My reply to this is that their is a whole autism spectrum. Autism is only one part of it as well as aspergers.
Part of the massive growth of “autism” is they basically today classify so many kids with the diagnosis. I’m around all kinds of kids labeled “autistic” and they are all different. In some you can barely notice it and in others its quite profound. I think part of this is because nobody wants their kid to be labeled “retarded” so “autistic” sounds better. I think this also messes up the studies. If they would just set aside a classification for persons with the most profound traits and disregard the others I think the data would be more meaningful.
On whether its in the womb, you do see many who were like it from the beginning but with others they didnt begin to show symptoms until they had vaccinations at around 18 months. Its almost like a switch was turned.
So the big question is, could there be a switch triggered by a biological event?
My 2 cents. I think their are some natural traits encoded in the persons DNA which would normally present themselves as a mild case of autism or aspergers but somehow get triggered and go full on by the vaccinations administered at such a young age. I get this because in most parents I know of children with autism, we have some of the same traits. Such traits are just a normal part of the persons personality and can often make them more creative or better at some things like math or visual thinking. Temple Grandin is a perfect example.
We all have traits in us which come from our parents. These can be everything from eye color to height to math and creative abilities to “hardheadedness” to susceptibility to diseases like diabetes. We laugh at some of these but others can be quite serious.
However what we have now with vaccinations is basically a shotgun approach where they say EVERY kid should get these vaccinations at the SAME dosage at the SAME age. And at the same time. Right now a kid might get as many as 5 vaccinations at a single visit. Their is little or no screening for any reactions which could be triggered by the vaccines. Your talking millions of kids every year getting these vaccinations by tens of thousands of nurses and doctors from vaccines churned out by the millions in a factory. NOTHING. No drug. No chemical. Works the same in every person so your going to get some variations and yes, some problems. How much risk is acceptable? Some doctors are already discussing this for example this doctors book “What your Doctor May Not Tell You About Childhood Vaccinations”.
Now if say the world was facing down a killer epidemic like polio or swine flu I’d agree to just vaccinate everyone and to hell with the side effects but we are talking diseases which can be treatable and we have the luxury to adjust the vaccination schedules.
What I would like to see is some sort of screening method where they could look for certain traits in the child and the family. In those cases the children could be given an alternate vaccination schedule where they would get single dose vaccines spaced out over months and at later stages of life (say after age 4).
I’m sorry you and your family are having such a struggle.
However. even if there is a “switch” which could be “triggered by a biological event” which accelerates autism, vaccines have been ruled out as being that switch. Sorry you don’t want to hear that but in this situation your “two cents” are not worth a plugged nickel.
Any parent is free to discuss with their doctors alternative vaccine schedules and as I posted above, many do. Even the CDC guidelines and the guidelines from other countries allow for some flexibility.
And yes, my having a son with autism and my experience with other families gives me insight you obviously do not have.
Calling for parents to press for a delayed vaccination schedule is dangerous. Suggesting that there’s a need for it is* medical misinformation*. Insinuating that it’s safer to delay or spread out vaccines is dangerous medical misinformation.
Want to know what increases the risk of bad effects from the MMR vaccine? Delaying it. It causes more seizures if kids get it late. Now, those seizures aren’t serious or lifethreatening, and they don’t seem to lead to epilepsy or seizures later in life, but they’re scary as hell, and may initiate a chain of intervention that puts the child’s health at further risk, like an unnecessary hospitalization for observation.
Want to know what causes a rise in kids getting vaccine preventable illnesses? Delaying them. Every day they’re unvaccinated is a day they can get sick, and/or pass the illness to someone else.
So, yes. There is dangerous medical misinformation to be found here. That’s not hyperbole in the slightest.
It does. And that insight is important when it comes to the experience of raising a child with autism.
You know what it doesn’t give you? A medical degree. Expertise in vaccines. A rigorous testing protocol using a statistically significant sample size. A basis for discounting multiple intensive independent studies into the connection between vaccines and autism.
The plural of “anecdote”, no matter how individually compelling they may be, is still not “data”.
Could be. Maybe. We don’t know. But we do know that certain biological events simply do not trigger it. Specifically: vaccines. We know damn sure, through literally hundreds of studies, that vaccines do not cause autism.
Just stop.
Your 2 cents aren’t worth shit if you can’t back that up with any actual research. You haven’t. At no point in this thread have you provided ANY evidence. ANY! You’ve offered exactly limp dick with regards to actual evidence. And no, your anecdotes are not evidence.
Patently false. There are literally hundreds of studies examining possible reactions to vaccines. They’re so thorough, I’ve seen some that, in listing possible side effects, bring up car accidents, not because there’s even a slight chance that the vaccines cause autism, but because some people got the vaccine and then got in a car accident. Vaccien manufacturers spend a lot of time and money ensuring that these vaccines are safe. Yes, even multiple vaccines!
You clearly have no idea of the science, and yet you keep making absurd statements like this:
“Their is little or no screening for any reactions which could be triggered by the vaccines.”
