John McCain Enters the Autism Wars

I would like to know when McCain received a medical degree and from where? Just what medical research does this old man base his “there’s strong evidence” statement on?
You are right Jake about thimerosal no longer being used. And yet, diagnoses of autistic spectrum diseases are still increasing among children. If this “politician” scares parents enough to keep them from immunizing children, I fear for the consequences of those kids having to deal with devastating illnesses like measles.
I am a nurse and someone needs to set the man straight about practicing medicine without a license!!

Many parents with autistic kids feel just the opposite, I guess it is just their imagination ageofautism.com.

Kate,
You are wrong, thimerosal is still being used in the flu vaccine which is recommened for children 6mo.-18yrs of age and for pregnant women as well. Also, it is not just the thimerosal, but it the gigantic increase in required vaccinations over the years. Our children’s immune system cannot handle this! Every organization that does feel vaccinations contribute to autism does NOT tell you not to vaccinete your child, however, they tell you to do it at a slower pace, separtate the vaccines instead of giving four at a time, do not get the flu vaccine that still contains mercury and so on. If you had a child that was affected by vaccines you would be right on board, trust me!!! John McCain is being responsible. It is about time someone stood up to the CDC, the AAP, the drug companies for not only poisoning our children, but also covering it up.

kate,tx, when you go in to work on Monday, look at the package inserts for your flu shots. They’ll tell you all you need to know about the thimerosal in those vials.

Nobody wants to see the diseases of the past but the US has become the US of Autism, ADHD, Asthma and Allergies. With the increasing rate of autism in 1990 came the increasing no. of vaccines mandated by the CDC and AAP(their cash cow).
Thimerosal is still being used in the manufacturing process of vaccines. There is no govt FDA/CDC whomever oversight as to how much mercury is left in these vaccines. The mercury ban in CA went into effect December 2006. In 2002 pregnant women and children 6 months to 5 years of age were recommended to have flu shots. To this day roughly 85% of US flu shot supply contains thimerisol. i.e. the mercury has not been removed.
Vaccines should be safe and effective. Today’s vaccine schedule calls for 30 some doses of vaccine before a child enters Kindergarten. Adverse effects are ignored becuase the CDC promotes universal immunization -NOT Safety.
The only way to settle this austism debate is a vaccinated and never-vaccinated study which the CDC won’t do. I wonder why.

You are both wrong about thimerosal not being used in vaccines. The current “preservative” level mercury in multi-dose flu, meningococcal and tetanus vaccines is 50,000 parts per billion, a level of mercury 250 times higher than what the EPA classifies as hazardous waste. This can be confirmed by simply analyzing the multi-dose vaccine vials. Autism rates are still going up due to earlier intervention and change in diagnostic criteria. What does McCain know about thimerosal? He has helped Gulf War veterans recover from the same injuries caused by these vaccines as children.

RJ, the govt. recently conceded causation in a vaccine/autism case. I posted the info below.
Frist actually tried to pass legislation protecting the pharmaceutical companies from Thimerosal lawsuits in the Homeland Security Bill years ago.

RJ, Autism rates have increased because more kids have autism. One way to tell for certain is the profound increase in public school district budgets for special education and services for all of these kids. Schools are strapped for cash and don’t want to pay a dime more than they absolutely have to; the fact that the percentages in spending have increased so markedly for special needs, special foods, special aides, etc. indicates that there’s been a huge increase in children who actually need help. Schools won’t “pay” based on a diagnosis, they “pay” based on the actual educational needs of the child. So regardless of broadened diagnostic criteria, there’s a tidal wave of autistic kids that need help. Don’t you think it would be in our society’s best interest to investigate the underlying cause of this profound increase in special needs children?

Garbo,
It is true that there are more kids with autism today than 10 years ago. This is due to broadened description criteria.
And, this is NOT a bad thing. 10 years ago, there were more kids with autism who were not diagnosed with it, which meant they couldn’t get the help they needed. Broadening the criteria has allowed us to get help to more children – this is a GOOD thing.
People are investigating the underlying cause of autism. Catmacdee, I feel your pain, but I think we should leave it up to trained researchers to make the decisions about autism, not politicians. There is not a single gene for autism, just as there is not a single gene for almost all neural diseases out there. The lack of a single gene link or autism in a family tree does not eliminate the possibility of many multiple genes acting together to express autism newly in a family.

A nurse is no more a doctor then Sen. John McCain.

RJ, I get what you are saying, but if there were just as many autistic children 10 or 20 years ago as there are today, where are they now? Where are all these severely autistic teenagers and young adults? The kids we are talking about have severe medical issues, not just behavioral or psychological ones. Did we suddenly broaden the criteria for diagnosing asthma and life-threatening food allergies too? Or for severe gastrointestinal disease? Because they’ve all increased and many of our kids have them.

Senator McCain:
Autism is a horrible condition. My heart aches for those children and their parents.
However the constant unproven accusations and blame on vaccines will ultimately cause immunization rates to fall, disease epidemic to rise and lives will be lost or destroyed.
Time and time again research shows there is no link between vaccine and autism. Just this month ABC news aired a study that Suggests Autism Causes Are Genetic.
Sir, I mean this with no disrespect but you are old enough to remember those days before vaccine. One simply has to walk around and old cemetery to understand the value of vaccines. For me I just have to open my eyes everyday and face another day without my precious son.
In 1998 I lost my only child, Ryan, to meningococcal meningitis. My perfectly healthy son went from just that to blood coming from every orifice of his body in 14 hours and he died. All of this was vaccine preventable.
The last words Ryan heard were “Daddy loves you baby boy.” The last words he said were,”I know.”
With him went the words we would never hear again like mom and dad, the honor to be parents at his wedding, the joy of holding a grand child or having his comfort in our old age.
The public needs to know/see what happens when kids aren’t vaccinated, do not have access to vaccines or the worst, parents chose not to vaccinate. I believe if children were given the opportunity between loss of life or a sever disability caused by a vaccine preventable disease, they would choose vaccine.
Since Ryan’s death, I have dedicated my life to educating kids, teens, parents and the general public on communicable diseases and the prevention which includes vaccine.
Each day new families across this country, like me lose their children.
Many have children that are so severely debilitated that they require care 24 hours a day 7 days a week. They suffer from a wide variety of disabilities including brain damage, kidney failure along with other organ damage, blindness, deafness, migraine headaches, digestive, muscular and neurological disorders.
Many suffer severe anemia, learning disabilities, limb amputations, paralysis, seizure disorders so sever they have brain surgery to remove pieces of their little brains, mental illness and yes even autism.
Many families end in financial ruin because of the never ending medical bills, become social outcast and many end in family breakup. A few even suicide.
There are also parents who have lost children to pertussis, cervical cancer, chicken pox, influenza and more.
WE CAN PROVE that a vaccine preventable disease did this to our children, to our family, to our lives.
Vaccines are the greatest discovery of the last century. The lives saved are immeasurable.
It is time to STOP laying unproven blame on vaccines.
Mom to a child that shoul not have died.

Anyone who claims thimerosal (mercury) has been removed from vaccines is just plain wrong and totally uninformed on the issue. Here is the web page that lists the current vaccines that do and do not contain thimerosal.
Even the vaccines listed as only containing trace amounts of mercury still contain 0.3mcg of mercury, which is a lot of mercury.

John McCain has now cemented my vote for him. Thank you Mr McCain, the vaccine damage is out of control…36 vacs before 5 yrs of age is INSANE !!!
Most of the comments here pro vacs are from Doctors and their wives who are slaves to the Pharma companies. They wouldn’t trade their free vacations to save children. Sad but 100% true.

To Frankie-
I am deeply sorry for the loss of your child. Your comment here-”Many families end in financial ruin because of the never ending medical bills, become social outcast and many end in family breakup. A few even suicide. ”
This is the world of autism and the families that live there. We experience all of these too. The numbers are increasing as well. It is time to question vaccines and preservatives that can harm. Vaccines have been a powerful tool to keep illness away but we cannot close our eyes to pollution out of smokestacks, mercury in fish, or vaccines that cause immune,gastrointestinal,and neurological disorders as we are afraid what we may find. To blindly stay on that path will destroy more lives and the entire vaccination program.
Teresa
Chicago

Hey pathdoc, apparently the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program does not agree with you.
Since you can’t tell us what does cause autism how can you be so sure?

For some this is just a debate, something to argue for or aginst. For others, such as my son and I, this is real life. My son has autism (and no, it doesn’t run in my family). I used to scoff at biomedical approaches to autism. I thought they were desperate people who were in denial. I come from a family full of mathmaticians and scientists, and logic still reigns supreme in my house. The facts are evident to any who actually live with autism and don’t just chit chat about it on the web:
There is no such thing as a genetic epidemic
The diagnostic criteria has not expanded (giving way to the increased number of autistic children). There is simply more autistic children to be diagnosed.
Most autistic children share the same physical illnesses. Dysbiosis of the gut, yeast and bacterial infecions, viral infections, heavy metal toxicity, and mitochondrial disorders.
Get educated. And, unless you have autism, love or care for someone with autism, or are willing to help find the solution to autism….keep your uninformed opinions to yourself.

For sake of argument, lets say it is in a vaccine – but if there was only *some* vaccines with *some* mercury in my day – then why is it that my aspergers no different than any other child with aspergers born 20 years after me?
Wouldn’t more mercury exposure in vaccines lead to more severe cases of autism? Growing up I had mercury batteries, mercury thermometers in my mouth, and mercury in electronics. All in far greater concentrations than in vaccines.
The diagnostic criteria *has* increased – only because Autism was considered a form of mental retardation for several decades. You had to have had it *bad* in a Forrest Gump sort of way. Aspergers didn’t even enter the diagnostic lexicon until 1993, and by then, I was already 20 years old!
I have no problem with the idea that mercury, among *many* other pollutants, could be the cause of *genetic mutation* leading to more autism cases -but stuff from landfills and in our water supply is far more dangerous than what may or may not be in a vaccine delivery vial.
Look at some news reports recently of little kids having plastic compounds in their bodies. And we have *no* idea what effect that may have.

