What do you think of the idea of linking autism to vaccinations?

Question

Any personal experiance information is welcomed, Thanks

Answer 1

Could be?

My son is severly autistic. At about 12 months old he was developing perfectly (he has a sister who is 15 months older so we had a good recent example of developing infant). Then an unexplained event occurred. We do not believe it was a seizure but somewhere between the 12-15 months he recessed quickly but not immediately. This is the time he received is first 12 month vaccinations.

At one point we thought he was deaf because he would no longer respond to our verbal requests and he (besides crying and laughing) went almost mute.

The only other recent bit of study that matched my son was the relevance to the size of the child's head. My son was born with a larger than normal head not abnormal but definately large. We had baby clothes given to us up until he was 2 years old that would not fit because it wouldn't go over his head. The idea on this study is that the brain grows to fast and the wiring of the networks for the brain to run on are not developed correctly during those early critical months/years.

Long answer - could be I don't think we'll know in my life time.

Answer 2

Thimerisol, the mercury based preservative that many suspected caused autism, was removed from manditory childhood vaccines in 2001. The older batched made before 2001 expired in 2003. So one would expect the autism rate to drop. But it continues to rise! So thimerisol could not have been the cause.

While you always hear people say the stats are "1 in every 166" child born today will have autism, the actual stats are 2 to 6 out of 1,000, or somewhere between "1 in every 500" to "1 in every 166."

And that includes high functioning conditions such as Asperger's, which composes as much as 80% of those on the Autism Spectrum.

Asperger's is a condition which likely has been around for years, just undiagnosed. They may have just been labeled "geeks" & "oddballs." They are also frequently very functional. Some suspect Bill Gates has Asperger's. And some suspect Einstein was, too!

This accounts for a big hunk of the increase. Adding Asperger's to the spectrum could have increased the diagnosis rate 4 times over! Then you take into account that many autistic kids were likely to be just diagnosed "retarded" or "brain-damaged." Remember, up until the 80's, the common theory was that autism was caused my neglectful, unloving mothers. So you didn't have parents taking their kids to the doctors saying "I think my son has autism." And if a family doctor knew the mother was loving & attentive, he would be very likely to rule out the possiblity the child could be autistic. So the rates we see from previous generations are inaccurrately low.

So when you hear people say the rate of autism has increase a thousand fold, or something like that, this is comparing inaccuratley low stats of 40 year ago which only included SOME of the more severe cases of autism, compared to the possibly inflated stats of today which includes the likes of Bill Gates. Not exactly an accurate comparison.

Autism is NOT a new condition. It is just a newly recognized condition.

Answer 3

Well, it is a mystery to me. Mercury is used as a preservative in vaccines and it's been used for years the same way. Unless I'm mistaken, autism is a pretty new aliment. Just like the peanut allegries--what's that all about. I either heard on tv or read in the paper that autism is caused by older fathers with old sperm. Basically, noboby knows what causes autism.

Answer 4

I wouldn't put too much stock in that belief. There are a few new research articles out there that have proven that theory false. I frequently give vaccinations as an RN so I see lots of info on that kind of thing. Seems to be no solid link at this time.

Answer 5

I don't think it is completely off base but I do think that MUCH more research needs to be done on it.

Answer 6

Essentially, it is a load of crap.

Answer 7

i think anything could happen