Aspies For Freedom

(held off from measles vaccines for second and third child daughter till just last year)

can't blame me as their pediatrician said that our oldest sons extreme reaction to his MMR would be pretty likely repeated due to genetics. I am also highly sensitive to any drug/chemical.  I was not interested in my heretofore healthy children/babies getting 105 fever and measles spots so I doctired school paperwork till I felt like it! I'd do it again too.  But if I were to travel with the kids I would have vaccinated them earlier.... MY CHOICE, my right.  By the way the doctor/pediatrican still wanted to vaccinate but warned me it might just ahppoen again - some choice - she is not on the mmr causes autism wagon AMA - the opposite most likely)

Also, I rarely believe studies/news reports etc.,  - they can so easily be skewed to say whatever one wants...

I'm glad I had all my vaccinations even if they caused my Asperger/giftedness.  Hepatitis B and chicken pox vaccinations did not exist in the 1970s, and I contracted chicken pox as an adult in 1989.  My brother found it in high school and gave it to me for Christmas after my first semester in college.  I am not even sure he was symptomatic.  I was.

Four days of hell at home.

Vaccinations as a whole save many lives.  You don't remember how many people had diseases like polio, etc. or died from them.  Gone with the Wind Charles Wilkes died of measles in a Confederate army camp.  Disease used to kill more troops than combat until WWII.

Mom had mild polio and had to wear the back brace.  She was too weak to do anything else on the dairy farm except drive the tractor.

Now we have maybe ten cases of polio a year in the United States, thanks to immunization.  But it only works if people take it.

Autism is a tragedy but we can't prove the vaccine did it.  

Although, if you like conspiracy theories about vaccines, you'll love The River by (I think) Edward Hoopoe (polio virus testing accidentally leads to HIV in humans)

Charles Hamilton, Melanie Hamilton Wilkes' brother, sorry

Popular press crap, I agree with you on.  But a tiny modicum of basic scientific knowledge and statistical acumen goes a very long way in evaluating studies.

Now THAT is coursework that should be mandatory in public schooling--how to read and understand scientific papers--even if you don't know the science in question to start with.  Someone who knows the technique can become familiar with any field by starting with any paper (in a language of sufficient fluency) and applying said technique with it.

Experimental design, randomized assignment to trials......  

Social psych stuff.

I wonder if Charles Hamilton was an Aspie.......  or a geek........  probably would have food stuck in his braces....

(have read thousands and thousands of pages of research and hundreds of studies and spent untold hours looking at government records on vaccines and statistics on medications, vaccines and diseases) My kids did NOT need t be vaccinated from measles at 15 months or 18 months or even 5 years old - not with our sensitivities)