Exactly. Nobody knows what causes it. So let’s start with what we do know. One, mercury is highly neurotoxic. Two, it’s in vaccines, and dental amalgam, and fish, and the air we breathe, and on and on. Three, scientists have connected environmental mercury levels in Houston with increases in autism levels. Four, why is there even discussion of mercury in vaccines? We shouldn’t even be having a discussion about getting mercury out of vaccines and dental amalgams. It should be gone. There is no reason for it to be there, and every reason for it not to be.

You are so right, rebelmom. My son was diagnosed at age 3; if I had listened to all the people who told me to just accept it I shudder to think where we’d be now. After almost 4 years of biomed he’s nearly whole. He tested high for mercury, lead, and a host of other nasties. He had zero good bacteria in his gut thanks to antibiotics for an ear infection, and loads of measles virus. Post-chelation he’s at the top of his class and nobody at his school is even aware he was ever diagnosed. All us parents want is for everyone else to know how to prevent this from happening in the first place, and if it does how it might be fixed. Some of the research I’ve read has suggested that Asperger’s people do not have the same high levels of heavy metals as other spectrum kids, so there may be a different underlying pathology.

“I appreciate you have probably had some struggles in your life….is it so wrong that we want to stop this from happening to other kids?”
Because the health risks to other adults and children are so high if we *don’t* vaccinate. Look at what’s going on in Switzerland. People didn’t vaccinate their kids – they’ve had over 1400 cases of measels in the last year. A child went there on vacation earlier in Feburary, and when they returned, infected other kids in San Diego, and one of THOSE kids went to Hawaii and now there are cases there.
What if your refusal to vaccinate, leads to the death of 10 kids in your child’s class? What if it leads to an epidemic in your town, with hundreds of people ill?
If there are other preservatives that work, then funding given to autism research should have an earmark to develop the new materials, and then *hand* it to the drug companies for free. Then all they need to do is mix it, OR a company can be found that will produce the vaccine with a safer mix, and we’ll all buy from them.
But that *still* won’t remove all the other junk in the environment, nor will it cure the cases that are most definitely genetic. I believe ABC news had a story about a family with 6 autistic kids within the last few weeks.

RJ,
What care are you speaking of when referring to adults or children with autism? Just try getting services that are recommended for chidren with autism (ABA therapy). If you can afford it it will run hundreds to thousands of dollars a week. If not, you can wait for the state or school district to hlp and believe me, that’s a fight I don’t wish upon anyone else. Are you seriously tryig to say to moms like Garbo and myself that our childrens autism is neccessary result of cost-effectiveness?!? Sell that one to someone else. You are not listening. We are not anti-vaccine!!!!!!! We are for clean vaccines. Tell you what, I’ll happily pay for the increase in health care costs if it means no more children are exposed to toxins through their friendly doctor at well baby check ups.
Congrats on your child’s progress Garbo…my son is making gains through chelation as well.
Here’s a thought: If the flu shot caused erectile dysfunction and baldness in 1 out of 150 men and they even suspected it was due to preservatives…..it would be cleaned up FAST!!!

Oh, and for McCain….being that he is what started the discussion.
I don’t think this would be close to affecting his chances in the election at all. I mean, if he came out and said that he didn’t believe in evolution, or that we were all children of Xenu and that we need to prepare for the battle of Thetans – then *maybe* people might think twice about letting him near the Red Button.
His heart is in the right place, even if what he is saying hasn’t been proven by science. But being that his wife has run medical missions to Southeast Asia, I’d love to know what she thinks of his comment.

Unshrub~
Your comment is presumptuous and it shows. Allow the truth from a politically active, autism mom to shed some light and open your mind (and hopefully your heart). First, President Bush did quite the opposite of what Senator McCain has and is. President Bush pandered and gave plenty of lip-service to the autism community. He made us promises, was elected and left us high and dry. President Bush also NEVER had the courage to take on this particular issue pertaining to the autism crisis; although, he promised us he would. Second, Senator McCain has an entire health staff working on this issue within his U.S. Senate offices. He and his staff are looking at, in scrupulous detail, ALL of the science and research, from ALL sides, not just from the financially tied and/or vested interested party’s side. He’s earnestly listening to the concerns of hundreds of thousands of parents. He has taken it upon himself to actually be fair, all the while knowing he will become a target of enormous, corporate powers and many, many members of Congress. Senator McCain is well aware of the controversy, as well as, the upheaval which will follow by taking on our plea. He is, nonetheless, an honorable man who is choosing to find the truth rather than cave to industry, special interests, and corruption. Lastly, he also chose to put a full-time health staffer in his campaign on this subject due to the numerous requests of parents and loved ones of those with autism from all across the nation. YOU ARE GRAVELY MISTAKEN. HE IS VERY WELL INFORMED AND EDUCATED ON THIS ISSUE! Senator McCain has chosen to give us a voice and a chance!! Take it from a mom, an advocate and a political activist who has had her feet pounding the pavement from ground zero, all Senator McCain is guilty of is listening to us and taking our concerns seriously. I applaud and commend you, Senator McCain, for having the courage to proceed where few others have. Sincerely, THANK YOU!!!

Many children are born with high levels of mercury that are passed from mom and dad from their mercury amalgam “silver” fillings. Boyd Haley and other doctors have researched this as a causative factor in autism and also in ad. The vaccinations are what push them over the edge.
Do I believe in vaccinations? Absolutley NOT. What protects us from disease is our immune systems. How can tearing down our immunity with toxic chemicals and a heavy metal make it stronger? Our immune systems can be built up through a proper diet. Unfortunatly the FDA does not look out for us it looks out for the drug companies.
For the person who thinks thimerasol is so wonderful and is needed in vaccinations, maybe you are mercury poisoned and your judgement is off.

Awww, that’s cute. ABC News thinks there’s no thimerasol in vaccines.

the necessity for thimerosal is because of MULTI-DOSE vaccine vials. You DO NOT need any mercury if each dose of vaccine is packaged separately. So insist your doctor use individually packaged vaccines and you do not have to worry about thimerosal!
Unfortunately I do not believe this will take away all vaccine -related autism cases, because how and when vaccines are delivered is a critical key that the govt/cdc/aap/etc does not even address. In fact the thimerasol issue has made it easy to hide that giving newborns/infants monthly assaults on their STILL DEVELOPING neurological systems has far more implications for autism and other neurological disorders than the mercury itself.
We even “swallow” their arguments about how little thimerasol there is in “A” vaccine. When is the last time your newborn/infant went for a “well-visit” and ONLY got “A” (as in 1) vaccine. Our babies get multiple vaccines each time…the case recently reported said the child had received 9 vaccines in one visit.
We need to stop allowing the govt to randomly assault our babies with whatever they discover. Why do babies need to be vaccinated for sexually transmitted diseases? Why can’t this wait until the child is older….because the medical community thinks parents are too irresponsible to bring their children to the doctor….they want to bombard the babies, early, so they know it is done. This is an insult to parents.
As someone who grew up when we only had polio, smallpox and dpt shots…..everyone had measles, mumps, chicken-pox and german measles….no one in my NYC public school died from any of those illnesses and everyone had to take their turn being out for the 10-14 days it took to recuperate …..maybe that is what the govt is trying to control….sick days! :-p
It is time to make the govt rethink when babies need to be vaccinated and to limit how many are given at a time…that would lower any thimerasol exposure from multi-dose vials too….

Hello Elyse, when you’re commenting on a blog, it’s good manners to at least take a glance at the comments that are already there, in case your point has already been made or addressed. See my post immediately preceding yours, which negates your concerns about multiple doses of thimerosal in one day.

Dan, the first principle of toxicology is usually stated for brevity as “the dose makes the poison.”
Everything is “poison” in the right (wrong?) quantity. People have died from drinking too much water. The fact that mercury can be toxic doesn’t mean that enough is present in thimerosal to make an effect on health.
In fact, in one of the few known cases of ethylmercury overdose (ethylmercury is the form in thimerosal), someone attempted to commit suicide by drinking a large quantity of straight thimerosal. His blood reached an astronomical mercury concentration – and he survived with no lingering neurological deficits (other than whatever made him crazy enough to attempt suicide via thimerosal in the first place!).

One more thing. Some of the comments below reference anti-vaccine organizations’ claims that the government has conceded in a court case that a vaccine caused autism in the plaintiff.
Not. The finding was that the plaintiff had experienced an aggravation in her encephalopathy accompanying a mitochondrial disorder. Some of the symptoms of mitochondrial disorders mimic autism, but they are not autism. There are many things that could have been the cause of the worsening of the encephalopathy, but since vaccines were one plausible cause, compensation was judged appropriate under the lenient guidelines of the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. In no way was it shown that “vaccines cause autism.”

