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Quote:

Originally Posted by Empress View Post
I think your tone towards me is very contentious, and I am confused on why you felt the need to go over my previous posts in another support forum to prove me "wrong" and split hairs over my statements.
By reading members' past posts, I learn more about them and what angle they're coming from. I didn't read your posts with the intention of trying to prove you wrong or to split hairs.

The message I got from your first post was, 'Vaccines don't cause autism. Genes do', therefore I was surprised to read elsewhere that you do believe that vaccines are a cause of autism, and I wanted to point that out.

It must be very difficult for parents of a non-vaccinated child with atypical behaviours from birth to keep hearing, "It's the mercury" or, "It's the vaccines". And I think I can understand your point of view, Empress. After all, books pointing the finger of blame at 'The Mother' were still being written and published in the early 1990s and I found them very distressing.

I knew that I hadn't caused my son's autism and yet here were psychiatrists telling me that I had. I knew my son hadn't been neglected or abused but, from what I read, I just might have overdone my devotion to baby, for they told me that "a good-enough mother" was the best kind, and I might have been too attentive.

IMO the problem with the autism and vaccination controversy is the word "Autism". Its meaning has evolved into a certain kind of disease that must have one cause, like vaccines or genes, instead of a collection of unusual behaviours found in many people, from the severely brain-damaged person at one end of the continuum to eccentric geniuses at the other.

There isn't one cause for these behaviours, there are many causes, and some are only personality traits and don't have 'a cause'. We are not all alike. But within the group of children with atypical development, there is a subgroup of once neurotypical children with regressive autism after vaccination.

The myth that has been perpetuated is that regressive autism always starts to appear between 12-18 months, or in the second year of life, and any link with the MMR vaccine is purely coincidental. What should be widely known is that children have regressed and become autistic after MMR or other vaccines at 2, 3, 4, 5 and 12 years old.

Something happened around the mid-80s and continued throughout the 90s because suddenly instead of two-thirds of children being born with autism, two-thirds had the regressive-type.

Parents of these children needed to know the cause, they were not content with, "Autism strikes some children. It's genetic. Here are some drugs that might help, and here's the telephone number of your local support group".

They witnessed the link with vaccination and needed to know what impact it had had on their child's developing brain. They were looking for a possible cure to restore the child they had lost.

Obviously children with Retts or the 50% of children with TS and tubers in the brain and seizures, don't have vaccine-induced autism. Neither do children exposed to Valproic Acid or alcohol during fetal development, nor children deprived of oxygen at birth. But, because these children have the same behaviours as children with late-onset autism, they are put under the same PDD/ASD/Autism umbrella.

PDD-NOS is not a specific disorder (so it's not a tangerine), and your PDD definition would only apply to children. Adults with Autism don't have developmental delay.

You say that Retts shouldn't be included in the PDD category because it is genetic. But the reason these children are included is that their behaviours fit the criteria.

Children with these disorders also fit the criteria:

Non Verbal Learning Disability, Pathological Demand Avoidance Disorder, Semantic Pragmatic Disorder, Pediatric Bipolar Disorder, Childhood Schizoid Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, Schizotypal Personality Disorder, Attachment Disorder, Multidimentionally Impaired Disorder, Multiple Complex Developmental Disorder....

Once these subgroups are in use, and others have been defined, will the children with these disorders remain under the "Autism" umbrella, or will they be re-categorised?

Once the picture becomes clearer, will geneticists stop looking for the 'Autism gene'? Will the media stop using "Autism" instead of PDD? And will the rate of "Autism" miraculously drop?

Perhaps not. Because if ADHD is eventually classified as a ASD, as some clinicians have suggested, "Autism" cases would skyrocket overnight and the rate increase to perhaps..... 1 in 8 children.

Maybe that would only matter to parents of children with vaccine-induced regressive, late-onset autism in the 80s and 90s. Our kids don't have ADHD. (And I'm not trivialising the condition. I believe that these behaviours are also vaccine-induced.)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Empress View Post
3) I have conceded before that is very likely that some children affected by PDD and autism are a result of vaccinations. But I think the number of it is not as high as the proponents of the vaccination and mercury theory would like us to believe, or as low (or non-existent) as the CDC and other anti-vax/mercury theorist would like us to believe either.
But mercury isn't the only toxic substance in vaccines. Regardless of whether vaccines contain mercury or not, they can still cause brain damage and hence unusual behaviours.

