There is a vastly different rate of childhood autism in the unvaccinated Amish community as compared to the rest of the (largely vaccinated) American population, and increasing rates of autism have tracked very well with the ever-expanding childhood vaccination schedule.
For years, I would say to myself, okay, that means there’s a *correl…
There is a vastly different rate of childhood autism in the unvaccinated Amish community as compared to the rest of the (largely vaccinated) American population, and increasing rates of autism have tracked very well with the ever-expanding childhood vaccination schedule.
For years, I would say to myself, okay, that means there’s a *correlation* between vaccines and autism, but it’s not *causation.*
Then I saw the documentary, “Vaxxed: From Cover Up to Catastrophe”:
This documentary (banned everywhere!!) provided me with enough circumstantial and anecdotal evidence to realize that, yes, vaccines cause autism.
Some will condemn “anecdotal evidence” as weak, but what I’m talking about here is the parents who told their stories of taking perfectly happy, healthy children for a routine vaccination… and then saw them turn into autistic zombie shadows of their former selves.
These parents know and understand their kids like no scientific investigation can ever hope to.
Dr. Andrew Wakefield puts it best:
“There can be very little doubt that vaccines can and do cause autism. In these children, the evidence for an adverse reaction involving brain injury following the MMR [vaccination] that progresses to an autism diagnosis is compelling. It’s now a question of the body count. The parents’ story was right all along. Governments must stop playing with words while children continue to be damaged.”
You lost any credibility you possessed when you invoked Wakefield.
Wakefield *is not* a doctor. Wakefield is a scammer who conspired with parents of autistic children to falsely claim a connection between MMR vaccine and self identified "digestive disorder" in children who already had been diagnosed with autism, *in order to promote his own alternative vaccine*. Wakefield is a fraud who falsified medical records for his own financial gain.
Autism is genetic.
Autism is not apparent at birth, it is a developmental disorder which presents as the child grows; it is coincidental that it presents at a similar age to vaccination schedules, since vaccination is regularly scheduled in young children.
"For years, I would say to myself, okay, that means there’s a *correlation* between vaccines and autism, but it’s not *causation.*"
There isn't a correlation between vaccines and autism, so your statement is evincing a false premise. To have persuaded yourself that there is proven causation is delusional. In the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, a delusion is defined as: A false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality that is firmly sustained despite what almost everybody else believes and despite what constitutes incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary. The belief is not one ordinarily accepted by other members of the person’s culture or subculture (e.g. it is not an article of religious faith).
Autism rates in the Amish population are not a useful control group; the *whole point* of Amish society is distinction from "modern America". Amish are a restricted gene pool, different diet, different environmental stressors, and too small a sample size for significance to boot.
Social contagion. Perverse incentives. Over diagnosis. Historic underdiagnosis. Vested interests in education, disability funding, social work. Medicalisation. “Diversity” (meaning that the weird kid needs a labelled condition), shitty parenting, “it’s always been that way and now we’re better at recognising it”, good parenting, snowplough parenting.
Take your pick, there’s plenty of plausible explanations for an increase in diagnoses which aren’t vaccine related.
There is a vastly different rate of childhood autism in the unvaccinated Amish community as compared to the rest of the (largely vaccinated) American population, and increasing rates of autism have tracked very well with the ever-expanding childhood vaccination schedule.
For years, I would say to myself, okay, that means there’s a *correlation* between vaccines and autism, but it’s not *causation.*
Then I saw the documentary, “Vaxxed: From Cover Up to Catastrophe”:
https://archive.org/details/vaxxed-from-cover-up-to-catastrophe-2016_202008
This documentary (banned everywhere!!) provided me with enough circumstantial and anecdotal evidence to realize that, yes, vaccines cause autism.
Some will condemn “anecdotal evidence” as weak, but what I’m talking about here is the parents who told their stories of taking perfectly happy, healthy children for a routine vaccination… and then saw them turn into autistic zombie shadows of their former selves.
These parents know and understand their kids like no scientific investigation can ever hope to.
Dr. Andrew Wakefield puts it best:
“There can be very little doubt that vaccines can and do cause autism. In these children, the evidence for an adverse reaction involving brain injury following the MMR [vaccination] that progresses to an autism diagnosis is compelling. It’s now a question of the body count. The parents’ story was right all along. Governments must stop playing with words while children continue to be damaged.”
You lost any credibility you possessed when you invoked Wakefield.
Wakefield *is not* a doctor. Wakefield is a scammer who conspired with parents of autistic children to falsely claim a connection between MMR vaccine and self identified "digestive disorder" in children who already had been diagnosed with autism, *in order to promote his own alternative vaccine*. Wakefield is a fraud who falsified medical records for his own financial gain.
Autism is genetic.
Autism is not apparent at birth, it is a developmental disorder which presents as the child grows; it is coincidental that it presents at a similar age to vaccination schedules, since vaccination is regularly scheduled in young children.
"For years, I would say to myself, okay, that means there’s a *correlation* between vaccines and autism, but it’s not *causation.*"
There isn't a correlation between vaccines and autism, so your statement is evincing a false premise. To have persuaded yourself that there is proven causation is delusional. In the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, a delusion is defined as: A false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality that is firmly sustained despite what almost everybody else believes and despite what constitutes incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary. The belief is not one ordinarily accepted by other members of the person’s culture or subculture (e.g. it is not an article of religious faith).
Autism rates in the Amish population are not a useful control group; the *whole point* of Amish society is distinction from "modern America". Amish are a restricted gene pool, different diet, different environmental stressors, and too small a sample size for significance to boot.
"Autism is genetic."
How is it that a "genetic" disease has increased so suddenly, and so rapidly, as it has in recent years?
Social contagion. Perverse incentives. Over diagnosis. Historic underdiagnosis. Vested interests in education, disability funding, social work. Medicalisation. “Diversity” (meaning that the weird kid needs a labelled condition), shitty parenting, “it’s always been that way and now we’re better at recognising it”, good parenting, snowplough parenting.
Take your pick, there’s plenty of plausible explanations for an increase in diagnoses which aren’t vaccine related.
None of those are genetic.
And your point is?
Reasons for the increase in diagnosis were requested and provided.