Frontline - Vaccine Wars

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There was a Frontline episode about vaccines on PBS today. Of course the topic of Autism was discussed. Paul Offit and Jenna McCarthy were both interviewed.

You can watch it here (i think/hope):

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/vaccines/

I found the program fascinating. In my opinion, it sure made the anti-vaccine supporters look like pseudo-scientists. There is an interesting position presented as well - that not getting a vaccine is unethical, as you could potentially cause illness to vulnerable people in society (people that are unable to get vaccines). The epidemiological studies in Denmark and Europe were also interesting.

The one thing that I would have liked to see what have been some discussion of vaccines by people who autistic, but maybe that is my bias

I had German Measles, when I was one and a half. If I didn't get that vaccine, I would be dead, today.

My Dad, who was born in 1921 (yes, my parents had me late in life), almost certainly had Asperger's, though he lived and died without ever knowing it. He was never vaccinated for anything, living in rural Washington state, and yet he was an Aspie. The vaccine theory is a load of crap.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Not only can it kill you, a lot of these diseases can cause neurological damage, among other things. These crazy people never lived in a time where people all over the place were dying from all of this stuff they vaccinate for. I wonder how they would feel if their infant caught something because of the children running around spreading this stuff because their parents refuse to vaccinate.

Makes no sense to me.

Vax me! topic

My two youngest received the MMR and they are NT.

My father was born in 1918 and got nothing except smallpox (now eradicated, I hope it stays this way, as my youngest two did not receive this vaccine.)

I got Hep A before the vaccine came out, and yuck, was I sick.

I know part of why people are going down the vaccine trail is because of the huge - rising number of people with autism-- but, I am wondering -- how legit are these numbers?

For example, we live in a world where some guy across the globe tips over a cow, I could hear about it ! !

Did that happen 10 years ago? 20? 30? ....

So one might see a few rss posts or cnn headlines about cow tipping and think -- uh oh, an epidemic of cow tipping!

Beyond that, I wonder how there are realistic numbers to compare to- how can you have any data older than 5 or 10 years ? Even today they are discovering new things. The DSM-V changes definitions.

Does that make any sense?

Add to this the fact that AS wasn't even in the DSM-IV until 1994, and HFA was seldom diagnosed until the past decade...

I watched it last night. One woman on there said something along the lines of "Why do they need a Polio shot? There hasn't been a case of Polio since the 1970's!"...

...Well DUH! That's because they have a vaccine, you stupid broad. Seriously, there are so many stupid people out there who think they know everything.

IMO, vaccines should be required by law - no exceptions. Well maybe the exception being Flu vaccines.

HuffPo, a website I rather dislike and is in severe need of a better server, has posted something about the Frontline program:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jay-gordo ... 54691.html

There is some interesting discussion in the comment area. Still, I doubt huffpo is going to go out and ask an autistic person what their view on the topic is or is there any discussion on the subsequent treatment of autistic people that arises from the mercury causes autism discussion - that is biomedical treatment and chelation treatment. I sometimes wander why I never hear things such as mercury causes aspergers or mercury causes pdd-nos. I guess it always has to be autism, because autism scares people. Oh well, it's not going to ruin my day.

I see this study posted frequently:

http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/n ... icle/19273

Was there any scientific responses to this articke?

My sense is that the severity of autism has gotten worse, and is not fully accounted for by the changes in awareness, diagnostic criteria, etc. If the severity goes up, so does the count on who has it. My basic observation is this: my father was probably an Aspie, my husband is probably an Aspie, but only my son has anything that resembles a disability. So, why? Just the fact that two Aspie inclined families merged, or is there more? While I discount the vaccine hypothesis, there are other environmental factors that should be looked at, including (a) flame retardant in infant sleepers (which my son chewed on a lot - why didn't they consider that infants chew in making the requirement? I was just stunned to discover they didn't expect the chemical to ever actually get ingested - huh?), (b) the overall sensory increase in the world we live in (noisier, brighter, busier), and (c) birth experience (my son was an emergency C due to fetal distress). And those are probably only the tip of the iceberg of what can be looked at not as causing AS, but making it more dramatic and inhibiting. The leading experts are, apparently, now saying it seems to be a combination of genetics and environmental factors; I can buy that; it makes sense.

People given the polio vaccine still got polio, some even got illnesses and died from the vaccine. Just because you get a vaccine it doesn't mean you won't get the illness. People that got the swine flu vaccine still get swine flu. Even those that have died were vaccinated.

When America first got the pertussis vaccine (whooping cough) that was when the first cases of autism were popping up. And they were well off families because back then the vaccine was only affordable to them.

These days children are given more vaccines in a short space of time. They can even get say 4 or 5 in the same day. It's no wonder why autism rates has risen. If you look at some of the videos of families who say their children got autism hours or days after being vaccinated it's hard to doubt.
Not everyone becomes autistic from the vaccines, but with the overwhelming evidence there is it's really hard to deny.

Since vaccines have been made people have been dying from them or becoming ill; smallpox vaccines, pertussis, DPT, MMR, etc.

Also, why is everyone so quick to deny vaccines can make someone autistic? Is it that you don't want to think of yourself as damaged? Because from this side of the argument I've seen very little evidence.

We've also been using Mercury for centuries. In medicine, in dentistry, we expose it to the atmosphere in coal burning and it's in our polluted waters.

Did you even watch the video pensieve?

DW- I do not know if you could really measure whether the intensity of symptoms have increased. I would say that people are more willing to pathologize behavior than in the past. The Internet has been one of the most important influences on the increase of ASD's.