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In reply to the discussion: I've Got Whooping Cough. Thanks a Lot, Jenny McCarthy. [View all]Lydia Leftcoast
(48,217 posts)I'm told that when I was four years old, I attended a birthday party where one of the children was diagnosed with polio a couple of days later. The vaccine was still in the testing stage and not generally available, so the only advice the pediatrician could give was that I should get plenty of sleep and extra vitamins. I was lucky; I didn't get it, but the boy who did get it ended up using crutches for the rest of his life.
One day when I was in college, I saw a fellow student with withered, limp legs using crutches, an obvious polio survivor. That's when it occurred to me that everyone I saw who showed after-effects of polio was my age or older.
I had measles when I was nine. Despite its "funny" name, it was beyond all doubt the worst illness of my entire childhood, burning up with fever and constantly thirsty. As I recovered a bit, the worst part for me was that measles can damage the eyes, so I had to lie in a darkened room with nothing to do but listen to the radio. No reading (I loved to read) and no TV (we had only one, and it was downstairs).
Two years later, when I was eleven, the sister of one of my classmates died from measles encephalitis, one of the possible complications.
Yesterday, I was talking with a retired pediatrician I know from the gym, and she was ranting against the anti-vaccine types, because she remembers when all those diseases--measles, whooping cough, mumps, polio, and even diphtheria killed children or left them with permanent disabilities.
We don't know what causes autism. The kind of epidemiological studies that could find the cause have never been done, as far as I know, because they would recover looking at EVERY factor in the child's genetic heritage, prenatal environment, and early life. It could be due to plastic baby bottles, for heaven's sake (just to name one thing that has changed during my lifetime--all baby bottles used to be glass). I'm not saying that "plastic baby bottles" are a cause of autism, but it makes as much sense as saying that vaccines are the cause.
It's worth noting that Japan, which has NEVER used thimerol in its vaccines, is seeing an increase in autism as well, and that in Minneapolis, incidence is unusually high among Somali immigrants. These two facts suggest that Jenny McCarthy and the ninnies who hang on her every word are wrong and that the causes are complex and still unknown.
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