Vaccines do NOT cause autism.
There is a scientific consensus that vaccines do not cause autism, and there is no scientific controversy surrounding vaccines and autism.
This scientific consensus is backed by a very large body of legitimate scientific research — nearly 30 studies on thimerosal as well as the MMR vaccine, which never contained thimerosal — that found no correlation (which is not even close to causality) between vaccines and autism.
The divisions and debates have nothing to do with science, they are purely political.
The likely reason why so many folks showed up here to post anti-vaccination screeds is because this story is linked in blog posts on anti-vaccination activist group web sites.
Whenever there is a news story that contains the search terms “vaccines” and “autism,” anti-vaccination activists are urged to post multiple comments in order to make it appear that there are more anti-vaccination people than there actually are.
Anti-vaccination activism is a one-percenter issue, so Mr. McCain’s remarks will likely carry very little weight one way or the other with voters.
However, isles, in the comment posted Mar 1, 2008 9:31:04 AM, made an excellent observation that should be taken into serious consideration with regard to the wider range of issues:
“I am disappointed to realize McCain lacks the sophistication to either (a) analyze a scientific question according to what science has actually found or (b) know when to consult an expert instead of relying on what some yahoo tells him. It shows a troubling lack of judgment.”
Indeed, a most troubling lack of judgment. Now, I do not expect a presidential candidate to have a scientific background, but what sort of scientific advisors does Mr. McCain employ?
Once again, vaccines do NOT cause autism.

In 1999, it was recommended that mercury be removed from vaccines. We’re almost ten years later now, and it’s still there. There has been more than enough time to figure out alternative formulations. Until the government mandates it, or growing numbers of vaccine refusals force it, the mercury will continue to be there. It’s sad that we are still fighting the same fight. For those who doubt the link between vaccines and autism, do some more research. Look at the Burbacher et al study that suggests ethyl mercury (thimerosal) may be even more neurotoxic than methyl mercury at smaller doses, because it crosses the blood-brain barrier and lodges in the brain. Children who get annual flu shots based on the current recommendations would be getting 150 mcg by age 5, just from that one vaccine alone. More than enough to cause damage, not even taking into account the viral components and other toxins like aluminum and formaldehyde found in vaccines. Even the FDA’s own website denotes a schizophrenic approach; formaldehyde is designated as unsafe for internal use, yet there it is on the approved vaccine ingredient list.

I am so happy that there is candidate running that is willing to have an opinion against the medical establishment when there are controversies such as this one. I want a president who would stand up for what is right and not take the side of what is popular and good for business. Someone has to look out for people of this country, especially our future generations. What we must realize is should Thimerisol turn out to be part of the cause of autism it will not only impact the drug companies, it will impact the American Academy of Pediatrics, The American Medical Association, the CDC and anyone else that had anything to do with the vaccines and the vaccine schedule. I think that this is very scary. However, the autism epidemic is even more scary. What is going to happen when all of these children become adults? Who is going to pay for their care? The Thimerisol issue is definitely controversial and scientists are divided on this issue. As far as I am aware it is not a dead issue and that more study is needed. We cannot take statements such “there is no evidence” as an absolute truth that Thimerisol does not cause autism. It may be part of a perfect storm of multiple causes that scientists have not been able to identify yet. We also need to look at some of the other ingredients of the adjuvants such as aluminum in our vaccines that may be contributing to autism as well. Adjuvants in vaccines are used to cause an immune response. Perhaps some people’s immune systems overreact to them. Epidemiology studies can have their flaws and do not address the biochemical processes involved. Many studies that are done on vaccines only address reactions that occur soon after the vaccine is given and do not study long term effects. The vaccines may also not be studied well enough in combination with the other vaccinations that children are given at the same time. We should not have blind faith in our policy makers who are pressured from the drug companies and physicians to put a new vaccine on the market and mandate it’s use. They can only make decisions based on the evidence presented to them which is usually from the drug companies themselves. Just this past week the advisory committee made a decision to recommend flu vaccines to all children up to 18 years old because flu cases are up. The only problem with this is that the current vaccine does not contain the strains that are causing the flu this year and needs to be changed. Flu vaccines are not totally safe (and most still contain thimerisol) and we should not be recommending them just because flu cases are up and we have it available. Most children can recover from the flu without complications. The benefits must outweigh the risk. I can understand the very young and the very old needing them but I am wondering why they suddenly want the older children vaccinated. I hope they are not doing this to financially support the drug companies so that they can change the strains in the vaccine. That would be bad policy. We need to recommend vaccines because of medical need, not for economic need and availability. I think that our vaccine program needs to be shaken up a little bit and we need to do some good research with a control groups of children who do not have vaccines. That would be impossible if we mandate them for all and put parents in jail for not having their children vaccinated. The public needs to be aware of what is going on and our politicians need to get their head out of the sand. John McCain is my man! He supports more research.

The Vaccine Injury Court has hearings that you can listen to online and it is apparent from listening to these hearings that the evidence,science and testimony of world famous Doctors and researchers overwhelmingly support a mercury/vaccine autism connection.Listen for yourself no need to take my word for it.

Thank you Mr. McCain for having the courage to question the druglords

He also has access to records of the many soldiers who have been devastated by vaccine injury. Anthrax vax + depleted uranium found in ammunition= Gulf War Syndrome. And the rise in ALS (Lou Gehrig’s) amongst military pilots. Mercury switches in the cockpit? Who knows. Shouldn’t we find out, though?

Hello, conspiracy theorists!
As Bill Nye would say, consider the following:
1. Total thimerosal exposure for U.S. children has declined to near zero since 1999.
2. Autism is at an all-time high.
Possible conclusions:
1. Autism and thimerosal are unrelated.
2. The federal government, which can’t find its butt with both hands, has managed to orchestrate a massive conspiracy with vaccine makers to make it look like thimerosal has been removed from vaccines while still slipping it in there undisclosed, in higher and higher doses over time to match the steady rise in autism prevalence, all the while hiding this activity from insurers, who would LOVE to know what was driving all these claims for the various therapies that autistic kids get.
If you think #2 is more plausible, you may have your tinfoil hat on a little too tight.

Are you seriously so wrapped up in your own opinions that you have forgotten the fine art of actually listening to what others say, JOHN AND ISLES? I think perhaps you need to take your superior and belittling attitude down a few notches.
I do not believe there is a conspiracy to give our children autism….get it straight. You want to negate my point by calling it “crazy” or calling moms like me “conspiracy theorists”. If you do not have the intellect to argue a point in scientific manner, don’t try. What we are saying is that our children have underlying medical conditions that predispose them to negative reactions to ANY toxins,be it preservatives in vaccines, exposure to mom’s amalgram fillings in utero, or industrial pollutants. When a child is born with a weakened immune system due to genetics or pre-natal exposure, or if a chld is born with mitochondrial disorders that are not apparent and tested for, they are at risk for vaccine reactions. Every day children are given vaccines and don’t develop autism, and every day children are given vaccines and develop autistic symptoms soon after. I find it amazing that the world’s leading doctors argue this point, but some random person on the internet thinks they know the final answer….guess we can close the case on this one folks, John and Isles have spoken!
There is science on both sides of this issue, but you want to know what made me a believer? I ACTUALLY HAVE A MERCURY POISONED CHILD!!! That’s right! I’m not just sitting around talking about something I have no first hand knowledge in. I have been chelating my son and guess what? He is starting to talk, lost many autistic symptoms, and is improving at a drastic pace. So, when you want to dismiss us all as lunatics you’re really showing how scared you are of what might be the truth for some kids. Let me ask you something…..do you have a child that needs vaccines soon? Planing on having any babies in the near future? You blow hard on this blog, but I have a feeling you’d have some second thoughts when someone wanted to stick a needle in your 1 day old child that may or may not cause them to become autistic.

Rebelmom:
And your child has been diagnosed with what underlying condition that makes him or her unable to receive vaccines…?
Yeah, didn’t think so. There are a few known conditions that contraindicate vaccination – and it is precisely because some can’t be vaccinated that it’s so important that everyone who can be, is. To do otherwise heightens the risk for kids who are already extra-vulnerable. Mercury moms like to say their kids have “mercury efflux disorder” or somesuch, but that’s just something they and a few crackpot professors made up.
Your child would be doing what he or she is doing with or without the chelation (provided, of course, it doesn’t kill him like that boy in Pennsylvania a couple years ago). You can stop patting yourself on the back for oh-so-bravely bucking the medical establishment, and give your kid a little credit.
No need to trust some random person on the internet. Check out the Institute of Medicine, World Health Organization, American Academy of Pediatrics, etc., etc., etc., etc.

John — We parents are all too aware of the differences between methyl and ethyl mercury. Methyl mercury stays in the body longer than ethyl mercury, but because of its molecular configuration ethyl mercury (thimerosal) crosses the blood-brain barrier whereas methyl mercury does not. The study by Dr. Burbacher et al which I referenced below, published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives April 2005, discovered that ethyl mercury lodges in the brain tissue, and therefore may be even more neurotoxic than methylmercury at the same or lower dosages despite the shorter time it remains in the body. Another study, found in Toxicology & Applied Pharmacology April 2005, details the fact that in comparison to methyl mercury, ethyl mercury (Thimerosal) leads to second-tier immunosuppressive effects in certain populations. So please spare me the “Ethyl mercury is perfectly safe” argument. It may be even more dangerous in general, and especially dangerous for people with certain pre-existing markers.

Again you have the smug attitude that only the ignorant indulge in.
My son was born with a condition that causes oxaltes to accumulate in his cells. He was also born with almost no glutathione production ability. He had no chance against any toxin, much less one injected into him. Funny thing, they don’t test for things like this before sticking him with the Hep B vacc a few hours after he was born.
And as for thinking my son would be getting better without chelation, well, I again refer to my comment about the indulgence of ignorance. In October of 07 I was told he needed either to be heavily medicated or put in an institution (he is 4 years old, btw). This was said to me by a prominant neurologist at UCLA. It is now March of 08 and my son is now going to be put in a regular Kindergarten class next year. He is exceeding every goal we had set for him months ahead of schedule.
Give my son credit? You petty little fool, my son gets ALL the credit!!He is a fighter, an angel, a gift from God and I am grateful every day of my life for him. My son did not ask to be put in this position, yet he faces it on a daily basis with more dignity and class than you could ever dream to have. I suppose you would be content to lock an entire generation of children in institutions instead of digging a little further into the truth.
Also, why has no one responded to my post regarding the fact that autistic children often have the same physical illnesses? Guess that one must have been too hard for you to answer, so you ignored it. I don’t have that luxury.

