They weren’t saying that 1 in 100 Amish kids are autistic, they are saying that the rate of autism in Amish kids is one hundredth of that of non-Amish communities.
So if the autism rate in NJ is about 1 in 100, the autism rate in the Amish community would be 1 in 10,000.
It’s confusing because 1/100 looks like it could mean one in one hundred instead of one hundredth.
Thank goodness we are past the barrage of vaccines for kids. I might not have this right but I thought I heard that before kids get to kindergarten they've received 30 shots. That's ridiculous! I am referring to kids dropped off as infants to pre-elementary school in daycare. We didn't do that and I refused some of the shots and NEVER had ANY problems.
What I strongly object to is the vaccine is not weak or watered down as it used to be. In other words it's not a watered down germ being injected. The strength has INCREASED. A child's immune system is immature until he/she is two years old. What you rare doing is injecting STRONG GERMS into an immature immune system to kick start it but the QUANITY of strong germs, I fear is causing major problems with kids.
I don't want to get off on a tangent but the same applies to pets. For example, the strength of rabies shots is very strong. They used to inject a watered down version. Now they don't. We stumbled on this when my cat was diagnosed with bone cancer in his ankle - the same leg they inject his rabbies vaccine. It is KNOWN within the veterinary community that BONE CANCER would OFTEN result with the stronger vaccine so instead of shooting them up at the scruff of the neck, at least on a limb you can amputate it and give the pet a chance. It turned out that the kind of cancer he had was not the kind of cancer associated with the rabbies vaccine.
I can't go into detail but we did go with the amputation. I lost a piece of my heart. I'll ALWAYS love Charlie. He adjusted beautifully but it came back four months later in his lungs - his insides were “marbleized”. I will never forget that x-ray. I'm looking for his liver etc and you couldn't find it. By then I had seen many x-rays. It was so difficult ... He did lose his hearing from the surgury and it affected his vision. He didn't hide after the surgery. He was himself but only for a short time.
It was such a no win situation. If we did nothing, he'd die. If we went through with it and with testing it appeared contained so he had a chance. We gave him a chance. He was a great cat. Clearly he wanted to live and his personality didn't change. It turned out to be the right decision for his temperament but an unlucky outcome. We did all kinds of tests to make sure he was “clean” but cancer is sneaky.
Through that experience we learned allot about vaccines and how much more POTENT they are today than in the past. It doesn't matter if it is for animals or humans. They are stronger. When you couple stronger vaccines and a huge increase in the QUANITY of them - you are going to have trouble and we are seeing that.