For those blaming Vaccines for their child's ASD...

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I am not judging you, but I'm just crurious to understand why you would blame vaccines when you have access to this great wealth of information on Autism. The Wakefield study has been debunked many times and many of these toxicity and gut dysbiosis theories aren't scientically sound.

Is there a reason in particular why you believe this so strongly? I would love to better understand.

I haven't been here all that long, but I don't know of any parent who frequents this forum who blames vaccines for their child's ASD.

I don't care for all the vaccines, but it's not because of autism. When I had my kids I was afraid of autism from the vaccines, but I've since learned that it's not the case. I have an issue with some of them for other reasons.

I've gone round on the internet with those who say that autism is caused by the vaccines. I have AS, I was allergic to vaccines as a child. I've never had them. How can vaccines cause autism then? Either I'm laying that I have it, my doctor lied to me that I had it, or my mother, my pediatrician and my medical records from childhood are all falsified to show that I didn't have vaccines, when I had them. Somebody actually accused me of that before online when I said that I never had them.

I do think that some vaccines can cause high fevers and seizures either from the fever or the vaccine itself with a rare reaction, and that high fevers and prolonged seizures (not the type found in febrile seizures) can cause brain damage which may look like autism. I don't doubt that there are a handful of children or adults now, who have brain damage caused by a rare reaction to a vaccine. That isn't autism caused by the vaccine.

My daughter had a severe reaction to the pertussis vaccine and the pediatrician said never to give her or any of the others the pertussis vaccine again. I didn't. They aren't vaccinated against pertussis. If they choose to be now that they are adults, then that's their decision. maybe they will or won't have a reaction if they choose to. That's a decision that they should make, in consultation with their doctor and taking his advice into consideration.

I did all the vaccines except the pertussis for my kids, but I gave them the Salk polio vaccine and not the live oral vaccine. That vaccine can cause polio in unvaccinated adults if they don't use proper handwashing after changing diapers in the days after the baby gets the vaccine. I wash my hands, but I didn't want to take the chance that somebody else might not, like an elderly person at the day care, and the elderly aren't usually vaccinated against polio.

I don't like new vaccines because I don't know the long term effects of them because that hasn't had a chance to be studied and I try to avoid them unless it's serious. Thats why they didn't get the chickenpox vaccine, back when it was a choice. They did get chickenpox later though. They are fine. Chicken pox is usually mild and I knew there was a small chance that something could go wrong if they caught it, but I didn't know what the long term effects of the vaccine itself might be so I opted to go with the devil I knew rather than the devil I didn't. I'm old enough to remember thalidomide so I know that nobody knows what something might cause down the road.

I did the same with my girls and the HPV vaccine. My older daughter is and has been since she started dating, in a monogamous relationship with the same boy. They have been together 8 years now. They will eventually marry. She doesn't need the vaccine unless she has a reason to think he's cheating, or if she cheats. Also, they were both virgins when they started dating. My younger daughter who is 18 is not sexually active and doesn't want to be until she either marries or is in a long term relationship with someone and it's as serious as marriage. It's not a religious decision but she says sex isn't something she thinks people should play with and if others want to thats fine, but she doesn't.

I also fear that the HPV vaccine would cause a false sense of security and prevent condom usage, which is notoriously lacking in teenagers. They don't believe they know anybody with HIV and they don't think they will get pregnant or are on birth control anyway, so they don't care about the other diseases and don't think about them for the most part. Gone are the days of the kid who got the clap in high school and everybody knew about it. Now, all they think is that you can get HIV from unprotected sex, or pregnant. Girls today mainly think that if they get pregnant too young they will either have the baby and their family or the boy will help raise it, or they can get an abortion. Thats true, but that doesn't mean they aren't at risk for HPV, herpes, chlamydia, syphillis, gonnorhea, or trich. I remember when one of my oldest son's friends caught the clap from his girlfriend. He didn't even know that was still around, he thought that was cured in the 70's. Kids don't need that false sense of security, but if a child is hellbent on being promiscuous and not using protection, then I would definately get the HPV vaccine, but otherwise I don't see a reason for it.

