Marching Over Vaccines And Autism
A New Battle Cry For Those Arguing There's A Link
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Celebrities March For Autism
Celebrities work to raise awareness of a possible link between the CDC's recommended vaccination schedule and autism. But many doctors warn parents against ignoring vaccinations. Jon LaPook reports.
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Stars March For Autism
Parents like actress Jenny McCarthy protested the current vaccination policy in a Washington, D.C. march. Vaccines and their preservatives are a disputed cause of autism. Thalia Assuras reports.
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Protesters marched on Washington to challenge the medical establishment, which says there's no evidence vaccines cause autism. (CBS)
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Find out more about autism, and where to get help for someone who may have this neurological disorder.
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"We want to send the message to the CDC and our federal government that vaccinations schedules are not one size fits all for all children and that each child is different," said concerned parent Michael Williamson.
Their new battle cry: Spread out the vaccine schedule.
"Thirty-six vaccines in the first few years of the life are too many too soon," Carrey said.
By the time a child is two years old, the CDC recommends 14 different vaccines in as many as 28 doses. That may sound like a lot - but these shots have helped to wipe out diseases like smallpox, polio and measles, saving an estimated 33,000 lives a year, according to the CDC.
Even so, some are asking: Why give so many vaccines over a relatively short period of time? Dr. Paul Offit helped invent one of those vaccines.
"There is no advantage to spacing out, delaying or withholding vaccines," Offit said. "The only thing that will come of that kind of behavior will be allowing for a period of time to occur when children are at risk of vaccine preventable diseases."
The activists are also worried about the preservatives used to keep vaccines sterile.
Safety concerns about a mercury-based preservative called Thimerosol led to its removal from most childhood vaccines almost a decade ago. But since then autism rates have gone up, not down. Still, parents are asking lots of questions.
"I would say that as a pediatrician I spend about 50 percent of my day talking about vaccines," said Pediatric Dr. Bruce Brovender.
He insists his patients be vaccinated, but he's willing to compromise with parents - up to a point.
Brovender warns them about the risks if they don't follow the schedule recommended by the CDC and American Academy of Pediatrics.
"They are 100 percent warned that by delaying or spacing them out they are not going to get the protection they need," Brovender said. "It's better to follow the academy's schedule, but it's better to get something than nothing."
He says the marchers have forgotten the consequences of failing to vaccinate properly.
"The child who didn't get the whooping cough vaccine and is now on a respirator and now may have permanent brain and lung damage," he said.
For more information from both the medical and activist communities on this issue, you can check out:
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See all 69 CommentsIf you and your children are all vaccine injured have you considered the possiblity your genes might be the source of the problem?
Rabies vaccine contains preservatives, so would you pass on the vaccine?
By the way, examples of autism go back centuries, way before vaccines.
Also, bear in mind that thimerasol is a preservative, which made multiple doses per vial possible, thereby decreasing the cost of the vaccines. Removing the preservative forced single dosages, which increased the cost.
So, as much as you may be concerned about vaccines and the possible effects it had on you or your kids, know that in the big picture, many more of you would be dead or seriously ill if none of the diseases I listed above couldn''t be prevented by vaccines. Don''t believe me, just read up on smallpox, the 1918 influenza epidemic and that kids who get measles can actually die.
Posted by my2centss at 09:42 PM : Jun 04, 2008
Okay, I''m calling you on this. Please provide me some evidence that medicine defined autism in 1931.
Also, how do you know this particular kid was vaccinated and with a vaccine containing thimerosal?
Posted by brucesmall at 10:19 PM : Jun 04, 2008
I''d like to offer some hope to the anti-vaccination crowd. There is a SINGLE report of an individual surviving rabies.
Posted by my2centss at 09:42 PM : Jun 04, 2008
Okay, I''''m calling you on this. Please provide me some evidence that medicine defined autism in 1931.
Posted by rational_1 at 10:22 PM : Jun 04, 2008
I just looked this up. Autism was added to the American Psychiatric Association''s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in 1980, fifty years after you say the first case was diagnosed. So for fifty years kids could be diagnosed with autism and no one bother to put it into DSM?
These children do not need a Hepatitis shot and whatever else they had added to it, our sanitation is far enough advanced except for those I listed are not necessary.
The only way to stop this cra* is to STOP voting the same good ole boys back in office. AND I am not talking about just the Presidency, I mean Congress, as in the House of Representative and the Senators. Did you see where Senator Byrd was just admitted to the hospital, HE IS 90 Years old. That is ridiculous.
How many people do you know that a fully cognizant at 90 years old?
I am not a rebel rouser but this is so totally ridiculous to keep putting the same people and same type back in office over and over again.
