Teresa your post was right ON. Except it might be a wee bit confusing to some people when you call the people anti- pro safe (anti pro gets a lil confusing But Teresa is correct folks. People are looking for alternatives whether this be SAFER vaccinations, a SAFER schedule or for some no vaccinations and the science people are attacking them yet they bring no hard science to back up why current vaccine and vaccine schedules are completely “safe”. My God people open your mind a little bit. Drugs and vaccines (gasp!) aren’t always good. How brainwashed have you become?

And I agree with you Teresa that the pig “Bob” who posted the comment to the woman calling her a bitch and a monster (and worse) is completely uncalled for. Bob you should be ashamed of yourself! GET A LIFE. not another vaccination.

Erin

testing, my follow-up for karennd would not post. Hrmmmm, conspiracy?

This isn’t about vaccinations being the right thing to do, because they have definitely proven to wipe out diseases. The issue here is that there were certain vaccinations containing mercury which were introduced in the 90s. Statistics have shown the rate of autism has skyrocketed after that point. This is the real issue. Those stats have not been disputed but science and drug companies refuse to change. It is partly because they don’t know what is causing it. Hard as it is for some to believe but scientists don’t have the answer for everything. Do they have cures for AIDS or Cancer?

Actually the issue here is that people like Jenny McCarthy go on and on about vaccines causing autism because they want to blame someone for their child being autistic and see a perfect scapegoat in vaccination because the symptoms of autism start to manifest at about the time a child gets their MMR vaccine. They talk about this so often and convince other people that they are speaking the truth when in fact there is no evidence whatsoever that supports their claim.

And then those parents who believe this rubbish either don’t vaccinate their kids, opening them up to many possibly fatal diseases, or put them through pointless chelation therapy because they believe that “the mercury will give them autism” or that it will “cure” their kids.

So basically the issue is that people who can’t be bothered spending their time verifying claims made by ignorant people are putting their kids at risk.

We (Jenny and mom’s like her) are only crazy until a child you love is affected by Autism (and vaccine injuries), then I’m certain you will seek us out for the truth and answers about how to heal your beloved child. We are used to these types of rude comments and attitudes that are being thrown around on this site. While it hurts (because we know that these attitudes are preventing children from getting well and allowing more children to become affected) we can handle it and will be there to help you and your child when the time comes and you need help because we are not speaking up out of malice but out of love for our children and yours.

quote from Timelord: “Lisa the answers aren’t here on this blog. The answers are elsewhere – away from falsehoods like mercury poisoning.”

This is truly spoken from ingnorance and not science or experience. I have lost my child TWICE now as a direct result of mercury poisoning. The first time when he was a toddler and received a high dose of mercury in his vaccines. We then HEALED him. He MEDICALLY recovered. This is FACT. He lost his autism label and the other medical disease that he also had as a result. After being recovered/healed….there was an accident at his school in which my child was exposed to high doses of mercury and again became acutely mercury poisoned. He immediately regressed and his autism (behavior and medical symptoms) returned. He is again being treated for mercury poisoning and is again recovering for a second time.

I am the mother of an autistic child. We are a minority of people – you will see our numbers reflected in the number of responses for Jenny M. Jenny is right. We must be extremely cautious about vaccines. This is another topic, but would be shocking to those who believe vaccines are so safe for everyone. If you are ever blessed as we are to have an autistic child I seriously doubt your comments would be so heartless, hurtful and rude. We are talking about the most precious, innocent and vulnerable gifts of life here and they are deserving of every safety measure as they cannot protect themselves. That does not always mean vaccinating them. Some children have adverse affects from vaccinations while others do not. Have a heart for the parents who were simply trying to do what they were told and the outcome was different from normal. They only want parents to know the truth before they make decisions.

Twyla

I never said that there was no evidence of vaccine harm. Just that there is no relationship between vaccines and autism.

It would be good if you could cite the second study better. But it looks like you have misinterpreted the results of the first one, which is entitled “The Risk of Seizures after Receipt of Whole-Cell Pertussis or Measles, Mumps, and Rubella Vaccine” and found:

“There are significantly elevated risks of febrile seizures after receipt of DTP vaccine or MMR vaccine, but these risks do not appear to be associated with any long-term, adverse consequences.”

