Autism rises with childhood vaccines

http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/commentary/wb/154898

Autism rises with childhood vaccines

One of Ellen DeGeneres's recent talk show guests was a young girl who
raised a large sum of money selling bracelets to benefit autism treatment.
She was motivated by having an autistic brother. At one point, the mother of
the girl spoke, saying something I've heard other parents say over and over.
She told the audience that her son had been happy and normal, meeting every
developmental milestone, but a few days after receiving a round of
vaccinations, he regressed into autism.

The shocking rise of autism correlates with the rising number of
immunizations that the majority of children are now getting. I was
suspicious of the three that were recommended when my sons were young,
knowing they contained thimerosal, formaldehyde, aluminum, ethylene glycol
and a host of other suspect ingredients. Currently, there are at least 12
compulsory childhood immunizations, and because many are given twice, most
children have had 20 or more shots before the age of 2, and new vaccines are
being developed all the time.

With one in every 150 children being diagnosed with autism, we should be
talking about the cumulative effect that so many vaccines could be having on
our children. We know antibiotics save lives, but their overuse has created
resistant super bugs and the emergence of deadly infections like MRSA. Why
is there no public debate about the overuse of immunizations?

Why are parents who are reporting that their previously healthy children
descended into autism after a round of vaccines being taken less seriously
than the drug companies who sell vaccines for profit? Not only are they not
required to prove that vaccines are safe, new rules made by President
Bush-appointed FDA officials in 2006 protect pharmaceutical companies from
private liability litigation.

The drug companies' poor safety records are regularly revealed, as drugs on
the market have proven to be harmful and are pulled from distribution. Why
were vaccines containing mercury, one of the most poisonous elements on the
planet, ever given to babies? Only after public outcry was the mercury
removed. (It is still in most flu shots.)

Sometimes the side effects of a drug treatment are worse than the disease
being treated. In the case of immunizations, they don't treat disease but
are supposed to be a preventative measure in case our children contract an
illness. Back in 1979, Dr. Robert Mendelsohn said in his book "Confessions
of a Medical Heretic," "If this is prevention, I'll take my chances with
disease." I wonder what he would say today.

Recent headlines have announced that vaccines don't cause autism, but these
headlines are misleading because they reflect a conclusion based on the
assumption that because autism has not declined since mercury was taken out
of vaccines, they must be safe. As toxic as mercury is, it may not be the
primary culprit linking autism and vaccines. A 2002 study published in
Pediatric Neurology revealed that elevated levels of measles antibodies
exist in autistic children, suggesting that autism could be an autoimmune
disease triggered by the measles virus in vaccines.

Evidence suggests a genetic predisposition to autism. It seems obvious that
a round of vaccinations containing a number of viruses and neurotoxins could
be enough of an assault on a child's body to push the susceptible ones over
into this illness. In the case of the MMR vaccine (measles, mumps and
rubella), children are exposed to a mixture of three live viruses at one
time, something that would never happen in nature. It's understandable that
some parents choose to protect their children against disease by
strengthening their immune systems through health-giving practices and that
they would reject over-relying on the recommendations of government experts
with alliances to the profit-driven medical establishment.

The least I hope for is that doctors and parents begin to take a cautious
approach to the practice of immunization, such as delaying shots until an
infant is older, administering one shot at a time, and picking and choosing
which ones are given. I hope they keep in mind that some of the diseases
children are immunized for were considered normal childhood illnesses that
strengthened children's immune systems when I was growing up. I hope they
remember that it took decades before big-profit cigarette companies were
forced to concede that their products were dangerous.

Smoking one cigarette won't hurt anyone, but regular use can kill. When it
comes to man-made inventions and interventions, more is hardly ever better.