Posted by rational_1 at 10:33 PM : Jun 04, 2008
+ report
The term Autism has been around since 1911. Thimerosal studies, some done by parent company Ely Lilly, who own the patent, pointing to the dangers of it''s use, date back to the 1930''s.....in fact, the army, during WW II, labeled thimerosal as "poison."
This info can be read on line from your point and click office at your major research university.
Merck faked the safety and efficacy studies of Vyotrin. With the billions of dollars at stake, do you really think they haven''t done the same thing with vaccines?
This info can be read on line from your point and click office at your major research university.
Posted by lucasnico at 11:29 PM : Jun 04, 2008
DSM-II was published in 1968. You can get the PDF of the entire manual at the following web site.
http://www.psychiatryonline.com/DSMPDF/dsm-ii.pdf
The word autism never appears. 182 disorders are named but autism is not one of them. If it was defined in 1911 as you say why is it not in the 1968 handbook of mental disorders? Is there a more definitive source than DSM?
So, where exactly was autism described in 1911?
Hey, I don''t particularly care when it was defined, but you guys are throwing dates and ''facts'' around at will and never referencing anything. I just called him on his 1931 date and now you come up with 1911, and yet no one ever provides any evidence.
Leo Kanner (prnc. Conner) (June 13, 1894 %u2013 April 3, 1981) was an Austrian-American psychiatrist and physician known for his work related to autism.[1][2]
Kanner was born in Klekotow, Austria. He studied at the University of Berlin from 1913, his studies broken by service with the Austrian Army in World War I, finally receiving his M.D. in 1921. He emigrated to the United States in 1924 to take a position as an Assistant Physician at the State Hospital in Yankton County, South Dakota. In 1930 he was selected to develop the first child psychiatry service in a pediatric hospital at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore. He became Associate Professor of Psychiatry in 1933.
He was the first physician in the United States to be identified as a child psychiatrist and his first textbook, Child Psychiatry in 1935, was the first English language textbook to focus on the psychiatric problems of children. His seminal 1943 paper, "Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact", together with the work of Hans Asperger, forms the basis of the modern study of autism.
Essentially we are inheriting a ten year old British health scare/scam based off of discredited research.
Incidentally, the reason that babies are given the hep B vaccination first is because it hep B often causes liver failure in children with a relatively high fatality rate, and because it takes three shots to get a decent immune response. You might also want to know that the immune system (even those of babies) reacts to each bug independently--pretty much as if any others weren''t there at all--so the question of one vaccination at a time or multiple per shot is pretty much a question of how many times you want your kid to get jabbed in the arm. The reason why they start early is because the immune protection from the mother lasts for about six months, then the kid is on their own immunologically speaking.
Posted by lucasnico at 12:55 AM : Jun 05, 2008
I am sorry but I am going to have to ask you to put your dunce cap back on - you clearly haven''t even read or understood the source of your information. Blueler came up with the word ''autism'' but it was not in any way in reference to the condition we all think of as autism today. You just read his use of a word and thought it meant exactly what you thought it meant. Blueler was instead referring to schizophrenics exhibiting a catatonic state, not autism as we think of it today. See
http://www.autism-resources.com/autismfaq-hist.html
The real condition of autism was first described by Leo Keller in a paper published in 1943 titled Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact. He and Hans Asperger were the true pioneers in this field.
Leo Kanner (prnc. Conner) (June 13, 1894 %u2013 April 3, 1981) was an Austrian-American psychiatrist and physician known for his work related to autism.[1][2]
Posted by lucasnico at 01:00 AM : Jun 05, 2008
Oh good, so you did come up with Kenner on your own. So this very nicely explains why autism didn''t make it into DSM until 1968 as I said. DSM-I was published in 1952 and at that time the work of Kenner and Asperger probably wasn''t widely accepted; you don''t just come up with something and get immediate acceptance in the entire medical field, especially to the point of inclusion in DSM. By the time DSM-II was published in 1968, the work of Kenner and Asperger was clearly widely accepted and therefore published in DSM-II.
Posted by rational_1 at 08:44 AM : Jun 05, 2008
This is what happens when you type responses on to little sleep. I was thinking of DSM III above (not II which did not define autism). DSM-III published in 1980 was the first DSM to define autism. So, even in 1968 the work of Kenner and Asperger done in the mid 40''s hadn''t reached the point of widespread acceptance to make it into DSM. It took until 1980.
