Bump for later read.
I am pretty sure that the Amish do other things (than vaccinations) differently than city folks.
Interesting, but correlation is not causation. Whoops! Washington Times should be ashamed.
Further, the American Autism Society (or somesuch) says that the precise cause of autism is not known, but that it is probably genetic.
very interesting
This is pretty hard to explain as anecdotal and therefore not statistically significant.
If the differences in the populations are this dramatic, then why doesn't Dr. Eisenstein do a statistically valid study, instead of citing anecdotal information?
If he's a doctor, surely he knows what constitutes the necessary scientific proof to make action possible.
Has anybody checked to see if autism existed before vaccinations?
My wife teaches natural childbirth, and thus she also reads a lot about other things introduced to children by recent generations - like mass vaccinations. She has mentioned this alleged link to me before. It seems like a logical explanation to me. Some people, however, don't even want to hear about, much less discuss, such a possibility.
My anecdotal musings are just as relevant as the ones in the article. I have seen Autism where genes were the cause, and where genes were not the cause, where FAS was present, and where it was not present, and where post birth difficulties were present, and where the birth was perfect. When do I collect my Nobel Prize(just the money, thank you)?
They are wrong. I worked at an institution for the retarded, and one of our patients was autistic from an Amish family...
And autism was widespread in the 1950's, but those kids were labled "retarded". Now any retarded kid with behavior problems is called "autistic", which is more pc....
Autism has a strict criteria, and can actually be caused by measles, mumps and other viruses that cause encephalitis...what is different now is that pediatricians who trained after 1980 have never seen a case of measles encephalitis...
Amish polio cases raise concerns
By Robert Rhodes
Mennonite Weekly Review
ST. PAUL, Minn. — A polio outbreak in a central Minnesota Amish community has health officials looking for ways to convince more plain people to take immunization shots.
Though no one has become ill from the outbreak — the first time polio has surfaced in the United States since 1979, when an international outbreak also affected the Amish and other plain groups — five Amish children from Todd County have contracted the polio infection. Three of the children, ages 5 to 14, are from the same family.
Minnesota state epidemiologist Harry Hull said Oct. 31 that the state health department now faces the challenging task of encouraging more people to overcome their fears about immunization — the only sure line of defense against a broader, more dangerous outbreak.
“What we’re hoping is that we can head this off at the pass before it gets into [general society],” Hull said, noting that only about one in 200 people who contract the polio infection suffer the disease’s ravaging paralysis.
So far, immunization appeals among the Amish have met with some success, Hull said. Out of 24 Amish families in the community where the polio turned up, near Clarissa, about a third had been vaccinated previously, Hull said, and others have agreed to take the vaccine.
In another Amish community in southern Minnesota, near the Iowa border, Hull said as many as 500 people are expected to receive the immunizations in coming days following an appeal in that area.
Hull said health department personnel have been lobbying for the vaccines by first approaching local Amish church leaders, who have been leaving the choice to individual families.
In some Amish settlements, Hull said, workers have been going door-to-door, to ensure that no pressure is exerted on families by others who object to immunization.
“It’s been a very individualized approach,” Hull said. “There are a fair number of Amish who are immunized already . . . so you get into lots of subtleties here.”
Sociologist Donald Kraybill of Elizabethtown (Pa.) College, said there are no official prohibitions among the Amish against immunization. Instead, he said, some oppose the practice out of a combination of fear, ignorance and religious zeal.
“It’s more rural conservatism or caution,” Kraybill said Oct. 31. “Some of it is just sort of rural neglect or fear of the unknown. These are people who haven’t studied any science in high school.”
Kraybill said in Lancaster County, Pa., Amish schoolteachers maintain immunization records on their students, as well as offering a form to be signed by families opposed to their children receiving vaccinations.
Kraybill said one Amish clinician, who works in an Amish pediatric practice, said as many as two-thirds of the Amish children in the Lancaster area are vaccinated.
This high percentage, Kraybill said, may be attributed in part to the 1979 polio outbreak, which Hull said started in Europe before spreading to North America and beyond.
In Canada and the United States, the 1979 outbreak had a significant impact on several Amish, Mennonite and Hutterite communities where immunization was frowned upon, Hull said.
But after 1979, Kraybill said, Amish leaders in the Lancaster area became more supportive of vaccine programs.
This also is the case in more progressive Amish communities where there is more openness to modern medicine, Kraybill said, or in parts of Indiana, where Amish children attend public schools and are required by law to be immunized.
“A lot of it relates to fear about the vaccination process,” Kraybill said. “They’re not sure what’s in the vaccine.”
Others, Kraybill said, “would feel that your health is more in God’s hands. But that would certainly not be the prevailing atttude.”
Oh, no. Not this feces again?
The Amish don't have autism. They just have 5,000 other genetic diseases to deal with (as well as deaths from vaccine-preventable diseases).
Putting mercury in baby vaccines will turn out to be a huge mistake.
My oldest son began to show autistic symptoms at the age of ten days - before he was vaccinated, but while I was on intravenous antibiotics and rehydration - and breastfeeding.
I wonder if the antibiotics or saline solution could have been preserved with thimerosol - or if the antibiotics themselves were the cause - or if that had nothing to do with it.
When he was first born he was very serene and distant and stern - like a warrior monk - unusual but not anything obviously wrong, as it was two weeks later.
Mrs VS
Ping.
Bookmark me!
You know the fact is people react differently to vaccines. When you introduce a foreign substance into a million peoples bodies there is going to be cases where a certain percentage of people are damaged. The pharmaceutical companies know this and so does the goverment. There is an evangelist in our church whos body was wrecked by the polio vaccine. Not polio but the polio vaccine. The problem I have is when the comapnies and the government try to hide that fact from its citizens.