anti-vaccine thinking led to murder of 3 yr old by mother

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http://www.week.com/news/local/13709297.html

She felt guilty because she vaccinated her daughter? She wanted to give the child up for adoption but the father said, "this is my daughter!" She started hanging around with the antivax loons and the mercury phobes, including an apparently paranoid psychotic, mercury phobic, radiologist (David Ayoub). Ayoub believes in the whole international, Illuminati/space-alien driven vaccine conspiracy thing where the descendants of powerful families (Rockefellers, etc) are trying to destroy humankind with vaccines. No really, this is what he believes, and the black helicopters and everything. She was also friendly with other well known antivax autism extremists in the Chicago area. Anyway, so she felt that her normal daughter had been robbed from her by vaccines and she was now stuck with this beautiful little autistic girl named Katie... so she put a trash bag over Katie's head and held it there for two minutes until Katie stopped struggling and defecated.

No. Really. This is what the mother admits that she did. And she said she blamed vaccines for her daughter's autism. The same thinking that led to the death of Abubakar Tariq Nadama.

http://autismdiva.blogspot.com/2006/05/ ... shall.html
If we believe in absurdities we shall commit atrocities. - Voltaire

Last edited by autism_diva on 11 Jan 2008, 7:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

That's sad. I wish the government didn't force her to get vaccinated. However, I think she killed her because she was autistic and not because she was guilty about causing her autism. She probably isn't mentally normal either. What I don't understand is why don't people put their kids up for adoption? I think there's plenty of families unable to have kids who would have taken her.

Last edited by zendell on 11 Jan 2008, 7:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.

That is beyond tragic. That poor precious little girl. She justifies this by saying that vaccines took her child away from her? Even if that were true, that vaccines caused her child to develop autism (which I don't buy into), you help the child. Help doesn't involve suffocation with a garbage bag. If the woman felt such a strong need to take a life, she should have taken her own.

Who said anyone forced her to vaccinate her daughter??? The mom is a pathologist. Do you think her daughter was normal before vaccination? Apparently, her father didn't think so. He loved her and when the idiotic female he was married to said, lets give her up for adoption, and he said, "no" she should have hit the road.

The father didn't blame vaccines. The mom was fairly deep into biomed from what I have heard through people who knew her at the time. I think without the antivax hysterics pushing the idea of vaccines destroying children, and without Ayoub's story that it's a plot designed by evil supernatural or alien forces to destroy humankind, that she would not have thought about killing her daughter. She could have just left the girls with their father. She had not been taking care of her daughter's anyway for some months, she had just reunited with the family for a short time. Katie's therapists told the court that in the week before Katie was suffocated they had told the mom that Katie was making great strides and progress, etc. The mom countered that she thought Katie was getting worse. No doubt, to justify her homicidal thoughts, no doubt. I think the mom is cruel, and in that sense not normal, but I doubt she was insane like "voices were telling her to kill her daughter," or she thought she say her daughter "shape shifting into a reptilian alien form....".

The thing is that this murder is a natural consequence of seeing autism as evil and autistics as destroyed and less than human. This is part of antivax extremism. There's no separating the two. Now there are people who are afraid of vaccines who aren't antivax extremists. But the most extreme, like Ayoub, they are a threat to the very lives of autistic children, the same as people who say that autistics are "empty shells" are a threat to the lives of autistics. Why would it be wrong to kill a "soulless husk"? After all they aren't really human any more since "autism" robbed them of their "personhood."

Antivax extremism and mercury phobia led to the slaughter of Abubakar. It has led to the torture of autistic kids and teens via extreme blood draws and extreme experimentation, like with the chemical castration drug, Lupron (tm). It has led to extreme dosing with vitamins that has seriously harmed at least two kids, and may lead to hundreds getting cancer in the next few years (if MeB12 is able to methylate/shut of tumor suppressor genes in these kids as it does in some people).

Zendell, I think need to stop spreading stupid harmful gossip about vaccines, you personally may contribute to more of these "bad outcomes" like autistic children who are despised by their parents because they see them as "destroyed". Just as Ayoub obviously contributed to the murder of Katie McCarron by convincing her mother that it was the Illuminati and Big Pharma who were really to blame for her daughter's condition.



http://farm1.static.flickr.com/53/170318107_2864d8652e_o.jpg

Last edited by autism_diva on 11 Jan 2008, 7:33 pm, edited 3 times in total.

She is a sick and twisted person. A total nut job.

I don't buy into the vaccine thing, but I know several good parents who do. They would never harm their children though.

Clearly, that murderer deserves to be locked up for the rest of her days.

autism_diva, I feel bad for the girl and I'm sorry it happened. I just don't think it was anti-vaccine thinking that caused her to do what she did. I think she was mentally unstable and would have done it anyway. I think she felt hopeless that she couldn't be cured. If she bought into the genetic theory she probably would have done it sooner (but I don't want to debate that). I think we need to look into all causes of autism and not use stories like this to convince people to ignore vaccines as a possibility.

