Is the Autism Controversy Finally Over?

Actually it was never a controversy for me. I have three children none of whom is autistic all of whom were vaccinated at the right times for their ages for for the correct illness.

A special Federal court decided yesterday that the vaccines are not the cause of autism. Naturally parents with autistic children and the entire autistic community and their advocates were disappointed by this. It is so easy to blame someone when your child has a fairly unknown condition. For that matter we all want to blame someone or something when we get cancer or for example in my case an autoimmune disorder. I say it must be the power plant near by or the fact my parents smoked.

The court's case was made clear: There's little if any evidence to support claims of a vaccine and autism link.

The evidence "is weak, contradictory and unpersuasive," concluded Special Master Denise Vowell. "Sadly, the petitioners in this litigation have been the victims of bad science conducted to support litigation rather than to advance medical and scientific understanding" of autism. webmd.com

This isn't anything new. The scientific community has been saying for a long time that there is no connection between vaccines and autism. Yesterday's decision hopefully should put parents' minds at ease. I am a huge proponent of public schools. I know many people home school their children and I am not judging them. However from both a professional and personal view I think home schooling is not the best choice but that's another essay. I know many parents home school because they don't want to vaccinate their children or going out on a limb perhaps use that as an excuse to home school. If I could have been vaccinated against my disease I would have been. A baby in Minnesota died after contracting meningitis. The baby had not been vaccinated.

The U.S. Court of Claims also known as the people's court is different from many other courts: The families involved didn't have to prove that vaccinations definitely caused autism just that they probably did. In other words they did not have to prove "beyond a reasonable doubt."

This doesn't seem to be the end of the road. People will still wonder about the connection and will probably be back in court. There is another side to this court case which I find very interesting. We once had vaccines that had preservatives containing mercury - remember the glass thermometers? I hope you don't have any and if you do turn them into your health department and you will get a new non-mercury one. In any case if the mercury damaged the brain then I guess the makers of mercury could be sued. Physicians are also being blamed for misleading families.

I am old enough to have sat in the sun before sunscreen protection was invented. My suntan lotion was baby oil and iodine as was my mom's. She's had melanoma. Should she sue the iodine company? What about all the people who have been killed when cars didn't have seat belts? Should their family now sue the car manufacturers for something they didn't know about? I could go on and on and you can probably think of many such circumstances. By the way many of us get flu shots. In some there is mercury present. I do not hesitate to get a flu shot and before you make the connection between my flu shots and autoimmune disorder I only got the flu shots after I was diagnosed. My autoimmune disorder like many is hereditary so I can't blame all the vaccines I got as a kid of it though maybe I could sue the power plant.

Source

WebMD