First paragraph: agreed - I can't claim to wish I'd been listening, but I seem to recall Ofsted take note of how many SEN pupils a school has, and it has a bearing (I just can't rememebr why)

Second paragraph: agreed again, and the point I was trying to make (albeit less clearly than you). I suspect there are way more kids getting the help they need now that would, in the good old days, have spent most of their school days in the headmaster's office.

Depends on what you mean. It means the research was entirely discredited and any conclusions drawn from it are entirely discredited.

It means there is no evidence of causal links between MMR (or other vaccinations) and autism.

It doesn't mean that stupid people will continue to expose their children (and by implication other people's children) to horrendous medical risks by not vaccinating.

"It's almost like a moral decision. Except not really cos noone is going to find out," Jez, Peep Show

Is the correct answer. Autism and ASDs aren't new, they've always been present, its just that they weren't identified as a specific disorder back then (its as late as 1991 that ASD is determined).

Back then, they were just left to it, generally failed and stuffed. Incidently, IT is full of people with undiagnosed Aspergers.

"One Nation Under God, has turned into One Nation Under the Influence of One Drug"
[Link]

I think there is definitely a link between medication and autism in some cases, whether through vaccinations or otherwise. I'm one of 5 siblings and my younger brother is autistic whereas the rest of us, his twin included, are all 'normal'.

The thing that differentiates him from the rest of us is that as a child he was constantly ill with severe asthma and allergies as well as two broken arms. This resulted in him being given a massive amount of medication from an early age including ventolin, antibiotics and medicinal steroids and there is no doubt in my mind that it played at least a part if not directly causing it.

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold...

Recreational drugs must be also be considered, how many different strains of drugs have been arriving since the rave scene of the late 80,s 90,s onwards. Sounds cuckoo I know,but somethings going down here. Check it out, ask the parents,research it I say.

Very unlikely, unless taken during pregnancy. Recreational drugs tend to be neurotransmitter reuptake stimulators or inhibitors and have no mutagenic capacity to alter the DNA (Autism has a strong hereditary correlation). The only ones I could imagine, which taken during pregnancy, that would likely affect the neurological pathways involved in autism would be dopamine antagonists (amphetamines), as the symptoms seen in autism do have a relationship to those seen in schizophrenia which is 'modelled' using amphetamines.

I know is de rigur to blame anything on something, but its unlikely that autism occurs in a simple structural cause and effect model. Its probably a combination of multiple hereditary factors, environmental triggers (either in utereo or as an new born) coupled with the immune system (inflammation in the neural pathways in autism is not entirely dissimilar to a factor in epilepsy and the two seem to have a relationship - the levels of epilepsy in autism are statistically abnormal)

"One Nation Under God, has turned into One Nation Under the Influence of One Drug"
[Link]