Posted by lambofgoth at 07:11 AM : Jun 05, 2008
Right. And like a lot of other psychiatric illnesses (eg. depression, alcoholism) it comes down to a combination of genes and environment. For example the prevalence of schizophrenia in the general population is about 1%, so the odds of any of us getting it at random are pretty low. However, if your identical twin becomes schizophrenic your odds are now 50%; if it''s a fraternal twin the odds are about a third of that - clearly a genetic component. But it''s not 100% even in identical twins, so clearly environment must also be playing a role. The big BIG question then become exactly in the environment and how good is your evidence demonstrating causality. I think the genetic influnce is actually even higher in autism than SZ.
Posted by rational_1 at 09:08 AM : Jun 05, 2008
+ report abuse
offering opinion as fact puts you on dangerous ground mr. spiccoli.
offering opinion as fact?
Dr. Jon LaPook decries the parents marching to demand that Congress clean up the vaccine schedule. We''re told "marchers have forgotten the consequences of failing to vaccinate properly." It should be pointed out that the parents who came to Washington are the ones who did vaccinate. Countless thousands of them also report that their normally progressing kids regressed into autism following these vaccines.
Katie Couric seems to have forgotten the recent story from CBS News about vaccines and autism. Sharyl Attkisson interviewed Dr. Bernadine Healy, former head of the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Healy challenged the credibility of the CDC and admonished officials for refusing to investigate a susceptible subgroup of children who unable to eliminate the toxins in vaccines. Her interview is a major step toward public recognition about what''s happened to our children.
Anne McElroy Dachel
Chippewa Falls, WI
Media Editor AGE OF AUTISM
Posted by rational_1 at 09:08 AM : Jun 05, 2008
+ report abuse
offering opinion as fact puts you on dangerous ground mr. spiccoli.
offering opinion as fact?
Posted by lucasnico at 09:32 AM : Jun 05, 2008
I''ll let the abstract of this recent review answer your question for me. I took a quick look through it; it says that there is a 70-90% concordance for autism between identical twins (higher than for schizophrenia). Happy?
Advances in autism genetics: on the threshold of a new neurobiology.
Abrahams BS, Geschwind DH.
Nature Reviews Genetics 9:341-355 (2008).
Autism is a heterogeneous syndrome defined by impairments in three core domains: social interaction, language and range of interests. Recent work has led to the identification of several autism susceptibility genes and an increased appreciation of the contribution of de novo and inherited copy number variation. Promising strategies are also being applied to identify common genetic risk variants. Systems biology approaches, including array-based expression profiling, are poised to provide additional insights into this group of disorders, in which heterogeneity, both genetic and phenotypic, is emerging as a dominant theme.
Kenneth Stoller, MD
President, International Hyperbaric Medical Association
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHxqTyAxZZE
I am appalled that CBS did what clearly seems to be a one-sided story. It''s too bad that a topic that could be helped greatly by more non-biased media coverage always seems instead to get pushed aside or reported as pro-Big Pharma.
In the end we all want our children to be healthy...I don''t think asking for safer vaccines across the board is asking too much.
Kenneth Stoller, MD
President, International Hyperbaric Medical Association"
THANK YOU DOCTOR!!! It irritates me beyond belief that people do not SEE this!! NO SHOTS WERE EVER RECALLED..therefore current stock were used up before ever receiving newer vaccines...hence the argument that mercury was taken out but autism continues to rise is null...children still received these unsafe vaccines, besides the yearly flu shots which are still loaded with toxins.
PEOPLE..CHECK THE INGREDIENTS on the labels before being injected!!
It mentioned the purpose of the walk but interviewed drs., etc. who all agreed that autism was not related to the immunizations or the importance of immuniza-tions. Why did they not interview professionals
that can prove otherwise? Wake up! Our government & pharmaceutical companies do not want us to know the truth. They just tell us what they want us to believe or to know. They are afraid to admit the truth because they would be responsible and liable for all of the children affected with autism. It all gets down to dollars & cents and who is benefitting. It is time to think about the children they are putting at risk and at whose expense are they lining their pockets. Our children are our future. Don''t you think they should be our number one concern. Not the profits others are making from their negligence to be honest & forthcoming. As Jim Carrey said yesterday, "How stupid do you think we are?"
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/downloads/appendices/B/excipient-table-1.pdf
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/downloads/appendices/B/excipient-table-2.pdf
Rachel Ford, Ed.S.
Rachel Ford, Ed.S.
I agree Garbosmed...
I had thought about this when obviously seeing the whole report was one sided. With the ridiculous amount of drug ads running on any tv station, it''s obvious they are paid to run these ads therefore are going to sway opinions in their favor.
Sorry, but it happens everyday and is a complete OUTRAGE.
So much for unbiased journalism..it''s pretty hard to find in the regular mainstream media.
Shame on you CBS!!!
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