After Trump made another throw away comment this week, I decided it was important to reflect upon this topic.
In Trumps tweet it stated: "Healthy young child goes to doctor, gets pumped with massive shot of many vaccines, doesn't feel good and changes - AUTISM. Many such cases!"
This literally makes me cringe/laugh at the same time, as someone so dissimilar to a doctor, autism expert, neurologist anything similar could make these kinds of comments.
So where to begin? This website sums it up pretty well...
http://howdovaccinescauseautism.com
So although anti-vac people state there is no evidence to support that vaccines don't cause autism, I beg to differ. It isn't hard to find reliable sources and studies to show that it is simply silly to believe that a vaccine causes autism.
Now let me say here- I'm not particularly for or against vaccines, I haven't ever had to make that decision and I firmly suggest you make your own judgement on that- but were not talking about whether vaccines are good or bad, were stating they cause a progressive neurological disorder.
Anyway back to the studies...
- http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/autism.html this one is pretty clear, although seems kind of government based. Maybe thats enough to settle your mind on the case, I however would like further studies and research by not so governmental agencies to prove some things.
"In the United Kingdom, researchers evaluated 498 autistic children born from 1979 through 1992 who were identified by computerized health records from 8 health districts [5]. Although a trend toward increasing autism diagnoses by year of birth was confirmed, no change in the rates of autism diagnoses after the 1987 introduction of MMR vaccine was observed. Further, MMR vaccination rates of autistic children were similar to those of the entire study population. Also, investigators did not observe a clustering of autism diagnoses relative to the time that children received MMR vaccine, nor did they observe a difference in age at autism diagnosis between those vaccinated and not vaccinated or between those vaccinated before or after 18 months of age. These authors also found no differences in autism rates among vaccinated and unvaccinated children when they extended their analysis to include a longer time after MMR exposure or a second dose of MMR [6].
In California, researchers compared year-specific MMR vaccination rates of kindergarten students with the yearly autism case load of the California Department of Developmental Services during 1980–1994 [8]. As was observed in the United Kingdom, the increase in the number of autism diagnoses did not correlate with MMR vaccination rates."
And much much more, if you care to look.
So I can hear you saying, ok well if vaccines don't cause autism, what does? Answer is out, but here are some things to think about.
Simply researching studies into findings of alternative 'causes' of autism sometimes is a good idea instead of blurting out something someone else may or may not have made up, like this :
- http://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1741-7015-7-63
- http://www.cell.com/ajhg/fulltext/S0002-9297(07)00035-3
This study suggests its down to the genetics i.e. chromosomes or even having a defective oxytocin function within your body.
I just want to round this ramble out by giving you one last thing to think about before you firmly believe the cause of Autism. You can of course believe something Trump is saying, but as many have said before he knows how to play to people, he knows how to catch media attention and get people talking, of course he’s going to go on about something that effects 1 in every 100 kids now. And dont think that just because the number seems to have risen or is particularly high, that it actually has changed. People have ALWAYS been autistic or been on the scale of autism, they were just misplaced for being troubled or different.
Isaac Newton was seen to be troubled, he locked himself away for 2 whole years in a room and refused to see anyone and ended up writing one of the most well known scientific/physic books of all time- Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica in 1687. Alongside Einstein, Darwin and Mozart. All people that were known for being different but none the less exceptionally talented.
Autism was around and prominent WAY before vaccines were even invented.
I'm not saying that you think vaccines are the sole cause of autism, but it’d be silly to think that so many people hundreds of years ago were faced with autism before the times of technology, vaccines all the other BS ‘causes’ of autism.
Here are some more more journals/studies/research into the cause of autism:
Maybe you'll find that vaccines really do cause Autism, or maybe you'll learn something new. Either way, I hope you understood my passion for the subject, as I believe it is so so unfair to solely blame parents for wanting to protect their child (getting the vaccines), and then inducing them into a world of torment. As someone who works with children with all ranges of autism, it isn't fair.
All opinions stated below will be responded to IF portrayed in the correct manner, have a nice weekend :-)