Um… What? Back in 1985, they didn’t even have a decent diagnostic toolkit. It wasn’t until 1987 that the DSM even contained a diagnostic checklist, or indeed considered autism a general mental illness; prior to that, it was referred to as “infantile autism”. Most people didn’t even know that autism was a thing prior to Rain Man. Do you have any evidence other than personal incredulity to back up your claim that it’s “not a diagnostic issue”?
Also, good to see that pretty much nobody here has bought into the bullshit this movie is slinging. For anyone not convinced?
Stop it. Just stop. This isn’t funny any more. You’re wrong and you’re hurting people. Mostly your children, sometimes other people’s children. Being anti-vaxx in this day and age should be about as socially acceptable as being pro-children-smoking, for exactly the same reasons. If I had a friend who was giving cigarettes to their 5-year-old, you can damn well be sure I’d shame them, both privately and publicly.
Here and here among hundreds of similar articles and studies.
Somewhere between 2/3rds and all of the rise in autism diagnosis are the result of the expansion of the austistic spectrum (where previous disorders were considered seperate from autism are now within the autistic spectrum), the de-stigmatization of autism (resulting in non-reporting and what were once called generic “mental disability” conditions) resulting in more accurate reporting, increase vigilance for the symptoms of autism which results in more diagnosed cases from people who otherwise wouldn’t be classified as autistic, and a much greater tendency to report very mild cases.
It’s not unlikely that there’s no rise in autism at all when these factors are controlled for, and if there is, it’s very small compared to the claims of an autism epidemic.
A vaccine is a solution which contains the corpses of a virus. Think of it like a juice with hacked up limbs in it. Your body’s guards look at the limbs and memorize the tattoos, armbands, etc. that identify the enemy so that, in the future, they’ll know to take them out.
There’s nothing a vaccine - necessarily - must do that would be anything different than straight up giving someone a disease. If getting the measles doesn’t give you autism, why would giving you dead measles give you autism?
The basis for the work which showed the “link” between autism and the measles vaccine was that there was a chemical in the juice which was harmful. That chemical no longer is a part of the vaccine. So…what exactly is supposed to be giving a child autism?
It’s a shame that your child has this disease, but it’s simply a happenstance that you noticed around the same time as he had the shot. Autism starts to show leading into the second year (generally) and the MMR vaccine is usually given in the 1-2 year. If the vaccine was given in the 4th year, children would still be diagnosed with autism in the second year, and measles would be more common and children would die from it.
Autism is a developmental disorder. While we’re not completely clear on what causes it (there may be multiple factors) it appears that while the child is developing in the womb, there is an early, excessive growth of the brain, which later causes there to be too many neuronal connections, and this causes a cascading failure of the brain to be able to develop correctly. Due to the cascading effect, it takes a couple of years before the difference become noticeable. But, you can generally track it back to the womb, where the is sufficient data from that time period.
We do think that there is some form of toxin that causes autism (a teratogen), but while we are not sure which one, we do seem to be certain that it is in the mothers body, during development of the embryo. Our best way to replicate the development cycle of autism in rats is to give mothers valproic acid, and this causes the disease in their children.
It may come down that there is some preservative, some chemical in wall paint, an adhesive, or whatever that we determine has been causing most cases of autism, but whatever it is, it’s something which got into your wife’s body, not your child’s.
And that’s very sad, and if it makes you want to eat organic, I wouldn’t fault you, but you should remember that, in the whole, we have been steadily decreasing the incidence of physical and mental developmental problems that existed in the centuries before. We’ve reduced lead poisoning, dysentery, cholera, dwarfism, measles, etc. While we may be introducing new toxins into our environment every year, that’s because we’re putting them in to replace ones that were worse.
If the idea is that we can’t trust the CDC because they are corrupted by the lure of money, keep in mind that the reason Andrew Wakefield falsified the data on the study that started all this was to discredit another vaccine, in hopes that the vaccine he had a financial interest in would be adopted instead.
If there is anyone who is willing to let children get sick and die in order to make money, it is Wakefield. I wonder if he mentioned that in the movie.
This is the equivalent of asking me to go see the newest Loose Change video, or a ‘documentary’ on the Kennedy Assassination Conspiracy or Moon Landing Hoax. Sorry, but not interested in more ridiculous CT tripe. I did see some reviews of the ‘movie’ as well as some commentary on it when it was going to be shown at the Tribeca Film Festival, and it was everything I figured it would be. I mean, freaking Andrew Wakefield directed this abortion…that’s all anyone who has any understanding of this subject needs to know about it really to know it’s not worth the time to see.
Dude, if you have to believe in some nonsensical conspiracy theory, can’t you at least pick a relatively harmless* one like “the moon landing was a hoax”?