McCain is right – it may be a preservative, but it is more likely the glutamate that they add to the vaccines as a preservative for the virus than it is the mercury. Currently the newest drugs on the market for neurodegenerative diseases are all glutamate blockers, but they still add glutamate to vaccines for children. Here is how it is related to mercury: glutamate interferes with the metabolism of cysteine – which is used to make glutathione in the body. Glutathione is the body’s natural means of getting rid of mercury FROM ANY SOURCE. So, modern vaccines will REDUCE a child’s ability to handle mercury from the air, from their tuna sandwiches, from the water – from ANYWHERE. Thimerosol doesn’t even need to be IN the vaccines for a vaccinated child to be harmed by the vaccines and consequently – mercury. There is enough mercury in the environment now that simply destroying a child’s ability to naturally get rid of mercury by shooting them full of glutamate – which, BTW when injected into mice makes them obese, and destroys brain cells, may cause damage in children with certain genetic predispositions. We took MSG out of baby food but we are injecting into our kids instead.
Why on earth are we injecting babies with glutamate while we are prescribing the following glutamate blockers: Lyrica, NBQX, Memantine, Topiramate, Baclofen, Riluzole,Tramadol, Tizanodine, and even Ibuprofen to their parents and grandparents who have diseases like Alzheimer’s and A.L.S. ????? Topiramate – BTW is a glutamate blocker used to treat epilepsy – which over 20% of autistic children suffer from. Coincidence? Not when the largest genome study in the world found in February of LAST YEAR that the genes involved in autism contain the instructions for wiring the nervous system – specifically the nerve synapses for GLUTAMATE neurotransmission. And the “Experts” still don’t know what causes autism??? Please. If they told us what caused it they wouldn’t be able to soak the parents for $$$$ to treat autism. Like a closet arsonist firefighter – Big Medica is GIVING these kids autism so they can treat it later.
Kudos to Senator McCain for speaking up – the cause IS a preservative STILL IN ALL vaccines – glutamate.

There are several facts that have been mentioned by previous posters. Some are true, some some are slanted.
Vaccinating is a core belief. We are taught all of our lives that it is the right thing to do. It is like abortion and war. People are going to have strong beliefs.
But as a society we need to examine the bigger issue. Vaccinating goes beyond Kantian and Utilitarian ethics; it is a civil rights issue.
If vaccines were 100% safe, 100% of the time, well then that would be a first for the FDA to approve.
Someone needs to figure out why despite all of the wonderful vaccines, this generation of children is the FIRST to be sicker than the predecessor in a century.
Oh, and if you truly believe that the government is up front and honest (including the GOVERNMENT FUNDED medical studies), I guess you still believe we should keep looking for Weapons of Mass Destruction.

It’s a virtual “Best of the Anti-Vaccine Movement!” Break out the disco ball!
@ Concerned Parent:
Here’s how it works. Not everyone can be or will be vaccinated. Some children have medical contraindications. Others have parents too disorganized or too sucked-in by the anti-vaccine movement to protect them via vaccination. Still others will be in the small percentage who do not become immune from a vaccination. (All vaccine experts readily admit this is true.) People in these categories need everyone around them to be immunized so that vaccine-preventable diseases can’t circulate in the community and reach them.
My concern is not solely or even primarily for the safety of myself or anyone in my family. I think of others. I wish anti-vaccine activists would do the same.
@ Rebelmom:
So you’re not contesting the fact that autism has nothing to do with oxalates and your little hypothesis about the causation of your son’s autism is just something you and your mercury mom friends made up. Now we’re getting somewhere!
On the subject of PubMed, I’m not sure if you’re suggesting that medical researchers ought to go back to the days of card catalogs or what. How odd.
Aluminum is an adjuvant (not a preservative) which is safe at the levels used in vaccines. (Ever eat anything made with baking powder? Uh oh!) Formaldehyde is present in trace trace amounts in vaccines, much less than the amount the human body naturally produces every day. (Oh, but it sounded so scary!) Ether is not a vaccine ingredient. Ethylmercury (mercury moms never make the important distinction between the different forms of mercury) is safe in the tiny amounts used in vaccines.
My offer to answer your questions was in reference to your objecting to my general advice to see the web sites of organizations like the American Academy of Pediatrics or the World Health Organization for more information. It was not an offer to share personal information which would be irrelevant to the scientific issue at hand. If you are proposing that being a mercury mom makes one a more authoritative analyst of the science, I would chucklingly beg to differ.
I am still waiting for that evidence that autism is associated with gut dysbiosis, yeast infections, bacterial infections, viral infections, heavy metal toxicity, and mitochondrial disorders. (This would need to be in the form of randomized cohort or case-control studies.) So you used some direct-to-consumer lab to give you some test results – do you know how inaccurate and misleading those places are? And that an anecdote is not the same as data?
It is common for mercury moms to say their kids got better after they started using alt-med treatments. Of course they want to see improvement. They paid good money for those pills and lotions and don’t want to think it was wasted! It’s getting tiresome, but I’ll say it again: Correlation does not equal causation.
Finally, your biggest blooper: The recent Vaccine Court case which was removed from the Autism Omnibus was removed precisely *because* the finding was that the injury in that case was NOT autism. It was an encephalopathy which may have been aggravated by a vaccine (but could have been aggravated by any fever-producing illness or just by the natural course of the condition; it’s only because of the generous nature of the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program that they give out money on a “just in case” basis). The child in question did become autistic eventually, but the fact that her encephalopathy and her autism shared some characteristics did not mean that vaccination was causally related to her autism.
If you feel like this isn’t enough answers for you, just keep on asking. I’ll be around.

Give praise to John McCain for his courage in speaking out. Myself and the autism community are so grateful for his intelligence and honesty. There is science on our side. the only problem is that the media won’t report it because their hands are tied by the drug companies and the government’s desire not to bring the truth in the open.

Can we stop and look at the question that was asked of McCain that started this discussion?
The mom asked him about revelation this week that the US Government conceded that vaccines triggered “Eve’s” autism in the first autism case to be decided (of the 5000) in the vaccine court. This little AUTISTIC girl will now be paid damages from the VACCINE Injury Compensation Fund.
The case was supposed to go to a hearing in May, but the Government just admitted that her injury was caused by her vaccines and paid her with out even going to trial!
Yet over and over we keep hearing that there is no link between vaccines and Autism???
She was a normally developing child, was vaccinated and then regressed into autism.
THE GOVERNMENT HAS JUST ADMITTED THAT THERE WAS A BIG FAT CAUSAL LINK FOR THIS LITTLE GIRL!!!
And this is only the first of the 5000 cases to get a decision.
This is huge freaking news, and not one major news organization in the US (beyond the cursory mention of this mom’s question in this article) has reported on it since it was revealed this past week. Talk about burying the lead!
So how many of these 5000 cases are going to have to be decided in favor of the autistic plaintiffs before the main stream will start saying that there is a link between vaccines and autism.
One should be enough.

If we only gave 1 vaccine at a time with 1 month between shots it would take 6 years with the current required vaccines and somebody thinks that 34 vaccines in 12 months/ starting on the day you are born is safe and does no harm?????we put all these viruses into babies less than 10 to 30 lbs.!!!!this is many to soon.