The later study, which I’m assuming is “MMR Vaccination and Febrile Seizures” found that “MMR vaccination was associated with a transient increased rate of febrile seizures but the risk difference was small even in high-risk children. The long-term rate of epilepsy was not increased in children who had febrile seizures following vaccination compared with children who had febrile seizures of a different etiology.”

So, basically what we have here is that yes, the MMR vaccine does increase the risk of febrile seizures, but it doesn’t have any long term effects.

Yes, most of that evidence is anecdotal, however the problem isn’t that it is anecdotal, it’s that these parents have jumped to a conclusion without any evidence. Studies have shown the opposite to what they claim, yet it seems that you want us to ignore those and accept these parents, because, and I’m assuming this, they must have a far greater understanding of the science involved then scientists who do this for a living.

Personally I can’t believe that you are mentioning the Rolling Stone article, an article that has 5 paragraphs of corrections on the online copy because of the poor research done by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Side effects of vaccines should not be minimized, ignored and denied by the medical community. Unfortunately, they are, and parents therefore do not have the opportunity to make a truly informed choice regarding their children’s preventative healthcare.

Kudos to Jenny for promoting awareness of this issue…and shame on Amanda Peet.

In the Foreword to the book, “Changing the Course of Autism”, author Bryan Jepson, M.D. describes how after his son was diagnosed with autism, his wife got on the internet and learned about various biomedical treatments such as dietary intervention and supplements. Dr. Jepson believed that this was all a waste of time and money. He was initially uninvolved, because he did not think these interventions would help his son, but he humored his wife because he figured the expense was a small price to pay for his wife’s need to do something.

But, he says, “when she told me about the possible link to vaccines, I could no longer be impartial. After all, this was striking at one of the few areas of preventive medicine that physicians are passionate about. Vaccines are good! They eliminate life-threatening disease! I have seen first-hand how vaccines have successfully turned fairly common serious illnesses into rare, interesting cases. Wasn’t autism just one more of those coincidental childhood illnesses that the crazy anti-government people were opportunistically using as an excuse to push their agenda?

“I looked at the research, largely to prove to my wife that the theory was unfounded. The further I looked, the more interested I became. And before long, I realized that this theory of a vaccine-autism link wasn’t driven by the whims of angry activists or the wallets of vitamin manufacturers. Rather, it was based on real science with a strong foundation of biological plausibility, led by knowledgeable and motivated physicians, research scientists, and parents of autistic children, all of whom weren’t afraid to question dogma.”

This book contains a 55-page long list of studies on both sides of this debate. I wish I could do this science justice, but I am neither doctor nor scientist, and I have neither time nor space for a terribly long post. I will just mention a few highlights, and recommend the book highly.

Dr. Jepson discusses the following:
- The rate of autism has increased dramatically, and this is not just due to factors such as diagnostic substitution.
- Autism is not just genetic. It does involve genetic susceptibility to environmental triggers.
- Many people with autism suffer from immune system dysregulation. Studies show:
o higher rates of autoimmune issues among family members of people with autism than those without.
o excessive inflammation (including study by Vargas et al re: neuroinflammation in the brain)
o shifting of the immune response from “Th1” towards “Th2” response, which means decreased ability to fight off intracellular organisms such as viruses and more prone to allergies, and autoimmunity.
o imbalance of the cytokines that activate and turn off inflammatory responses, such that the inflammatory cycle continues even after the original microorganism has been eliminated.
o food allergies.

Dr. Jepson thoroughly discusses research regarding the MMR. He cites studies in Japan and in the U.S. where vaccine-strain measles virus was found in a high percentage of biopsy tissues of autistic children with enterocolitis. In another study, 68% of a group of 28 autistic children tested positive for measles-virus antigen in the cerebral spinal fluid, while all but one of the control samples tested negative for the virus. (This one control group child had lymphoma and leukiemia.) He discusses the biological plausibility of an MMR-autism connection, and potential problems with giving the three viruses together (measles, mumps, and rubella).

Dr. Jepson also discusses impaired ability to detoxify as a factor in autism, and impaired biochemical processes in the body such as methylation. He discusses thimerosal and mercury in depth.

