The connection between vaccines and autism.
Oh god. Not this again. *sigh*
“Vaccines don’t cause autism. They cause demyelination, which eats the myelin sheath, paving the way for neural damage. THAT causes autism.”
May not be word-for-word, mobile tumblr doesn’t let me look at the OP while typing my caption.
//cracks knuckles alright here we go i’m doing it anyway
This is really long and I apologize.
First off, I found out in my Infectious Disease course that the vaccine scare is a Real Thing for a Real Reason ™. Back in ‘76 there was a flu outbreak in Fort Dix, New Jersey. A few recruits got sick and one recruit died, and after some short investigation they found out it was a new strain of swine flu that was highly infectious. So they made a vaccine. They made a lot of it. And they made it really fast. Flu vaccine is made in eggs. There were bad batches. And lots of people got sick, there were 500 cases of Guillian-Barre syndrome and 25 deaths. Back in 1976.The reason they did everything really fast was because it was election season and it was all televised, so every time they asked a candidate questions, they brought up the Fort Dix outbreak. So the government was put under pressure by the people to do something fast. And they did, for the safety of the American Public. Unfortunately it backfired, and the handling of that disaster was positively awful.
So the people raised in that generation became mistrusting of vaccines. And passed that distrust on to their kids. Who are now growing up and having babies. And don’t trust vaccines. Any of them. Ever.
Let’s look into some actual scientific studies about the relationship between vaccination and demyelination, as this post claims. Before I crank out sources completely tearing this fun little claim to shreds, let me talk about demyelination.
If you’ve ever seen the movie Lorenzo’s Oil, or heard about ALD, you will know what myelin is. It’s a protective sheath around your nerve cells’ axons, or tails. It helps impulses travel faster. Without myelin, the symptoms that crop up are those of diseases like ALD, Guillian-Barre, Multiple Sclerosis, and other leukodystrophies. When myelin is broken down, it hinders motor function. It causes ataxia, types of paralysis, loss of coordination, weakness, and sensation.
Some of those things overlap with autism. In children. When children present stereotypy, which is rapid repetitious motion. But children with autism also present in ways that completely contradicts demyelination symptoms, like compulsive behavior, extreme articulation (stacking, lining, ordering objects in ways that young children do not usually present) and most importantly sensory overload.
Sensory overload is important to autistic individuals. They are oversensitive to things that go unnoticed by non-autistic individuals. Like white noise and fluorescent lights and the room temperature. If the CNS or PNS are being broken down due to demyelination, there’s no way that the exact opposite symptoms could possibly occur. This argument is very silly!
Moving on, citations that scientists have done investigating ‘vaccines’ in general to the demyelination process….
– Rubin, Micheal – Are Vaccines Safe after Guillian-Barre and Chronic INflammatory Demyelinating Neuropathy? — “Although patients with prior GBS or CIDP continue to experience pain and fatigue long after diagnosis, seasonal vaccination of these patients, particularly GBS, appears to carry a low risk of recurrence.”
-Karaali-Savrun, F. Et al – Hepatitis B vaccine related myelitis? – “Similar clinical and imaging presentation of myelitis following hepatitis B vaccination within a 1 year period with no other demonstrable clinical and laboratory evidence for any other disorder raise the probability of a causal link between these two events."There are dozens of studies on the relation of vaccines to demyelinating diseases. You know what they all have in common? They’re studying patients who already have those diseases. They’re neuro-degenerative. They’re seeing if the vaccines cause a flare-up or re-occurrence in a disease they already have by exciting and aggravating the immune system. Not one study shows any connection between getting vaccinated and developing a demyelinating disease.
Let’s talk about autism spectrum disorders. Why do parents think that getting vaccinated causes autism? It’s mostly because the presentation of an autistic individual can first be seen right after immunization. A baby gets immunized not right after birth, but a few months later, when their immune system can handle it and has the functionality to learn and develop long-term memory. And that’s around the time a baby starts moving, playing with toys, and reacting to the world around them in a way that adults can recognize. And people think in terms of short time spans, so cause and effect would lead them to believe the two are related when they’re not.
There are multiple causes of ASDs that researchers know about, including genetic causes, environmental factors, and prenatal stress. It’s complicated and anyone who has any experience with ASDs know that there is no cut and dry, and it is not a disease, it is not an epidemic, and treating it as such is insulting and frankly uninformed.
There are studies investigating the relationship between mercury and aluminum in vaccines, used as preservatives. (Senef, S. Et al, Aluminum and Acetaminophen, Price, C. et al, Thimerosal from Vaccines) There is a link in animals between ASD-like symptoms and inorganic mercury or aluminum buildup in the CNS. And you know what the vaccine companies did when those studies were created?
They created vaccines that don’t include preservatives. At cost to them. That you can opt into if you are informed and concerned.
Bottom lines:
1. Not getting your kid vaccinated is not only a risk to your kid, but to other kids they interact with and the entire community at large. Kids die from MMR. That’s the reason we have the vaccine.
2. Stop making grandiose claims about disorders that you clearly don’t understand. It’s insulting to people with those disorders, who feel persecuted. It’s insulting to the researchers and vaccine scientists who dedicate their lives and livelihoods to studying these things. And it’s insulting to yourself, because you can’t take the time to look up something you claim to feel so strongly about.Sorry this got long.
TL;DR: VACCINES DON’T CAUSE AUTISM, AND THIS HAS BEEN DEBUNKED FOR MANY YEARS. IF YOU STILL BELIEVE IT, YOU’RE FLAT OUT IGNORANT AND NEED TO STOP TALKING UNTIL YOU LEARN.
The British study that was done that linked vaccines and autism was an ELABORATE FRAUD:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/01/05/autism.vaccines/index.html
"It’s one thing to have a bad study, a study full of error, and for the authors then to admit that they made errors,” Fiona Godlee, BMJ’s editor-in-chief, told CNN. “But in this case, we have a very different picture of what seems to be a deliberate attempt to create an impression that there was a link by falsifying the data.“ (emphasis added)
It’s extremely appropriate that this post on my dash is followed by a link to this article on the dangerous impact of OP’s anti-vaccine pseudo-science bullshit: ”Measles is back. It had help.”