Those who have not had it happen to their child are probably going to remain as the man rocking on his porch, petting his dogs. He hears the wolves off in the distance and thinks he has nothing to worry about. He goes inside and goes to sleep, only to wake up and find that his dogs have been torn apart by the wolves and they are coming in to get him next. But by that time, it will be too late to help.
I walked into a doctor’s office on 03/07/01 with a perfectly healthy child and vehemently stated that my child was not to get thimerosal containing vaccines. They lied, gave them to him anyway.
I walked out with a child who could no longer talk, sufferred excruciating abdominal pain, and has ever since had a damged immune system. He suffers from chronic lung problems, ASD, OCD, SID, and APD.
All of this because of the greater good?
I think not. I think it is profit driven, and we have a society now where their profit means more than our children.
You think we can eradicate disease? How stupid! Basic biology teahces us that life will always find a way –and tht includes bacteria and viruses. If we do not strengthen our immune systems by catching and surviving these more minor illnesses (benign compared to some really bad things out there), then our immune systems will not be preprared to handle them. Vaccinating against things like chilcken pox is positively assinine and due to nothing more than profit.
This has happened because we didn’t think to put the same checks and balances betwenn the government and medicine and medicine and pharmacology that we put between the branches of government.
They are afraid that vaccination rates will get too low? I don’t even put it past THEM to CAUSE the next epidemic. –they will do anything to deny what they have done, and to protect the profit projections.
WE are learning our lesson regarding the overuse of antibiotics. How long will it takes for them to admit the fallout due to the overuse of vaccines?
When will enough be enough? Now it’s thirty-six vaccines. When will they stop? AT fifty? At 100?
I say let them make their vaccines, but I think it it an inherent civil right to decline vaccines in the absence of a clear and present danger. (But then again they would create the danger), so I thnk it shoudl be a consitutional right to decline. I certainly view it as cruel and unusual punishment.
I read the scare tactic in the article about the boy who died after contracitng measles. Did ihe actually die of the measles? Was his immune system all ready comprimised before contracting the measles? They leave off vital information in order to invoke fear. He probably had AIDS or cancer to begin wtih. –not to dtract from that chld’s loss or his parents’ grief, but I think throwing away 1 out of 150 children to ASD becasue one child could catch such and such and die. This is not the purpose of governemnt. This is the parents decision and should remain such.
I sat by my brother’s bedside when he had the measles and I never caught it. i shred a room with my sister who caught the mumps. I never caught that.
I had the flu about four times in my life. It was no fun, but I survived.
I finally took a flu shot in 1987 and a few short hours later I was admitted to an emergency room. I nearly died. I won’t ever take a vaccine again and regret that I allowed them to vaccinate my son.
Here’s fear for you: one out of eighty infant boys who get fully vaccianted today on the present childhood schedule will wind up with an ASD disorder. This will be due to the synergistic effects beteent he mercury that still exists, the aluminum and the synergy that occurs when so many vaccines are given at the same time and combination vaccines that are given. As long as the “wolves” devour someone else’s children, they don’t care.
Also I am so sick of hearing that “they took thimerosal out.” They never ordered a recall of thimerosal- containing vaccines and there are plenty still out there.
My son got them AFTER they said it was out.
Also, thimerosal is still in some vaccines. I’m not concerned about the thimerosal, per se. I am concerned witht the mercury therein.
All vaccines that are not live virus vaccines are still MADE USING THIMEROSAL. They are telling the public that they then extract it out. Mercury binds to protein. All vacicnes use some form of animal protein. Therefore, the mercury binds to the protein, and it would be next to impossible to get it out. So, they get to dupe the public and say, “Hey kids are still winding up with autism and we took it out.”
I’m not falling for it. My son was diagnosed with “Heavy Metal Intoxication” at a major metropolitan children’s hospital. It was all very hush hush as this hospital has it’s lips so connected to the butt of the pharmeceutical industry. They wanted me to secretly let them admit my son and begin chelation. It was evident to me they didn’t know what the hell they were doing.
The lead pediatric neurologist said to my husband and me, “Gee, I’m sorry, but you’ve just got to understand, by mass vaccianting we are saving so many, but there are going o be losses. Your child is one of them and you just need to go home and accept it.”
What a load of crap is that?
Then after listening to them telling us how it’s hopeless and he will never talk, or be potty trained etc… We did what DR. Amy HOlmes told us to do, and I am happy to report he talks and is potty trained. But his immune system is still screwed up! His body chemistry is still screwed up!
Genetic? There is not autism in either of our families.
I walked into that doctor’s office with a perfectly healthy child. Four vaccines later I have a child who is chrocially ill and has been for the last six and half years! And they think they will EVER convince me it was mere coincidence?
I will NEVER stop warning parents about this. It is time for mandates to end, and we need the checks and balances between the drug companies, the FDA, and the CDC.
It needs to become illegal for doctors to recieve any perks from drug reps, and prescription advertising on television needs to be banned as it is in most other countries (Has New Zealand banned it yet?)
Sincerely,
One Mad Mom

Thimerosal was only RECOMMENDED to be removed in 1999. There was no mandatory recall. Manufacturers finally got around to “phasing it out” (reducing the levels to “trace amounts”) in 2001. The thimerosal containing vaccines in clinics didn’t expire until 2003-2004, and many clinics across the country continued to use these vaccines. In 2004, the flu chot was recommended for pregnant women and children 6 months and older, with 25 mcg of mercury.
Pregnant women and children continue to be poisoned to this day. I am so sick of reading and seeing reports that thimerosal has been out of vaccines for years. This is a lie. Go to the FDA website and see for yourselves.

Once upon a time, the tobacco companies said that smoking didn’t cause cancer and everyone believed them. They had all kinds of scientific studies performed by their own scientists to back themselves up, and they were able to use their power and money to suppress evidence to the contrary. Until one day the evidence was just too overwhelming — it was too clear — and now everyone knows and accepts that smoking causes cancer. And we know that the tobacco companies actually knew that all along. They lied to protect their profits.
We are now in that same place with autism and vaccines. There are now too many diseased children to effectively ignore any longer. The truth is starting to come out, the dam is starting to break, and once the flood happens people are going to be walking around saying, “oh, of course there’s a link between vaccines and autism, everyone knows that!”
People like to call autism parents crazy, but really it’s like Plato’s allegory of the cave: We’ve escaped the cave and seen the light and the truth of the world, but how do you explain sunshine and trees to people who’ve only ever lived in shadows chained to the wall of a cave? They’re not evolved enough to understand, they can only repeat what they’ve been told. It’s not their fault.

Amen, sistah! My son had the same symptoms (I’m sure I don’t have to relate the gory details) and our pediatrician in a blue-chip Beverly Hills practice told us to give him prune juice. Never suggested a single test to see if there might be some kind of problem. First visit to a DAN! doctor tests were done and it turned out he had ZERO good bacteria in his gut; they had all been killed off by antibiotics for an ear infection at 4 months. Thus began the cascade to autism. 4 years later, we are nearly recovered. Anyone reading this recognize symptoms in your child? Stop vaccinating now, and get yourself to a DAN doctor pronto.

Isles — why the venom? How exactly does it hurt you that people want to make sure the vaccines their children get are safe? Do you work in sales for a Pharma company? As to thimerosal being safe, guess again. Even when it was first put in use in the 1930s, there were warnings. And if you’d bother to look at the studies I cited below (Burbacher et al, in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives 2005 August; Toxicology & Applied Pharmacology 2005 April) you would see that there is ample evidence that Thimerosal is harmful, may be even more neurotoxic than methyl mercury because of its molecular configuration, and leads to secondary immunosuppressive effects like those evinced in autism.
It’s stunning to me that people can go into a tizzy over lead paint on toys but sit idly by as mercury, which is even more toxic, is routinely injected into babies.

@Isles,
Contrary to what you may believe, the only documented Amish study of Autism that I’ve come across revealed that there were only 3 cases of Autism in an Amish community that should have had as many as 200 cases statistically at the time. The first was a girl brought over from China, adopted by one family only to be given up after becoming overwhelmed by her autism. The second child had received a vaccination and developed autism shortly thereafter. The vaccination status of the third child wasn’t attainable at the time of the study. Neither case was born to an Amish couple. I find this study of the opposite affect astonishing to say the least. After reading a number of your responses to this news article, your ignorance on this whole subject precedes you.
BR,
Steve

Don’t be fooled by McCain’s efforts to win your votes! McCain, Huckabee, Obama, & Clinton are all members of the Council on Foreign Relations, which wants a one world govt – a vote for any of these candidates is a vote for Bush! RON PAUL IS THE ONLY PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE WHO IS NOT CFR. RON PAUL is an OBGYN, who is HOLISTIC, who’s been in CONGRESS for 10 TERMS representing Texans, who LOVE him! PAUL OPPOSES MANDATORY VAX legislation. Become a delegate to the National Republican Convention to cast your vote for the Love of America, for Freedom – Vote PRINCIPLE over party – VOTE FOR RON PAUL! Restore America to its founding Constitutional Principles!
h ttp://www.cfr.org/
h ttp://www.ronpaul2008.com/
h ttp://www.ronpaul2008.com/issues/health-freedom/
h ttp://www.rpv.org/?q=faq
h ttp://www.gopconvention2008.com/Default.aspx
h ttp://www.constitutioncenter.org/

I hear he’s also pretty suspicious about this whole rural electrification project. Causes brain tumors.

To those who insist that vaccines have not, are not and will no be linked in any way to ASD. That hundreds upon hundreds of stories about children regressing into autism, or developing other autoinmune disorders shortly after a round of vaccination are just the product of fertile imaginations. That thimerosal was taken out of the vaccines in 2001. That the CDC, AAP and FDA have no other interest than the health of our kids. That they are and always will be transparent. That they are not financially supported by vaccine makers. That they have no ties whatsoever with the pharmaceutical industry. That every study ever published discrediting the link between thimerosal or the MMR jab with autism has been unbiased, not manipulated, flawless, definitive, and that the researchers and authors of these studies never had or have any special interests, never received any funding or had any link with the CDC or pharmaceutical companies, and that they were never related in any way shape or form with the pharmaceutical industry. That the media is fair and balanced in reporting both sides of the story; that they do their homework before they report anything, and that they do not respond to any special interests. That every parent who tries to do “unproven” alternative therapies is an irresponsible whacko even if the kids get better. If the kids get better this way is probably just the natural progression of their autism, or they were never in the spectrum in the first place. That every parent should only try ST, OT or ABA with their kids as if these therapies were free, affordable, or even accesible to everyone.
I cannot force everyone to be objective and really do their homework, as I’m sure I don’t have the time to do it for them.
As Kim Staglano puts it “you cannot expect 100% of the vaccines to be 100% safe, 100% of the time to 100% of the children” Yet the CDC thinks so.
My son was diagnosed with PDD-NOS last a year ago, and he is the only peer reviewed double blind placebo controlled study that I need.
No developmental pediatrician, neurologist, psychologist or therapists have been able to explain to me why his metabolism is so messed up, or why he suffers frequent episodes of unexplained diarrhea, or why he has yeast and atypical bacteria overgrowth in his GI tract, or why he suffers from colitis, or why he is proven mercury and lead toxic. Furthermore, they have not been able to explain why so many kids in the spectrum have similar clinical problems as my son does, or why my son’s behaviors and symptoms have markedly improved with “voodoo” therapies, and treating his clinical issues.
If thimerosal was removed in 2001 one , then why in feb. 2007 we found thimerosal in 3 out of 4 vaccines that my then 4 months old daughter was going to receive just to have her ears pierced (I still have the vaccine inserts, and by the way this happened in Houston, TX and not in Uganda or wherever).
I read somewhere that you “don’t need a study to know that sh.. stinks”, I guess if enough people can agre on that, then thousands of anecdotal stories cannot or should not be ignored and considered worthless.
Also, I don’t want to say that the CDC or the AAP are corrupted and are profoundly interested in protecting their contributors and sources of funding (If I’m just making this up, just go their web pages and find out for yourselves), yet no one who has in all honestly reviewed the famous Denmark studies (form the statistical flaws to the researchers involved, as well as to the funding sources and vested interests), or the manipulation given to the original Verstraten data presented at Simpsonwood could in their right mind say that institutions like the above mentioned are transparent, and that they only have our children best interests in mind. The IOM, and the FDA are also just eating from the same plate.
The ignorance, or better said, lack of information that the mainstream medical community has is due in large part to their trust of the official federal institutions that I refered to. Your son/daughter pediatrician cannot be directly blamed for not knowing, but for not researching.
A study is published today (reputable or not)that allegedly destroys the thimerosal or MMR theories as causes of autism, and for the next three weeks you will find it on the web, in newspapers, television news, radio, magazines, and every form of media ever created. If such study (reputable or not) supported the idea that thimerosal or the MMR is related to autism causation you will be lucky if you get to read about it in the classifieds section of a God forsaken newspaper. And the scientific evidence that supports a connection is vast. For starters it is universally known that if I was mass murderer I would inject my victims with mercury. It wouldn’t take much to kill them, and only very minimal dosis would cause serious neurological damage. It is toxic and that is a fact
Apparently everybody has an agenda, and the parents are left to find answers on their own.
Unfortunatelly the answers that thousands of parents have found on their own are against everything that is oficially being fed to the masses. Therefore, we can only swim against the current, and work relentlessly with our kids and to see them improve day in and day out with forbidden therapies and traditional therapies as well, and in some cases even recover. All on our own.

