Speaking up against anti-vacciners

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I think it is interesting your dad feels vaccinations caused your autism. I think parents know more then we may think. LIsten to him instead of feeling like he is attacking who you are. We are ALL who we are because of circumstances in our lives. PHysical or otherwise. That doesnt change us or make us any less then we are. Who cares if your personality rests on a shot being given?

Thank you so much for sharing this. When I was writing the letter and espcially after I got the rather negative reply, I did feel the same way.

I'm kind of worried about the kids of people who are anti-vaccine. One, because the very philosophy behind the anti-vaccine issue is so selfish and childish - it's kind of like sticking your fingers in your ears and screaming "No no no, I can't do anything wrong, it's all science's fault!" instead of saying, "Hey, a lot of my family has autistic symptoms, maybe there's something going on with my genetics". It's unhealthy for an adult and is even more unhealthy for a child who is hearing their parent say it. It's like telling the kid it's okay to never take responsibility and it's good to blame your issues on something external instead of using it for self examination.

And two, because it pushes an unhealthy view on the child that something is "wrong" with them that needs to be fixed and that they're not "normal" so they're "flawed". My parents brought me up to never feel bad for myself or see myself as disabled and I have to think that while their methods were tough on me at the time, they've made me into a very confident person now. I have to wonder how these kids are going to be, if they're going to have self-esteem issues...

I found my autism under a cabbage plant which I ate. god bless vaccines they give us so much,
for fifty bucks you can cure autism, these myths and more on NT world!! !! !! !

I feel all of you stick your fingers in your ears and scream "I AM AUTISTIC BECAUSE I AM COOLER THEN YOU AND SMARTER THEN YOU AND KNOW MORE THEN YOU SO THERE!! !"

Thats how I feel. So there

There is more wrong with vaccinations then JUST causing autism (regardless if it just helps the symptoms be more prominent or actually causes some cases, NOT ALL as my son has never been vaccinated). Children are being injected with POISON from the time they are a day old and now kids have cancer, allergies, skin problems, SIDS, ect. Im sorry, but big brother pharma has alot of money going into it. If they are so harmless why do I have to sign a waiver if I decide to give it to my child and under side effects of ALL of them is *death*.

You all sit here and act like there is NO PROOF. Doctors say there is proof on their side. Parents and doctors say there is proof on there side. I think there is proof on both. It is probably somewhere in the middle. To stick your fingers in your ears and say LALALALALA is obnoxious. SOMETHING is going on here. People are SEEING it happen to their children. With there own eyes. People with NO OTHER agenda and who have never even heard of vaccines being dangerours (thus gave them to their kids not thinking twice). These people believed in vaccines, why suddenly say they did something to their child? Parents SEE it happen. Others, like me, knew something was wrong from an early age. Dont disregard other peoples feelings and thoughts because they dont line up with how you feel about your *condition*.

That's true, though I think the "'vaxx' causes autism" meme can be the same thing in the opposite direction: "this is (for a fact) not how you are supposed to be."

My 'friend' - on Facebook, I've known her for a while and we have a bit of a love/hate relationship - has just mentioned this, her update specifically went as follows;

My reply went along the lines of;


I don't mind people's concerns over vaccines in the slightest, but it is the fact that when it comes to ASD as well as inaccurate (most of us were born this way) there is this hysteria - THIS is my problem, the sort of propaganda that vaccines have caused this increase in people with ASD (the increase is likely more to do with how it's now being more commonly diagnosed, IF we are increasing in number's it's down to more people with ASD having kids so passing on the genes...and okay, possibly environmental factors) and the idea that ASD is some disease that's threatening our whole way of life. There's really too much politics involved, when NT's start discussing this it makes me feel uneasy because in most cases, even if they have ASD kids, they're not going to see the implications in accepting this theory.

I say bologna to the bold. Babies are given vaccinations at BIRTH. There is no showing signs before that. So EVERYONE shows signs AFTER vaccinations (unless not vaccinated). Again, I dont think vaccinations are the only cause, maybe not even the leading cause, but I dont think it should be over looked!

So how come there are unvaccinated kids with autism? Y'know, like my little sister?

Without even mentioning autism, that is how I usually speak of vaccinations: "Drawn from the witches' brew."