THIS IS NOT TRUE. STOP SPREADING FALSEHOODS ABOUT VACCINES.
Measles, TODAY, kills about 13 people per hour. PER HOUR!
What I would like to see is one of the following:
A) Something resembling evidence,
B) an understanding, or at least acknowledgement that people have responded to your garbage
C) To have this thread moved to the pit, as this is not a debate, and you clearly are not interested in having a debate!
The sheer number of people getting vaccinations is one of the reasons why we have such solid evidence about their side effects.
Public health people are seriously good at crunching data. They can trace Ebola back to a single toddler. They can find those “less than 1%” side effects you find listed on every drug insert. They can determine exactly when a mammogram is and is not likely to useful. They can tie a still extremely rare birth defect to a nondescript, usually innocuous virus that was on nobody’s radar. A lot of these feats have been achieved in countries with extremely limited tracking and reporting.
And thanks to their work, those of us who have access to medicine are living longer and healthier lives than ever in human history.
What makes you think that this one specific field, in a world of incredible public health achievements, is the one that they inexplicably can’t make sense of? And this, despite it being one of the fields with the highest volume of relevant data? And has been under scrutiny since the beginning?
This is probably THE most studied field in public health. Don’t you think that if you, a random dude speculating, can come up with ideas, the experts that have been studying this for decades would have been able to make a solid link by now?
You are right that vaccines can cause side effects. They are all right there on the vaccine information sheet they give you. Some are serious and even fatal. Evidence shows that these events are rare enough to be worth the risk, but they are there.
Again, if they can discover, track and inform people the many potential side effects listed on the information sheets, what makes you think they are somehow incapable of doing the same for autism?
Here are a few diseases that we have vaccines for with their mortality rate and number of recent deaths.
Diphtheria
5-10% 3,300 deaths in 2013 Tetanus
10% 59,000 deaths in 2013 Yellow fever
20% 30,000 deaths in 2013 Whooping cough
4% 61,000 deaths in 2013 Polio
2-5% children, 15-30% adults (Maybe no more deaths? 416 cases in 2013 though) Measles
0.2-10% 96,000 deaths in 2013
EVEN IF there was any suggested proof that autism was linked to these vaccines, you are saying a quarter-million deaths* is better than autism**.
Hey, as long as it’s not MY kid!
*Not including people who died from complications from other vaccine-preventable diseases, or even glancing at deaths from influenza (250k-500k).
**My son was barely not diagnosed with ASD. (It took multiple meetings before they reached a conclusion) Sometimes we can see it when his behaviour is . . . different. At those times however, I do NOT wish whooping cough or measles on him like some parents apparently do.
Eh, I’ve gotten a few nice links. Wouldn’t mind seeing it moved to the Pit so we can ignore each other more loudly. I promise I won’t bold and multicolor my insults, that and the wave are reserved for encouragement and celebration respectively.
Yes, they are missing the emotional involvement that the parents have that means that they will grasp at any straw to try to point to a reason for the sudden change in their child. I’m not going to downplay the positive role that emotion can play. It is emotion that will motivate a parent to risk life and limb to save their child, or stand up against all odds against injustice. But unfortunately it is that same emotion that can lead to poor decision making when it gets in the way or perceiving reality. Its emotion that makes the addicted gambler say “If I just stay in the game a little longer I can win it all back”, or the abused spouse say, “yes he hits me but I know that I can change him”. This is the emotion that leads parents of autistic children to think that autism couldn’t have just happened, there has to be some reason and someone else (big pharma) to blame.
Yes, and this should be investigated. But one thing we do know is that the triggering event if it exists is vaccines
If so how do you explain the fact that when 537,303 children(including 132,648 unvaccinated children vs 404,655 vaccinated children) when they looked at the 316 children with a diagnosis of autistic disorder and 442 with a diagnosis of other spectrum disorders, they found that the unvaccinated children actually were 8.6% more likely to get autism than those who were vaccinated. If vaccines cause autism why were there so many unvaccinated children who got autism, and so few vaccinated children who didn’t. Before going any further on theories of mechanism, you are going to have to explain why if there is a connection it didn’t show up in these cases.
To some extent this is already being done. You may recall that one of the main reasons that the pro vaccine side wants to develop a herd immunity is to protect a small population that the CDC recommends should not be vaccinated due to the likelihood of adverse reactions, and so they do have some sort of screening method. Could there be a better one? Possibly, but that would require more research and more research dollars, which are few and far between in the post sequester environment. Until then, the best we can do is to look at the probabilities based on the epidemiological data we have to determine what is decision will result in the best outcome from a likelihood of cost to benefit, and without any additional indication of particular adverse reactions, that calculation will result in the same answer for every child.
Given that some posters are receiving legitimate information from other posters, (if, strangely, not from the anecdote-ridden OP), I am not going to close it, but sine there is no serious debate occurring, (one side refusing to actually engage in debate), The BBQ Pit seems to be a good location for it.