http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,302858,00.html



My BF's sister does not believe in vaccinating her kids and will sign a letter saying it is against her religion(even though she is luthern and the girls were baptised lutheran) her MIL thinks it will be worse for the girls and that vaccinations cause autism. I think it is sad.

Aren't there some schools that won't allow kids to attend unless they are vaccinated?

as long as you have a letter stating it is against your beliefs/religion it is ok

I've also heard that vaccinations trigger autism... **shrugs** who knows tho for sure..

maybe we can get Al to investigate if this is true or not...

There have been a number of major publications that have floated this theory in recent years, but I don't think anyone can conclusively say one way or the other if there is validity to the claim. A former co-worker claims that his autistic son was normal until the age of 4, when he received a vaccination shot. Stopped talking almost overnight, and started showing signs of autism within 2 weeks.

In this day and age of media induced panic, I think we will see more of this. The days of trusting your doctor implicitly are long gone, and many uninformed parents will make poor choices based on something they heard or read, without uinderstanding the implications or doing their own research. I'm thankful that my kids are past teh age of needing anything other than the occassional tetanus shot.

Post deleted by Devil Queen

My son has had all of his vaccinations, I cannot say that I understand why a vaccine would cause autism... but, there has been a dramatic rise in years of late of autistic children, something like 1 in 100, the numbers seem really high to me.

I am concerned more if my son contracted a disease for which he could have been vaccinated for...

You decide!

http://specialchildren.about.com/od/autismandvaccines/i/vaccines.htm

dramatic rise... or better in terms of definition:
example
Autistic kids
100 years ago - He aint right is he?
60 years ago - He is slow
30 years ago - He is retarded
20 years ago - He is special
10 years ago - He is mentally handicapped

we are just getting better at defining autism as its own special disease.. it is no longer lumped in with other mental retardations... or even worse stupidity

Interesting thought...

parents should stop being lazy. in fact, they should vaccinate their children themselves instead of depending on others to do it for them.

I don't think it is laziness Ron,JMO but I think these people truly believe the immunizations will hurt them in the long run. I have been hearing that if you don't get the chicken pox as a child, you run a high chance of getting shingles as an adult. So now with the chicken pox vaccine are we exposing our children to something worse?

Now I have no proof, so dont ask for any. I have mine all fully vaccinated, just had to play the devils advocate for a minute

Years ago, a guy I went to school with had his daughter vaccinated (DPT booster) and there was a reaction. Although I don't know exactly what was wrong with his daughter, she died several years later. It was very sad. However, having said that, I can't imagine not vaccinating my son. He got every one availble at the time he was young. He even got the meningitis vaccine before starting college.

I had very, very light chicken pox when I was a kid, and it's always been a concern that I would get shingles later in life. Hopefully they'll pass over me.

Is there more autism or is it just diagnosed more and better now. As stated above, many children were misdiagnosed in the past.

As far as vaccines, I am a beliver in them but they are not without their risks. If you have an egg based vaccine and your child has an undiagnosed allergy to eggs it could be deadly.

I am involved in Rotary and one of our missions is to wipe out Polio in the world and we are almost there. We do so by administering a vaccine. I don't think we ever want to go back to the days when polio ran rapid and crippled people.

I would hope that someday we can rid the world of other viruses that criple children.

I had the chicken pox twice as a child (first case very mild) so hopefully I'm out of the woods.

It's so hard to keep up with anything, today something is fine, tomorrow your at risk. All we can do is make the most informed decisions that we can.

I think the thought is that it is the preservative (thimerosal) in many vaccines that has been thought to cause a higher incidence in autism.

Someone mentioned that the definition of autism has evolved over the years - I hadn't thought of that.

You can get shingles even if you've had chicken pox - I had a terrible case of chicken pox when I was 7 and had shingles when I was 27. At the time, I recall the doc saying that if you've had chicken pox and are exposed again, it will manifest as shingles. I didn't want to vaccinate the Man Child for chicken pox but our pediatrician had some startling statistics about it. Since the vaccine came out, they've eradicated the mild strains of it - if kids get it now, it is much more serious and some kids die (albeit a small number of them). We did choose to have him vaccinated when he was 3 because I was pregnant and chicken pox/shingles can pass through the placenta and attack the fetus and we agreed with our OB's recommendation to do it.

KCGeo had a great point also - our daughter is allergic to eggs and can not have the flu shot. The rest of us get it to try to get it. She had the shot when she was 10 months old - then went into anaphalixis about a month later the first time she had food with eggs and now comes equipped with an epi-pen.