I don’t believe this book mentioned an interesting study by a team of cell biologists, toxicologists and molecular bioscientists at the University of California, Davis, connecting thimerosal with disruptions in antigen-presenting cells known as dendritic cells obtained from mice. This study provided evidence that dendritic cells show unprecedented sensitivity to thimerosal, resulting in fundamental changes in the immune system’s ability to respond to external factors. See http://www.ehponline.org/docs/2006/8881/abstract.html.

O.K., it’s after midnight and I need my sleep. I haven’t done this subject justice, but I just felt that I had to say something in response to the oft repeated claim that “there is no science” on the side of a vaccine-autism link.

Go to http://www.generationrescue.org for a lot of info on (and analysis of) studies on both side of these issues. Also go to the “w w w .putchildrenfirst . org for more info, including some of the studies that have supposedly “proven” vaccines safe. (I can’t provide a third link or this post would be filtered, so remove the blanks.)

Also, read:

Evidence of Harm by David Kirby,

Children with Starving Brains: A Medical Treatment Guide by Jaquelyn McCandless, M.D., and

Healing the New Childhood Epidemics – Autism, ADHD, Asthma, and Allergies by Kenneth Bock, M.D. and Cameron Stauth

Twyla said;
“At any rate, one of the biggest kinds of evidence is the testimony of thousands of parents, such as:
- those who have filed claims under the Autism Omnibus proceeding, and
- those who recently marched on Washington D.C., and
- those whose stories are told in the books “Evidence of Harm” by David Kirby and “Unraveling the Mysteries of Autism” by Karen Serroussi, and
- those who called Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from around the world with similar stories after his article about vaccines and autism was published in Rolling Stone magazine, and
- those whose VAERS reports were recently read by Dan Olmsted and by CBS news – reports of vaccine injury causing regression into autism filed before this issue was being publicized, and
- those who are members of so many autism organizations including TACA, A-CHAMP, National Autism Association, SafeMinds, Generation Rescue, Autism United…”

Pinpricks, Twyla. For every thousand parents you are talking about, there are tens of thousands silently seething at the foolishness of the clear minority.

* The Autism Omnibus will fail.
* The march made fools of those who participated
* Kirby is a money making charlatan (I don’t know Serroussi, but if it’s the same rhetoric the same applies)
* Rolling Stone Magazine???
* Olmsted jumps on little bits and won’t do proper research. CBS has since backed down from that line from what I’ve seen.
* And the best organisations are the ones who get positive things done. I’m yet to see one in the United States because the majority won’t stand up and fight against this panic, thinking it will just blow over.

There should be an investigation – into this foolishness because it is affecting vaccination numbers. And that is a health threat far worse than any other.

And Generation Rescue should be avoided at all costs. Their leader is a first class lunatice – and I’m talking about Brad Handley.

@Twyla
You point out that children are at greater risk of having febrile convulsions following vaccines such as MMR (than the prevailing background risk).

You seem to think febrile convulsions are a very bad thing.

I am not necessarily disagreeing with you, but if this is what you believe, then why do you IGNORE the fact that if a child gets natural measles infection (which ALL will do in the absence of vaccination), the reported risk of a febrile convulsion is TWENTY time higher than the risk from the vaccination?

The fact is that the disease poses more risks for this than the vaccine, and I wish you would acknowledge this simple fact.

The pictures at the top are interesting with Jenny looking forlorn or angry and Amanda smiling happily.

There is a great deal to question with vaccines. A friend’s 7 year old recently passed away from leukemia. He was also severely autistic. This young man was developing completely normally until he received a series of shots. He developed a very high fever, screamed like crazy and within a days was a completely different child. He “disappeared.” The mom knows it was the vaccines that created this and ultimately lead to his death.

Many will just say this is anecdotal and doesn’t hold a candle to the “science.” We now have thousands and thousands of anecdotes like this. Do we just ignore them all and say the “science” is right and people’s stories don’t matter. Our stories are our lives.

A friend of mine is a pharmaceutical researcher and he said we will never know the true safety of these products for two reasons. One, the testing period is too short to fully understand any long term ramifications, and there are patent time limits and second, there are so many products on the market that there is no way to physically test all of them against each other. In many ways it’s just a crapshoot.

Children’s hospitals are full of patients. These children are very ill and they’ve all been vaccinated (at least a vast, vast majority). Are we creating new illnesses that are even more devastating then the old ones we have limited?

