Lots of California parents refusing to vax kids

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Encephalitis and autism might have similarities, but that doesn't mean they are the same or that one causes the other.

The swine flu vaccine was really rushed to market because of the potential impending pandemic. As such, it would have been improper to mandate it.

In terms of absolute numbers, more vaccinated kids get vax-preventable diseases than unvaxed ones. However, the opposite is true if you go by percentage.

I am not surprised by this. Every time I read a comments section to a autism article in a general publication there are many posters convinced vaccines are causing autism.

The PBS program Nova did a program on this topic Wednesday night. I did not see it as I was at a GRASP meeting but I am sure the program will be put online or on demand at some point

Meanwhile, so many Hollywood A-List actors have refused vaccines for their kids that the vaccination rate at some elite Hollywood preschools is on par with some parts of Africa!

http://blog.sfgate.com/sfmoms/2014/09/1 ... -children/

And before you-know-who jumps in and says "nobody wants to be wiping their 40 year old kid's butt while he smears poop all over the walls!" most auties aren't that bad. That's why it's a SPECTRUM, genius!

I can only hope that herd immunity protects the nonimmunized kids.

Or maybe it is shallow of parents not to get their kids vaccinated because they are afraid it will turn them 'autistic' which has never been proven if anything more evidence points to it not being the case.....so they'd rather their kid potentially be exposed to and die of a disease that is vaccinated against over an irrational fear that vaccines will make their kid autistic, better to have a dead child than autistic child....seems to be their conclusion.

Also I didn't realize 'toilet trained at 40' was really the most common ambition parents have for their autistic children....also its not like being NT would automatically give their child an ability to be a 'hedge fund manager' not sure exactly what that is or what is so great about it to begin with. The assumption the most an autistic person would be capable of is getting 'potty trained' is pretty shallow if you ask me.

Please do not discuss shamans ever again since that was probably the most ignorant/stupid thing I have read about shamans and shamanism...

More likely some with autism where the shamans, but shamanism isn't about 'oh that person is acting weird must be evil spirits' its a pretty in depth thing, involves good spirits positive energies and well probably no point in trying to explain it all...

Trouble is people do not end up with autism from vaccinations it is something you are born with.

They could also be born NT, with a severe intellectual disability...

We shouldn't look exclusively at those NTs, and fear having an NT child because of it.

Irrelevant anyway, vaccines were looked into and debunked an age ago.

I was talking about those unlucky enough to end up on the most severe end of the spectrum. The reality is some do have considerable ID and incontinence issues.. but if you want to ignore their existence on the spectrum feel free. I NEVER made that claim about all autistics. Try again.

The anti vax movement is something that I have followed with annoyance for quite a while. Apart from the fact vaccines don't cause autism an awful lot of the other stuff that comes out of their keyboards are lies. You hear an awful lot about vaccine damaged children but very little detail. Yes there is the rare bad reaction, but they are just that rare. I've seen examples where the 'vaccine damage' was in fact the child getting asthma a couple of years after the vaccine. Diagnosed by the parent of course.

There is a lot of that type of thing. I don't belittle any real tragedies here either, it's terrible but it's the lies that do that. You then get stories of nurses secretly trying to vaccine their kids and when you follow the threads there are so many contradictions they are clearly lies. You get lots of silly conspiracy theories. Also the way they downplay how serious some of these diseases are infuriates me.

Of course the experts they then use to backup their claims are normally widely discredited or not qualified in anything relevant at all. They nearly all do their own lines in alternatives to vaccination also. Funny that. If you then ask any questions that require proof or meaningful detail you then tend to get banned from the forum in question. The whole thing is built on a bed of sand and will soon come crashing down.

I would definitely not vax. Seriously, anything to control risk is good, including getting donor egg and using my boyfriend or husband's sperm.

Seriously, my friend spends a fortune on special diets, ABA and chelation when he found out. He was devastated. You build a life, and you want your kid to be able to share in that life including all the social stuff. And I'm autie / full seclusion sped growing up. Not saying that having autism is bad, but let's face it, it is a huge, massive disadvantage.

It's not a huge, massive disadvantage, not at all.

This is one thing I don't understand about many people. For some reason they are willing to accept some random supposed "fact" just because they heard someone else say it was true. And these are not just random people, many of them are intelligent people, but they don't question things.

