Why do people still believe this anyways? Why can't we just get rid of it?

The guy who did the study admitted he wanted to make money from lawsuits against vaccine companies. To make the money he then created the results.

The spokesperson one moment says her son is an indigo baby (a gifted child), then that he is autistic, then that he is cured but still needs special schooling.

Just one study, and one playboy playmate and we can't get rid of this shit.

There are diseases that are linked to autism, twin studies that show non identical twins have very little chance of autism compared to identical twins, genes, study after study. It runs in certain families.

Yet we can't get rid if the vaccine link. Because big pharma is supposedly making a profit off of what? Vaccines are cheap as hell and readily available because no real patents were taken out. Now if you wanna talk about what big pharma ACTUALLY makes their money from I'd listen (hint it ain't toddlers).

Not getting your child vaccinated is a choice all right. An extremely misinformed choice, bordering on child endangerment. These parents need the crap kicked out of them.
If I were the doctor treating this child, I would be slamming some massive guilt on these parents. "You know this was preventable, right?"

My sympathy stops with the child. If you get your medical advice from second rate actresses, you are a fool.

If you get your medical advice from second rate actresses, you are a fool. -- MarkD at April 27, 2013 5:13 AM

Does she actually qualify as an actress?

I wonder what these people will do when the iron lung comes back?

""A lot of people may not know (that) even the person who did that study admitted that study was flawed," Weister said."

No he didnt, he admitted it was a FRAUD specifically designed to scare people away from vaccines and into buying his bullshit alternitive vaccines.

And the only reason he admitted it was a fraud is because it worked so fucking well no one was buying his snake oil

There are some parents who do not vaccinate for entirely legitimate reasons... like life-threatening allergic reactions to previous doses.

I know one family where a child can not be vaccinated for just about anything because of another medication he is on for something that is very serious. Thankfully, THAT issue didn't pop up until he was about 4, and had at least had 1 dose of pretty much everything. Still, he's at increased risk of stuff and all these "no vac" folks are putting him at risk... along with infants too young for vaccines and people with immunological issues (including pregnant women, and seniors) who are more likely to get sick even if they HAVE had the vaccines.

Now, I can't say I'm "all in" on vaccines, as I'm not sure the chicken pox vaccine won't cause issues with shingles later on (it's the same virus & the vaccine is a "weakened" virus). I'm also not sure what I think about the Human Papillomavirus vaccine (an STD vaccine that doesn't work against all forms of HPV and was originally only recommended for girls - which raises a few red flags for me).

But as for things that have been used for decades and prevent serious illnesses that are easy to catch just by, say, going to the grocery store... well, if there isn't some strong contra-indication, then really, you're just putting everyone at greater risk.

Whenever I read about issues like these, I try to understand the thought process.

Here's the initial proposition: "Non-vaccination of children will result in increases in childhood diseases, with an expected rise in fatalities." That's just math. Is it even arguable?

So from there, we go to, "Somebody, somewhere suggested that childhood vaccinations seem linked to autism later, and although any connection has been repeatedly debunked, it's still nervous-making." Okay, then.

That leads us to, "Is the non-existent but still-in-the-back-of-my-mind possibility of autism worth putting my healthy child at risk of any number of diseases? How is this risk mitigated if other parents have their children vaccinated?"

Which concludes with either: "I'm glad we got the vaccinations," or "How horrible, that little boy down the street coming down with rubella," or "Diptheria? Why?"

Yes, there are some very rare cases of individuals having strong adverse reactions to vaccinations, but more often than not the reactions are to a preservative or other component of the vaccine, not the antibody/antigen itself. Usually, there are alternatives that don't include that component.

In the even rarer cases where the reaction is to the antigen/antibody, that person's safety is dependent on everyone around them getting immunized, so that they won't come into contact with it.

This is what so infuriates me about these parents: By not vaccinating their children they're not only saying they don't care about their own child's health--they're saying a very big f-you to everyone else's children!

"Indigo" baby? What's wrong with "gifted?"

Babies are the result of genentics being passed on, not getting vaccinations is the equivalent to dumping chlorine in the gene pool. I'm ok with this up to the point of parents endangering other people's children. Then I'm only more certain that my kid's shots are kept up to date and he stays healthy.

People take Jenny McCarthy seriously??? The only reason she has a voice at all is she was jack-off material. The silver boy short and top with her cleavage pressed together was my favorite...

We are doomed.

Penn & Teller summed up my views on this subject rather nicely.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5kjY9p4RiE

My kid has autism.