The pertussis component of the DTaP might be enough to cause damage, or the measles virus, or aluminium or....

Seeing as they have only just discovered that injected mercury and aluminium end up in the brain, and have yet to find out where other toxic ingredients go, no one knows what effect they might have on the developing brain - or the immature immune system. How the brain works is still largely a mystery, and the brain and the immune system are closely linked.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Empress View Post
I do believe the answer of what is causing the "autism epidemic" lies in a mish-mash of increased diagnosis and attention to the issue, genetics....
IMO, screening is responsible for the continually increasing rate of autism. And if people are looking for delays in language and socialization in infants, they will find them. If they are looking for communication and socialization problems in teens, they will find those too.

PDD is flexible. Autism isn't. And, using the DSM-IV criteria, neither is Asperger's Syndrome.

What worries me about what you call the mish-mash of increased diagnosis is that the children in the 80s and 90s who were brain-damaged by thimerosal are being forgotten. And associating Autism with past geniuses and eccentrics, such as Einstien, is making an "Autism" diagnosis far more socially acceptable, and maybe... even desirable.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Empress View Post
I do think that everyone has their own agenda, and pushing hard the "It's the vaccinations! It's mercury!" is doing a disservice
I don't think that warning people about the dangers of vaccines is doing a disservice to anyone. Parents should be fully-informed about vaccines and should find out about the diseases that they are supposed to prevent. And, IMO, they should also be looking at the side effects of prescribed medications.

I do think people should stop and think why mental health problems affect one in every five young people today. I very much doubt that the largely non-vaccinating Amish community has such a rate. Their Autism rate is close to zero.

Parents alone should decide what risks they want to take with their own children, not organizations hell-bent on eradicating infectious diseases.
 
Quote:
IMO the problem with the autism and vaccination controversy is the word "Autism". Its meaning has evolved into a certain kind of disease that must have one cause, like vaccines or genes, instead of a collection of unusual behaviours found in many people, from the severely brain-damaged person at one end of the continuum to eccentric geniuses at the other.
I could not agree more.
The more I learn about it, the more it seems to me that there has to be a cluster of totally different disorders, that just overlap symptomatically here and there, that are all getting thrown under the "autism" umbrella.
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by mamakay View Post
I could not agree more.
The more I learn about it, the more it seems to me that there has to be a cluster of totally different disorders, that just overlap symptomatically here and there, that are all getting thrown under the "autism" umbrella.
I was just mulling over this thread in my mind last night and came up with a thought along the same lines. Some people whom I have met recently through my sister, particularly those whose children have very high-functioning autism or Aspergers it seems, believe that autism is just a different way of being and that their children should not try to be "cured." I believe there is even a web site dedicated to this idea (I am pretty new to autism so if this is old hat to others here, forgive me).

The problem with this idea though, is that if your child's autism is a result of a brain injury, it is not just a different way of being. It is not just the way nature intended your child to be. This is a totally different thing. A brain injury, as opposed to just "quirkiness." But both are thrown under the same umbrella.
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by mamakay View Post
I could not agree more.
The more I learn about it, the more it seems to me that there has to be a cluster of totally different disorders, that just overlap symptomatically here and there, that are all getting thrown under the "autism" umbrella.
And this is where I am getting paranoid
. Why all of a sudden do we need to throw everything that is not quite right (it seems) under this umbrella and widen the definition almost... indefinitely? Are we trying to hide a few dead trees by planting a dead forest, so to speak?
:
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Spy View Post
And this is where I am getting paranoid
. Why all of a sudden do we need to throw everything that is not quite right (it seems) under this umbrella and widen the definition almost... indefinitely? Are we trying to hide a few dead trees by planting a dead forest, so to speak?
:


I've thought about that, but I don't think it's what's happening. I think they really just don't know what they're doing, and they're just making a mess of things. Incompetence looks sinister like that a lot of times, I've found.
 
True, but still... can't help it. Looks like a very timely and well planned mess to me...
:
Just when the incidence of those strange regressing after vaccination cases (coincidentally, of course) seems to outgrow the public ignorance - oh, look! There has been a change in diagnostic procedure! Oh, and some of the 'new autism' cases are probably genetic - see, we told you!
 
