incredibly questionable source of data for any study, (and I wouldn't be surprised if this was the reason that the paper was pulled from publication). Not to mention that the sample was taken from a rather specific section of the population, limited to a few of the more backward States of America (OK, OK, citation needed for that
)
The article doesn't quote any other studies, but goes on to mention a few other "doctors" that agree with the findings, that all seem just as sketchy as good old doctor of English and controversial journalist, Jennifer Margulis. I could probably find a bunch of dirt on them too, but I can't be bothered to investigate further as the article has already lost most of its credibility.
While I would personally agree that studies into the potential dangers of vaccination should continue (even if just to socially educate people), this article stinks.
I haven't done much research into vaccines causing "ADD/ADHD, asthma and other auto-immune disorders", but there are some very meticulous and thorough studies that suggest that vaccines absolutely do not cause autism. For example, here is the abstract of a meta-analysis of 10 studies involving over 1.2 million children:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24814559And an article explaining it:
http://www.skepticalraptor.com/skepticalraptorblog.php/final-nail-coffin-vaccine-autism-myth/My personal opinion is that in recent years, a greater understanding of autism and ADHD type disorders has led to an increase in their diagnosis. Most children get vaccinated, and if even a small percentage of these children develop autism or ADHD, it's understandable (but incorrect) that the parents could make a false assumption that one had caused the other.
Imagine you started feeding your kid solid food, perhaps PB & J sandwiches for the first time in their life, and a few months later they got some weird disease. Then you read about other parents who did the same thing, and
their kids got the same disease. That absolutely doesn't mean that PB & J sandwiches gave them the disease, it was just a coincidence, but these parents get sucked into this filter bubble/echo chamber, and suddenly everything they're reading and hearing is confirming what they suspected. It's called
confirmation bias, and is extremely easy to succumb to on the internet.
Moral of the story is, check your sources thoroughly and be extremely careful with websites like "naturalnews.com" - they are using you as a means of making money, and they themselves probably don't believe the majority of the shit they post.