S/O vaccines, autism, "catching" autism,etc

amother

Thu, Jan 29 2015, 4:45 pm

My family has a history of autism-like symptoms (myself included). My oldest was vaccinated up to age 18 months, and none of my other children were vaccinated. The oldest has the absolute worst autism symptoms, and all but one other child have no symptoms at all. I believe that vaccines don't cause autism, but they do in individuals who are already predisposed to it.

Nomad

Thu, Jan 29 2015, 4:46 pm

I work in a research lab that studies autism so OP, I have answered your question a lot.
Just to be clear - after conducting many, many, many studies, no connection has been found between vaccines and autism. I kind of almost wish there was a link because then Autism could be prevented.

The original thinking about how vaccines cause autism was that perhaps autism is caused by the preservative thimerosal in vaccines which is a type of mercury (a heavy metal). Thimerosal was removed from all childhood vaccines (other than SOME flu shots) over a decade ago because of this and the rate of autism has still gone up, so it's not that.

Then others have proposed that vaccines are "too much for a baby's immune system". This has pretty much been debunked also because babies expose themselves to more germs daily (eating things from floor, mouthing shoes...) than they would get from a couple of shots of a dead virus every couple of months.

Some have said that vaccines trigger an immune response in children that leads to swelling in the brain and/or seizures. This scarily enough has been found to happen in some children. But, because this tends to be a VERY RARE side effect of vaccines it still cannot explain the current and growing rates of autism. And unfortunately, these children would have likely developed this reaction at some point in their lives anyway -vaccine or no vaccine.

Got to get back to work! I find this post really interesting and can address other posters later...

chavs

Thu, Jan 29 2015, 5:42 pm

Regarding diet and ppl who claimed that they cured their kids. Autism is a spectrum and a person with asd can move across the spectrum. There are times a day, times a month and various other times when a person with asd will seem more or less severe.
One ccannotsay that it was a diet that changed the person or if it was coincidental.

About curing autism
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7736196.stm

amother

Thu, Jan 29 2015, 6:09 pm

Nomad wrote:

I don't want to prevent autism. Then I would not exist. Then my child would not exist. Not as the people we are. I wouldn't trade either of us in for anything. Even when my son's symptoms were much more severe and interfered with daily life more. He was still valuable for the person he is and not the person I wanted him to be.

He has shown major progress. Not from anyone claiming to "cure" him: from traditional evidence based therapies (speech, OT, behavior--naturalistic ABA type not strict DTT, which I don't like so much). If I had done anything else I would have believed they worked. But I didn't. I did therapies to make him happier and help him communicate and interact with the world and be comfortable as himself, as an autistic person.

chavs

Thu, Jan 29 2015, 6:12 pm

amother wrote:

I don't want to prevent autism. Then I would not exist. Then my child would not exist. Not as the people we are. I wouldn't trade either of us in for anything. Even when my son's symptoms were much more severe and interfered with daily life more. He
was still valuable for the person he is and not the person I wanted him to be.

He has shown major progress. Not from anyone claiming to "cure" him: from traditional evidence based therapies (speech, OT, behavior--naturalistic ABA type not strict DTT, which I don't like so much). If I had done anything else I would have believed they worked. But I didn't. I did therapies to make him happier and help him communicate and interact with the world and be comfortable as himself, as an autistic person.

I can't like your post enough. Completely agree!

amother

Thu, Jan 29 2015, 6:26 pm

As a person on the spectrum I am EXTREMELY skeptical about any claims of "curing autism". My brain is wired this way. I've always been like this. It's the way Hashem created me. It's not bad or good, it just is. Like having red hair or brown hair or being short or tall. I do believe that many people on the spectrum can learn how to behave in a way that allows us to fit in better in NT (nuerotypical) society. (Some more than others, as it is a SPECTRUM, and some people's brains are just not wired in a way that any amount of learning/training will ever make them appear NT)

The idea of vaccines causing autism is laughable imho. Autistic "tendencies" run in my family. Some of my siblings (10+) are affected somewhat (none "severely "), others not at all. All of us were fully vaccinated. My children don't seem to have inherited my "brain wiring" probably because I unwittingly married the most NT person possible Very Happy

my social, outgoing, multitasking DH. Oh, and they're all vaccinated.

supty

Thu, Jan 29 2015, 6:29 pm

amother wrote:

OP HERE:

You guessed right with me, I'm actually highly PRO vaccines and it hurts me to know that a child is suffering from anything, some things we can stop like measles and some things we cant stop like cancer. I have students who come back from a week of being sick which is horribly hard, then they have to catch up on the work they missed and all of us teachers require them to take their missed 5 tests within a 2 weeks span because there are another 3-5 tests given every week. It hurts to see their suffering. Other than taking a poll as to which students take/dont take the flu shot (I know this year not that effective) there is no real way to figure out why some kids in the class catch "whatever is going around" and other kids dont catch anything all season. Even the poll is a fake way of trying to do research.

I wrote my original post because I want to understand their side. No my views will not change but maybe I'll be less judgemental.

Someone mentioned its the toxins.....and I've heard that mercury is what people are blaming....aren't there versions of vaccines without mercury? cant one test for levels of mercury in their system before and during pregnancy is that is what causes it?

There are other toxins other than mercury, such as aluminum, formaldehyde, etc.

sky

Thu, Jan 29 2015, 6:39 pm

supty wrote:

There are other toxins other than mercury, such as aluminum, formaldehyde, etc.

How much of each is included in every shot? Can you expand on why these amounts are dangerous, how they build up in the body, what the affects are, How long does it take for the body to break it down? Rather then throwing around scary words can you please give me facts regarding these?