It's certainly a serendipity for some folks.
But I've poured over this from ever angle, and I really don't think there's some big mastermind behind this kind of stuff. It's just more of a chaotic mess, IMO.
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by mamakay View Post
I've thought about that, but I don't think it's what's happening. I think they really just don't know what they're doing, and they're just making a mess of things. Incompetence looks sinister like that a lot of times, I've found.
They did the same thing with schizophrenia. I look at my uncle who is as loony as they get and then I meet other people who are "schizophrenic" and I think has their doctor ever met a true schizophrenic?
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by lyttlewon View Post
They did the same thing with schizophrenia. I look at my uncle who is as loony as they get and then I meet other people who are "schizophrenic" and I think has their doctor ever met a true schizophrenic?
My own theory is that psychology and psychiatry are just littered with pseudoscience pretending to be science in some of these areas. There is neurology...which is an actual science...and psychology is trying to be a hard science, but it's just not there yet...not by a long shot...but it's still being allowed to act as though it's theories (which are often wild guesses and pure speculation) are facts, when they're not.
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by mamakay View Post
My own theory is that psychology and psychiatry are just littered with pseudoscience pretending to be science in some of these areas. There is neurology...which is an actual science...and psychology is trying to be a hard science, but it's just not there yet...not by a long shot...but it's still being allowed to act as though it's theories (which are often wild guesses and pure speculation) are facts, when they're not.



And to think of all the drugged autistic children wasting their time at the shrink's office when they should be at the immunologist's office.
 
Quote:
My own theory is that psychology and psychiatry are just littered with pseudoscience pretending to be science in some of these areas. There is neurology...which is an actual science...and psychology is trying to be a hard science, but it's just not there yet...not by a long shot...but it's still being allowed to act as though it's theories (which are often wild guesses and pure speculation) are facts, when they're not.
Ya got that right! Ya know that guy B.F. Skinner. He was a freako with that baby box thing he made.
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by MamaPossum View Post
Ya got that right! Ya know that guy B.F. Skinner. He was a freako with that baby box thing he made.
I had more than one psych prof tell the class that the daughter of B.F. Skinner, who spent the first part of her life in the baby box, was a nutjob herself. She is a psychologist also. Must be hereditary.

Only one psych prof told me that was not true, but that is probably because he worshiped the work of old B.F. Skinner.

No fair being biased.
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by MamaPossum View Post
Ya know that guy B.F. Skinner. He was a freako with that baby box thing he made.
And what's really scary is his behaviorist "theories" are routinely used on our children in public schools in this country.
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by uccomama View Post
And what's really scary is his behaviorist "theories" are routinely used on our children in public schools in this country.
Yes, I do recall the psych prof I had who liked old B.F. Skinner was an educational psychologist.
 
Skinner is all over parenting practices, and attitudes about children in general in western culture too - not just in public schools. Anything that dissects humans into a behaviorist model. It's just that the Ed Psy guys are aware of him and his work.

Every parent who uses a time-out or a "positive reinforcement" is following after the ole Skinner himself... Any form of behaviorism stems from that bastard.
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by aira View Post
Skinner is all over Every parent who uses a time-out or a "positive reinforcement" is following after the ole Skinner himself... Any form of behaviorism stems from that bastard.



Yep, you are correct. His manipulation techniques are being used in every aspect of our lives and people have no clue. I am so grateful that my son goes to a school that is on to Mr Skinner and his merry band of behaviorists and does not use any of his "techniques". Our children are human beings not dogs, rats or pigeons.
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by uccomama View Post


Yep, you are correct. His manipulation techniques are being used in every aspect of our lives and people have no clue. I am so grateful that my son goes to a school that is on to Mr Skinner and his merry band of behaviorists and does not use any of his "techniques". Our children are human beings not dogs, rats or pigeons.
Isn't he the guy that invented the environmentally controlled crib?
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by lyttlewon View Post
Isn't he the guy that invented the environmentally controlled crib?
Yes, and he put his baby daughter in it.

Someone mentioned earlier on this thread that she works in the psychology community and is still carrying on her dad's influence; she herself is alittle "tweaked" from the experience. She should make some public appearances to dispell that rumor.
 
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