Flouride- I am actually not going to touch this one, the links I got didn't discuss autism but more just rants about flouridation of water in general.
You might want to rethink your position and "touch" this subject.
Fluoridated water!
Brought to you by the same safe DDT science!!
Safe in 1950, safe today!
Sorry for the derail, but fluoridated water was brought up, and was in the OP article. I just wanted to add my opinion!
It is not about isolating one particular environmental toxin as a cause of autism, it is about the full on assult of our children by many different potentially harmful substances. Fluoride is one of the most toxic people are exposed to. The science promoting the fluoradation of water is so weak to say the least and it is avoidable, less so for low income families unfortunately.
I can't imagine the pain of having a child with autism.
At this point science and medicine have not discovered what causes autism.
I think that saying we don't know is better than guessing or buying junk science.
Vaccines are vital, one of the most lifesaving inventions of the 20th century (with indoor plumbing/sanitation).
I doubt that anyone who refuses vaccines would also refuse indoor plumbing (although I could probably mock up a study linking it's use to the rise in autism diagnosis)
I will be surprised if a genetic cause is not eventually found.
Finding the gene will not help anyway, unless people are willing to gene test and abort kids with autism (which I imagine tragically many would given the stats for prenatally diagnosed Down syndrome).
Keep in mind that many kids with autism were simply labeled "retarded" in the past, and placed in institutions.
Long before that, kids with disabilities were left out to die of exposure.
Perhaps as as society we should view the increase in people with autism as a victory over the relative ignorance and barbarism of the past.
What I find most interesting about the blogs/articles/studies done is the "links" they find. My stats professor was found of saying "correlation does not equal causation" .
One of the most frustrating links I see is the link between pitocin/c sections and autism. Yes, we have a higher autism rate than compared to countries that don't do these things. We also have a lower infant mortality rate. And a higher birth rate in general. If it weren't for these interventions, these babies would have died, possibly along with their mothers.
I also agree with the people saying that it is hard to find unbiased research. I've actually found it near impossible. I'm not even sure where I stand on the vaccine issue.
It must be very hard to have a child with a condition that nobody can explain, and has no real "cause", just a variety of things that may or may not have an impact. I would imagine I would search endlessly for an answer.
While I can see why the comment "just the way they are" is inciting a riot here (and I strongly disagree with that statement), I think the poster was trying to point out how wrong it is for mothers to blame themselves for causing their children's autism or similar issues. If we want to blame someone, it should be the people producing these environmental hazards when they knowingly try to hide research showing they are a danger to our health. Also while I applaud the public awareness this blogger is bringing to these environmental hazards, I don't think it is sufficiently conclusive research (I could not find any links to peer-reviewed articles in the articles she linked to, though I couldn't get some of them to work) to determine that these factors are the cause of autism, though they do merit looking into. I worry that other mothers of children with developmental disabilities would read something like this and start blaming themselves, particularly during the emotionally fraught time when you first receive that diagnosis.
I do NOT agree with this article. I do believe that autism may be caused by chromosomal anomalies and environmental toxins, but I completely disagree about vaccines being a cause. As a public health professional, and pediatric nurse practitioner who sees cases of vaccine preventable diseases (and even fatalities), it scares me that so many people are choosing to not vaccinate. It is a choice that every parent needs to make, but they also need to be aware of risks. There are longitudinal studies being conducted (and still ongoing) that have shown that control groups of unvaccinated children have similar rates than vaccinated children.
I would imagine I would search endlessly for an answer.
So what would you do if you found research that firmly linked autism with vaccines? Or Tylenol? Or age of fathers? Or proximity to highways?
The first two actually have quite a few studies showing a link. No, it doesn't prove that those two are linked with every case, nor does the research prove that only those causes and no other causes were involved in the cases where they are linked. But the science shows a link.
Meanwhile, the pharmaceutical industry is paying everyone they can to discredit the links there, and instead emphasize, yes, the age of fathers and the proximity of highways.
If a father says, "OMG, I started my family too late, and my son is now autistic," the pediatrician would no doubt pat him comfortingly on the back, and say, "there, there, you had no way of knowing that this would increase the risk of autism."
