These are the type of people representing Autism

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I posted earlier that I had an argument with some people on the Ayn Van Dyk site...."help bring little autistic girl home to her daddy". The posts were deleted from the site but I found them all in my email. This is the woman who, I feel personally attacked me. I commented that I thought it was selfish not to vaccinate your child as it affects other children. Not only do her words show a complete lack of education in what she is debating but she is offensive, insinuating that I did not breast feed my children or try to feed them healthy food, she directly called me selfish and told me that I was afraid (did not feel safe)...of what I dont know? As far as I know this woman does not even have an Autistic child. She "thinks" that there is such a thing as healthy food and water....I have news for her due to what we have done to the planet we live on there really is no such thing. I grow my own vegetables but still there are toxins in the ground and there are even toxins in breast milk, however I did breast feed all five of my children until they were a year old, not that I need to validate anything. What upsets me is that this is what people listen to....this unfounded nutty stuff. She says thousands and thousands of children have died from vaccines....Um, where did we get this info from our little head??? I think she has that backwards...thousands of children have died from diseases that we now have vaccines for. Im sorry this kind of stuff really bothers me but I feel the need to share it with those who are more rational so that you are aware of what type of people are out there spreading lies about what Autism is. This is why we need to fight against this. These are the types of people who are the poster parents for Autism Speaks and other such pessimistic groups. These type of people want everyone to think that Autism is a horrible, painful disease that children are suffering from and it must be stopped....this is what the media eats up and spits out at the general public. This is the face of Autism that WE need to change.

<<< 3:13pm Aug 2
April, you are the one who is selfish if you think I should put toxic substances in my children so you can feel "safe". Your child's health is directly related to how healthy you feed them, and it is your responsibility. Healthy, breast fed babies, and children fed healthy food without chemicals do not die from childhood disease. Vaccine damage kills and debilitates thousands and thousands and those numbers are growing. Childhood illness have been declining and death in countries with clean water and sanitation is extremely rare. Also, Autism for many children is incredibly painful and they experience physical pain and symptoms. It is not just a mental disability. Also, Dr. Thomas Verstraeten was the author of the ONLY US study about the autism correlation, he found that the vaccinated children showed delays, tics, seizure and autistic "like" behaviour. He went on to say these behaviours we worsened the younger a child is vaccinated. The study was labeled neutral pending more studies. But the CDC just swept in under the rug.>>>

Ill just add that the reason the Doctors "study" was "swept under the rug" was because it was a bunch of lies and assumptions. You can look up this guy if you like.

Last edited by liloleme on 09 Aug 2011, 3:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I can totally appreciate what you are saying, but don't know how appropriate it is to post an argument you are having with someone in private emails. And including their name.

However, that being said, you bring up a super good point. Extremists in any direction are doing a big disservice to the cause. It's like they want the attention themselves and don't really care about the individual affected by the disorder.

It all comes down to what you'd prefer: possibly autistic and alive or diseased and dead.

There's not enough proof that MMRs cause Autism. --storing them in mercury doesn't sound like a good idea, but the shots themselves I don't believe would cause it.

This was not a PRIVATE EMAIL....if you READ like you obviously DO NOT it was from the Facebook open forum. The original post was deleted but I found it in my email because all the posts that you put on Facebook are sent to your email. Please read what I write before you respond. When something is posted on an open forum it is open to the public even if the original post was deleted.
Sorry to get so upset but you have already done this to me in PM....not read what I write and then make assumptions based on what you THINK I said. Please take the time to read what people write...I already have doctors and other people that dont listen to me plus I am very ill right now and easily agitated.
I took off her name....happy now?
I would NEVER post something that was told to me in private, Im not that type of person nor have I ever been and I dont like to be accused of being this type of person because these types of people disgust me.

Oh dear. I am sorry to have upset you. I mean no harm. It stresses me out when people bring their disagreements with others out in public. We all have enough stress to deal with. I should probably just not respond to threads that I find stressful. Best to just move on. Smile. I am not out to get anybody.

