Posted on 04/20/2005 8:26:42 AM PDT by agsloss
Lancaster, PA, Apr. 18 (UPI) -- Part 1 of 2. Where are the autistic Amish? Here in Lancaster County, heart of Pennsylvania Dutch country, there should be well over 100 with some form of the disorder. I have come here to find them, but so far my mission has failed, and the very few I have identified raise some very interesting questions about some widely held views on autism. The mainstream scientific consensus says autism is a complex genetic disorder, one that has been around for millennia at roughly the same prevalence. That prevalence is now considered to be 1 in every 166 children born in the United States. Applying that model to Lancaster County, there ought to be 130 Amish men, women and children here with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Well over 100, in rough terms. Typically, half would harbor milder variants such as Asperger's Disorder or the catch-all Pervasive Development Disorder, Not Otherwise Specified -- PDD-NOS for short. So let's drop those from our calculation, even though "mild" is a relative term when it comes to autism. That means upwards of 50 Amish people of all ages should be living in Lancaster County with full-syndrome autism, the "classic autism"...
-snip-
I have identified three Amish residents of Lancaster County who apparently have full-syndrome autism, all of them children. A local woman told me there is one classroom with about 30 "special-needs" Amish children. In that classroom, there is one autistic Amish child. Another autistic Amish child does not go to school. The third is that woman's pre-school-age daughter. If there were more, she said, she would know it. What I learned about those children is the subject of the next column.
(Excerpt) Read more at washtimes.com ...
LOL...well, that sounds like a REAL fun trip!
Never heard of Vit. C helping with chicken pox, and now I'll never get to test it out for myself!
What really worries me is that no one knows just how long this chicken pox vaccine is good for, and I also know that you definitely DON'T want chicken pox as an adult. I worry that my kids' vaccines will wear off when they are adults and THEN they'll get it.
I watched a grown-up suffer for three months with dangerously high fever, hallucinations, you name it...all because he contracted chicken pox from his kids as an adult. (BTW...the kids were over it within a week or so.)
So I really would prefer it if they got the dang thing as kids, when it is MUCH less serious. (Yes, I know that a few children are in grave danger from it. They are, of course, in the minority.)
Regards,
Of course data can be manipulated. Organizations do it all of the time-- when ever they want to be able to give some good news about themselves. Sometimes its blatant, sometimes it's not. In my original post, I wasn't trying to make any grand point--hence, my "small sample" comment-- except that there's more to the problem than mercury as a preservative-- if mercury is the problem.
What does "trained in this area" mean? I'm trained in this area: I've submitted four kids to a series of vaccinations because I was told it was good for them, therefore I'm a good parent, therefore I'm "well-trained." Is that what you're referring to?
I think the poster might have put it this way: You aren't the parent of "millions of lives" and she is the parent of one of those injured by a "safe" vaccination.
I don't usually commend arguments on the basis of their proponents having or not having "personal experience" with or -- at least -- an emotional tie to what they're arguing, but in the case of autism it seems like it's pretty easy to tell on this thread which posters are speaking from knowledge and experience (in spite of one person's claim to the contrary).
As usual, a lot of the posters are proposing "either/or" when the issue is that there are safer alternatives to epidemics of whooping cough and the like. It isn't "either/or"; it's "there are better ways to avoid the problem." The smokescreen is the lie that thimerosal is safe, vaccines are safe and don't contain thimerosal anymore even though it's safe (figure that one out), etc.
Uh...pardon me for asking this, but when you say "a family member," could you please be more specific? Otherwise, your statement lacks a certain grabbing-quality.
I believe there is a genetic component in SOME cases; a Stanford study indicates there are three genes with an weakness. The condition itself is not genetic, however, from their findings. I mention elsewhere a connection with lazy eye in families with autistics; my husband believes there is an issue of genetic "brain mapping" that is genetic but it is not autistic, per se. That, I think, might explain the "engineering" aspect. My husband, one son (non-autistic and very "engineering" personality) and my mother-in-law all have the lazy eye condition (only one is visible on gross examination outside the eyes, however); a relative of my mother-in-law's was a fluid dynamics engineer at NASA. I happen to think those things are all connected.
Oh, incidentally, my husband is an engineer-type, also, and his mother has an autistic-like personality.
What, exactly, is the toxic level of mercury? You know all about the topic, having been trained in it, so you give it up.
i've heard this throughout the years... i didn't pay much attention until i became a parent... i always hated when my baby had to get his shots... a friend of the family believes her son became autistic when he got received one of his vaccinations... he seemed fine before that... she now works with autistic children professionally... i don't know if vaccinations cause autism, but some people do believe that, and it's not far-fetched...
A person can't go through their whole life blaming their parents, but my wife and I really wish we'd had 'normal' parents. It's taken years to resolve a lot of stuff.
My family would have been Lancaster Conference or an ever more conference. I grew up in Canada however, near Kitchener-Waterloo, and the folks there were already amalgamated, I believe.
"I'm sure I'll be flamed for this, but I didn't have my children vaccinated."
If I had kids I would not have them vaccinated. I myself refuse to get flu shots etc. A good friend of mine has studied this field and he says it's not so much as the vaccination itself but the one dose fits all approach.
I have a theory on this: look at the Pitocin connection and the greater cephalopelvic disproportion with (larger) male infants.
Not true yet. There are various websites that will instruct you in how to waive out of the situation.
Do the Amish practice home-birthing? (Pitocin...)
Yesterday, I took my son to get an x-ray, and seated in the small, cramped office were two young girls with masks on who'd tested positive for tuburculosis. They were clearly contagious. They were foreigners, and a wave of anger overcame me.
Don't be so sure. A few years ago I had a college student from Japan renting a room in my house. Just before graduation, the college made everybody get a routine TB test, and if the skin test showed any reaction at all, an X-ray followed. Well, this girl had a very slight skin reaction, and the X-ray showed a spot on her lung. She explained that the spot had been seen on X-rays when she was very young, and had been checked out and determined to be benign -- and after all those years it was still just the one little spot. Nevertheless, they confined her to the campus infirmary and made her wear a mask all the time. Further testing proved conclusively that she didn't have tuberculosis. Extreme precautions are taken when there's the slightest evidence of possible TB infection. Most likely those kids in your doctor's office didn't have TB and/or weren't contagious. If anybody really thought they were contagious, they wouldn't have been there.
Oh, exactly! Try what you can and see what works! I tried homeschooling for mine, and that is beating out all the public school services so far. I am sorry we are both in this situation.
But just the fact that you need 3 boosters 2 months apart makes me sick. How good can a vaccination be if you need to keep shoving it in every other month? How do we know that every child needs that much?
Where should I report this?
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