Tuesday, June 12, 2007

By request, my thoughts on the autism lawsuit…

A certain Maggie sent forth a request for this bitch’s thoughts on the lawsuit seeking damages from the government for autism cases allegedly caused by vaccinations.

As most of you know this bitch’s older brother is autistic.

Cough…consider…commence.

A bitch must confess to being unimpressed with the research done to clarify this issue. Researchers tended to view autism as a homogenous disease rather than a spectrum disorder and dismissed connections out of hand because they couldn’t be uniformly applied to an absolute. This bitch has long suspected that the notion that some forms of autism might be triggered by vaccination in some chil’ren was not explored thoroughly because that shit threatens parental support of childhood vaccinations.

Whoa…hold it!

Catch that knee…catch it!

I am not saying that there is a connection between vaccinations and autism.

What I am saying is that my ass hasn’t been convinced one way or the other.

Mercy!

Anyhoo, the lawsuit will not solve anything scientifically or prove anything other than the fact that family members of some autistics are frustrated with the medical community’s unwillingness to listen to them. Too often concerned families run into the brick wall of ignore and redirect.

As a co-guardian to an autistic adult I sure as shit can testify to that ongoing frustration (wink).
Autism is not one solid block of blue or red and it may have as many triggers as the spectrum has colors. Medical research should partner with family members rather than seek to shut them up.

We’re not the enemy…yet (wink).

We are the caregivers who face a lifetime with autism…a lifetime of taking care of those children who are blessed to grow into autistic adults with adult challenges and needs.

Some of us want to know how this happened.

We want to know why.

So, there is comfort in a theory…any theory…when faced with a lifetime of "I don’t know" and "we’ll have to wait and see".

But I also find potential in the unpopular theory.

The world was once flat and to think it round was once insanity...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Autism/mercury interaction is one topic that really gets my goat. You are right - the medical community does just seem to want to stifle any discussion of the matter. I read an article about a test in mice, that clearly showed an autism-like effect of ethylmercury on mice that are genetically predisposed to autoimmune conditions. And the scientific community responded with "none of our other research displayed that, so it can't be true, so there's no sense spending any money to research that further." But they made no direct references to any specific study that tested this and DISPROVED it. What they said about not having anything to confirm it might be true, but lack of evidence is NOT, and never has been, evidence of lack. I'm with you - I don't know whether it's true or not. It just pisses me off that science - SCIENCE! - is not even interested in the answer. And that seems so unlike science to me. To say "we don't know what the answer is, but we don't think it's that, so we shouldn't bother checking into that." Grrr!

christine mtm said...

we aren't sure if my 5 yr old autistic son was exposed to mercury or not. but 2 years ago he had lead poisoning. the same treatment for lead is used for mercury... chelation. once the silent prince began chelation he improved and started learning better. so i would agree that heavy metals might indeed have something to do with autism.

and no, the autism wasn't caused by the lead. unfortunately autistic children are more prone to lead poisoning because they are so habitual. my son puts everything in his mouth and lead paint tastes sweet.

i would very much like to know why, why something like this happened to my family and why it is happening to so many others.

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