Timelord -
You say, “No, your child was not poisoned by mercury IF he or she is Autistic.” That makes no sense. The official definition of autism has no mention of causes. Autism is defined as impairments in communication and social skills, and repetitive behaviors. Yes, I am paraphrasing — that’s not an exact quote — but the point is, regardless of cause, autism is described by behaviors. Autism may have many causes.

Frequently parents of kids who have recovered from autism are told, “Well then, apparently your child was never really autistic” even though their child was diagnosed by one or more leading professionals.

You also say, “And NEVER EVER say you ‘lost’ your child. That’s pathetic and says to me that you don’t want an Autistic child. Too bad – you’ve got one, and you can’t change it. In fact – by calling your child ‘lost’, that’s tantamount to abandonement.”

Believe me, if you had a child who was happy, talking, learning, playing, and socializing, and then suddenly s/he was in his or her own world, uncommunicative, unhappy, and not playing or learning or socializing, — you too would feel that your child was lost. Calling the child lost certainly is not abandonment. Many parents have worked extremely hard to find treatments that helped their child to regain language, social skills, happiness, and the ability to learn and participate in society. Just today there is yet another such account at http://www.ageofautism.com/2008/10/autism-recovery.html. How dare you cast aspersions on parents who are working so hard to help their children.

“A few decades ago, back when all children came down with measles because there was no vaccine, the rate of autism was about 1 in 10,000, compared with 1 in 150 (or more) today.”

That is historically true if one accepts that these incidence rates are measuring the same illness. They are not, and it is disengenuous to say that the improved criteria for diagnosis and altered thresholds of diagnosis and higher awareness of the problem has not altered diagnostic rates.

Have you read “Unstrange Minds” yet?

“It is often speculated by vaccine defenders that a case of the measles is more likely to cause autism than the MMR vaccine, but this is not consistent with history.”

This is entirely consistent with history if one accepts that MMR does not cause autism. On this point we will have to disagree.

“My point is not that febrile seizures cause autism, but that they are a symptom of the impact of the vaccine on the immune system.”

You clearly have no idea what the pathophysiology is that leads to febrile convulsions are – they are not caused by impacts on the “immune system”. Even if we accepted this (incorrect) point, please explain why natural infection is twenty times more likely to cause a febrile convulsion than vaccination is, and why, in your book, this does not imply a similar “impact on the immune system”. You can’t have your cake and eat it, you know.

“As Dr. Bernardine Healy pointed out, it can be hard for epidemiology to tease out info on a relatively small, susceptible, heterogeneous group of children.”

Can’t you see the paradox in what you are saying. On one hand, you suggest that 1 in 150 kids has autism (provoked by vaccines). Yet somehow this massive epidemic of vaccine-associated illness never appears to register on any proper epidemiological studies. Not even a teeny weeny little blip.

This must tell you something. It tells me that IF vaccines trigger autism, they do so in such a tiny subgroup of susceptible kids that the impact is not discernible on a population basis against the background noise. Ergo, autism cases reported to occur after vaccination are mostly due to a combination of recall and confirmation bias, plus coincidence.

“Other studies document the high rate of immune system dysfunction among people with autism, especially regressive autism.”

Please cite references for these studies showing a “high rate of immune system dysfunction”. I think you are trying hard to put all your theories together in a plausible way, but you are using kindergarden science to do so.

I see the anti-vax people haven’t read my post on brain development.

Hello. People. Go read it. I will admit to be well off on the number of connections…I deliberately engaged in some hyperbole. There are ~100 Billions neurons and on the average 10K synapses per neuron-that’s 10 quadrillion connections.

Read evidence of harm and there’s lot’s of reputable science for the autism/vaccine link?

Which is it? Evidence of Harm presents a lot of half-baked (at best) science by people who would be taking a step up if they made it to third-rate scientists. Seriously, that book has done more harm than vaccines.

karennd: “Just curious, what science has helped your child? I am sincerely interested.”

