My 4th son is severely autistic… but it is my first son I discuss, as he was smart, quiet, and potty trained and had a 300 word vocabulary at the age of 3. I took him in for routine vaccines and later that night he ran an awful fever… I took him to the hospital and they sent him home, his fever went down and that was that… until the next morning he woke up, having lost his entire vocabulary and unable to understand a word i was saying about going to the restroom… i had to repotty train him all over again. He was later diagnosed with “educ-ably mentally handicap” but he is brilliant and sociable in a couple areas… in other areas he just doesn’t process… we have realized they labeled him wrong… (he is 24 now)… he has a great job and he is a foreman and he is a miraculously gifted guitars-man… but he is clearly CLEARLY Aspergers( a milder form of autism) … and I do believe vaccines turn the switch on to autism…
i think we all have it in us… it could even be a left over early human genetic gene/chromosome… i think they got it all wrong… I think a flu or virus could potentially turn it on too… I think those terrible diseases they inject into us… are the culprit in most cases… i think their body searches itself down to the tiniest CORE to rid itself of this horrible disease its been injected with… I think big pharma KNOWS this too… so they let us linger believing that its mercury and crap and they "win’ by using different chems in new vaccines thus monetary gain… i do however believe vaccines save lives… so i’ve always been torn… would i have rather my son die painfully from measles… or have autism… i will take my son any way i can get him…
Well, your unsourced, medically questionable anectdote is more than enough evidence for me.
Eight instances of “I think” or “I believe” in your post, with zero instances of any scientific support for those beliefs. You have my sympathy for the medical issues your sons suffered/suffer, but you’ll find this board is more fact-oriented in general and your post will get the level of respect it deserves.
I am curious though, did you vaccinate your fourth son after your first son’s experience?
debcroweapple, I am happy for you that your son has adapted so well to his particular challenges.
I am not going to argue that your experience is one data point, and that your conclusions are not born out by studies.
I am not going to try to instruct you on what vaccines are and how they work, other than to say they do not inject horrible diseases into us.
But I can most definitely assure you that there is no monolithic Big Pharma, with the major multinationals conspiring to … to the detriment of the consumer. Big Pharma exists in a capitalist economy; they compete against each other.
I believe that you believe this to be what happened. But there is no scientific evidence that this in fact happens, and your anecdotes do not constitute proof. If you wish to believe it is what happened then I hope it comforts you to believe this.
My Facebook picture is of me at the age of several hours, one eye closed so I could try to focus on the camera, with a clear expression of, “Piss off,” just like I would today! I didn’t even have a first name and I was anti-social. Not autistic, just grumpy.
All the more reason to share the links, so we can laugh some more at the Italian legal system. 
More seriously, debcroweapple, I can empathize because my daughter started having seizures at age eight that caused brain damage that took her from being a bright little girl to one in special ed. Seventeen years later and she is catching up with being the bitchy, little snark queen she started out to be. Still has seizures, still gets confused easily, but she’ll catch me off-guard and break me up.
Your first son’s problems sound like they might have been caused by that fever, which might have been caused by the vaccination, or by an unrelated case of the flu, as you suggest. Neither of us knows. What I do know is that there is no “Big Pharma,” just a bunch of companies competing for your money; they would happily feed their competitors into a wood chipper if they thought they had the goods on them for selling dangerous products; and that the big money is in hard-on pills and things to keep older people alive longer because they are both repeat business and patentable. They don’t make squat off the vaccination trade.
Oh, and “those terrible diseases they inject into us” are just a tiny fraction of the potentially terrible microbes kids are exposed to every day of their lives, every time they breathe or cut themselves or stick their grimy, little fingers in their mouths.
Ah, you’re in the industry, I see. Companies do cheerfully rat each other out to the Feds under the Bad Ad program; I swear they measure the font size of the contraindications with calipers. The only thing medical products companies cooperate on is lobbying Congress.
Sorry about your girl’s challenges; I hope she keeps working passed them.
I’ve heard some similar stories. LOTS of similar stories.