Im not having a disagreement with this one person....I dont even know her or have ever spoken to her she just came out of the blue and attacked me after I made a statement.

What Im trying to show is that these are the people that are representing Autism and showing it as something ugly and bleak....something that you can "catch". These people think they have a "normal" child and the evil vaccines poisoned them and made them "sick" with Autism.

If you read the top of the page when you enter wrong planet. You will see the little snippet of the blog with the young girl with Aspergers. Read what she says about what she thought Autsim was before she learned about it....its because that is what is being portrayed....like she says the "poster children".

The reason I put up the vidoes of my daughter and the reason I get so angry about this type of thing is because this is how the majority of the general public is viewing autism.

Its the same type of stigma people have with mental illness (I have an adult son who is bi polar). This needs to change....its all Im saying.

I have a dream, I have a dream ....trying to lighten things up a bit.
I need to try to sleep now which does not come easy to me because pain sucks!

Last edited by liloleme on 10 Aug 2011, 11:57 am, edited 1 time in total.

You know, it's just sad but the whole vaccines=autism thing has the trappings of an urban legend.

Hi Lilome,
Sometimes it's better not impose your views on people. I have come across parents who are highly sensitive over the issue of vaccination and GFCF diets and will take offense at even the mere questioning the validity of their beliefs.

There is an ironic twist to the vaccination/diet debate in that if parents really believe their child will get better then this may actually benefit the child ( a sort of placebo) where a parents optimism may actually help the child.

Funny you say this! Our support group was talking about positive atmosphere being helpful. One of the guys was assigned to research the research on this. lol.

We have veyr few extremists on the vaccination issue or the GFCF diet. We have LOTS of people that follow the diet. But most people are pretty cool about it. Nobody is militant really in their beliefs. Vaccination is not mandatory in schools and there are definately a few that do not. Very accepting of whatever here which is nice. Lots of information sharing, but no shoving down your throat stuff.

In our community, it seems almost as if it's cool to be on the spectrum. So many services available thankfully. And so many cool teachers and community members willing to go out of their way to help out. I am very thankful for that.

If your community is not so accepting, start changing it! Start with just one person and see how they are. Sometimes communities just need a little shove in the right direction.

I have a friend who self identifies as 'crunchy' - on of their issues is with vaccines and vaccines causing autism. While I agree with her on many other issues, this one I am just completely at odds over. I keep seeing the anti vac sites she links and posts and comments on - the last onwe showed a listing of how autism spiked as more vaccines were added to schedule after 1986. Well, Asperger's and PDD-NOS were added to DSM in that time period. Two whole new classifications of high functioning autism were added yet they refuse to even consider that as a possible reason WHY the autism rates are an 'epidemic'. Autism rates have gone up in countries that do not have an aggressive vaccine schedule as well. SE Asia uses less than half of the vaccines used in the States and their autism rates are keeping pace with the US and UK.

I do believe that some kids are being harmed by vaccines but I do not think that harm is autism. And now that autism is out of the state hospitals and mental wards, it is much more visible. Families used to just send their autistic children away and that was that. And, with a world population in the trillions I suspect that the numbers of autism probably follow a predictable curve - since we are just now beginning to look at that, there is no way to know if the incidence rate has gone up or not. Previous statisics were based on outdated, out of use criteria.

Fear is an ugly thing. I actually feel sorry for people that are that fearful of what they do not understand.

From my experience, the vaccine=autism believers tend to be very rigid and inflexible in their beliefs, at leas that's what I've seen online. I can't vouce for "the community" since I am not in an English speaking country and do not ever interact with other parents with autistic kids.

One of the bad points about "the diet" is decreased bone mass. I feel bad for the kids who are on it who don't need to be.

Yep, we are in Asia and the vaccine schedule is much less. They don't even do the MMR here. (Japan.) And guess what, my kid is still on the spectrum.