I don't blame vaccines anymore but I did at one time. The reason is, my son regressed around the time he got MMR. Watching your child regress is a very hard thing- it's not fair, it's scary, and you want to know why that happened. Also you want to be told that it can be reversed. The vaccine idea provides both answers and solutions, which no other theory does. My son regressed in 2003, which was still close enough to the release of that paper that it was a big deal. Nowadays it isn't so much, but there are lots of new people hypothesising about vaccines causing autism- it's in the media and all over the internet. Jenny McCarthy may be a playboy model and not a scientist, but she is also a MOTHER and heartfelt stories of mothers watching their children "fade away" are moving. They get air time. And like I said, they provide the mothers of children who are having problems hope of "recovery". The idea that vaccines are a conspiracy and really a bad thing dates back to before the Wakefield paper- it dates back to the conception of vaccination. It's really nothing new.

One thing that really doesn't help is pro-vaccine pro-neurodiversity people claiming that children with autism never regress. It's not helpful because some do. And if you're claiming children with autism never regress, those parents of regressing children are obviously going to look elsewhere for answers- they're going to look at places that acknowledge that this occurs. So if these pro-vaccine pro-neurodiversity people wnt less of this, one tip I have is stop saying it didn't happen. I don't believe vaccines causes it in my son, but it DID happen. I have it on video tapes- you can watch it happen and it is striking.

I watched a show once that seemed to explain this well to me. There was a doc saying ( theorizing) that the Autism is already present in the child at birth, but the child is not presenting with symptoms until a shift happens neurologically during a typical growth period. This shift ignites the brain activity which causes the symptoms. Typical kids have a typical shift happen, but Autistic kids have an atypical shift. I am not explaining it well, and I can't remember the name of the program. The timing of this growth shift happens to coincide with the timing of the MMR. I also read somewhere, or saw some other program (my memory was fantastic before I had kids, I swear) that talked about the legend of "changelings." These are legends of creatures switching a baby's soul while they slept, so that it became a different baby. The theory is that it may have been the way people very long ago explained away this sudden regression, long before vaccines existed.

I don't believe vaccines cause autism.

However, when I was pregnant with my 1st child, I knew that autism ran in my family and it seemed likely that I might have a child on the spectrum. At the time, I was very doubtful about the whole vaccine thing, but wakefields study hadn't been debunked yet. So there was still that one shady study that no one could seem to reproduce. There was hub bub at the time that it might be fraud, but it wasn't proven until a year or two later iirc. Anyway, I didn't really buy it... but I figured, what could a delayed and spaced out vaccination schedule hurt? So I fought with the pediatrician a bit and got the schedule altered. My daughter was autistic anyhoo. It was obvious by 18 mos-2 years old to anyone who lived with her (we didn't get her diagnosed till almost 5 though) so we got her all caught up on her vaccines around age 2. No net change. Still autistic. To the same degree.

Anyway, it is totally amazing how many parents really do believe that vaccines cause autism and that snake oil will cure it. I run into SO MANY it makes my heart and my brain hurt.

There are not many on these boards though. You see... these boards are very pro-real information and also very pro-neuro diversity. The result is that the vaccine whackos don't stick around or frequent here because they don't get the validation that they want. People call them out and call it whacky, because it is. So I think they stick to their own forums, where ever those are.

When I run into an anti-vaxxer irl, I pretty much have to turn around and walk away. Same with those MMS weirdos. Also people who over medicate and try to squeeze every last drop of autism out of the kid. Poor kid. The parent tries to get rid of all stimming, all "boring" monologueing, all "useless" special interests.... and for what? Those kids are neurotic, and gee I wonder why??

Anyway, the folks I've bothered talking to who believe that vaccines cause autism fall usually into 2 camps-

1) the camp of the ignorant and/or woefully ill informed... people who literally are so uneducated that they cannot understand what a scientific study is, how one might be performed, and why results might be valid or invalid... and as a result have no idea why wakefields entire study is invalid, why NOT being able to reproduce it is an issue, or what other studies that have shown no link between autism and vaccines even really mean.

2) consipracy theorists who believe that there is some sort of big pharma conspiracy related to vaccines and autism. There are several floating around. They're all pretty ridiculous.

Search the Internet for the terms "induced diseases disorders" and "mimic diseases disorders." The results will show the diseases and disorders that can be intentionally or unintentionally induced or mimicked by external influences like drugs. Why would ASDs be the only disorders that aren't induced or mimicked?

Note that CDC researcher William S. Thompson, Ph.D., was given "whistleblower immunity" this week for his upcoming congressional testimony about how he intentionally omitted information in a study that could have shown a race-based link between vaccines and childhood diseases including autism http://www.dailycaller.com/2015/02/03/o ... e-congress .

