Critics discount the findings.
The new study, like two others recently conducted in England and Finland, found that the rate of autism has been rising dramatically as the number of children vaccinated has remained virtually constant. But it is certainly not the major villain. Autism is a severe developmental disorder in which children seem isolated from the world around them. In the 1970s, studies showed the incidence of autism to be about one case in every 2,500 children. Wakefield has argued forcefully that the viral infection may have allowed some potentially toxic components of food to leach into the bloodstream and travel to the brain, where they damaged neurons and produced developmental problems.