One thing I do wonder about though, I've seen people online who claim that their kid was completely NT until a particular vaccine, and had a bad reaction to it and ended up getting hospitalized. After that, they were on the spectrum. I wonder what's going on there?

ARRRGGGG, anyone else have problems with your post suddenly disappearing?? Ive had that happen so many times on here. That was a long one too....ok, I have to start all over again...grrrrr!

Ok, I agree with cyberdad that I should not argue with these people anymore because its fruitless, like trying to tell a religious person there is no god, and it upsets me too much. My original disagreement was that I did not think that a post about Vaccines causing Autism or an advertizement for a DAN doctor who does chelation therapy belonged on the site about getting a little girl home to her Dad. Then people started attacking me and being the aspie that I am I felt the need to try to correct their insanity and their statements that I knew were just WRONG....before I knew it my fingers were flying and I was in meltdown mode. This is the reason I will not go back to the site. One of the Autism rights groups there in BC was also upset about the posts so they were removed but then Derek himself (the Dad) turned around and started another discussion....so that was it, I cant be on that site.

Also draelynn is right about the rise in Autism. Even Temple Grandin has pointed this out that the rise started around the time that Asperger's and HFA was being finally diagnosed....people started coming out of the wood work. Also there is no real tally of Autistic people. The only place that has been done was in Korea by Autism Speaks and they not only found high numbers but found many Aspies that were undiagnosed that pushed the numbers up.

My husband is a doctor of biology and he is a professor of genetics. He has done his own research on Autism because he is married to me and we have two autistic children together. One of my first three also has Aspergers, but together we have one aspie and one autie. Before my daughter I also had the image of autism in my head of a screaming child who looked deranged and was seriously brain damaged. Even though Maddy did not look at us and laughed at the sun rays on the floor instead of us trying to make faces at her....she never pointed, waved or spoke other than strange babble and animal noises.....she was happy and she was smart. She was putting numbers together on the refrigerator in order and even putting 2 2 4 and we knew she was not brain damaged. Also she would let you hold her and she would even be cuddly at times....she would engage with us if we played rough with her like tickling her or swinging her around. This was when I started studying Autism and Maddy was diagnosed with severe receptive and expressive language disorder and shortly after classic autism about three months before her 3rd birthday.

My husband tells me that Autism is a metabolic syndrome (disorder whatever you feel comfortable calling it) so it makes sense that there are regressive forms of it. There are hundreds of metabolic disorders in which a child or person seems normal and then regresses later in life. There is the regressive form of autism and this is where the vaccines causes autism idea stems from.

Many kids with autism do have physical problems and some of them just like typical kids also can have food allergies or be sensitive to certain products (allergies). I mean you can be allergic to just about anything....there are people who are allergic to the sun. People with kids who have regressive autism sometimes are not even aware there is another form of classic autism where the child shows autistic traits from birth. They know only what they see and what they have been led to believe. Also they think that all regressive kids have horrible bowel problems and sleep disorders, seizures....ect. We have someone here on WP that posts a lot who has a son with regressive autism and he just posted the other day that he is very healthy, eats well and sleeps 11 to 12 hours a night.....so neener to the people who think all regressive autistic kids are sick and in pain 24/7.

The problem is that some of these people had their childrens vaccines done and they had a reaction. I have always had reactions to my immunizations and Im even allergic to Tetanus. I had my last one 21 years ago and was told never to have another one as I ended up in the hospital so I will avoid rusty nails . None of my kids, Ill point out, had any problems with vaccines at all....out of my 5 kids not one of them got so much as a fever. However because of my own experience I know that I would be sick for days sometimes and I would run a fever.

Sometimes young kids have febrile seizures when they have a fever over 101 F. I have seen children have seizures and I can image in was very frightening to see your child have one. This (in my opinion and theory) is what happened with these kids. They had a reaction to their shots....not uncommon then maybe even a febrile seizure. Sometime after that (some parents like to say the next day but I think everyone knows how hard it is to remember certain traits and when they started) they began to regress and have more autistic symptoms.