But this was premeditated murder.

No mental insanity plea is going to help her, thank God.

If she had thought autism was heinous and that it was genetic, she might have killed herself, as she might think it was she who passed on the genes or blame her husband and herself for having a child with him. She blamed vaccines in her defense in court. That tells me where she's coming from. I don't appreciate you trying to separate this woman from her antivax beliefs in order to clean up the story, as I think you are doing.

i seriously hope this so called "mother" goes to the electric chair... and not the electric wheelchair... im talking about...



IM TALKING ABOUT THAT ELECTRIC CHAIR... THE ZAPPY ONE...

no mental insanity plea for you... off to the 'lectric chair with you... NOW!! !

that poor little girl. RIP KATIE.
vaccines do not have anything to do with autism as far as i know. vaccines are supposed to protect you from icky diseases that can kill.
it is totally sad that peeps think autistic means the person is subhuman. they are still a person you know.

the bolded part really paints a pretty horrid picture, really horrid...


can someone please confirm for me that this woman will wind up in the ZAPPY CHAIR? better yet, id like to see this woman suffocated with a trash bag... that is a harder death than the electric chair in my opinion.

this woman does not belong in society... how the hell is she a biomed major and not know autism is not a thingy that makes you subhuman, makes you better than regular humans

can the legal system please murder this woman on katie's behalf...

I don't think it's the anti-vax stuff that did this. Not nearly as directly as other things, anyway.

What I do think contributes to things like this:

* All-consuming hatred of autism (which the more extreme it gets, since "autism" is just an abstraction of the person who has a certain brain configuration, eventually it leads to hating the person, no matter what someone says, wishing someone didn't exist rather than exist a certain way is hating them).

* Fanatical need to believe that making someone non-autistic is the only way they will be proper children, or happy children, or anything else

* A political (yes, political, power-relationship is what it means) climate where disabled people are constantly cast as inferior to non-disabled people, our lives are viewed as lesser versions of other people's lives, and we are viewed as less than full expressions of humanity, missing something vital to being human, fate worse than death

* A similar political climate in which some of the most intense hatred and bigotry of that sort is directed at autistic people

* A political climate where you can actually check the records to find that killing disabled people is prosecuted less severely than killing non-disabled people who are similar in all other ways to disabled people (similar things can be used to measure racism, classism, etc.)

* And... again... autistic people fare really badly in that. And meanwhile, it is perfectly acceptable for some of the largest autism organizations in several countries to talk about autism as worse than death and several deadly diseases, even worse than 9/11 and terrorism and disasters like the tsunami, all of which take lots of lives all the time... and even to talk about contemplating killing their children.

* And it's been shown that people using murder of disabled people as a fundraising tool or a description of the need for services and such, leads not to services, but to more murders, because the more acceptable the thought becomes, the closer the deed becomes to people who were teetering on the edge to begin with

The industry and culture that give rise to the problematic ideas autism_diva is talking about are all results of the above. Not causes of it. They would have few to no customers and true believers and so forth if the ableist causes of the entire situation were not in place.

This murder was horrible, but the murderer's particular choice of 'cause' and 'cure' were her choice only because it's the currently fashionable choice in her location. The industry not existing would not have stopped her, with all these other variables in place. She would have gone for some other fashionable 'cause' and 'cure', as many others have. Talking about this as if it was about antivax stuff in particular, is like talking about this as if it was about the act of suffocating people. They are both methods and expressions of the same thing, not causes of it.

And it's even known she wasn't the primary caretaker for her child. This wasn't about services or the particular anything else. This sort of thing is the product of hatred of disabled people and hatred of autistic people in particular, combined with a cultural and political climate where this sort of crime is more acceptable towards disabled and autistic people (which is a result of hatred, although most people don't think it's hatred because it doesn't feel like anger, but hatred isn't anger, wishing someone out of existence because they don't fit a certain standard is hatred even if it's dressed up as pity or shame or a number of other things).

I have to agree with Anbuend... it wasn't the anti-vaccine thinking that did this, I think she was obviously mentally unstable anyway, and driven by a few other things:

For example, the recent billboards about how autims kidnaps your child etc. There's a real hatred of it happening and a fear of autism headed up drug-pushing doctors in a lot of places; I've seen it myself. An idea that autistic kids grow up to be unhappy, nasty, 'ret*d', violent autistic adults who smear s**t all over walls and eat their own arms - that there is no recovery, so it's better to just be dead, as they can never lead a normal life or be normaly or - most importantly - be happy; they're just trapped in this ret*d body.

And quite likely also guilt that she could have possibly caused it (genetics etc) which I'm sure she would have considered deep down.