My daughter's pediatrician told us that she got one patient after the child's previous doctor refused to see her. The kid' parents wouldn't vaccinate, and he basically told them to fuck off. We almost asked for that guy's number.

It's not just children at risk. If I get sick from the flu or whooping cough, I'll probably be OK. But I come into contact with countless people every day who could die from it: the elderly, the sick, etc. Getting vaccinated means being a decent person to the people around.

What gets me is the people who claim they made the decision after a lot of "research". Really? I spent two days researching the subject for a speech class(and reading actual, you know, scientific stuff) and learned about how effed up the original study was. These parents apparently don't care enough to research very hard.

As mark and Shannon pointed out, there are people who can't get vaccinated for legitimate reasons, and people who are immuno-compromised. These asshole parents obviously have no idea what herd immunity is.

I'm in Washington. Last year the state declared a whooping cough epidemic. There was more than a 3-fold increase in cases from 2011-2012. 3-fold in one fucking year. There are 18-19 states (mine included) that allow "philosophical" objections to vaccine requirements for school attendance. Absurd.

At least those who will not allow their child to have an operation or blood infusion/transfusion because they prefer to believe prayer is the only way to treat illness are mostly only going to kill their own children.

But unless a child has an allergy or other problem, non-vaccination puts all of society at risk: anyone else remember the polio vaccine and what it meant to the potential thousands-per-year of Iron Lung inmates? Tuberculosis death wards?

I wonder how many of these "parents" also push to ban nuts (ground or tree) from schools and parks? BTW, research has shown that most nut allergies can be cured by - yes - having the affected person exposed to tiny-but-increasing doses of nuts under medical supervision... Not all, but most.

OTOH, I no longer get a "flu" shot annually. The three times I did I had the worst colds of my life (not counting a case of "walking" pneumonia} while the many years I did not I was fine... Go figure.

Wakefield & McCarthy haven't killed any babies--What an Ignorant Comment!

It is really sad to realize there are so many of you who wouldn't think that when BigPharma launches a smear campaign against someone who actually found proof, that they wouldn't launch it full attack so that most of the info you'd "research" wouldn't contain the truth or anything even near it. Every day, "studies" are launched that are so twisted and further from the truth, but most couldn't sort through it to understand it, and most researchers hands are tied today and are not allowed to even state what they really know to be true.

I supposed you all still think that mercury isn't toxic in your mouth, but of course it is when the same piece is tossed in a lake. They knew that a hundred years ago, when rival dental organizations were fighting for the big $ in offering a cheaper, yet very toxic alternative. Do the research on that.

Or that fluoride is a necessary additive in your water, looking the other way as to what kind of poison is came from and the damage it is doing to the bone structure of one's body, and nevermind one does NOT NEED to be fluoridated to have good strong teeth. Look at the beautiful smiles in Africa and other countries where vitamin D is plentiful from being in the sunshine, but oh no!! We're told NOT to go out in the sunshine, and the man who discovered vitamin D was demoted because it wouldn't fall into big Pharma's beliefs.

Try digging deeper to get answers and don't just accept face value, folks. There have been numerous studies for and against a great deal of medicines/toxins, but only those backed by the biggest corporations $ trail are the ones that are going to be readily available or supported in the usual places that you look.

I personally got sick for months from Tetanus/Diptheria shot, lost weeks of work and never felt right afterwards. When I reported the side effects to the dr. who is by law required to notify the drug company which serum # had bad side effects, he told me it couldn't be related. Two months later, another coworker became ill the same way and told her dr, who gave her the brush off. How many people get sick from these vaccines, and the dr's don't report it back? Too many people in the chain of drugs who abuse them, don't handle them correctly, and even when people take them correctly, it is now up to 200,000 deaths per year.

Just take a look at the inside stories on the numbers of people dying from that useless vaccine they now are pushing on girls for HPV, and now onto boys as well, as if enough haven't died or become seriously ill after receiving it. Please wake up and look deeper before making so many ignorant comments based on "what you're told to believe" about vaccines.

Dr. Wakefield Film 'Hear the Silence' Resurfaces After 10 Years
March 26, 2013 |

By Dr. Mercola

The video above, “Hear the Silence,” first aired on British television in 2003, then disappeared for nearly a decade before recently resurfacing on YouTube.

It tells the story of British gastroenterologist Dr. Andrew Wakefield, whose 1998 research published in The Lancet suggested there may be a link between the MMR vaccine, chronic bowel disease and autism.

