22 Replies to “Okay, get your vaccines”

1. Lost My Cookies says:

   January 6, 2011 at 10:31 am

   Not midichlorians?

2. JD says:

   January 6, 2011 at 10:36 am

   Their mendacity knows no bounds.

3. Ella says:

   January 6, 2011 at 10:51 am

   Geez, I’m starting to think autism is as bogus as ADD, global warming, and income inequality as a measure of oppression.

   LMC — that’s funny. Makes me want to see a Plinkett review.

4. Lost My Cookies says:

   January 6, 2011 at 10:55 am

   I know autism is way too hot of a plate to pass, but once overheard two pediatricians that I respect talking in an unguarded moment and the upshot of the conversation was that the single largest cause of autism was the diagnosis.

   Having been diagnosed with Adult ADHD, when I was most certainly ADHD as a kid (without the H), I didn’t like hearing that. But then I thought it over and I realized that they were probably correct.

5. Lost My Cookies says:

   January 6, 2011 at 10:56 am

   So quit opressing me Ell… hey! wanna go ride bikes?

6. happyfeet says:

   January 6, 2011 at 11:02 am

   hot water burn baby

7. Tweets that mention Okay, get your vaccines -- Topsy.com says:

   January 6, 2011 at 11:25 am

   […] This post was mentioned on Twitter by saundra D. saundra D said: RT @proteinwisdom: Okay, get your vaccines https://proteinwisdom.com/?p=23906 […]

8. cranky-d says:

   January 6, 2011 at 11:37 am

   Many of these diagnosis are a way to make people feel better about their supposed failings, or those of their children. There is such a thing as autism, but the real kind is the kind where the kid barely responds to you. I’ve met kids who were supposedly autistic who could communicate with me just fine. They don’t qualify.

9. Squid says:

   January 6, 2011 at 11:52 am

   It’s a spectrum, cranky! Shades of grey, dontcha know.

   Me? I’m wondering if there might be other factors involved with families that live within 1,000 feet of a freeway. Factors that might be inversely related to the ability to move more than 1,000 feet from a freeway, so to speak.

10. dicentra says:

    January 6, 2011 at 11:55 am

    The latest explanation from the ALT-Med community for autism is autoimmune disease in the mother, sometimes celiac.

    Don’t know if that’s valid, either, but you REALLY gotta watch out for information cascades that result from ONE BAD STUDY that reaches a conclusion that feels right, for whatever reason, and so people repeat it over and over and over and it gets cited ad infinitum, and pretty soon it becomes the Truth.

    That can happen even when there’s no self-interested liar fudging his data to get grant money (::coughAGWcough::). It’s much worse when there are a cadre of them.

    Pat Gray, Beck’s sidekick, has a wife who is really hysterical about the vaccine thing, plus the food coloring thing and the artificial sweetener thing and the aluminum in the deodorant, etc. Their main argument is: WELL HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN THE ASTRONOMICAL RISE IN AUTISM CASES LATELY? Did you know autistic kids when you were growing up? Huh? Huh?

    Which, “WELL HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN X !!!111!” is not what I’d call evidence, much less an argument.

    Because back in the day, the severely autistic kids were branded as RETARDED and summarily institutionalized. The mildly autistic were branded “slow” or maybe just “odd.” Only lately did someone figure out that some of those “retarded” kids were actually smart kids trapped by sensory overload and an unusual brain structure.

    Hence the increase in diagnoses, not necessarily in incidence.

11. Lost My Cookies says:

    January 6, 2011 at 12:07 pm

    I won’t use deodorant that’s artificially sweetened. Yuck. I get mine from Mexico.

12. Silver Whistle says:

    January 6, 2011 at 12:11 pm

    I’ll believe it when I read it in The Lancet.

13. dicentra says:

    January 6, 2011 at 12:13 pm

    Speaking of information cascades, I’ve found one while wrassling with the information presented in this book, written by a chiropractor.

    Yeah, I know. Red flags aplenty. But I figured he might have something to say, and the book started out sounding plenty legit.

    And then he mentioned leaky-gut syndrome, a popular fake condition, and my skeptic’s needle pegged hard. The theory goes that something in your intestines causes it to become inflamed, and the inflammation causes the permeability of the intestinal lining to increase such that it admits over-large particles of food into the blood stream, and these over-large particles screw with your immune system something awful.

    Because, he asserts in the case of auto-immune thyroid disease, gluten molecules look exactly like thyroid tissue, so the antibodies that form against the over-large gluten molecules also lunch on your thyroid gland.

    Google “gluten molecule thyroid” and see how many times that assertion is repeated. Dozens if not hundreds. But check the articles for evidence of this molecular similarity–or leaky guts–and you’ll find exactly bupkis.

    No side-by-side comparison of gluten and thyroid molecules (as you will find with caffeine and theobromine or T3 and reverse T3). No photos of an actual leaky intestinal wall compared with a healthy one (plenty of drawings, though). No stained slide showing over-large food particles alongside red blood cells.

    Not one scrap of empirical evidence for something that should show up empirically. And yet all these people repeating the same unsubstantiated claims, over and over and over.