John McCain just lost this physician’s vote for good.

There is NO, NO, No evidence of a link between autism and mercury and/or vaccines.

Though there is no doubt in my own mind that any mercury whatsoever is unhealthful to a growing human child, I admit that I do not know if thimerosol or mercury is at the root of autism. It could very well be that the vaccines themselves are completely toxic and harmful to some individuals and could very well be what is causing autism in so many. Now that the vaccination schedule is up to 36 various shots per child, God only knows which of the vaccines could be causing it. But quite obviously, it is most indeed seeming to have something to do with the vaccines.
Modern man has decided that 36 freaking various childhood vaccinations are necessary to protect our children from ever feeling ill or ever possibly dying young?
Has our society completely devolved into a bunch of neurotically spasmodically paranoid delusionals?

That John McCain has joined the fray of psuedoscience experts is not so surprising. It does, however, raise the danger level of what has become an extremely frightening trend of misunderstanding the scientific concept of “evidence”. The evidence is overwhelming that thimerosal does not cause autism, and that the MMR vaccine (which never contained thimerosal) does not cause autism. Of course, science can never “prove” a negative, which is another concept the public does not understand. There is no scientific controversy about this subject. Only a media-enabled fear-spreading campaign to scapegoat vaccines yet again. The public needs to be reminded about the devastating nature of the diseases we prevent through immunizations. More importantly, we need to bring science to the forefront of our educational system, to prevent us from slipping even further back into the dark ages.

Why is it so much to ask for two things…
1)Support and help for our kids
2)A non-biased study comparing the vaccinated population to a non-vacinated population.
???????????????????????????????????
Why do you need “copies of e-mails, power-points, memos, documents, or whitewater type recordings that provide such evidence”
All the hysterical parents are saying is Green our vaccines. Look at the facts:
1983: Autism rate 1 in 10,000
Vaccine schedule 10 shots
2008: Autism rate in boys 1 in 70
Vaccine schedule 36
My sons last words:
“My name is Tanner. My name is Tanner.”
The week of his shots for school…
Show me any other campaign for disinformation as wound up as this one by the medical(vaccine maker) community. Remove the Mecury, Aluminum, formaldehyde, ether, antifreeze. Reevaluate the schedule. What was the death rate from these deadly diseases in 1983 that we had to add 26shots? If there are side effects to the vaccinations all we asking for is support for therapy, respite, and recovery.

You’re right that we need to be careful about spreading misinformation, but wrong about your facts. 80% of the flu vaccine in this country still contains full-dose of mercury, and the CDC has expanded the flu vaccine recommendations significantly, despite the fact that this year’s vaccine doesn’t protect against the flu. Kids who start getting flu shots at 6 month will get 85 mcg by age 5, more than enough to cause harm just from flu vax alone. Most other vaccines still contain “trace” amounts of mercury which are only measured by the pharmaceutical companies, not the FDA, because mercury’s removal was “recommended” but never mandated. In many vaccines, the thimerosal has been replaced by aluminum, which is equally neurotoxic. If parents are afraid of vaccines’ safety, blame the CDC for never doing the proper studies to prove safety. No study comparing vaccinated with unvaccinated populations. No study to prove safety of different virus-containing vaccinations in combination. No study of the neurotoxic effects of the combined vaccine schedule. Don’t blame the parents who are trying to protect their children from harm. Blame the CDC, FDA and Pharma for putting profits ahead of safety.

Tim,
I fully support our kids against credible threats to their health and safety such as the diseases we vaccinate them against. The fact that autism rates have increased and the number of vaccines given to child is correlation, and it does not prove a casual relationship between the two.
There have been studies done on vaccines and autism, and the burden of proof is on you to prove they are biased. Here’s an alternative hypothesis why autism rates have increased: the consensus of what symptoms indicate autism have changed over the past 25 years and now more children are labeled autistic than would have been before.

Adapted response:
Vaccination is a sensitive topic. I suggest you review the vaccine ingredients; analyze the results of available safety and efficacy studies (and lack thereof); compare the risks of the vaccines against the diseases; and explore alternative methods to boost immunity, versus vaccines.
I have to admit, though, it was my friends very outspoken sister in law who got me to pay attention to the issues surrounding vaccines. At lunch, She turned to me and asked me outright if I was vaccinating my daughter. When I said “of course,” she looked at me in horror. I was dumbfounded because I thought everyone vaccinated. She then asked me if I would allow my daughter to “drink” aluminum, mercury, formaldehyde or monkey blood? When I said, “of course not,” she said, then you need to do your homework, because you are allowing doctors to inject these very substances into her bloodstream. I was completely confused, shocked and frightened…and, in my usual style, spent countless hours over the next few months (then years) researching vaccines, attending seminars, watching DVDs, you name it. Then, it was actually Dr. Tenpenny’s DVD that finally convinced my husband and me that we had made our vaccine decisions based on misinformation…basically no information, and we had made a poor decision.
I have become more outspoken over the years…I guess because I’m more concerned about the increase in the number of mandated vaccines, as well as the increase in childhood diseases, like autism. In NJ, 1 in 60 boys has autism.
Thank God, a few days ago, the court finally conceded that vaccines were linked to a child’s autism and awarded the family damages toward a lifetime of medical expenses.
“The reality, as documented by the American Medical Association’s own journal (JAMA) in the January 1999 issue, is that there is no connection between death from infectious diseases and vaccinations; that’s right, “none”.
If you like to gamble go ahead.

Autistic persons are genetically predisposed to be unable to detoxify from heavy metals and other toxins. So, it’s very likely that back in the days when childhood vaccines contained these substances, it was the vaccines that often triggered the autistic symptoms. Children not predisposed to autism could clear the toxins, but those unable to detoxify wound up with autism.
The fact that thimerosal has been removed from vaccines (except for some flu vaccines) yet autism continues to increase only shows how people are being exposed to more autism-triggering toxins overall. It needn’t be from vaccines only.

Most Americans are aware of the courageous service John provided as a naval aviator and POW . But few can fully appreciate how bad the egregious hospitality of the Hanoi Hilton was .His main concerns were for other POWs’ life threatening conditions and how he could assist their problems.
To this day John’s truthfulness, dedication and what he believes in is demonstrated by his sincere actions and service as a Senator of the United States of America. We could do a whole lot worse than vote for John Mc Cain.

Tim,
I will say you are entitled to your hypothesis, but that it is not supported by the available evidence, and you are not entitled to your own facts. The National Academy of Sciences review in 2004 is just one of the many studies that rejects your hypothesis.
I am truly sorry for your son’s condition, and will not even pretend to know what it is like to care for an autistic child.
However, you use it in the context of this debate as an appeal to emotion in an attempt to shift the burden of proof . If you are going to make a claim, the burden of proof is by necessary on you to prove it correct, not anyone else to prove it incorrect.
I do agree with your final thought, and would say never assume malice on the part of people or the government when stupidity and apathy will suffice.

I am a pediatric RN. Thimerisol IS still in vaccines! I beilive it is dangerous. Of course the government says it is safe, they are making money off the pharmecutical companys!!

McCain is right. My son changed froma perfectly normal toddler into a bot ruled by autism within 3 days of his MMR vaccine. I have video proof.
The government does not want to admit it because they said it was safe to use Thimerisol in shots. They are to blame, as are the huge lobbyists in the pharmaceutical and health care industries. Why else do you think Congress keeps exempting them from autism lawsuits in the name of national security?
The link I provided is of a case where the vaccine fund actually paid out for an autism case. I hope they go more public and start a class action too. It’s sickening to think that Congress started up a vaccine fund which has unilaterally turned away thousands of parents of autistic children and still maintains their lobbyist’s position that autism increased exponentially within a year of the vaccine being required in four states through other means than the vaccines.
In my case, my son stopped talking within 2 hours of the shot, stopped looking at us within 24 hours, lost his potty training within 24 hours and started banging his head on the hallway tiles within 3 days, yelling and screaming when he did not get what he wanted. And it took 4 years more before we even got him to use one single verbal word.