One woman I talked to said she had twins and she recounted that they had fevers and seizures and diarrhea after their shots and then later began to have autistic symptoms. She was very adamant about her kids being "normal" and being "turned autistic" by the flu vaccine. I know by working in the medical field that you do not get a vaccine out of the same vial....they all come from different vials. So the chances of both vials being contaminated are very very slim....its far more likely that because they were identical twins that they both had the same allergic reaction.....also they were both born autistic but they did not regress until later and they did regress around the same time which is also normal for identical twins.....it can be different for fraternal twins, sometimes one has autism and the other does not.

She told me that I could not deny that Autism could be acquired.....I said...."I can and I will deny that because that is impossible, if it was so there would be brain damage to your childrens brains". CT scans and autopsies of Autistic peoples brains show that the brain does function differently but there is no damage per se.....there are no "dead" areas such as in mercury or arsenic poisoning.

Anyway, as I said....the main reason I posted this was to try to convince more people who know truly what autism is to try to educate the general public more. Do not try to change the minds of the cult like anti vax people. We have a lot of resistance from them to portray Autism as a child thief....an acquired disease that steals their "normal" child away from them.

There are doctors out there who prey on the desperate parents (there is a good reason insurance does not cover DAN doctors and they would not want to be covered either, imagine the money they would loose). A man named Andrew Wakefield found a few families in the UK who were convinced that their children were poisoned by vaccines due to my theory above. He has been shown as a fraud but he did a lot of damage along with celebrities like Jenny McCarthy (who still supports Wakefield btw) who now even says her son does not have Autism, and Jim Carrey who had the sense to get away from all that craziness. Still they whipped these people into a frenzied cult of angry parents who wanted and demanded compensation or some type of revenge for taking their children.

Fortunately Wakefield was publicly shown as what he truly is....idiot woman decided it would be better to be the spokes woman for weight watchers but STILL there are people who believe....like little cult splinters....and still there are people who follow Wakefield who now hides in the US.

I do my part to try to educate people that Autism is not the big bad ugly thing that could snatch your child away. I make videos of my daughter and there are many people like me who are now doing the same. There is a woman whos name on youtube is autismauntie who makes videos of her niece and nephew who are mainly non verbal (her nephew completely but her niece is starting to talk at age 6). She is showing what autism really is just like I am....we are showing children who are very intelligent, loving and happy a stark contrast from what the anti Vax people want you to think.....Its funny you dont see many people showing their children suffering in misery all day from autism on youtube, there are those people who show their child having a meltdown and say that they are in pain, that Ive seen.

Im proud to say that many of my videos have over 400 hits and one has over 600....thats a lot of people that I hopefully educated a bit. Autismauntie has a huge following....they also have a sad story because these two beautiful children lost their Dad to pancreatic cancer a few years ago. You can see in the videos what a close relationship he had especially with his son.

Anyway, Im not saying we should all make videos but how many times do you have the opportunity in a public place to educate people? How many people have said to you "he/she doesnt look/act autistic".
Going head to head with the cults is going to get us nowhere but we can make a balance that hopefully tips in favor of showing truly what autism is. Yes its hard to raise a child with "special needs" but our kids just have Autism and I will agree that sometimes it can be really bad but we need to ask ourselves....are our children happy and who is suffering, is it us who wonder if our children will every get married or is it them who could care less?
Our kids may not get married, they may not be able to get a job but they can live happy lives and to me that is what is important....I only want my kids to be happy.

