MMR vaccine, 1 additional febrile seizure every 3,000 kids

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That's been studied, and from what I've seen, regressive autism is just as genetic as non-regressive autism. Parents of kids with regressive autism have the same frequency of broader autistic phenotype traits (mild autistic traits that aren't enough for a diagnosis) as parents of autistic kids who didn't regress - both are far higher than the general population.

Interesting thread, especially appreciate the balanced viewpoints offered.
I add to it the fact that my son reacted (with high fever & sickness) strongly to the combined vaccines at age 3.
His behavior and speech development changed significantly at that time.
He was given a diagnosis of speech dysfluency, which he was given therapy for until his speech improved at age 5, when it quite suddenly 'morphed' into a severe stutter which he has to this day.
Though it is a noticeable coincidence I have no concrete reason to believe the vaccines caused this for my little guy.

The problem is that there are so, so many variables at age 3. It is a time of enormous development, and therefore delays and regressions seem really striking when they happen. Shots are traumatic for any child, so they are something a parent is likely to remember (febrile seizures as well - which are quite common.)

Very good point. Yes, so the question becomes, how often does a kid have a damaging seizure from the vaccine. And I think that question would probably put us somewhere in the neighborhood of one out of several hundred thousand.

Quite a bit different from 1 out of 88 persons being on the Autism Spectrum.

If there are 50 million children in the United States and if each child gets ten vaccinations, wow, that is fertile ground for spectacular coincidences. I mean, it would be surprising if we didn't get some spectacular coincidences from this many possibilities.

But . . . for a particular child, and I want to be careful saying this, do we really want to jump to the conclusion that this is a one-in-a-million coincidence, without looking at other possibilites from a couple of different directions? And I say no. We don't want to jump, we probably do want to look.

Okay, so a child seems to have a rather abrupt reaction to a vaccine. It could be some funky autoimmune response. Or, maybe the child has been becoming increasingly frustrated with trying to talk, and with the additional frustration of being a little bit sick, the child decides to give up on trying to talk. Or, maybe the child has been treated mean or has witnessed someone else being treated in a mean fashion, and the child withdraws and numbs out. So, a relatively limited number of post-vaccine possibilities.

And I do think some kind of autoimmune response is a definite possibility. I mean, the thing with PANDAS should just blow us out of the water. Rheumatic heart fever has been known for, what, close to a hundred years? And PANDAS only for maybe the last ten years or so (perhaps because OCD wasn't talked about). And both (possibly) caused by antibodies to strep attacking the body itself (still considerable controversy with PANDAS).

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And I want to preach Spectrum Rights at the same time as we get the best scientific information we can get.

For example, our educational institutions seem to need to define a person as either high-functioning or low-functioning. So, it might be an absolute breath of fresh air to define a student as middle-functioning. We might even adopt the political slogan, 'We are all middle-functioning.' And I can almost hear the sputtering educational official now, but what help would the student need ? ? Well, why don't we have a respectful conversation with the student and/or the parents and see what help he or she needs.

So, yes, I want us to work both the scientific and the political sides of the street.