Posted on 12/08/2005 6:15:13 PM PST by agsloss
It's a far piece from the horse-and-buggies of Lancaster County, Pa., to the cars and freeways of Cook County, Ill. But thousands of children cared for by Homefirst Health Services in metropolitan Chicago have at least two things in common with thousands of Amish children in rural Lancaster: They have never been vaccinated. And they don't have autism. "We have a fairly large practice. We have about 30,000 or 35,000 children that we've taken care of over the years, and I don't think we have a single case of autism in children delivered by us who never received vaccines," said Dr. Mayer Eisenstein, Homefirst's medical director who founded the practice in 1973. Homefirst doctors have delivered more than 15,000 babies at home, and thousands of them have never been vaccinated....
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
the Amish have a genetic problem that causes mild retardation and a malformation of the heart. For that reason they often send their children to other Amish settlements in Ohio etc to find husbands and wives.
But these children are retarded, and often cared for in the Amish community...
As for Autism, it is not the same, although it overlaps with retardation...many children diagnosed as retarded or as "childhood schizophrenia" in the 1950's would now be called autistic...but back then, they were placed in "homes" for care...
I had one autistic/moderately retarded Amish child in my care...and two others profoundly retarded but not really "autistic" from Mennonite or Amish homes...
Alas, retardation is not PC, so now children with brain damage and severe behavior problems who would be called retarded or as having "childhood schizophrenia" in the past are now called "autistic"...
The trouble with anecdotes is that these people often don't see parents who cared for such children at home in the past...
You got that right. The autism-by-vaccination folk is a cult.
There's no clue in the article to a peer-reviewed paper on a well-controlled study. So how on earth are we supposed to evaluate the claims being made?
your history is wrong. Scientific doctors started with Hippocrates.
Barbers were surgeons. We don't see much difference in the USA, but in England, up to a few years ago, a surgeon was always called "Mister", not doctor, because they were historically not "gentlemen"...
That is because they live in such close knit communities, they intermarry.
If you are a manly and dominant man, and your wife is a woman with a strong personality, you have a much higher probability of having an autistic child.
This seems to imply it is genetic, and that some of the genes are partially expressed in the recessive/hybrid state. But then, when they are autosomonal recessive, autism presents.
Smart people with autism exist, but they have to formally do the touchy feely things that the rest of us do inherently.
The Amish, yes, I agree. But 30,000 children in Chicago who are not Amish? That's why this writer was so interested in paying a visit.
Putting mercury in baby vaccines will turn out to be a huge mistake.
"But, of course, correlation does not mean causation"
Correlation does not *necessarily* mean causation, but it generally means that research should be done to determine whether there is or is not a causal relationship.
Still a lot of factors. The doctor didn't say where he was practicing, for example... if it's in a poor area, the demographics could be disporportionately affected (and the column did say 38 in 10,000 vs. 60 in 10,000 had autism in that school district, so exaggeration is probably involved), plus the families didn't spend the money & time to get a diagnosis.
Autism has always been with us IMHO--they've just lowered the bar drastically in recent years. Asperger's syndrome people are prevalent in the tech field and they've got a very distinctive personality...
One particular instance was an employee of ours who, was a bit 'challenged' himself. 4 of his kids were fine and wonderful (his teenage boy was a hoot) but 2 little ones had physical and mental disabilities. Quite sad, he wasn't much of a farmer and had little land, and had never made more than 3000 a year in his life. (this was 20 years ago). He'd drive his tractor winter or summer up to 30 miles to wherever we were working.
"It did. The word autism was first used in the early 1900's, and the classification/diagnosis began in the 1930'-40's. I believe wide-spread vaccination began at least a decade after that."
Hmph. It would seem, then, that vaccinations could not be the sole cause. However, if mercury is the culprit, eliminating mercury from vaccines should produce a sharp drop.
I remember kids playing with mercury from thermometers with their bare hands when I was a kid.
"Also, autism most likely existed for centuries; it just wasn't labeled that."
What do they call it when people analyze old medical records to see if people had things that weren't properly diagnosed in the past? Seems like that might tell us something.
"This does not explain all the increases, but it does explain some."
I'd be more interested in finding the reason for the rest of the increase than in a lot of things we spend money on.
What a tragedy it would be if the misery caused by autism were due to mercury, and we just didn't bother to look.
"Barbers were surgeons. We don't see much difference in the USA"
Doesn't a surgeon have to have an M.D.?
Wouldn't that depend on whether John Edwards was the parent's lawyer?
"Asperger's syndrome people are prevalent in the tech field "
Good grief! You mean there really *is* something wrong with the Dilberts of the world?
Modern doctors are not scientists, mostly just folks with good memories. If I were smarter I could be a scientist, if I had a better memory I could be a doctor.
"but I've seen several "special needs" Amish children."
Yes, that's because the inbreeding diseases are rampant. Rampant enough even to hide autism?
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