I started preparing a list of our experiences in answer, but this quickly grew into a long history into our diet, experiences, and how we set about learning about our child’s autism. It’s a bit longer than would be helpful for the current discussions, and would eventually be a distraction to the current threads… related, but as i don’t have a lot of free time to participate, the long version may best be dropped. I have no wish to toss in controversy and run away, but these are the experiences of my family, and those of other close families in our neighborhood, church, school district, etc…

One one hand, I’m embarrassed by some of the things we and other families have tried. It’s normally much easier to investigate alternatives, but when it means further erosion of the home, schoolwork and your child’s self esteem, some of these are hard to justify. I wish I had kept full notes so I could have shared the experiences; some of the stories might have made for an interesting book.

[continued next post]

>> If there are no such thing as reactions to vaccines..why is there Vaccine court and why has the govput billions in reserve for it and why have people been awarded money!!!!!!!!!! <<

Because there is such a thing as a vaccine that has not been looked after properly, maybe? It happens. Is that the fault of the vaccine? No.

Maria, I am sorry one of your relatives had a severe reaction to vaccines. None of the “pro-vaccine” proponents here would ever dipute that vaccine reactions can happen. They clearly do and that is the reason there are things like vaccine compensation schemes.

What is clear is that the risks of a severe vaccine reaction is very small. Vaccines do so much good that overall, it makes sense to take the small risks entailed in order to give your child protection.

The argument that “Vaccines are not 100% safe, therefore it is better to give nothing” is a fallacy (sometimes called the “nirvana” fallacy). If this were universally applied, it would mean you never treated your child with antibiotics for meningitis, because “the antibiotics might cause a reaction”. It is quite illogical to persuade other parents not to treat their children “until ‘safer’ antibiotics are developed”.

No medical advances would ever have been made if one only seeks perfection. Today, 80% of leukemia is curable – this advance came about by incremental improvement in the drugs and methods of giving chemo. If 40 years ago people just threw up their hands in hopless frustration saying lets not give chemo because it has side effects, no-one today would be able to cure leukemia.

Yes we would all like to have safer vaccines which have fewer reactions. This is one of the reasons there were moves to remove vaccines such as the old whole cell pertussis, and replace it with the less risky acellular vaccine, or to change the makeup of the rubella vaccine so there were no episodes of vaccine-induced encephalitis (even though the rate occuring with the old Urabe strain vaccine was actually still much LESS than the rate of encephalitis from natural rubella!).

I have great sympathy for those who have experienced reactions. But to argue (incorrectly) that vaccines provoke certain illnesses and to use this to persuade people not to vaccinate their children is wrong, wrong, wrong.

I hear some people hear say “what’s the big deal with 100 cases of measles?”. Well in Europe, dozens die each year from epidemics of measles – not in poor countries with no decent medical system, but in countries like Germany and Switzerland. If no-one vaccinated and measles returns to the USA there will be hundreds of deaths each year (between 500 and 800) from this infection alone.

People like karend have a quaint view of these illnesses, saying they never hurt anyone and are just nature’s way of making us healthier. This is complete and utter *****, and it’s time some people here realised this.

Look at all the heroes claiming to be scientests.

1) Do you know what causes autism?
2) Do you have a cure?

Until you do, you have no right to challenge parents with autistic children.

Science does not tell us what causes autism, nor how to cure it. So dont use science in an argumnent when it has no answers.

Tex wrote:

[blockquote]Look at all the heroes claiming to be scientests.

1) Do you know what causes autism?
2) Do you have a cure?

Until you do, you have no right to challenge parents with autistic children.

Science does not tell us what causes autism, nor how to cure it. So dont use science in an argumnent when it has no answers.[/blockquote]

Hey Tex. You’re fantastically, amazingly wrong.

Autism is most likely a “problem” of “wiring” in the brain. I’ll note there are “high-functioning” autistics who also have Ph.D.’s and do very very well in their field (Scientific American profiled one a few years back). Go read my post way way back up there on neurological development.

Now onto your fallacy regarding causes. Epidemiological studies show no connection between vaccines and autism. Therefore, one cause is eliminated. At the same time, the diagnostic criteria for autism have changed. That means there is a confound in trying to state vaccination (or Thimerisol) as a casual factor. Please read up on inductive logic, deductive logic, and confounding variables.

Dyce said, “What is clear is that the risks of a severe vaccine reaction is very small.” This is not clear at all. Perhaps this used to be the case, but as the number of vaccines has grown, the percent and number of adversely affected babies and children has grown as well.