*(Harmlessness not guaranteed if you are stupid enough to confront Buzz Aldrin in person)
Right, it’s a conspiracy theory, so it’s not about finding out what’s real. It’s about deciding you’ve made up your mind, and now you’ll twist the facts to your preconceived notions.
Anti-vaxxers used to say that it was the thymerisol in vaccines that caused it. It’s a mercury-based preservative, and mercury is scary. But they’re ignorant about the differences between ethyl and methyl mercury, and the amounts used in vaccines. The amount of bio-available mercury you’d get from a vaccine would be somewhere around the same as if you ate a quarter of a tuna sandwich.
But the idiots and their histrionics refused to use vaccines with thymerisol, so we removed them from vaccines anyway 20 years ago. And since then, the raise in autism diagnoses have only gone up. Removing thymerisol had no effect whatsoever.
Now a person who was honestly interested in finding out the truth might say “huh, I was really convinced it was thymerisol, and yet it wasn’t. Maybe I should learn more about this or rethink it”
But no, they’re full in on conspiracy theories, so they just rush to the next point ignoring the fact that you destroyed one of the premises of their beliefs, the same way that moon hoaxers or any other conspiracy theorist will do.
It is true that there is no established…no suggested…not even a theoretical link between vaccines and autism.
That said, there’s only one person on earth who we know as an established fact is the least trustworthy on this idea: Andrew Wakefield. It’s been proved in court that he made up the idea in the first place for money – the same motive he imputes to others in the film. He admitted it, if memory serves.
Urbanredneck seems unaware that a vast amount of vaccine research has not been funded by or conducted under the auspices of the Centers for Disease Control.
The reason that “Vaxxed” makes such a fuss over the “CDC coverup” is not just the mistaken impression that a link was found between MMR vaccination and autism in a subset of black children (it wasn’t - the alleged connection disappeared under more rigorous statistical analysis and never made sense in the first place). A major goal of antivaxers engaged in this hoopla is to discredit the CDC, which is a highly respected source of information about infectious disease and vaccination. If enough people can be taught to distrust and dismiss the CDC, antivaxers think its pro-vaccine message will suffer as well.
Urbanredneck also repeats “pharma shill” nonsense. Worldwide, about 2% of drug company revenues come from vaccines. Vastly greater amounts are made from drugs treating infectious diseases and their complications. If Big Pharma really wanted to boost profits, it’d stop making vaccines and wait for the big bucks to roll in from all the stuff it could sell to treat millions of new cases of polio, measles and other dangerous diseases.
Which sometimes makes me wonder if the real conspiracy is a subterfuge whereby Pharma interests secretly subsidize antivaxers, hoping that people will desert vaccines so that disease incidence can skyrocket. Profit!!!
As others have pointed out, there’s been studies, frankly TOO many studies, about this. And I say too many, because we’re going back over this stuff because of this conspiracy theory and wasting resources here that could be spent elsewhere. Bottom line, vaccines have decades of science behind them, they work. Maybe some have some side effects, as almost any treatment does, but seeing a correlation between the onset of autism symptoms, is sort of like blaming the middle school your daughter just started for making her into a whore, when it’s really just that she’s just starting to show interest in boys because she’s beginning puberty.
Moreso, I think Penn and Teller’s bit on this does well explaining the implications further (I can’t look it up since I’m at work, but it’s easy to find it on youtube just search them and vaccines). Even IF it caused autism in some cases, which would obviously still a small risk, if I were a parent, I’d still take that risk of autism on my child over the much more real threat of diseases that vaccines protect against.
Worse, some of these diseases that were well under control in most of the developed world have started making a come back due to ignorant parents not vaccinating their kids. It’d be bad enough if it were just the unfortunate kids of ignorant parents, but there are some kids who legitimately can’t (immune disorders, major health issues, etc.) or who actually did get it but it just wasn’t all that effective on them, and now THEY’RE at risk too. It’s killing herd immunity and it’s hurting kids who aren’t able to make these decisions themselves.
If you have questions, ask your pediatrician. Hell, ask multiple pediatricians. You’re trusting that person with the life of your child in every other way, they have years of edcuation and, in all likelihood, years of experience practicing too. Are you really going to take a documentary maker’s word over your pediatrician?
I am very much bothered by government mandated vaccination, not because I doubt them, I just have major issues with the government requiring I or my potential future kids being injected with anything. Public schools really muddy that up, and to that extent I can tollerate it since, really, at this point, the onus is on anti-vaxxers to prove their case, so if they don’t like it, they can find a private school and pay for it.