Because vaccinations are not the root cause or reason for autism, if even involved at all.

Last edited by leejosepho on 13 Apr 2011, 7:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.

My understanding is that the vaccine associated with ASD was the MMR vaccine, which is administered at 1 and then again at 4 - so not quite at birth, and I would say that ASD traits can be seen in babies under 1 years old. I do believe mine was at the age of 2, and I remember this which to my mind confirms there's enough there for a parent or medical professional to see some traits of ASD.

Of course, I'm speaking as someone with little knowledge of this whole issue.
I think it should be considered...but I disagree with people like my friend who is a bit of a conspiracy theorist (so am I, but not quite to her level) who are determined that vaccines are in fact a major factor which is being hidden for the sake of profit.

If vaccines are/were actually involved at all, the size of that effect in relation to autism would likely be irrelevant to the pharmaceutical companies who market the vaccines for other purposes already propagated as acceptable and/or even necessary.

You may think that, and it's probably true for some, but the idea that that's all that's behind people being pro-vaccines is wrong no matter how you feel about it. I'm for vaccines because of the good they do in the world, because I'm one of those people who could die if exposed to vaccine-preventable diseases and so are many people I know in the disability community and I happen to value our lives, and on and on from there. I don't think I'm smarter than nonautistic people, nor cooler. Frankly if autism were caused by vaccines it wouldn't change my view of myself at all, nor my view of how important vaccines are. I would gladly give up a lot more than I've "given up" in being autistic (and all my various medical issues), if it meant that vaccines could still be used. I don't think I'm qualified to evaluate vaccine science (not "smart enough" in that area), but I know a lot of people who are very qualified to do so, and I trust their judgement that vaccines give more to the world than they take away, and that what they take away is a lot less than some people are willing to admit.

I've also gotten to watch the anti-vaccination movement build and unfold over time, and I think it's one of the most dangerous movements in the world today. It's mostly a lot of people in rich countries claiming that any of a number of things are associated with vaccines that aren't (often with a lot of junk science thrown in, and over time that junk science gets exposed so they just move on to more junk science, that sounds plausible to laypeople but makes no sense on a scientific level), with absolutely devastating effects in poorer parts of the world where vaccines aren't as available as they are in the countries where people are doing the complaining (and where people have a lot more risk factors for bad effects of the illnesses themselves). And also ignoring the effect on people with immune suppression and other health issues when sick children get around us. I have a friend who caught whooping cough from a purposely unvaccinated child. She has multiple physical impairments, and this caused her to crack several ribs coughing, become severely dehydrated to the point where the usual rehydration measures were not working in the ER, and the dehydration set off her already-severe epilepsy. She almost died. I also know someone with such severe immune deficiencies that she caught the measles several times in a row, with serious risk to her health. She is terrified of the trend towards vaccinating less. Personally I have a respiratory disease that's almost abolished in the first world because of vaccines, but which still exists in the third world. If I got exposed to those diseases, it could make it worse at best, kill me at worst. And this is besides the many people I've met who are autistic because their mothers caught vaccine-preventable diseases while pregnant (and FWIW, they don't have any more tendency to feel good or bad about being autistic than people where the cause appears genetic... the idea you have to have a "good" cause in order to be happy with who you are is wrong). With fewer people vaccinated we'll see more of this happening... but then I've seen some anti-vaccine people actually say that vaccines are bad because then the unhealthy people don't die of disease and then we stick around and mess up the world by being unhealthy, or something. That's certainly not how most of those of us with these health issues look at things.

Anyway, there are perfectly good reasons for preferring people to vaccinate, that have nothing at all to do with whether you feel good about being autistic or not. I've certainly seen some people claim that that's the reason they prefer pro-vaccine to anti-vaccine, and that bothers me a great deal because it makes no real sense. But it's not good to presume that's the main reason for people's views on vaccines, because even if they say they like being autistic (and this thread is set up in such a way that that discussion is going to happen, because of the way the poll was worded), it doesn't mean they don't have other, much better reasons for their views on vaccines.

