The anti vaccine people got it all wrong by blaming one vaccine. Gulf War Syndrome was studied, and new theories involve the interaction of vaccines. Soldiers were given all their vaccines in one day. These grown healthy adults, a certain percentage developed many symptoms that stumped the VA doctors. The soldiers were all healthy until they took their vaccines before overseas deployment.
One vaccine will not make a child autistic, but hitting them with 14 to 28 vaccines before they attend K grade is another story. Gov and drug companies swear it is impossible to do a study because Americans are mobile and move all over. Interesting to note no one thought of studying the autism rate amongst the Amish. Amish autism rate is 1 per 15000, while modern US is 1 per 88 thru 150 (depending on source). Younger Amish families are starting to accept some vaccines for their preschool kids. Be interesting to track their future autism rate.
There are supposedly two varieties of autism; one that has roots with gut flora and one that has roots in brain abnormalities. If that is indeed the case, I can understand why some children have adverse reactions to vaccines and some don’t. There’s an article/interview on the Dr. Mercola website with a doctor who claims to have cured her child of autism with a certain food protocol she follows.
The fact is that the cause of Gulf War Syndrome remains unknown. Interestingly, a couple of years ago, I happened to sit in on a committee reviewing Gulf War Syndrome study proposals (as an impartial government observer). GWS may be caused by infectious agents common to that part of the world, or to chemical exposures.
There is no credible documentation of "vaccine interaction" causing any kind of adverse effect. The main concern when giving multiple vaccines at once is that the immune system might not be able to respond effectively to one antigen if it is given in combination with another antigen. These kinds of issues are actively examined during clinical trials of vaccines. If a vaccine is known to interfere with the response to another vaccine, then those vaccines are not given together.
Just keep in mind that every day, every person is exposed to and responds immunologically to thousands of antigens--far more than the few dozen typically received during the course of vaccination.
One vaccine will not make a child autistic, but hitting them with 14 to 28 vaccines before they attend K grade is another story. Gov and drug companies swear it is impossible to do a study because Americans are mobile and move all over. Interesting to note no one thought of studying the autism rate amongst the Amish. Amish autism rate is 1 per 15000, while modern US is 1 per 88 thru 150 (depending on source). Younger Amish families are starting to accept some vaccines for their preschool kids. Be interesting to track their future autism rate.
Autism shows every sign of being a genetic disorder, probably affected by the synergy of defects in several different genes, with perhaps some contribution from environmental factors experienced before birth. There is some evidence that fevers at certain stages of pregnancy increase the autism rate; partly for this reason, pregnant women are encouraged to get the influenza vaccine. Epidemiological analysis actually shows that women who received the influenza vaccine have better pregnancy outcomes on a number of measures than women who didn't.
There is actually no evidence that the Amish autism rate differs from that of the rest of the population. Amish people do vaccinate their children--Amish parents, like other parents, do not relish the prospect of seeing their children die of vaccine-preventable diseases.
This article addresses the falsehood that Amish do not vaccinate.
And this article raises some intriguing points about why the perceived autism rate among Amish may be lower. The diagnostic criteria for autism have been changed, resulting in more active screening for it, resulting in more diagnosed cases--the Amish don't screen for it. And until the actual genetic/environmental causes of autism have been defined so that objective scientific diagnoses can be made (instead of subjectively looking at a list of indicators and trying to decide whether the patient exhibits them or not), we won't have a good idea of how prevalent autism actually is. The bottom line here is that differences in culture account for most of the differences in autism rates, regardless of which cultures are compared.