Any type of medication prescribed or medical proceedure HAS A RISK. Penicillin kills people because of allergic reaction. People have died during surgery. There is a SMALL risk, perhpas 1 in 10 million that you may have a reaction to a vaccine. The benefits outweight the risks. The recent study in California proves beyond a doubt that this epidemic is likley a combination of a DNA anomaly and environmental. The study collecteed data about the numbers of autism diagnosis now (after thimerosal has been removed) and the numbers from when thimerosal was used. There are more diagnosis of autism now, even AFTER thimerosal has been removed. SOMETHING is causing this, but we don’t know what.

Joe,
I’m REALLY sorry to hear about your child. I have to inform you that you’ve made an error in your thinking. The MMR vaccine does not and never had contained thimerosal.
MMR has never contained mercury in any form. There are multiple sources for this information. The FDA/CBER has a full report on Thimerosal in Vaccines. The report details the history and use of the mercury-based preservative thiomersal/thimerosal in vaccines with an overview of the reasons for its introduction and the studies on its safety.
I truly wish you the best of luck with your child and I sincerely hope that we find a prevention or cure for autism. But we must not be too quick to jump to conclusions.

If McCain cares so much about the toxic effects of mercury, why did he support “Clean air Mercury Rule,” in 2005 that allowed power plants to be exempt from mercury emissions limits?
(the rule was found to be illegal on Feb 8 2008)
*****************
A federal appeals court ruled this morning that a rulemaking by the Environmental Protection Agency violates the Clean Air Act by evading mandatory cuts in toxic mercury pollution from coal- and oil-fired power plants. The decision invalidates the agency’s so-called “Clean Air Mercury Rule,” which would have allowed dangerously high levels of mercury pollution to persist under a weak cap-and-trade program that would not have taken full effect until well beyond 2020.

McCain is doing this as a political stunt for votes. He never gave a crap about this before. There is a HUGE differnce between ethyl mercury (the kind once used in vaccines), and methyl mercury (environmental type). Studies have shown that ethyl mercury is broken down and excreted from the body, but the methyl mercury (in our drinking water, in fish, etc) is not broken down as easily and accumulates in the body and may cause neurological damage. Why isn’t anyone concerned about all of the environmental toxins? There is as much methyl mercury in a can of tuna fish as there is in an adult flu shot with ethyl mercury (25 micrograms). Why isn’t this being attacked? People are still feeding there kids tuna fish and don’t accuse those companies of poisoning their children.

“That’s why the autism fund now paid out for a little girl your vaccines turned autistic” This is actually not correct. There is not an AUTISM FUND. You couldn’t be more wrong. It is a fund that pays out if there is an injury caused by a vaccine. There are very rare side effects such as brachial neuritis or anaphylactic allergy, and others that can be caused by certain components of certain vaccines, and the family can be compendated for this. This in NO WAY “proves” an autism/ vaccine link. This was ONE case in which the girl had an underlying medical condition, a mitochondrial DNA disorder, in which a vaccine aggravated her already present condition. This is RARE. VERY RARE. This is NOT the case for all children with autism. Autism is accuring in children who were NEVER vaccinated at all. Like I said before, any medication or medical proceedure carries risks.

“I have to admit, though, it was my friends very outspoken sister in law who got me to pay attention to the issues surrounding vaccines. At lunch, She turned to me and asked me outright if I was vaccinating my daughter. When I said “of course,” she looked at me in horror.”
Ask a parent who lost their 18 year old college student to meningococcal meningitis the same question. I lost my sister to meningitis. It could have been prevented. She never got vaccinated.

“There is a major cover -up”
Wow. Now there is a conspiracy because SOME (not all) vaccines have a TRACE of thimerosal? Come on. Nothing is good enough. Pretty soon a vial of sterile water will cause cancer.

“What protects us from disease is our immune systems”
I would LOVE to see how the poster:Mercuryfree’s immune system holds up against measles or hepatitis b. Our immune system cannot protect us against everything. Be realistic.

This does not represent anything other than a very special situation,” said Dr. Julie Gerberding, head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Who are you going to believe the Boss doing the spin or the Judge that slipped?
The case may not be a first, said Gary Golkiewicz, chief special master for the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. He oversees the special “vaccine court” which rules on requests for payments from the vaccine injury fund.
“Years ago, actually, I had a case, before we understood or knew the implications of autism, that the vaccine injured the child’s brain caused an encephalopathy,” he said. And the symptoms that come with that “fall within the broad rubric of autism.”
And there are other somewhat similar cases, Golkiewicz says, that were decided before autism and its symptoms were more clearly defined

Vaccines such as HIB and pneumococcal have saved many lives. They are “newly required” vaccines. Do the research. Meningococcal has as well. Do some reading on these. More research is being done on vaccine preventable disease,a nd we are finding more ways to prevent death. Children die from pneumoccocal disease and HIB meningitis. The ingredients such as thimerosal were used to keep the vaccines from becoming contaminated with bacteria. They were used to keep vaccines safe. Autism is more “prevalent” now becuause it is diagnosed sooner and we are now calling things “autism” that never used to be categorized as such. I am looking forward to more studies being done so we can move on from this situation.

Why if everyone is so confident that there are no side effects to vaccines do we need double speak and dishonesty?
The parents are not stupid… We know vaccines do great things for the general population.
We also believe we need to get the bad things out of our environment.
I guess when you have a son who could talk and use his body one day… Then he gets shots and does not talk and function… You tend to discount just about anything anybody says.
None of you have answered my questions.
How can parents tolerate Gerberding’s Lies? This is not the only case. Admit it. Give help to those that need it… And let’s move on.
We need Therapy, respite, and Recovery now!

A coincidence does not happen over and over again…
If the law mandates the vaccination then the Government is responsible for therapy, respite, recovery, and remediation.
So far all the parents get is smoke screens, lies, deflection, lies, delay, lies, and portral as the bad guys.
Creditablility is built on honesty and trust… One cannot say there is no link and then concede. It is not either/or… There is no such thing as Autism like… We already have a spectrum… Therefore the vacinations are involved in causing Autism. Double speak all you want.
The over 4800 cases are just the families of the Doctors and lawyers… Eventually the families of the non-professionals will have their day…

I also look forward to more studies that refute the autism/ vaccine link and bring to light an environmental/ DNA link.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Scientists revealed the most extensive findings to date on the genetics of autism on Sunday, pinpointing two new genetic links that may predispose children to develop the complex brain disorder.
The five-year study, led by an international consortium of researchers from 19 nations, indicated autism had numerous genetic origins rather than a single or a few primary causes.
The researchers scoured DNA samples from 1,168 families with two or more children with autism, and used “gene chip” technology to detect genetic similarities. They also looked for tiny insertions and deletions of genetic material that could play a role in autism.
The scientists hope that nailing down the genetics of autism will lead to better ways to diagnose it and focus efforts on developing drugs to treat it. They announced they are launching a new phase in the research to map genes responsible for autism.
The study incriminated a gene called neurexin 1 involved with glutamate, a brain chemical previously implicated in autism that plays a role in early brain development, as a possible susceptibility gene for autism. A previously unidentified region of chromosome 11 also was implicated.
Autism is a spectrum of disorders apparently stemming from genetic and environmental causes. Geneticist Stephen Scherer of the University of Toronto and the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto said 90 percent of autism may have a genetic basis.
“What we have now that we didn’t really have before is a pretty decent understanding of what the genetic architecture is looking like in the autism genome,” said Scherer, who worked on the study published in the journal Nature Genetics.

None of you have answered my questions.
None of you have answered my questions.
How can parents tolerate Gerberding’s Lies?
Why if everyone is so confident that there are no side effects to vaccines do we need double speak and dishonesty?
The parents are not stupid… We know vaccines do great things for the general population.
We also believe we need to get the bad things out of our environment.
I guess when you have a son who could talk and use his body one day… Then he gets shots and does not talk and function… You tend to discount just about anything anybody says.
None of you have answered my questions.
How can parents tolerate Gerberding’s Lies? This is not the only case. Admit it. Give help to those that need it… And let’s move on.
We need Therapy, respite, and Recovery now!

Hi,
I’m a student at a college in New England majoring in Psychology. For my Research Methods class I need to do a study and I chose to do Mercury causing Autism. I have a few questions that I would be very greatful if anyone would answer them and maybe give me an idea of how you feel about the subject. Thank you for taking the time.
1. Do you personally know anyone that has Autism?
2. Do you know a lot of information about Autism? Would you consider yourself an expert?
3. Do you believe mercury causes Autism?
4. Do you believe that thimerosal has made Autism increase?
5. Why do you think that the rate of Autism is at 1 out of 150 children?
6. Why do you believe that that number varies from state to state?
Is it the environment?
The mercury in the environment?
7. Do you believe that testing childrens’ hair is an accurate test of mercury causing Autism?

Thank you so much Tanner’s Dad you really helped me!

I’m the father of an autistic son, and I have always found those who vilify vaccinations to be an unnecessary sidetrack on the path to assisting and understanding those with autism. Science has never backed that view, and all the money spent to repeatedly disprove it could be channeled into special education programs where the dollars could actually do some good.
No surprise, however, that the Republican candidate has to straddle the fence between science and any wacko idea out there, as his base includes creationists, flat-earthers, and global warming deniers.