It's very sad but I don't see the need to blame anti-vaccine campaigners; they didn't do this to her child, SHE did it. I also don't see the need for such an inflammatory post either - I understand it upsets you but not all anti-vaccine people are loonies.

NEW NEWS RELEASE

The Morton mother accused of killing her autistic daughter took the stand in her own defense today.

Karen McCarron told jurors she blamed herself for her daughter Katie's disability.

This as prosecutors tried to show McCarron methodically killed the little girl in May 2006.

The prosecution had McCarron demonstrate with a plastic garbage bag how she suffocated her three-year-old autistic daughter.

Using his fist, prosecutor Kevin Johnson told McCarron to place the bag over it.

McCarron said Katie laid flat on the ground as she was losing air.

Johnson said, "Could you see her face?" "No" McCarron replied.
Johnson asked, "How long did you twist the bag?"

"Two minutes," McCarron replied.

"Why did you let go after two minutes?"

McCarron said, "she stopped struggling." Johnson: "Is that when she defecated? You knew that was a sign of death."

"Yes," McCarron said.

Prosecutors took McCarron back to May 10, when they say she attempted to smother Katie with a pillow, but took it off her face after a few seconds. When Johnson told McCarron she failed to carry it out then because she knew it was wrong McCarron agreed saying yes."

McCarron told defense attorney Marc Wolfe she blamed herself for her daughter's autism.

She said "it was unbearable. I felt I caused Katie's autism. I felt vaccinating her would not help her. It brought me a great deal of guilt."

McCarron is charged with two counts of first-degree murder, obstructing justice and concealment of a homicidal death.

Testimony continues Monday morning.

i will continue to keep an eye out for whatever else i can get....

i hae changed my decision, i hope this woman has to live in prison for the rest of her life, worse than death penalty because your going to live in there for life and then die there...

One thing I'm not so sure about is "mental instability". I think a lot of people (I don't mean people here, I mean the people from whom the ideas originate) don't want to confront the fact that ordinary people can do completely evil things. So it's easier to label people who do evil things with a disorder, than to confront the fact that some people do in fact do evil things, and can be driven to it by certain beliefs.

Most people who are considered clinically mentally ill do not do anything like this, and most crimes are not committed by people who are considered mentally ill, and even when they are, I bet they're not "because of mental illness" nearly often as people assume they are. That's like blaming autism for crimes autistic people commit (when it really has nothing to do with it -- I can see someone punching someone during a meltdown, for instance, but premeditated murder is not going to be because of autism).

This person certainly did a horrible thing. And she certainly was emotionally a mess. But often a person is emotionally a mess because of the degree of force it takes against the natural instincts of a human being (a social species) to prepare to kill and kill another human being, rather than as the cause of the killing. Killing does strange things to the human psyche. And the only mental condition she was diagnosed with was depression, which almost never contributes to anyone killing anyone but themselves.

I see more greed and self-centeredness in this act, combined with a social climate that allows those things to flourish and grow, than I see a mental disorder of some kind. I'm not a doctor or anything, I just know the statistics on crimes like this, and I know that most violent crimes and murders are committed by ordinary people, and that probably even most crimes committed by people diagnosed with a mental illness are not because of the traits that are considered a mental illness.

It tends to be comforting to call people who do these things "crazy", but I think what's both chilling and important is that most people who do these things are not (at least not in the sense that people mean). I've known a lot of people labeled crazy in all its variations, and been labeled that way myself, and none of us killed anyone, in fact we're more likely to be targets than perpetrators of such crimes. It may suit psychiatry to come up with labels to describe people who do these things, but I don't think that labeling ethical traits as medical is that useful (unless independent of having screwed-up ethics they also have other traits that directly contribute to ending up in a situation like that). And a person in this situation, I'd be more likely to consider extremely selfish and enabled (in the worst sense of the word, not a neutral sense) by society's prejudices to carry out certain acts she was planning based on her selfish desires.

Yes, there were things that set her apart from most people, and I definitely don't "blame society", she's the one who did this and most people would not. But I think the things that set people who do these things apart, are closer to a lack of willingness to examine what they are doing and do the right thing instead (and of course if nobody's on a large scale shaming them into doing the right thing, then they have even less likelihood to do so, which is where society tips things a little towards whatever selfish acts they might be considering -- because that's one of the points of having a society, is to keep people who would otherwise do selfish and horrible things, in check, by making sure it's really bad for them to do things like this), rather than some kind of mental instability in the usual psychiatric sense.

This is ridiculous. So the moral of your story is that if you blame autism on mercury you could become a crazy murderer? Or is it that a person who thinks it has anything to do with mercury is mentally unstable?
Its a constant offensive against the mercury theory on your part, and i hope that people are skeptical of you and all the propaganda.