    I so totally hate people sometimes. If you guys think the AGW thing is a horrific fraud, take a look at what passes for science in the nutrition and health fields.

    God help us all.

14. dicentra says:

    January 6, 2011 at 12:15 pm

    I’ll believe it when I read it in The Lancet.

    Ooo! Me too!

15. happyfeet says:

    January 6, 2011 at 12:16 pm

    it’s awful close to lunchtime for to be talking about the leaky guts I think

16. sdferr says:

    January 6, 2011 at 12:18 pm

    So yeah, get your vaccines, but don’t fail, if you’re a little kid, to play in the dirt and muck contrary to your abstemious mother’s wishes. Your immune system will thank you later.

17. I Callahan says:

    January 6, 2011 at 12:19 pm

    Because back in the day, the severely autistic kids were branded as RETARDED and summarily institutionalized.

    I’m sorry, dicentra, but do you have any evidence this is true? And how does that answer the question of increasing existence of autism in any way?

    When we were kids, we knew what retarded was – you could tell by looking at these kids (Down’s Syndrome, for example). And yes, some kids were slow. But autism isn’t even remotely close to being retarded – most retarded kids you can actually have a conversation with; not so with a lot of autistic kids. And the ones you can have conversations with are FAR more intelligent than retarded kids.

    When I was growing up in the 70’s, I didn’t know a single soul that would have been considered autistic using today’s terms. Yet now I have several close friends who have children that are autistic, ranging from mild to moderate to severe. And in my high school class of 360 kids, over 20 have autistic kids.

    I’m as skeptical of these studies as anyone here, and I hold no truck with the anti-vaccine nazi’s or their brethren in the environmental movement. But this isn’t a coincidence – something is different now. I can’t begin to guess what that is, but that doesn’t change the fact that something is different.

18. dicentra says:

    January 6, 2011 at 1:16 pm

    I’m sorry, dicentra, but do you have any evidence this is true?

    No. It’s my own conjecture, based on the following:

    Not everyone who is retarded has Down Syndrome. There are lots of ways to end up with decreased mental capacity: some affect speech, some affect the appearance, and some don’t.

    Severely autistic kids seem retarded, what with their habit of sitting in the corner, rocking back and forth, waving their hands in front of their faces or being otherwise fascinated by repetitive motion.

    When I was growing up in the 70s, I didn’t know a single soul that would have been considered autistic using today’s terms.

    Neither did I, but when would we have known these kids? They wouldn’t have been in school; you’d only know if your classmate had a sibling like that and you were over at their house and the kid was there, not in an institution. Furthermore, your ability to distinguish an autistic kid from a retarded non-Down’s kid in the 70s was as good as mine: non-existent.

    It is possible that there is a genuine increase in incidence and not merely diagnosis. However, I need to see various well-conducted studies that clearly account for mis-diagnosis in times past, and I need someone with the statistical-analysis skills of Steve McIntyre to check the math.

    Because there is way too much bad information out there (and hysteria aplenty) for me to believe that the sun rose in the East this morning without looking out my window to check.

19. Darleen says:

    January 6, 2011 at 7:19 pm

    I Callahan

    I may have been possible to grow up and never “see” an autistic kid in class because anyone outside of “normal” was not mainstreamed in “normal” school.

    My late sister-in-law was born with several physical and mental challenges. She never progressed beyond the mental age of about 12 or 14. But she went to “normal” school and eventually lived independently, learned how to use the bus system and held a part-time job. (no she was NOT Down’s Syndrome).

    If she had been sent to a special school, kids in the normal school would have grown up to say they never saw someone like her.

    My step-grandson, 4, is moderately autistic. His verbal skills are about on the level of a 2 y/o (he signs a lot which helps with his frustration). No one knows why he is this way, but with the early intervention and specialized education he’s getting, he has really come a long way.

20. I Callahan says:

    January 6, 2011 at 7:45 pm

    dicentra / Darleen,

    Thanks for your responses.

    It may have been possible to grow up and never “see” an autistic kid in class because anyone outside of “normal” was not mainstreamed in “normal” school.

    My experience has actually been the opposite. I went to a public school in Detroit from K-4th grade (before the city became a demilitarized zone). They had special education kids in the school along with the rest of us – they did have their own classes. So I was able to see these kids first hand. I was only 9 years old, but my memory is perfectly clear.

    My only point is this – I don’t believe that autism was underdiagnosed back then, or overdiagnosed now for that matter. There is too much anecdotal evidence to the contrary, as far as my own personal experience goes. I can be persuaded otherwise, however – after all, I am NOT a lefty. :)

    As an aside – here is an interesting link that apparently no one in the business wants to discuss:

    Link Between Advanced Maternal Age and Autism Confirmed

    This makes a lot more sense to me – women are having kids at a much later date nowadays, and that at least correlates with higher rates of autism.

21. dicentra says:

    January 6, 2011 at 8:26 pm

    High maternal age linked with birth defects?

    THE DEVIL, YOU SAY!

22. Mueller says:

    January 7, 2011 at 9:33 am

    Then again LMC maybe you were just a normal kid. You know, full of life and mischief. No boy in his right mind would voluntarily sit still in the same chair for six hours unless cartoons were involved. ADD my ass.

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