I'm not trying to jump on the bandwagon but...

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As the title said, I don't mean to jump on the bandwagon but...

I was reading my book, An Anthropologist on Mars, and I came across a section where Sacks mentioned that in the 1960s there was an outbreak of Rubella and within those populations the rate of Autism seemed to rise.

Well, I got to thinking (surprise, surprise) and I decided to google "autism" and "Rubella" out of curiosity and suddenly after doing some reading realized that the Rubella vaccine is part of that initial vaccine that all the parents are screaming about.

And I then asked myself, "What if for some cases of Autism, it isn't the Mercury which can affect Autism? What if it's the Rubella vaccine, itself???" I mean, from the very minute knowledge I have of vaccines, don't they usually take part of the diseased cells, themselves, and use those to create the vaccine?

What if some people/families have a certain genetic weakness to German Measles? And this then is a contributing factor to the development of Autism within those families???

Thoughts, anyone?

dunno, sophist - i have a natural immunity to rubella. when both my sisters got it, i didn't. my mum (who i believe i inherited AS) did contract it as a child. i also have a natural immunity to mumps (ditto scenario as above), although i've had measles.

If I hear one more autie needle story...well, please! Many things contribute, it's not just needles, it's one of those mysteries of life.

In my own defense, I despise paranoia.

BUT... after reading about that 1960s outbreak of Rubella and then the rates of Autistic Disorder going up within those populations, I am not about to ignore it just because the parents are driving me insane.

I'm trying to be rational and weigh all options. (Of course, not like I'm a geneticist or a doctor or anyone who can actually do anything, but for the sake of valid lay-person hypothesis such a possibility should be considered.)

::stubborn face and crossed arms::

Hasn't rates of Autism been going up since records began anyway? So, wouldn't it be tricky to tie that to a particular outbreak of Rubella?

It's an interesting idea though.

It depends. I was wanting to find out more about this particular outbreak but whatever I google I end up getting stuff about these damned Mercury vaccinations.

Maybe I should just try "rubella" "outbreak" "1960s" or something like that, cause I really wanna find out HOW MUCH rates went up within that particular population and whether that wouldn't be unexpected with Autism gaining slightly in popularity.

Found this:

Trouble is, you'd also have to show that there are no other populations where the rate of Autism increased above the average where Rubella couldn't have been a factor. That would require a huge amount of research - still, once you get started..

If I remember correctly (I could be wrong), Rubella can cause complications during pregnancy which can lead to autism. It may not be the vaccine but the disease itself which caused the rise.

I personally don't think vaccines alone cause autism. My dad has the same personality traits that I do, and chances are good that we were both immunized. However, so does my son, who has never had a single vaccine in his life, and his half brother (not by me), I have always suspected of being aspie, even before I realized that I was; he wasn't immunized, either. My son acts almost like a male carbon copy of myself, except possibly more extreme in some areas. So there seems to be a clear genetic link.

What I do think is that there is a possibility that the autistic's system is far more sensitive to some pollutants, alleergens, medications, and other substances. I think it is possible that some people who may have been aspie or mildly autistic had reactions to the vaccine that made them sick and more severely autistic than they may have otherwise been. Inother words, they might have been auties either way, but became much more noticeably so after the vaccine?

The result of all this is that I haven't vaccinated my aspie son at all yet, whereas his brothers have had all their shots....

Has anyone done a legitimate statistical study on this, looking for any correlations?

I personally think so because more and more people are joining this forum.

As for me, I doubt Mercury. And I also think there are varying causes of Autism, almost as though autism is the behavioral end to many stimuli and different stimuli for different people.

But that Rubella outbreak just made me wonder. And then I glanced that the Rubella vaccine is in the vaccines all the parents are worried over. It's at least worth looking into for some cases.

I was reading a bit that some people-- some mothers-- remain Rubella susceptible all their lives and might possibly, though this is unconfirmed as yet, be able to infect her baby via breast feeding.

I, myself, had a bad reaction to the initial booster shot and therefore did not receive the second. But this, again, is possibly only coincidental since I was already weird before that, hehe.

I think there is a very simple reason why cases of autism are 'increasing'. AS, HFA, and PDD-NOS (those on the higher-functioning end of the spectrum) are the most common diagnoses given of all ASDs today. Fifty years ago (even more recently than that, actually) the only recognised form of autism was LFA (also known as classic autism). Only recently was autism recognised as a spectrum disorder, which covers a broader amount of characteristics. Therefore, I believe that the amount of cases of autism hasn't really increased, but what is considered autism has and people are being diagnosed more efficiently.

I don't think vaccines are related to autism. It's genetic. I was born this way.

I doubt that there is any correlation between vaccines and ASDs. I have unusually eccentric ancestors dating back before most vaccines were invented.