I watched a show on Discovery health that showed a family with a child with downs syndrome and a family with an autistic child and a family whos daughter had this horrible disease that affected her skin and internal organs. They said she would not live to be much older than twenty. Her mother spent hours every day and night wrapping her daughters skin to protect the blisters. The episode showed them getting her ready to go to a school dance, something they thought was important knowing that she was NEVER going to grow up and get married, knowing that she was NEVER going to grow up and you did not see this Mother crying, she was only happy to see her daughter all dressed up and she did not complain about having to wrap her daughter ect. The family with the daughter with Downs Syndrome was also very happy and they were in the process of adopting another little girl (their child was their biological child) with Downs. The family with the child with Autism, the little girl was 4 they had her on medications (I dont know what) the mother was a basket case, crying all the time and freaking out every time her daughter would bite her hand or get frustrated with something. I was sitting there thinking....wow what a contrast. I was also thinking this woman needed to think about getting some medication for her own anxiety because she was making this kid worse by behaving the way she did.

Anyway the moral of this story is that, why do people think Autism is so terrible?..... more terrible than cancer or the woman who in the argument I had said she would rather have polio than severe autism???? I just dont get it!

My hands are killing me now so I have to stop but, as I said, I only put up this post to show that this is what a lot of people are thinking autism is....the way the woman describes it in the post and also to show how insane the thinking gets. I hope that more of us take the time to try to educate more people. There are many people now that are more on the fence than fanatical but its still the fanatical ones that get the media attention and they are reaching the general NT public.

I also think its sad that I wonder....how much can they be enjoying their children when they are constantly thinking they are something they are not supposed to be....that they were normal and now they are this, they have this horrible disease, they are poisoned and sick. People whose children were injured in an accident or ACTUALLY poisoned do not act this way....other than Minamata disease but that was understandable as the Japanese government was hiding what they were doing....actually it may be Minamata that these people think of when their children have regressive autism, that the government is doing this behind our backs.....but really logically, it makes no sense. Ill be the last person to say I trust complete in any government but there is too much evidence to the contrary and if you read about Minamata disease you will see that real heavy metals poisoning is far worse than any cases of Autism I have seen.

I think I need to write a book.....before I go I wanted to add that Dr. Paul Offit who wrote the books Autism’s False Prophets and Deadly Choices donated all the royalties of his books to autism research....I wonder how much if any did Wakefield ever donate?

Last edited by liloleme on 10 Aug 2011, 11:47 am, edited 1 time in total.

From what I see the pro vaccine believers are just as rigid and inflexible in their thinking. I personally just dont care for the whole 'extremists' attitude regardless of the belief. Once someone becomes an extremist on any side of any issue it's like they pop bananas in their ears and are no longer able to regard anyones opinions, beliefs or experiences as valid other than their own.

And I really dont get why pro vaccine rhetoric needs to be posted here. I just dont see the need unless someone is asking about vaccines. My child was damaged by vaccines and I dont go around hollering 'Dont vaccinate' but it is irritating when extremists continually seem to discount the fact that yes children are damaged by vaccines. Lives are saved, children are damaged, safety could be improved.. But nothing is going to change or improve or happen because the extremists are all sitting around with bananas in their ears arguing instead of doing the appropriate research to find out how vaccines can be made safer and how we can screen to see which children may be more likely to be damaged.

I wanted to point out one more thing. Most of the Anti Vax people are in the US, UK and Australia. There are not many fanatical types here in France although just a few years ago they were still treating Autism like a Psychiatric disorder, they have come a long way thankfully.

I was not aware that you had the choice to vaccinate your child or not in Canada, that would explain the high numbers of measles and pertussis there.

In the US you also have the choice, you can sign a paper saying that it is against your religion....although they are now fighting that as it is not really a personal decision as Ive mentioned. I can list stories of peoples infants who have died from pertussis (whooping cough) because the people in their community were mainly anti vax people and there were break outs. It is not a bad disease for older kids and adults but it is fatal for infants and the pertussis vaccine is not given until around 6 months old.

Also people think that chicken pox is not dangerous either. Not only can it be dangerous it is horrible to suffer. I had terrible chicken pox....so did my oldest son. We had them in "private places" my son had them down his throat. Many kids can get them internally and it causes bacterial infections that are fatal or can cause life long disabilities.

Last edited by liloleme on 10 Aug 2011, 11:48 am, edited 1 time in total.