This is what I know about formaldehyde. Can you tell me what the actual issue is?

HepB - Recombivax - 3 doses - 7.5μg/dose
DTaP - Infanrix - 5 doses - 100μg/dose
Hib - ActHIB - 3 doses - 0.5μg/dose
IPV - IPOL - 4 doses - 100μg/dose
Influenza - Fluzone - 7 doses - 100μg/dose
HepA - Havrix - 2 doses - 100μg/dose

the average person gets about 10 - 20 mg of formaldehyde every day from apples, pears, carrots, milk, cosmetics, etc.

A single pear has 38 – 60 mg\kg of formaldehyde. Should I stop eating pears? When pears are in season my family can go through double those in a week.

A banana has 16 mg\kg of formaldehyde. Is it dangerous to feed to my child? That is about how many banans my child may eat over the course of a week.

mille

Thu, Jan 29 2015, 6:59 pm

supty wrote:

There are other toxins other than mercury, such as aluminum, formaldehyde, etc.

I already made a post about aluminum. Highlights include how aluminum is found (in higher doses) in other common things, like tap water, flour, baking powder, and in low doses in breast milk.

Formaldehyde is naturally occurring in your body. Is your body not natural? There's no difference between the formaldehyde in your body and the formaldehyde in a vaccine, chemically. It also is naturally occurring in fruit, even organic fruit (which is considered very healthy and "natural", right?). Same exact chemical in fruit, your body, and a vaccine.

There is no mercury in vaccines as of ~10 years ago.

dancingqueen

Thu, Jan 29 2015, 8:11 pm

Hashem_Yaazor wrote:

I am pretty sure the prevailing thought of those who believe autism is linked to vaccines is this.

There are multiple factors involved in something of this kind. Someone may be predisposed to autism due to genetics. Something in the vaccine though 'pulls the trigger' and causes it to manifest itself. Without that predisposition, the child wouldn't have become autistic, and without the vaccine, it would need another trigger (whatever that may be) to have whatever it is go awry.

That is basically the sum of my knowledge on the matter, and I don't think I can answer more about what other people's theories are!

You mean the way that autoimmune diseases, like diabetes type 1 is often diagnosed after some kind of shock to the immune system (illness, surgery etc)? I don't understand blaming vaccines here either since in that type of scenario the disease would have manifested itself either way.

SorGold

Thu, Jan 29 2015, 8:52 pm

Assuming we stay with Dr. McBride's theory that autism is caused by leaky gut ( a permeable intestinal wall due to lack of proper gut flora), it is inhereited from the flora of the parents. Mainly from the mother , but it is also from the father as it is greatly affected by the flora in the birth canal.
This intestinal permeability causes foreign food particles and toxic substances to enter the blood stream (think gluten /aluminum /formaldehyde etc. Or anything else that autism has been claimed to be linked to) and can cause a host of ailments. She posits that leaky gut causes mental illness, asthma, allergies, autoimmune diseases, only ONE of which condition would be autism. Therefore, some children can be "born with autism" as they inherited leaky gut from birth due to a mothers leaky gut status or even a round of antibiotics during mothers pregnancy or delivery (think strep B+ ). A vaccination as a baby will therefore "cause autism from birth" because the baby's gut was already compromised and substances in the vaccines cross the blood brain barrier and affect the childs brain causing autism. Dr. Mcbride says leaky gut is also caused by steroids or even birth control. A mother having used these substances may have given over the intestinal permeability from birth. Other children may develop a leaky gut from medications after birth from an already compromised gut flora. Vaccinations therefore did not cause the autism. They only acted as the "trigger ." The leaky gut is the underlying problem which needs to be fixed by her "GAPS diet"
Dr. McBride say that if a child "needs" to be vaccinated it should be done well after language is established and given with large doses of vitamin c.

The leaky gut theory explains the genetic link, the some are born and some get at age 2 issue, and the vaccination relationship and why some "recover" from autism.

southernbubby

Thu, Jan 29 2015, 8:56 pm

dancingqueen wrote:

My sister and I have a genetic absence of clotting factor 11. This can cause heavy bleeding from surgery or trauma, chas v'sholem. Whenever we have any type of surgical procedure, we are transfused with several units of fresh frozen plasma, prior to the procedure. A few months after one of these transfusions, my sister developed a rare auto-immune disorder. One possible explanation for this, is that her immune system went into overdrive in reaction to a foreign protein in the blood she received and attacked her cerebellum. There is no absolute proof that the transfusion caused it the same way that it would be difficult to decide whether a virus or an immunization caused an auto-immune disease. It usually takes awhile to develop so there is no clear cut cause and effect. As they say, correlation does not equal causation.

Ashrei

Thu, Jan 29 2015, 9:01 pm

Just by the way... I read on mthfr.net that 98% of autistic people are heterozygous carriers for each of the 2 MTHFR gene mutations (1 of each). I'm on my phone so it's hard for me to link exactly to it,I can try to find it later.

It's not vice versa.

I think this site talks about how methyl folate can help the condition.it's related.

I'm not autistic.I'm just weird. (Anyway,I don't have those genes)

Barbara

Thu, Jan 29 2015, 9:06 pm

southernbubby wrote:

Same of my favorite correlations:

Per capita consumption of cheese in the US, correlated with deaths from becoming entangled in bed sheets.

Age of Miss America vs. murders by steam, hot vapors and hot objects

US crude oil imports from Norway, correlated with drivers killed in collisions with trains.

Correlation =/= causation.

Ashrei

Thu, Jan 29 2015, 9:06 pm

Ashrei wrote:

Just adding that I didn't read through the entire thread, but noticed that MTHFR sets one up to have most (all?) Of what others are saying 'causes' autism...