Truth in Autism Must Come First

Someone tweeted a link to a CNN article that discussed a Doctor who lost his ability to practice medicine because he was found to purposely mislead millions of individuals.  These individuals are parents who were under the belief that vaccinations were a cause of autism in some children.  These parents chose not to vaccinate their children out of fear that their children would have been exposed to autism or that autism already present in at least one child would be the cause of autism in the other children.

The fear of a child being diagnosed with autism is very real for families.  I worked in the field of social work and have had families with 2 to 3 children (in both cases it was all of their children) with autism.  These children appeared normal according to their developmental stages until suddenly around two years old the signs and symptoms of autism began to take over their child's development.  To determine that their children are in this type of situation because of vaccinations when it in fact does not have anything to do with the onset of autism puts those children in additional risk of contracting another disease that is completely preventable.

A child with autism and not fully immunized can come down with mumps, measles, rubella and other diseases that are completely preventable and suffer even more than their autism.  Blindness, deafness, heart diseases and becoming paralyzed are only a few of the problems that can come about when they are not immunized.

A child's life is already fragile when they are in their infancy.  All parents want to protect their child from harm and certainly do not want to inflict unnecessary harm on their children.  That is why when the announcement came out that children were developing autism due to immunizations parents questioned whether they should have their children immunized only to put their children at greater risk.  Then to find out that the physician who made this statement had no business making those statements nor had done tests that could be repeated with the same results by a large number of other researchers is atrocious.  This physician should lose more than simply his license.  He should be legally and financially responsible for the children who have suffered from a preventable illness due to the fear of vaccination.  This certainly should not be the last word on this subject.

Too many were duped by someone they believed had the answers as to why their child who should have been "normal" now had autism.  He needs to have a stronger punishment to fit this crime. To read the article in full click on the posting for May 25, 2010.

taking care of the written word,

dannielyn