Ever since the article's publication, it has remained one of the most cited yet most controversial studies on the topic of vaccine safety. The film provides a moving portrayal of Dr. Wakefield’s research and a mother’s journey in trying to find out the truth about what caused her child’s autism.

Is Dr. Wakefield a Fraud?

If you’ve followed Dr. Wakefield’s story at all, this may be one of the first questions that comes to your mind – especially if you’ve been following the story on mainstream media.

Dr. Wakefield's 1998 study involved a retrospective case series analysis, which essentially reviews the clinical histories of a group of patients with a constellation of signs and symptoms that link them together and create a recurring pattern.

In this case, it was a group of autistic children with gastrointestinal problems, which led to the discovery of a novel bowel disease that Wakefield and his colleagues at the Royal Free Hospital in London first described.

But the clinical story didn't end with bowel disease; it also included symptoms of regressive autism after receiving the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine... and many began to question the safety of the vaccine after this news was made public.

So rather than celebrating the discovery of a tangible, treatable and potentially preventable serious health problem that could help those suffering with similar health issues, Wakefield's discovery became a hotly debated controversy in which Dr. Wakefield's personal and professional reputation was badly smeared.

No Fraud Committed in Wakefield Study

At the heart of the Wakefield controversy has been whether or not the children in the study were, in fact, diagnosed with non-specific colitis, or if that information had been fabricated -- allegations that were largely initiated by investigative journalist Brian Deer, just months after “Hear the Silence” originally aired.1

Over the course of a 15-year nightmare journey, Dr. Wakefield lost his career and his medical license, which culminated in a series of articles published by the BMJ in January 20112 alleging that he falsified data, rendering the original Lancet article fraudulent.

But later that year, research microbiologist David Lewis of the National Whistleblowers Center explained that he reviewed histopathological grading sheets by two of Dr. Wakefield's coauthors, pathologists Amar Dhillon and Andrew Anthony, and concluded there was no fraud committed.3

It’s interesting to note, too, that in the years following his 1998 finding Dr. Wakefield published another 19 papers on the vaccine-induced bowel disorder. All were peer reviewed, and none have been retracted. However, none of these 19 papers are ever discussed in the media. In an interview I conducted with Dr. Wakefield in 2010, it’s revealed that numerous other studies also support Dr. Wakefield's controversial 1998 findings.

Do Some Cases of Autism Stem from Vaccine-Induced Gastrointestinal Inflammation?

As one example of many, at the 2006 International Meeting for Autism Research, Stephen J. Walker, Ph.D. shared preliminary research findings that confirmed Dr. Wakefield's contested findings.

A research team from the Wake Forest University School of Medicine in North Carolina had examined children with regressive autism and bowel disease, and of the 82 tested at the time of his presentation, 70 were positive for the vaccine strain of the measles virus (as opposed to the wild strain of measles). What this proved was that a majority of children diagnosed with regressive autism had the vaccine strain of measles in their gastrointestinal tract, which is exactly what Dr. Wakefield had found back in 1998.

This doesn't automatically prove the vaccine was the cause of the autism, but it does at the very least suggest a link between these three factors — the presence of MMR vaccine strain of measles in the digestive tract, chronic bowel inflammation, and symptoms of regressive autism.

This is precisely what Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride's work centers around, and her Gut and Psychology Syndrome (GAPS) nutritional plan is designed to reestablish proper gut flora in order to heal and seal your gut – thereby reversing and eliminating ailments running the gamut from autism, ADD/ADHD, learning disorders, and obsessive-compulsive disorder, just to name a few possibilities.

The Gut-Brain Connection Every Parent Should Know About

According to Dr. Campbell-McBride, children who are born with severely damaged gut flora are at a significantly increased risk of vaccine damage, which may help explain why some children develop symptoms of autism after receiving one or more childhood vaccinations, such as the MMR vaccine, while others do not. In a previous interview, she explained the chain of events that is typical for many, if not most, autistic children:

"What happens in these children [is that] they do not develop normal gut flora from birth… As a result, their digestive system — instead of being a source of nourishment for these children — becomes a major source of toxicity. These pathogenic microbes inside their digestive tract damage the integrity of the gut wall. So all sort of toxins and microbes flood into the bloodstream of the child, and get into the brain of the child.

That usually happens in the second year of life in children who were breast fed because breastfeeding provides a protection against this abnormal gut flora. In children who were not breastfed, I see the symptoms of autism developing in the first year of life. So breastfeeding is crucial to protect these children."