When I was at university, there was an orientation day, and at one point we went to a specified orientation for our major. Mine was one of the science buildings. And it is a pretty competitive university too, so they have to be pretty smart; the average GPA in high school was 3.8 and the average ACT was 29. At one point the professor giving the presentation asked this question: "What color is our blood when it is in our veins?" It is dark red. Arterial blood is a brighter red, but it is always red, not blue. If it was blue suddenly turned red from oxygen contact, we'd see the reaction happening, and the blood would probably look purple at first. I knew all this because I'd heard someone say it before and I didn't think it made sense, so I researched it and also just used my own logic.

I assumed that there'd only be a few people who answered "blue", but it was like half the room! It may have even been the majority. For some reason most people will accept something without question simply because it sounds believable. And then they refute my logic, and they didn't even think about it to begin with, let alone look up the facts themselves. I do not understand this. I mean, it's one thing if it's just a somewhat trivial fact like the color of blood, but I am starting to think that there isn't any limit to what people will believe, as long as it sounds right. People are frustrating.

Vaccines don't cause autism.

I'm a parent of a child who had a seizure at 9 months, which was around the time he got the DTP vaccine I think. (Developed full-blown epilepsy). Then regressed at around 13 months right after getting MMR. And my son is severely autistic. Nonetheless, I do not regret the vaccines, and continue to vaccinate him. I know someone whose child regressed at the age of 3.5. This kid was speaking in full sentences, telling knock-knock jokes, had friends, etc. He lost it all---but had not received any vaccines recently. Clearly, regressive autism exists. But the issue is why are we blaming it on vaccines?

The vaccine theory provides 2 things that no other theory provides: (1) a concrete cause, and (2) an action plan. I think it becomes an issue of desperately wanting it to be the vaccines so you KNOW. Not knowing is really hard. Especially while watching your child regress (which is hell, BTW). Vaccines are convenient since they do tend to coincide with late-onset autism. But in my son's case- so did many things. It happened to be unusually sunny right around his first birthday, he also had his first taste of ice cream, he also first started having a pillow in his crib, etc. You could blame it on any of those things. But vaccines are convenient because there's already a fraudulent study and a fanatic group of followers. That is, in my opinion, a large reason why this is so popular. I think if there was a better concrete ANSWER then people would blame vaccines a lot less.

Edit to add: Riley is correct that this is not about the child not becoming the rich and famous or whatever.

Some parents claim their child reacted and started regressing the same day as vaccinations.

How not recent were is vaccines? Were they over two months for example? Did the other child suffer from any fevers, illnesses, allergies, diseases that coincided with his regression?


Your experiences may differ from that of other parents. I do not think they just "want something to blame" if they witness something definitive for themselves within such a short amount of time after receiving vaccination. "Wishful thinking" isn't going to help their kids get better and they would probably know that. For spontaneous regression from a healthy child to a sick child there would have to be some sort of catalyst to trigger it.. and for there to be a trigger there would have to be something to be triggered that is not present in "normal" children. The fraudulent study (Wakefield) is also fairly recent as parents have been claiming there have been issues for over twenty years.


Thankyou!

Last one was at 18 months. So 2 years prior. He was not unusually unhealthy that I recall.



I know my experiences will vary from others, however I am in the same boat with a child who had a reaction shortly after receiving MMR. At the time (2003), I felt horrified and thought it was the vaccines too. It's not "definitive" though; correlation does not prove causation. My son was a very healthy boy, and now he is severely epileptic (still otherwise healthy). As I said, he does not have a "mild" case of autism either- he will need life-long care, and that is sad for me as his mother still. That's why I feel like my experience is valid enough to mention here.

It's natural to want to know why something happened. That's what all the different stories about gods were supposed to do- explain things that we didn't understand. Well, I think when you watch your child lose skills in such a dramatic way, it's natural to want to know what happened. It's not about "finding something to blame"- it's just about knowing what caused this (without assigned blame necessarily). I'm sure there are some parents who don't care, but my guess is they are the minority.

There have always been vaccine sceptics, since before autism was even defined. There are many now who oppose vaccines for another reason than autism too. So what? So they're right? I don't think you can draw that conclusion (I know some people do draw it, but I wouldn't). Vaccines do have a certain risk associated with them. There are cases of people dying or becoming severely brain-damaged from a reaction to a vaccine. The thing is, that risk is so incredibly small, that the benefits of vaccines outweigh the risk. There's a risk involved in travelling by airplane too. Most people decide the risk is outweighed by the benefits of travelling by airplane. But of course there are a small percentage of people who refuse to travel by airplane because they think it's too dangerous. So does that mean it IS too dangerous? Now the main difference between vaccines and airplanes, is that nobody is hurt by you not travelling by airplane, while people are hurt by you not vaccinating, because you mess up herd immunity for people who can't get vaccinated (due to age or whatever). That's why it matters.