Vaccines and Autism
Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.
Is there a link between vaccines and autism?
Just asking that simple question will likely stir up very passionate feelings on both sides of the argument.
Some folks say it’s just a wacko cookoo crazy idea.
Others swear by it.
So what’s the truth about vaccines and autism? Is there truth?
This is a topic that I personally don’t take lightly.
I have three beautiful children. And there’s a place in my heart that I never even knew existed until my children unlocked and occupied every nook & cranny of it.
The love of a parent for his child is a very different love than anything I’ve ever experienced. It’s different than romantic love. It’s different than friendship love.
I think a large part of that is because the love a parent has for his children comes with a very strong and palpable desire to provide protection for them.
Sure, you want to protect those you have romantic love and friendship love for, but it’s not the first thing on your mind for them. They can take care of themselves.
But a helpless, innocent child who doesn’t know the ways of the world and can’t fend for himself needs guidance and protection.
We’re responsible for them in ways that we’ll never be responsible for friends and romantic interests.
And as a parent, the last thing I want for my children is for them to be in any kind of pain or suffering unless it’s something that’s necessary for their learning, development, or growth (i.e. they ain’t getting out of doing the dishes or taking out the trash).
We have close friends with autistic children, so we’ve seen firsthand the challenges that they & their children go through together in living with autism.
My wife and I have personally made the choice not to vaccinate our children …
Yet
At least as of the time each of our kids were born, the dosage of mercury given to a child in vaccinations was the exact same whether they were 12 minutes old or 12 years old.
That’s not even the case for over the counter Tylenol … how much we’re supposed to give kids depends on their body weight. Too much can be harmful. Too little isn’t effective.
So why don’t we operate on the same basic premise for vaccinations?
Simple logic tells me that a 12 year old’s body (or 3, 5, 6, 9, etc) is much better prepared to handle the effects of a vaccine shot and dosage of mercury in his body than a brand new infant.
So we decided to wait.
We’ve taken a fair amount of flack for that from the school system and many of our pediatricians. But we don’t care.
Because the school system didn’t give birth to these children. Our pediatricians didn’t give birth to these children.
We did. They are our flesh & bones … they are ours to raise and to protect. And we hold firm to the belief that immediately after a child is born is not the best time to vaccinate them.
For us, that was the right choice. We don’t judge others or take it personally when people disagree with our decision and our beliefs.
But we do know it isn’t a done & settled argument on either side of the coin. And I have a feeling it will never be settled so long as the question is simply, “do vaccines cause autism?”
Until we have scientific proof of what DOES cause autism, not simply was DOESN’T cause autism, this will continue to be a highly debated topic regardless of how many studies come out and tell us otherwise.
So … today I thought I’d share some articles, links, blog posts, videos, and more about what some folks are saying on both sides of the coin these days.
Enjoy …
Autism-Vaccine Link: Evidence Doesn’t Dispel Doubts
Many major medical groups say vaccines don’t cause autism. Many parents say they do. So who’s right?
Autism in the absence of MMR vaccine
Two Autistic Children Awarded Millions by Vaccine Court
Deny, deny, deny. This is the favored approach the government and tow the line pundits in mainstream media take when it comes to the issue of whether vaccines cause autism. Newspaper and magazine headlines and TV …
Should children be vaccinated from dphillipsdunn, 1 year ago in Education
Immunization Safety Review: Vaccines and Autism
Immunization Safety Review Committee, published 2004, 201 pages
Huffington Post – David Kirby: The Autism–Vaccine Debate: Why It Won’t Go Away
I have been speaking to young parents in my neighborhood of Park Slope, Brooklyn lately about vaccines and autism, which science and the media have once …
Julie Gerberding, the head of the CDC, went on CNN’s House Call with Dr. Sanjay Gupta to discuss the Hannah Poling case and admitted that vaccines trigger autism in a subset of the population with mitochondrial disorders. It is time for Dr. Gerberding to answer some hard questions before congress. Call for congressional hearings into the Vaccine Injury Compensation Fund autism cases, so we can find out what the government knows about the relationship between vaccines and autism. AdventuresInAutism.com Addendum: Gerberding/CDC/HHS has given several names to the phenomenon of Vaccine Induced Autism. Gerberding calls it the “symptoms of autism” in this interview, “autism like syndrome” during a previous CDC press conference and HHS refers to it as “vaccine induced encepalopathy” on their website for the Vaccine Injury Compensation fund. I wrote this piece (see link below) to point out the absurdity of trying to fool the American people into thinking that vaccines cause something that looks exactly like autism, and in fact is diagnosed as autism by every professional the child sees, but is actually an “autism like syndrome” with the “symptoms of autism” that occurred following a “vaccine induced encepalopathy” which has the exact same symptoms as autism, but it is not really autism… oh… and by the way… vaccines don’t cause autism. It is time to end the word games and deal with the problem. UPDATE: I have closed the comments for now as it was becoming a mess. People …