Any anti-vaxxers here?

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Hi, someone I know has recently started arguing that autism can be caused by vaccinations. I am skeptical, but I would like to hear the other side of the argument, either from people who have autism whose parents believe it was caused by a vaccination, or by anyone with autism who believes they got it from a vaccination, or even from parents who believe their child got autism from a vaccination.

I'm curious about what age you were when you received the vaccination that caused this, and if you have any memory of what it was like to not have autism.

All you need to know can be found at the other end of This Link.

Here’s a link to the relevant info regarding autism and vaccines:

Discredited Fraud Andrew Wakefield (Wiki)

Andrew Wakefield’s discredited research lives on!

My youngest brother and his wife are staunch anti-Vaxxers, so much to the point that they’ve cut off all contact with both mom and dad’s sides of the family. Last I heard, they’ve gone completely off-grid and no contact.

They are completely closed minded on EVERYTHING . They’re always right, and everyone else is always wrong, even if one could prove 20 different ways to Sunday one is correct.

They are the same couple that called me everything but white when I was awarded SSDI almost 10 years ago, due to mental defect, yet they said nothing when mom was awarded SSDI for rheumatoid arthritis. Their reasoning: mental illness is a fraud (even though they have a son and a daughter that are low functioning and non-verbal, and she has a son (by another man) who goes OCD when he contracts strep. She has the entire family frequently go through chelation, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the do bleach enemas.

The only things that we do agree on is that autistics should not be given psychoactive drugs.

^ I’m speechless.

What the actual {censored}!

Poor kids

Really speechless, appalled: can’t think of anything else to say.

I can't remember not being autistic; for me, autism was almost invisible until stress caused it to appear more. Now it's pretty obvious I'm autistic.

The reason I think that so many antivaxxers have "vaccine injured children" is because the parents, generally, are of odious personality and temperament, and even normal healthy children would be driven slowly insane by them, rather like the people they try to sell Young Living Oils and Avon to.

Your antivaxxers are the hippies as well as the right-wingers, the crunchy mamas and the Trump worshippers. Still, no matter what side they are on, I'm surprised you don't have to water them every few days because they're only a hint more intelligent than an average houseplant, as in, they will grow towards anything that shines on them, and they die quickly of preventable diseases.

Last I heard of Mr. Wakefield, he was rubbing shoulders with some homeopaths a couple of years back. Seems about appropriate, given his level of credibility.

^ now that really is scraping the barrel: the man can’t even associate with people who put the effort of sourcing something more than tap water for their cons.

With the coronavirus, I'm seeing a revolting number of anti-vaxxers online proudly commenting in comments sections with double and even triple digit upvotes and strings of replies validating them.

Dr. Andrew Wakefield has been practicing medicine and working with autistic children in Austin, Texas.  He was the executive director at The Thoughtful House, but his name is no longer seen on the website.  He currently resides in Austin.

Wakefield left Thoughtful House 10 years ago according to wiki.


He's apparently been getting into film-making recently.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaxxed

Dr. Wakefield supposedly lost his license to practice Medicine in Texas.

I enjoyed reading the reviews:

Quote:

"In his film debut, Wakefield has cast himself as the victim of a massive conspiracy to hide the truth ... What drove Wakefield from being a respected researcher to a conspiracy theorist?" -- Paul Offit in The Hollywood Reporter.

"Issues around truth and ethics in documentary can get thorny. But this one is easy. This film is not some sort of disinterested investigation into the 'vaccines cause autism' hoax; this film is directed by the person who perpetuated the hoax." -- Documentary director Penny Lane

"[Vaxxed] doesn't care about convincing its audience with evidence. Instead, Wakefield, Hooker, and producer Del Bigtree run the viewer through a well-trod gauntlet of emotional pleas, context-free statistics ... and shadowy conspiracies, with Bigtree claiming that 'all of television' has been bought out by the pharmaceutical industry." -- Ed Cara, the Medical Daily.

"Wakefield's by-the-numbers approach to didactic storytelling relies on tons of random factoids positioned out of context to drive home his agenda. An end credit declares that 'every seven minutes, a child in the U.S. is diagnosed with autism', the kind of tenuous data set that passes for hard evidence in Wakefield's bizarro universe." -- Eric Kohn, Indiewire.

"... a slickly produced but scientifically dubious hodgepodge of free-floating paranoia ... anti-Big Pharma conspiracy mongering ... [which] too often resembles the kind of one-sided, paranoia-stoking agitprop that political activists construct to sanctify true believers and assault infidels. [Vaxxed] should be taken with several grains of industrial-strength salt." -- — Joe Leydon, Film Critic Variety.

"The vast majority of people who see this film will not have the scientific knowledge to assess the film's veracity. But it's fair to say that the documentary, though characterized as antivaccination, isn't quite that. The point of view is more nuanced. It's against the vaccination of children ages 2 and younger. And it's particularly against the MMR — that is, the giving of three vaccines at once ... it's a passionate advocate for its viewpoint, and that makes for compelling viewing. ... Of course, it's possible that the children would have developed autism anyway, and that one event didn't cause the other. But the parents presented here are convinced otherwise." -- Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle

"Wakefield's film acts as if his research had not been revealed as fraudulent ... [Wakefield] didn't mention the fact that he lost his license in Great Britain, he didn't mention the fact that [11] of his co-authors withdrew their names from his paper. He didn't mention the fact that there was a series of investigative articles by [Sunday Times journalist] Brian Deer. None of that existed in this film." -- Dr. Philip LaRussa, pediatrician

"The Booker, Wakefield and Bigtree segments are spliced with testimonials from parents describing their own ordeals with late-onset autism, which only points to another insidious aspect of Wakefield's fraud. These interviews are heartbreaking. There may be few tragedies as great as a parent watching a child's future rapidly contract. But it's another tragedy altogether to give these desperate mothers and fathers this straw at which to grasp." -- Pete Vonder Haar, Houston Press.

"... the CDC whistleblower affair [is] the central conspiracy theory of the antivaccine movement ... How on earth did this documentary full of antivaccine lies ... get into Tribeca?" -- David H. Gorski, Oncologist & scientific watchdog, The LA Times.

"It's not a stretch to say that the title of this new film could well describe the shenanigans of Wakefield himself in the late `90s – the cover-up being the secret contract with lawyers who paid him to construct a case against the MMR, and the catastrophe, of course, the worldwide slump in vaccination ... There is something profoundly ironic about Wakefield pointing to the commercial interests of the pharmaceutical industry or accusing the CDC of data manipulation when you consider his own undisclosed financial interests behind the 1998 Lancet study and his role in what has been called one of the most flagrant frauds in medical history." -- Sarah Gill, The Age, Melbourne Australia.

Me too.

It's awful.

Remember, both the Darwin Effect and Finagle's Law occur more often with people who ignore the facts and/or take unnecessary risks.

We may not be hearing from them for very much longer...