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Originally Posted by SunshineJ  For us while we believe that vax's *may* cause autism in some individuals, we haven't seen it thoroughly studied either way. With the research I've seen, I cannot say definitively that vax's alone can cause autism, regardless of what my personal suspicions may be. However, I CAN say without question that the human body was NOT meant to be bombarded with things like foreign human diploid cells, formaldehyde and heavy metals. While we do have a concern over autism, yes, that's not topmost on our list of our concerns. Also there's a fundamental belief for us that the human body was designed to fight off disease and every time you try to circumvent that with vaccines you are damaging that bodys ability to function correctly.
Our decision not to vaccinate is very much based on attempting to avoid things like autoimmune disorders - which based on our research, seem to be something that crops up anecdotally quite frequently among vaccine injuries. From personal experience I know that our 5.5 yr old DD still spikes a fever and goes into seizures when she gets ill, which is a result of being vaccinated. The lack of fear that you hear discussed, for us at least, refers to the illnesses themselves. I've had chickenpox. Every kid I went to school with had chickenpox. Chickenpox is *not* scary and very seldom fatal. I am not afraid of it, and laughed outright when I had a dr tell me my kids would die from it without the vaccine. I've seen measles, and likewise, it does not frighten me. We found a set of medical books from 1919, and the entries on the VPD's was quite enlightening! With the lack of advancements in medical care and no antibiotics in sight, most of the "deadly" conditions we vaccinate for were considered a mere blip on the radar and normal childhood events.
As for the OP why it's always about autism, I think the medical community focuses on that one solely because short of extensive testing on say identical twins (which of course I would never advocate and would never be done), there's no concrete way to prove the link 100% and it's easy enough to get evidence suppressed. The other issues it's not so easy. You just can't argue some of those points, so instead they pretend they don't exist and focus on the one thing they can try to control.
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I agree! We are concerned about the way vaccines work in the body--the way the adjuvant over stimulates the immune system and what possible consequences this may have. (Vaccines have an adjuvant specifically designed to hyper stimulate the immune system that so that you develop a very strong immune response to the weakened/inactivated disease in the vaccine.)
Autism is something I wouldn't want my children to have to face, just as it would be hard to see them struggle over any extra hardship or handicap. But if I had an autistic child I have no doubt we would love them and appreciate their unique qualities just as we would any other child. It's not much different from getting pregnant and not knowing if your child will be born perfectly healthy or with any kind of extra challenge.
Aside from that, we know two children who were born at home unassisted and are unvaxed and they both have low functioning autism. They are from the same family, so maybe it's genetic? Who knows. Their older sister was vaccinated and is 100% normal...or neuro typical, is that the right phrase?
The link between vaccines and autism may be there somewhere, I honestly do not know and can't argue either way, but there isn't enough extremely strong evidence for autism to be my specific reason to not vaccinate.
It almost seems demeaning that other people (and medical professionals also) assume that those who choose not to vaccinate are just blindly afraid their child will be autistic.
About fear--what I meant was we don't choose
anything out of fear. I don't decide to vaccinate my child because I'm terrified she'll get polio, and I don't decide not to vaccinate her because I'm afraid she'll have a bad reaction. We looked at all the facts we could find, thought carefully, and decided that the risk of tampering with her immune system was more than the risk of her catching or dying from each VPD. Being afraid of one outcome or the other just wasn't a factor in the decision making process. But it seems for a lot of people (in general) that fear of something seems to be a main motivating factor behind making the choice of whether or not to vaccinate.
I think we're gaining a critical mass of people who are suspicious and resisting being told to vaccinate.
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