Dyce said, “But to argue (incorrectly) that vaccines provoke certain illnesses and to use this to persuade people not to vaccinate their children is wrong, wrong, wrong.” Nobody is trying to persuade people not to vaccinate their children. Vaccination is a difficult and personal decision. Parents who witnessed their babies’ vaccine reactions wish they had been more aware of the risks rather than just accepting so many vaccines in such a short time period at such a young age. It is important to consider the risks as well as the benefits, think about whether every vaccine is needed at such a young age, whether it would be better for example to get the measles vaccine by itself rather than getting the MMR + varicela + flu shot with thimerosal all at the same time. We are for every parent’s right to make choices. We are for more information rather than ignorant blind compliance. Most of all, we are for the CDC and FDA doing their jobs to study vaccine adverse reactions, understand these reactions better, and take the necessary steps to make our vaccine program safer.

TimeLord said, “The autism/vaccine connection only exists in the minds of those who refuse to accept Autism as genetic in origin,” and “True mercury poisoning does NOT result in Autistic behaviours that result in a diagnosis – because the damage is wider and takes in areas that do not involve the DSM.”

You are simply making up your own definition of autism. There is nothing in the official DSM definition that says, “Only these characteristics, but not accompanied by XYZ medical conditions.”

In some of the earliest cases of autism diagnosed by Kanner, immune system and digestive issues are mentioned. Not everyone with autism has these kinds of medical issues, but many do.

Perhaps some cases of autism are purely genetic. But we have had a huge increase in autism, and this increase cannot be caused by genetics alone. And the “better diagnosis” explanation is a bunch of malarkey.

Sometimes it seems that what is called Asperger’s may actually be a completely different syndrome from other forms of autism. Yet, I am surprised to find that many people I know (or have heard speak) who have Asperger’s mention things like feeling much better when on high doses of vitamin B or on DMG, suffering from IBD, feeling better when not eating gluten and milk.

I remember hearing a mom of a teenager with Asperger’s speak about her son. She said that they were not doing any biomedical treatments. But during the break she mentioned that the family had gone on a gluten-free diet because her other son has celiac disease. They found that her son with Asperger’s did much better on this diet. When he went off the diet he did worse again (mood, ability to focus, etc.) and when he went back on the diet he did better.

TimeLord says, “I have had no contact with mercury. Yet I am formally diagnosed as Aspergers. Explain that one, people!” The explanation is: mercury is not the only cause of autism. But if mercury did not cause your autism, that does not mean that it can never cause autism. Alternative explanation: we are all exposed to a lot of mercury these days in our environment. Some people excrete it easily, but others don’t.

And TimeLord says: “The way to achieve inclusion is to educate society into acceptance – to assimilate.” This is very important. But you have to recognize that autism is a spectrum. Some people with autism are able to read, write, drive a car, work, go grocery shopping, and speak in complete sentences. Others are not able to do most or all of these activities. For those with a more severe level of disability, a lot more is needed than an end to discrimination against people who don’t understand the unwritten mysterious social mores that I myself have difficulty understanding.

I know of some families where there was a family history of mild, high functioning autism, but the children exposed to vaccines etc. have much more severe autism accompanied by health issues.

Bottom line, more and more people these days believe that autism is caused by the interaction of genetic susceptibility and the environment.

Let’s see if this works…

Twyla
…whether it would be better for example to get the measles vaccine by itself rather than getting the MMR + varicela + flu shot with thimerosal all at the same time.

Actually they don’t use thiomersal in vaccines any more. It’s because anti-vaxers convinced people that any substance with Hg in it is evil. Even though thiomersal, when in the body, degrades into ethylmercury, which doesn’t bioaccumulate.

Oh and Twyla, you are convincing parents that they shouldn’t vaccinate their children. The whole rationale seems to be “I vaccinated my children and now I have to care for a child with autism VACCINES ARE BAD”.

Just look at what Jenny McCarthy said in the blog post. It’s got nothing to do with her kid having autism, it’s that she has to care for a kid with autism.

Anti-vaxers continue to blow things out of proportion and use bad science to convince other parents that vaccination will cause all kinds of trouble to their child.

You are putting forward a point of view. You are biased towards a conclusion that you agree with. You aren’t impartial, so don’t try and make it look like you are.