Speaking up against anti-vacciners

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Of course I struggle tremendously and wish I didn't have so many problems to deal with. And I totally understand why a parent would be sad to see their child struggle. But I guess my main thing is that I hope parents try not to express feelings of hopelessness, anger towards the "higher powers", or feelings of their heart being broken IN FRONT OF their children, because it doesn't help anything, it just makes the child feel worse about him or herself. I am not saying that you do this, twinsmummy20, in fact it sounds like you do not. But I think that's why I reacted so strongly to your response. I see why autism is considered to be a problem, and most of the time it DOES cause problems for me (although it has helped me to excel in other areas, such as academics). I don't need to be NT to see why it is a handicap in some situations. But I can't help the way I was born and I can't go back and change the way I turned out, so it is depressing when I see people around me who are heartbroken to find out their child is going to be like me.

I hope your son is able to find some sort of solution for his vision problems, perhaps contacts when he is older, and hats to shield the sun? That is unfortunate that glasses make him uncomfortable.

I don't blame him for not wanting to wear his glasses. I have just normal nearsightedness, 20/200 vision, and when I'm overloaded from bright light I know that it doesn't affect me as much when I take my glasses off. Oddly enough, while this blurs my vision, it also increases the amount of useful information I get from my eyes. By decreasing sensory overload, I can do more with what I see. Obviously, though, a better solution is simply to wear sunglasses that wrap around my normal glasses (not clip-ons; those let light in around the edges). This removes some of the overwhelming light without also creating blurred vision, and works better than taking off my glasses. I assume your son already has one or more pairs of sunglasses, of course.

Okay... so you are saying you want your family to be happy. But then you seem to jump straight to the assumption that they would be happier if they were not autistic. Why is this? Everybody has problems; non-autistic people have problems, too. There are many things that solve problems that autistic people encounter without ever touching the autism itself. For example, an autistic child is bullied at school--remove the bullying, not the autism. Or, an autistic employee cannot work efficiently because the fluorescent lights above his desk give him headaches--well, remove the fluorescent lighting; no need to remove the autism. There is, in fact, nothing any more intrinsically negative about the experience of being autistic than there is about the experience of being non-autistic.

Autism cannot be cured. I've done a lot of research, including studying neurology and doing some work in a gene therapy lab, and as far as I can tell, we will not ever be able to remove autism without also removing everything a person has ever learned, everything they remember, every relationship they have. Autism is at least partly in the connections of the brain; and those are the same connections that make us who we are. Curing autism is not feasible; focusing on a cure is not useful.

When you focus on autism as the source of the problem and believe that to solve the problem, one must remove the autism, you deny yourself the use of other solutions. Adjustments can be made; work-arounds can be learned; society can be educated. Autistic children can grow up to be happy, mature, competent autistic adults.

Yes, autism causes problems. Yes, it is a disability.

But there are more important things than not being disabled. Being yourself is one of them.

I like who I am, autism and all. That doesn't change when I'm overloaded by something and it doesn't change when I fall in love with a new special interest and it doesn't change when I accidentally offend somebody. Life is good and bad and everything in between; but this is my life, my autism, and I like it the way it is. Might it be easier to be NT? Possibly. But the NT that was living my life wouldn't be me.

You don't hate being NT because you can't relax just by turning a shiny pebble over and over in your hands. I don't hate being autistic just because I can't read between the lines in a conversation. There is no reason to pity us, nor to think of us as "inspirational" for living what is, for us, our normal lives. I would much rather you campaigned for acceptance and integration. We want to be treated like human beings, be allowed to pursue our goals, get a good education and be hired for the jobs that let us use our skills. We want to be a part of the world--equals.

If all the energy spent on trying to snuff out autism were spent on learning to make the ever-so-slight changes that would let us find our niche in the world, then we wouldn't need to overreact to prejudice by claiming superiority. Yeah, some autistics do that. Lots of people who are part of a group against which prejudice is leveled will do that. Black people declare themselves superior to whites; gay people superior to straight people. They do it mostly because they haven't quite gotten the idea that two groups can exist as equals, because all their lives, they've been taught that one group is better than another--nondisabled people are better than disabled, NT better than autistic--and the only way they can think of to declare that they are not worthless is to switch the order of importance. But we can change that. We can teach the world that autistic people are every bit as important as non-autistic people, have all the same rights, and should be seen as equals and not objects of pity.

Vaccines do not cause autism. Autism is genetic. However mercury in vaccines do cause mecury poisioning which is also called mad hatters diesease which has some similar symptoms to autism plus makes you very physically sick. Therefore mercury in vaccines should be banned. Not everyone who receives a mecury shot will get mad hatters diesease but some will. The whole debate over whether vaccines cause autism is rediculous. It doesnt matter because having mercury injected into you cannot be good for you no matter what it causes.

I've always wondered about thimerosal toxicity, and even though in vaccines it doesn't cause toxicity, I'd feel much better if it wasn't in the vaccine or drug. Looks like there haven't been a lot of studies on thimerosal toxicity and I wonder if it's toxicity is similar to elemental mercury toxicity.