If there is a chance that his testimony is correct and/or shows that his supervisors knew about or instructed his omission, we could see congressional subpoenas for the testimonies of those supervisors.

Then, consider the 2012 U.K. court opinion http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2012/503.html about the complete exoneration of Andrew Wakefield's co-author, Prof. John Walker-Smith, wherein it was stated that the "serious professional misconduct and the sanction of erasure are both quashed."

So, it appears that there is something to the claims that certain vaccines induce or mimic ASDs in certain test subjects. The Wakefield et al. paper was ultimately determined by a U.K. court to have validity. Thompson's disclosure adds substance to the paper. We will see what, if anything, members of the Congress might do in official response to its inquiry.

The first time I ever heard of vaccines causing autism was back in the 80's. It sounded very real and there were some books by credible people, that were widely sold in for real book stores and not fringe places that talked about it. There were investigative reports on tv, articles in parent's magazines, articles in women's magazines and in newspapers, and it was talked about a lot and feared a lot. It sounded like it could be true, and when doctors talked about it to tell people that it wasn't true, they didn't sound as convincing as the people talking about it saying it was true and they sounded a hell of a lot less convincing than the book written by a pediatrician and the folks who wrote A Shot In The Dark. It had the feeling of something that was having the lid blown off of it.

We all already read the handouts about vaccine reactions and worried over high fevers and watched our babies like hawks afterwards. That was scary, especially for first time parents whose child hadn't had high fevers yet or been sick yet, and now this good shot could cause it, even for a little while and it was said that it was a reaction to the shot. The evidence for it causing autism seemed plausible then. It really did. Especially to young first time parents like us and others we knew.

Also, back then it was much harder to find and research information. Nobody had the internet. You had to drive to the library, look in the actual card catalog and find the book you wanted, or look on the shelf, and ask the librarian and check something out, take it home and read through it looking for your topic. Then when that didn't have it, you went back, ordered books from other libraries, and if you were lucky enough to live near a university you might go to their library or medical library and look through the books you could understand and try to find something, make copies and take them home and read them. That took weeks or months to do what we can now accomplish in two nights. Information was out there, but it wasn't as available because most people didn't know where or how to find it and some of it was only available in libraries that you weren't allowed in, or by subscription to trade publications and journals that you couldn't afford and anyway they may or may not have the info and if they do you probably won't fully understand it. We couldn't find out anything except by listening to experts and doing our own meager research.

I did what I thought was best and I asked my pediatrician the next time we went. Do vaccines cause autism? Is there a chance that this can make my baby (that r word we don't say now, but did then even though autism doesn't cause the r thing)? My doctor said no. I asked why they said it and she said "They are dumbasses" She said that, really. I knew her from working at the nursery and NICU at the hospital. I liked her and she was a chilled out, real person and had a great reputation as a pediatrician and was also a mother herself. She knew me from the hospital in a different setting where we did chat like that, so we talked like regular people to each other and not the more formal way that people talk to their doctor. I asked her then where does the autism come from and the problems? She pointed out that kids show symptoms around the same time as certain vaccines and that it's coincidence. She also told me about the brain damage theory from high fevers that mimics autism. Then she told me that my baby stood a greater chance of getting brain damage from me dropping him on his head cause I was nervous over the shot than from any side effect of the actual shot. She said it does happen rarely but every medicine ever has a small chance of causing a bad reaction and death. I believed her. I stopped believing that vaccines caused autism then.

I continued to worry about high fevers and seizures, because she said it was possible but rare. Then when my daughter had the bad reaction to the pertussis, I went crazy worried over it. I was glad they said not to give it to any of them anymore because she had told me that one was the one that caused the worst reactions medically, in her opinion. I stopped worrying about them for autism but still worried.

Now I worry about other things about them, mainly the newer ones. It's just like any new drug. They test it for a while, it works, it's on the market. It may have been around five or ten years by then, but thats not good enough. I want to know if it can have latent side effects 20 or 30 years from then. I want to know what it may do long term to the immune system. I want to know if it's going to do ,something else I can't think of, decades down the road. It probably won't and I'm probably being stupid about it, but the ones I don't get now are for things that are very minor to my kids. They aren't in a high risk group. I don't have to live with the worry of them catching something and dying because I'm a worry wart. Sure they could have died from the chicken pox, but they also could have died when three of them had MRSA and one of them had it pretty bad and spreading but didn't have to go in the hospital, just treat it at home and watch it and there was no vaccine for that. They might not get the flu shot but might get one of the other flu's and viruses that are going around and have complications and die from it. They might choke on a cheese stick and die too. I worry. But I still get the vaccines for things that could kill them, except for the one the dr said not to for medical reasons, based on actual facts and medical history and not gut feelings.