But a mother says, "I allowed my at-risk child to be given vaccines, and his reactions and subsequent medical events are textbook cases of severe reaction (and she qoutes peer-reviewed research corroborating this), and they resulted in seizures and brain damage, including autism, and I'm actually going to take responsibility (since the pharma/medical industry refuses) and say that it's MY fault because I didn't research the invasive procedure that caused these reactions," and people say that she's desperately grasping at straws. Funny, nobody says that about older fathers. Or they say that criticizing vaccines is tantamount to criticizing and refusing indoor plumbing. Funny, the US Department of Health and Human Services has admitted thousands of cases of vaccine-induced severe brain damage, including autism. They've even admitted 2 cases of vaccine-caused autism just this year, but I can't find any reference to autism caused by indoor plumbing...
Nobody is admitting the huge white elephant in the room: vaccines can cause brain damage and other severe health problems in susceptible children. Enough parents have reported this so that we know it's not vanishingly rare, but the pharmaceutical industry is going to great lengths to discredit such reports. (Hey, anybody remember that they also did this with Lipitor and Vioxx??) All kinds of well-meaning people are picking up the propaganda and repeating it, "Oh, it must be very difficult to have a child with autism; the poor mother must be desperately grasping at straws and blaming herself, but of course it's genetic..."
Bull-poop.
IF IT WERE GENETIC, THEY'D HAVE FOUND IT BY NOW.
We have only a vague idea which children may be susceptible (children with autistic relatives, children with a family history of autoimmune disorder, children with vitamin deficiencies, children with underlying mitochondrial disorders), and to make matters worse, there is NO screening for such susceptibilities, and no effeort whatsoever to head off reactions in such children, except by a few brave doctors who suggest a modified, delayed vaccine schedule and then are vilified for it.
Nope. It would only point to that if it completely ruled out other factors, such as diet and environment.
For example, if a child comes from a family whose diet and environment result in vitamin D deficiency, that means that that child is likely to have depleted glutathione levels, which in turn prevents the body from properly excreting the heavy metals in vaccines, which then cross the blood-brain barrier. The child recevies the recommended 35 vaccines, and hello, brain damage and autism.
If that child has a sibling, that child is also living with the same diet and environment that result in vitamin D deficiency, and is also likely to be vaccinated.
Let's not forget that the vast majority of families whose older child had vaccine reactions and then a diagnosis of autism, did NOT fully vaccinate the younger siblings--and the majority of those children either did not develop autism, or had a far milder case. This is true of every autism support group I've belonged to, and every one that I've heard about.
And let's also not forget that vaccines are not the only source of heavy metal poisoning that can result in autism.
I don't expect you to be impressed by anything I say, when you obviously didn't bother to correctly read what I'd posted the first time. Let me repeat it for you:
"the vast majority of families whose older child had vaccine reactions and then a diagnosis of autism, did NOT fully vaccinate the younger siblings"
How would you have any sense of whether or not that's true if you aren't a part of the community that has experienced this? Or do you just deny others' experience as a rule, if it happens to implicate vaccines as problematic?
Please do tell us exactly how the scientists controlled for diet and environmental exposures? How many sets of identical and fraternal twins who grew up in different cities, with different diets from each other, with measurably different exposures to various chemicals (including vaccines) did they actually examine?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/ knows that parents are not, sorry you don't
When parents of one autistic child also worry about the vaccination connection, subsequent siblings are not only at risk for autism but also for not receiving timely vaccination.
That link didn't work for me.
Your quote says "where parents of an autistic child worry about vaccination connection". Do we have any statistics of what fraction of parents of autistic children think there's a connection. I know for a fact not all do. For example: http://www.autismspeaks.org/blog/2013/01/16/25-random-things-about-motherhood-autism-style-update (see #21).
Also this is interesting and seemed relevent - a study of baby siblings of autistic children (result - they are more likely to be ASD diagnosed than a control sample). http://www.autismspeaks.org/blog/2013/02/14/baby-sibling-outcomes-beyond-autism
http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2011/07/10153/study-debunks-autism-primarily-genetic-disorder
“A rigorous study of nearly 400 twins has shown that environmental factors have been underestimated, and genetics overestimated, for their roles in autism-spectrum disorders.
“The study found that the children’s environment represents more than half of the susceptibility – 55 percent in the most severe form of autism and 58 percent in the broad spectrum of the disorder – while genetics is involved in 37 percent and 38 percent of the risk, respectively.”
Too bad they are trying so desperately to avoid looking at which twins did and didn't receive vaccinations....
so, University of Toronto, Canada and Hospital for Sick Children, Canada and not good enough research for you
Who exactly do you need to hear it from?
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