Incidentally, if you want to talk about skewed research, do a little bit of digging in the CDC report that has everyone jumping up and down about the extreme explosion of the incidence of Autism Spectrum Disorders. (just before you accuse me of being insensitive to people who have to deal with the effects of this disorder, let me set one thing clear: Autism has had a very direct and personal effect on my life, which, incidentally, is why I am so interested in it.)
If you look closely at their published research methods, the study dropped several states from its ‘representative sample’ since it’s last published report. Incidentally, those states that were dropped, tended to be the ones with lower rates last time around. Additionally, when collecting population samples, they clearly focused on the high population centers of the state – in some states they actually entirely left out the rural areas.
Although the collected numbers clearly indicate that Autism is on the rise in heavily populated areas (the state with, by far, the highest incidence was New Jersey), it would be hard to take seriously (for research purposes anyhow) the contention that Autism rates overall have exploded to the degree this study claims they have. Of course, since the purpose of the CDC’s report was to encourage more funding for autism research, that would make sense. it’s kind of like the CSE reports that schools carefully write to make sure that the child appears to be progressing, but also is clearly dependent on special services. This kind of research is meant only to obtain money for other, more sound research.
Interestingly enough, while there are many factors that make living in a high density population area different from more rural settings, prevelance of vaccination is not among them.