Most people back then, even when the stories from dr's came out debunking the myth, believed that vaccines don't normally cause autism but they do sometimes. That became embedded in most peoples minds that vaccines increase the risk and most do believe it even though they may logically see that it doesn't. If a parent went through that time period, when it was a new, big story, and they had a new baby at the time, then there will always be that little connection in their minds even if it's a "what if it really could..." kind of way, even if we don't believe it. People believe and remember things differently than how they happened and things like that become part of the collective culture and memory. There was something about people insisting that they saw one of the towers fall on 9/11 on the news the day it happened when in fact it wasn't shown until the next day or so, but many insist they saw it. That's probably not accurate but it was about seeing something on 9/11. Because we know it happened that day and there was tv coverage, it seems like we should have seen it, so we think we did see it, and remember seeing it then, even if we look it up and see that it's fact that it wasn't shown until later, we still remember seeing it the day it happened. We place ourselves in the chair we were in watching the live coverage when we remember seeing the tower fall or whatever thing it is that wasn't shown till later. It's the same with this. It was said so much by so many people on so many media outlets that vaccines cause autism that there is still some connection to it in our minds even knowing it's not true. Does that make sense? When something is said enough, for long enough, and we heard it in the past and believed it, there is still a connection there, and people still find the connection and the books today and believe it. Those people have to go through the same processes that we did back then, and research it for themselves, but they will have an easier time with it. So, just let them think what they will, encourage them to do research, and let them come to their own conclusions because you can't do anything else.

Sorry to ramble on, but it's an important issue in autism. i like to chime in about it because I've had no shots and I have autism. I guess I got mine from going barefoot outside. No, that's worms. Maybe it was from being bitten by a mosquito that had just bit an autistic child, no wait, that's how you could get HIV in the early 80s. I think I got it from a toilet seat, but then again that might be how people got STD's in the 70's. Maybe it was a public swimming pool, but that might be how some girls got pregnant in the 60;s or it might be how you got polio in the 50's. So, people think all kinds of things about how things are passed, contracted, caught, etc. It's not always true. The HIV from a mosquito seemed very possible when you heard it back in the 80's. We know now that it's a ridiculous theory. Just like vaccines and autism. The difference is that while the mosquito AIDS thing is wrong, the toilet seat STD thing was wrong, and the swimming pool pregnancies theory is also wrong, they didn't cause anyone to be put in harms way like this vaccine theory does. However kids do get worms from going barefoot outside and they did get polio from swimming pools in the 50's.

There was a study showing brain overgrowth about 6 months before noticed behavioral regression in subgroup of autistic children.

I'm 64 and was diagnosed about three years ago. I had the measles. I had the chicken pox. I had the mumps twice. I probably had an early form of polio vaccine. So, I didn't get any of these vaccinations everyone is blaming these days and I still had and have AS...

You had them twice? That sucks! Remember how they used to diagnose mumps back in the day? Feed the kid a pickle and see what happens. LOL! That's some sneaky crap right there, but it worked. Ouch! My salivary glands hurt just thinking about it.

Back when most people before the 1970s were growing up, measles, mumps, and chickenpox were considered "the usual childhood diseases." They were called that even in case studies, as in "XXX walked at one year, had the usual childhood diseases...."

The measles vaccine came out in 1963, the mumps in 1968, the chickenpox in the 1970s (I believe).

Yep...it was legendary that they closed swimming pools during polio epidemics before the Salk vaccine. The Salk did a lot; but the Sabin was really the one that dropped polio cases to nearly zero.

And here we thought that he was only a SEC football God. And also a really good dog.

Here's why this really shouldn't be a debate:

In what world is it smart not to vaccinate your kids because you're worried about something that is proven not to happen but you still think might actually happen anyway because you don't trust the scientific community even though you know that it's a simple irrefutable fact that not vaccinating definitely means that your kid lacks immunity to multiple diseases that spread like wildfire and can cause death?

I'm all for personal choice but if you believe people should have the right to not vaccinate, you would also have to be OK with people having the right to choose to drive around drunk in order to be consistent because it's their right and it's not much more likely that they'll kill someone.

#mybodymychoice