I think anyone who doesn’t get their child vaccinated should be arrested for medical neglect and thrown in jail for endangering the public. We have seen countless times, horrible disease make their return to communities take reject immunizations. Very rarely people can get Guillian Barre and some other immune mediated affects but autism has been disproven to be a complication and People definately don’t get seizures from immunizations. As per what people are responding with to this article is a great indication that what McCain says is ignorant and dangerous. I thought for once we had an intelligent republican candadate. These comments he made completely turns me off to him.

What a joke — of COURSE it is vaccines making our kids sick. What else do kids have in common all over the world besides vaccines? All their environments/genetics are different, but the are all getting shot full of a variety of chemical cocktails that are bypassing every defense their body has and going straight into the blood stream. Yes, mercury may be in the environment, but your skin and gastric juices offer you some defense — it doesn’t go straight into your blood stream!
For the poster who said unvaccinated kids are getting autism, I challenge him to go find 20. Just 20. I read that scientists were going to study autism in the Amish (because they don’t vaccinate) and they COULDN’T FIND ANY TEST SUBJECTS TO STUDY! None of my kids are vaxed and never will be — I saw my own nephew go from a shiny, bright child to a kid who can now never live on his own thanks to autism. My kids are healthier than ANY kids I know — my 12yo and 4yo have never had any illness, have never seen a doctor in their life. My 9yo has been ONCE for pinkeye. HOW MANY vaxed kids have that kind of health record — if it is not learning disorders, it’s asthma or other things, and nobody seems to know why. I’d much rather my kid get measles or mumps (which I was vaccinated for both and got BOTH anyway, and they were no big deal) than risk the chemical stew that is in vaccines. There is much controversy about shots for pets, and those shots causing cancers, seizures and other maladies. I can only hope some will connect the dots to see that there are also issues with shots for humans too.

Joe wrote:
“My son changed froma perfectly normal toddler into a bot ruled by autism within 3 days of his MMR vaccine…. The government does not want to admit it because they said it was safe to use Thimerisol in shots.”
The MMR vaccine never contained thimerosal. You’re confusing two unrelated autism theories.

I have two sons with high functioning autism. One is 8 the other is 4 years old. After they had their last shots around August 2007 we saw a big differance in their behavior. They became more defiant with more screaming.
The shots do effect children!

hi i am justing wanting to say that you rock mccain!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am so tired of hearing them LIE about thimerosol!!! I just read it off the label of dtap 3 months ago!!! Don’t believe me? GO LOOK! They didn’t remove it in 1999. It was in every one of my autistic daughters first shots in 2001/2002!! EVERY DAMN ONE. I pointed it out and was told “oh no its harmless”. My kid started staring into space after being alert and normal. She never talked,she hit all milestones before shots early, after shots, everything was different, shes 7 and can’t talk at all! STOP LYING about the preservative being removed I know for a fact it was not.

As for when thimerosal was removed… It was never totally removed.
The flu shot (which did and still does contain the full amount of thimerosal) was first recommended for pregnant women in 1997.
In 1999, congress decided that childhood vaccines should be made with little to no thimerosal, but the prenatal vaccine was STILL recommended and always has been since 1997.
Then in 2001 vaccines started being manufactured with the reduced amounts of thimerosal. However, existing vaccine stocks with the full amount of thimerosal were NOT recalled because this removal was considered to just be precautionary.
Based on the SV40 virus example below, the childhood vaccines that contained the full amount of thimerosal were probably still in circulation until at least 2003.
In 1961, the SV40 virus that was found in the polio vaccine was found to cause tumors in rodents. So they declared that future stocks should be free of the SV40 virus as a precautionary measure. “However existing stocks were remained in circulation until 1963.” Now traces of this virus have been found in certain types of lymphoma. This information was on the CDC’s website at this link: http://www2a.cdc.gov/nip/Redirects/Test1.asp?spath=http://www.cdc.gov/nip/vacsafe/concerns/Cancer/default.htm
But the page is no longer available. I had just accessed this page a week ago, and now it seems to be gone… You can find the link by googling “CDC polio vaccine SV40″ but it won’t display that page anymore.
So if the full-level thimerosal vaccines were still in circulation until 2003, and then in 2004 the full-thimerosal flu shot was added to the childhood vaccination schedule for children 6 months and older, there would have been a time period of only about 1 year where the childhood immunization schedule only included the “trace” amounts of thimerosal. And don’t forget, that even during that one-year time period the full-thimerosal prenatal flu shot was STLL being recommended even though thimerosal was removed for children. Why was it still recommended for developing children (who are much more susceptible) when congress decided it wasn’t safe for children to receive thimerosal?
Also, the CDC’s thimerosal study found that “increased prenatal exposure” caused “poorer executive functioning” in males only. That fit’s into the higher ratio of boys to girls with autism.
And another less frequently discussed problem is the aluminum. Aluminum levels were limited to 25 mcg in injectable medical solutions because the FDA, I’ll say that again, the FDA found that aluminum was causing neurological delays in preemies (and dementia in kidney dialysis patients aka post dialysis encephalopathy) due to reduced renal function.
Now the 250 mcg hep B vaccine is given to newborns, INCLUDING PREEMIES, the day they are born. Other studies have found that “Low birth weight and preterm birth increase the risk of autism in infants by about twofold”. Hep B is a STD, and the FDA already acknowledged that preemies have an increased risk of aluminum toxicity so shouldn’t this 250 mcg vaccine NOT be given to preemies unless the baby’s mother is Hep B positive???????
The CDC says that large amounts of aluminum have been found to cause neurological and skeletal delays in young and developing animals. Autism obviously includes neurological delays, AND the CDC also cites a study that found that children with autism have thinner bones than the controls.
Also, the NNii concedes that children’s aluminum levels do temporarily exceed the minimal risk level after being vaccinated, but that 50-70 percent is filtered out the next day so they’re not worried about it. Sure if it was only one shot, but we’re talking about 13 aluminum-containg vaccines by the time a child is 6 months old (For those of you who are curious, there were only 3 aluminum-containing vaccine doses by 6 months of age back in 1983). They haven’t done any further studies to determine what happens to the remaining 50-30 percent. Is the remaining aluminum removed by the body, or is it deposited in these children’s brain and skeletal tissue? 50-70 percent is a big difference, so obviously some children’s bodies are more efficient at filtering aluminum that others. Certain factors, such as elevated circulating parathyroid hormone increase aluminum absorption. Also, mercury and aluminum are synergistic, and studies have found that children’s risk of autism directly correlates to how close they live to power plants (this is believed to be due to the higher levels of environmental mercury due to pollution). Children with autism have had tests that show they have both high levels of mercury and aluminum.
And before anyone brings up the issue of how much aluminum is in soy baby formula, ingested aluminum and injected aluminum are two very different things.
The toxic dose of aluminum for an adult is 350 mcg or .350 mg. Extra strength antacid tablets contain 160 mg of aluminum hydroxide in each tablet, and the directions say to take 2-4 tablets up to four times a day. So there HAS to be a difference between ingested and injected aluminum or else a single antacid tablet would be toxic. (Remember, the FDA limited the injectable aluminum-containing solutions to 25 mcg. That’s .025 mg and the antacid tablet contains 160 mg)
Everything has a toxic limit

I am originally from somalia and children born in minnesota to somali parents are being diagnosed with autism at a higher rate than the rest of the population. some of the parents including myself state that our children were fine before the mmr shot, but other parents in our community are saying that their child had the symptoms of autism before the mmr shot.
Is it possible for the medical community to do a specific study in our community and really find out the real cause of this disorder which will lead us to the cure and prevention. I think our light at the end of the tunnel is the cure for our kids. Right??

Some people say that their children get autism from the shots, what really happens is: You are born with autism, as you become older you gain symptoms and the symptoms get stronger, they get noticeable around the child’s first vaccination. The only reason that symptoms are noticed on the day of the vaccination is that AUTISTIC CHILDREN ARE HYPERSENSITIVE, IF YOU WERE TORTURED WOULD YOU BE EXPECTED TO BE HAPPY FOR THE REST OF THE DAY? There is something called aftershock, that is when the child feels so bad it get really quiet and don’t seem to remember things. Since I am autistic I get it. THERE IS NO AUTISM BOOM! THE INTERNET BOOM MAKES INFORMATION EASIER TO MAKE AND SHARE, IT IS ALSO THE PERFECT HABITAT FOR FRAUD.
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I should make another comment- the MMR caused the most severe effects of the vaccines in my children. To correct Jeniele among others, the MMR may have no Thimerosal, and the FDA says that it contains zero mercury, but the FDA is lying. It contains “trace” levels, which are definitely toxic, and it has far larger amounts of aluminum which in combination with the trace mercury will inflict a bigger punch and definitely causes autism. The point is that the vaccines cause autism, not only due to mercury, but to the overall combination of toxins in this clearly deadly brew. You’d have to be blind not to see that vaccines cause autism, and proving it scientifically is not at all difficult.

The idiot’s comment above, and those like you, who make statements that parents should be arrested for not vaccinating should be given a straight shot of mercury, to pass through your blood-brain barrier, and nullifies that thing between your ears!
It isn’t your business ever, if parents want reassurance that their child’s brain could not be damaged because of these multi-dose preservatives in the vaccines, that’s their/our business! Besides, since you are herding your kids in like cattle, even with this controversy going on, that you don’t even care to check out the pharmaceutical claims telling you what to do about vaccinating your kids, despite any clear answer of the CAUSE effecting our children… is only an action by responsible parents!
And what the hell do you care about other kids getting the mumps?! Your kids are “safe”, remember?? So shut-up! The rest of us as parents prefer to take a breather here, break out of the cattle line, use our independent brain, and investigate on behalf of a child that can’t make this decision and that we are responsible for.