Last edited by anbuend on 13 Apr 2011, 7:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Stories like this are why the CDC monitors vaccines to look for risk factors. While I 100% support vaccines, I think that the doctors should test for known risk factors before giving vaccines. I don't think they should be delayed for a year though. Vaccines should be given as soon as the child is healthy enough to be vaccinated. Diseases don't wait a year to infect kids, so vaccines shouldn't either. I don't think that delaying vaccines would have made a bit of difference in this case.



"Epic fail" is more than enough to describe this line of BS. Who are these people spewing this crap anyway? It's like they're half luddites, half evangelicals, and all stupid.



People like this need to be slapped across the face and then backhanded multiple times. You DO NOT help your child by looking for a goddamn magic pill to make them NT. There is no such thing and there never will be. You help them by learning as much about it yourself so that you are in the best position possible to help them compensate for the weaknesses of AS while taking the strengths and running to success with them.



Name a chemical and provide a source to support your claim that vaccines carry a toxic dose of said chemical. I dare you to try.



There is a financial motivation to this debate, but it's on YOUR side. Andrew Wakefield, the a**hole who published the first paper saying there was a link between vaccines and autism was, you guessed it, paid by people who wanted to sue vaccine manufacturers

Oh, and research why the vaccine court was set up in the first place: vaccines were NOT profitable enough to justify manufacturing them when faced with the risk of lawsuits, so manufacturers pulled out of the market, and the government feared there would be a shortage and that herd immunity would be lost.



The only shouting for attention is being done by Wakefield, McCarthy, and people like them. The scientists who actually do the research prefer to publish their findings rather than yell into megaphones. Unfortunately this all too often means that the crazier side gets more attention than it should and that gullible people take them too seriously.

If big pharma is paying people to say vaccines don't cause autism, I'd like to know where I can get in line to have them pay off my student loans. Oh and is big pharma paying for ALL of the studies that show genetic links to autism or just the ones that reject your asinine conspiracy theory?



The FDA, CDC, IoM, and every other governmental agency that regulates vaccines says the same thing. If you honestly believe that "big pharma" is using money to control every governmental agency not only in America but every governmental agency in the WORLD as well as every last scientific and medical journal out there, you are delusional.



Or perhaps the "explosion" in autism is actually and "explosion" in kids with autism actually getting a proper diagnosis because of proactive efforts to detect autism and start treatment as early as possible to provide kids the best chance of success in life. No no it can't be that, it must be an epidemic in autism caused by vaccines, the only evidence of which is a discredited claim that was retracted by the journal that published it and repudiated by most of the people who contributed to the work that first made the claim.

Seriously, how much crack does one have to smoke to believe such a conspiracy?

Umm none? I am NT, and NOT a conspiracy theorist. A large number in my social circle believe that 9-11 was a set up. I have been shown many biased videos showing this. I dont believe it. I am not afraid of the government, I dont live in fear of people spying on me. I dont like vaccinations. I feel there is science based evidence proving they are not safe. INcluding the government payouts for people hurt by them.

double post, sorry

Last edited by kat_ross on 13 Apr 2011, 9:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.

twinsmummy20 wrote

"I think it is interesting your dad feels vaccinations caused your autism. I think parents know more then we may think. LIsten to him instead of feeling like he is attacking who you are. We are ALL who we are because of circumstances in our lives. PHysical or otherwise. That doesnt change us or make us any less then we are."

I take it you are the parent of an autistic individual, and so you are identifying with him a bit. There is a huge difference between telling your child that you believe his or her symptoms were caused by a vaccine and making explicit comments such as "My child's life has been ruined" and "God must really hate me because my child is having all of these problems." And you say I am not supposed to feel offended by his comments? I am supposed to "listen to him" because he "knows more than (I) may think"?!?! I hope you don't say things like this to your family member that is on the spectrum!

"Who cares if your personality rests on a shot being given?"

Obviously lots of people, otherwise this debate would not bring up such strong emotions. As you can see from my comments, some families tend to act as though there is something terribly wrong with a "personality" that has been caused by a shot, and seeing people argue so strongly against vaccines gives the impression that we are mistakes that must not be made again. That is a horrible idea to plant in a child's mind.

Also, for the record, I do not stick my fingers in my ears and say "LALALALA", nor do I think that I am better or smarter than other people.