Either way, I’d rather see these things enforced socially, since that’s what will actually fix it. Pediatricians should be providing relevant information to parents and eventually refuse to keep seeing patients that are unvaccinated. Day cares not accepting kids that aren’t vaccinated. Hell, parents probably learn pretty quick if other kids’ parents are anti-vaxx and can restrict their kids from playing with them.
But that said, waiting for kids to get older defeats the purpose. Kids’ immune systems are weakest when they’re youngest, and the longer they have protection, the safer they are. We need as many people protected as much as possible to maximize herd immunity. And, really, parents make literally every other medical decision for kids, and vaccination is one of the most important ones. Why is it okay to trust parents with all those other ones, but suddenly we need to let the kids decide when it comes to vaccines?
What legislation? As pointed out above, they’ve BEEN sued, and there’s just no evidence. It’s not a conspiracy, it’s not big pharma lining the pockets of congress. Look up the cases and verify it yourself, don’t just take that guy’s word for it.
They do. The US doesn’t dictate these guidelines to other countries. Hell, many of them are far more strict about getting kids vaccinated that the US is.
Why is this relevant? Is this an implication that, because they’re former military, it’s some kind of government conspiracy? Retired high ranking officers often get big jobs at major firms because they have clout and they have marketable management experience. Having done government contracting for years, I saw tons of military officers retire then get cushy, well-paying jobs in the private sector in major corporations. Similarly, I’ve seen government employees 14s, 15s, and SES, retire and get the same thing because, again, they have relevant experience. How should the CDC be any different? They have relevant management experience related to medicine. They can only cannibalize eachother so much. I’m sure there’s some backroom dealing, but I’m more inclined to think that’s related to fasttracking a drug approval or something, not due to cover-up of vaccines and autism.
Not exactly. He claims that he has read the opposing info and the previous threads we’ve had on the subject which have most certainly contained all the information people have brought up in this thread. What we seem to have here is a case of deliberate ignorance-a refusal to take in any information that contradicts his beliefs. Reason is useless in a case like this.
Ah, but they haven’t had to make that decision up until recently. They get to be free riders on herd immunity. They benefit from the collective immunity from all the rest of the parents vaccinating their kids, while avoiding the (nonexistant) danger to their own kids. This makes them even more selfish.
But of course in areas where you have a whole bunch of idiots trying to do this - usually in neighborhoods with a lot of Whole Foods stores and the restaurants all have a gluten free menu - then you actually drop below herd immunity and now vanquished diseases are actually making their way back.
The single refutation is that if autism diagnoses are what has increased, the differential diagnoses would have declined. That hasn’t happened. The various forms of retardation and deficit autism might be confused with remain largely steady.
Yes, the pattern of autism diagnoses has *shifted *over the last couple of decades as the spectrum is redefined, and the arguments rage over degree and classification and whether “mild Asperger’s” and PDD-NOS are even part of the spectrum. But in the end, the number of children diagnosed with a spectrum condition has risen sharply - on the order of 100-fold - and changes in diagnosis and diagnostic patterns accounts for only a small part of that rise.
There are one hell of a lot of children on the spectrum, far more than ever before. It makes little difference exactly how much the change is.
More importantly, parents, family and “experts” who make all their hay trying to discern a cause are wasting irreplaceable time. When there’s a car accident, you don’t stand around for two days trying to figure out what caused it while the victims bleed out. Too many anti-vaxxers, especially the original generation, are those who didn’t take enough right steps in the critical early days, and with a child who is now permanently disabled, spend their time looking for someone to blame.
Do you have a cite for that? IIUC, what you are saying is that there used to be 100 kids, five of whom would be diagnosed as autistic and five would be diagnosed as something else. Thus a total of five autism diagnoses and five diagnoses of “something else”. Nowadays of the same 100 kids, 10 would be diagnosed as autistic and five as the same “something else”, for a total of 10 diagnoses of autism plus five diagnoses of “something else”. Is that what you mean?
If so, keep in mind that diagnoses of autism can be added to other diagnoses, and not always replace them. That is, a change in the way autism is diagnosed can result in kids being diagnosed as autistic and “something else”. Not merely instead of “something else”. IYSWIM.
My understanding of autism might be a little dated, but I thought researches and professionals were moving towards a spectral definition of autism. At one extreme we have Kanner’s autism, like the title character in Rainman; on the other we have people who like their socks bunched up at the ankles rather than pulling them up a bit. Somewhere in the middle we have a line, below which a person is disabled and above that a person is not disabled.
Again, with my dated information, what autism is has not be determined, any statement as to cause would be speculative.
Urbanredneck, your reasoning in the OP is as faulty as that of people who claim that the intensifier use of “literally” is “incorrect.” You’re being jumped on here for exactly the same reason those folks are jumped on in other threads.
Just something to think about–do you REALLY want to emulate their unscientific worldview?