The thing to me is alot of stuff is in a vaccine. And just like any other chemical out there each chemical will affect different people different ways. Like how some people have allergies to things like peanuts or penicillin or latex. But the thing is they dont know until exposed to them.
Its the same with drugs. They give a drug to am person to help a condition and most often it does just what its supposed to. BUT, there are always some occasions when that same drug does something else or is ineffective.
So why do we blindly vaccine every kid out there, kids with still developing immune, endocrine, neurological, and digestive system with all these chemicals? I’ve often wondered if they should do some sort of pre-vaccine tests.
Personally I dont think the problem is the vaccines. Its just that we administer them too fast in too big of a dose, too early. This mass “shotgun” approach is bound to cause some problems.
Have you read any of the dozen of other threads on this board alone addressing the points you raise?
Have you followed any of the links and read those studies or articles?
I ask because you don’t seem completely clear on how vaccines or the immune system in general work.
I’ve heard a lot of Bigfoot and UFO stories.
You do realize that over the years they have been drastically reducing the number of antigens in our vaccine schedule, right?
Because we really don’t have that much in the way of bad reactions. Stories are just that: stories
Again, what the vaccine has in it is nothing compared to what you kid gets exposed to on a daily basis. All the ‘too many too soon’ movement has done is get some very young kids killed or maimed.
I’m pretty sure you’ve had this explained to you before.
Blindly. Right. Because NO ONE has done ANY work at all to even wonder whether or not this is safe. We’re just out there stabbin’ kids at random for the fucking fun of it.
Fucking hell.
Penn & Teller put it rather succinctly here.
The number of antigens in vaccines is trivial compared to the number of antigens a child is exposed to in the natural environment. It’s like worrying that a few drops of rain will drown someone swimming in the ocean.
But we don’t blindly vaccinate kids - kids with known risk factors may have their vaccinations delayed or never given. People with egg allergies, for example, are not given flu shots. There are contraindications for vaccines, and if you want you can go up to the CDC website and look them up for any vaccine you care to name.
And this is why it is important to vaccinate most children, to minimize the risk to people who cannot be vaccinated.
This is anti-vax scary talking point #3 (or maybe #4, I’ve lost track). When the anti-vax thing started it was “I’m not against vaccines but Wakefield’s research shows MMR causes autism”. When that was shown to be a fraud it was “I’m not against vaccines but mercury is poison”. When mercury was taken out of vaccines - not that it was ever in them to a dangerous degree - it became “I’m not against vaccines but we shouldn’t give Great Big Doses of Scawy stuff to Itty Bitty Babies!”.
This is a neatly vague claim; too vague to directly refute. But in the end, there is plenty of evidence that in the absence of vaccination, awful childhood diseases kill or maim far more children than does vaccination.
You’re either rational enough to let your head rule your heart in relation to vaccines or you are not. If you are not, then refuting anti-vax scary talking point #whatever isn’t going to help, because there’s always going to be another scary talking point you are going to rely upon. Because in the end, you *are *just against vaccines and that’s that.
Its #3 or 4 in the modern, Wakefield-induced narrative, but in the full history of anti-vaxx it is around #30 or #31 of their spurious claims.
This reminds me of the creationist/intelligent designer “fossil gap argument”–when a fossil is found that fits into a fossil gap, they then go: “Aha! There are now two fossil gaps!”
Okay, please, just stop, okay? Dial it back and think about your audience, hmm? And think about the goal.
Most people who worry about vaccinations are not idiots, conspiracy theorists, Andrew Wakefield, or even ignorant [insert generic insulting term here].
They are parents who do not trust the best medical care and products to be generate from the desire to make a profit.
Does that sound familiar? Did you ever express doubt that, oh, say, health care insurance companies might not be moved to pay for the best quality care and products?
What is the goal? To make children safer.
How? By encouraging people to vaccinate their children.
And no-one in the history of forever has ever changed an opinion in response to mocking.
If someone snorts, 'Oh, Argument #3", the likely response is not, “This person is mocking me, I must be wrong”, it’s more likely to be “I knew you wouldn’t have a good counter argument.”
Yes, it has all been said a thousand times, but that’s what education is.