They are at it again

normally_impaired · Tufted Titmouse Joined: Mar 20, 2007 Age: 26 Posts: 34

As long as Autism Speaks has parents believing that Autism is worse than Cancer 10 fold, parents will want to get rid of Autsim however they can. This really comes down to hope, if Autism is genetic, then there's no hope of curing it, but if it's a disease, there is hope for a cure, so they go with the latter because it makes them feel better. This is also because if it's genetic, there's no one to blame but their own genes, but if it's a disease, they can blame whoever they want, and since signs of Autsim typically become noticeable around the same time as early vaccines are administered, especially when a kid appears to be normal and the signs start after a year or so, the vaccines seem like a good candidate.

It's a hysteria thing, kind of like George Orwell's "War of the worlds", where a radio show did a play of a fake news broadcast made to sound like one that would be made if aliens attacked, hundreds of people believed the broadcast to be a real news broadcast. If that wasn't enough, hundreds called the police claiming to see the alien spacecrafts, when what they were hearing on the radio was actually a fictional play. These people were duped into believing something that wasn't true because the radio station didn't explain well enough that the broadcast was in fact fiction, so they panicked and thought they saw something that they clearly didn't.

This is similar because there's the coincidence of signs of Autism becoming noticeable at the same time as the vaccinations, people who don't understand the forces at play are making the assumption that there is a connection and making rash decisions off that assumption. You see this often in religion, like that case where the woman found a piece of a grilled cheese sandwich with what vaguely looked like a face, couple that with the fact that she was taught for her whole life that there's a god that performs miracles, this led her to quickly put 1 and 1 together to come to the conclusion that there was no other possible way that the pattern in the bread that vaguely looked like a face was in fact a miracle. Remember a few years later when someone found a face of the Virgin Mary under a bridge in New Jersey and it turned out to be a urine stain, same thing, quick assumptions turned into solid beliefs by those who don't understand what's really happening.

In a predominantly curebie-parent myspace group I joined (not because I agree with the group, I just like to stay informed of what they believe at the moment), there's a woman claiming that it was fast food that gave her kid Autism.

Then there's Autism Speaks' claim that the number of Autistic kids is rising, claiming that this makes Autism an epidemic. It really wasn't too long ago when Asperger's and PDD-NOS were not considered part of the Autistic spectrum, now they are, and those diagnosises are included, so it's not that there's more Autistic kids, it's just that more are being diagnosed than previously would.