If a child with abnormal gut flora and damaged digestive tract receives a vaccine, the added toxic burden may prove too great to bear. Keep in mind that this toxic burden is NOT necessarily limited to thimerosal (mercury-based preservative) or aluminum-based adjuvants found in some vaccines. The MMR vaccine, for example, does not contain thimerosal or aluminum. Instead, it appears the measles virus in the vaccine may contribute to chronic inflammation of the bowel, thereby unleashing a cascade of harmful effects on the brain. Dr. Campbell-McBride explains:

"...If the child's brain is clogged with toxicity, the child misses that window of opportunity of learning and starts developing autism depending on the mixture of toxins, depending on how severe the whole condition is, and how severely abnormal the gut flora is in the child."

Why Isn’t Vaccine Safety Being Openly Discussed?

The fact that “Hear the Silence” disappeared for so long only to resurface not on a mainstream media outlet but on YouTube is apropos, as people are largely kept in the dark regarding potential vaccine risks.

Most people accept the recommendation to vaccinate from the media, public health agencies and their physicians without question. But there are major conflicts of interest between the vaccine industry and government health agencies, which virtually makes it impossible to receive objective advice from them. It is crucial to investigate the other side of the vaccine story and evaluate the risks of vaccines before you make your decision.

We need to conduct comparison studies to evaluate the health outcomes of vaccinated versus unvaccinated children, yet such studies are not done. An oft-cited reason for that is that it would be unethical to not vaccinate certain children... But this is not really a reasonable excuse today, as many parents want to opt out of one or more vaccines for their children. Deciding whether or not to vaccinate your child is a VITAL decision with very high stakes. I implore you to avoid exclusively relying on the advice of public health officials and the media, which are clearly biased and influenced by vaccine industry money.

For instance, did you know that In 2009, the US District Court of Claims, also known as the "Vaccine Court," ruled in favor of awarding federal vaccine injury compensation to a young boy who developed Pervasive Developmental Delay (PDD), a constellation of symptoms of brain dysfunction that includes autism and other learning disorders?

The case of Hannah Poling is another important case to ponder when discussing potential vaccine damage. In her case, it was found that vaccines "significantly aggravated an underlying mitochondrial disorder," resulting in a brain disorder "with features of autism spectrum disorder."

Do Your Vaccine Research

The bottom line is, smear campaigns like those waged against Dr. Wakefield simply distract the public from the very real health risks that vaccinations have already been linked to … and take precious time away that could be devoted to conducting long-overdue safety and efficacy studies.

Remember it’s your health and your child, so do your research before making up your mind about vaccinations. One good place to start is NVIC.org, as they have been providing accurate and balanced vaccine information and insights to parents on this topic for the last 30 years.

For this and other articles on vaccines & the true story, you can begin here. Don't forget to check out the footnotes before jumping to more conclusions w/ opinions. http://search.mercola.com/search/pages/Results.aspx?k=Andrew%20Wakefield

Ilona,

If it is vaccines causing autism then explain this very simple test.

We know twins get vaccines at the same time, with the same doses coming from the same doctors and the same batches right?

Well....

If you are autistic and have an identical twin the chances of your twin having autism are 90%.

If you are autistic but have a non identical twin the chances drop to 0-10%.

Keep in mind twins tend to receive vaccines during the same doctor visit. So why do identical twins have such a high percentage and non identical twins have such a low percentage if it is NOT genetic?

And BTW I find the notion of the anti-vaccine crowd that autism and the vast spectrum it represents as a "bad, toxic" thing very very OFFENSIVE.

Even if there were a provable risk that vaccines caused autism:
1. Is it not overshadowed by the greater risk of the diseases being vaccinated against?
2. What medications do not have other side effects? Advil damages your liver. (Most) antihistamines raise your blood pressure.

Make an informed choice, yes, but make a rational informed choice.

I could be killed by a plane crashing into my house, but that's no reason to move.

FWIW, I hate 'big pharma' as well, seeing as how they know there is more money to be had by TREATING, not curing diseases. Research that, friends.

Ilona,

You are a perfect example of how the internet can be harmful in the wrong hands.

All this talk about "abnormal gut flora". Enlighten me: what exactly is this abnormal flora and what makes it abnormal? I want name and species and pathogenic effects.

You see, throwing out word combinations like "abnormal gut flora" is very easy. We have a lot of normal flora in and on our bodies. Just want to know which one this doctor considers abnormal so lab techs like myself can be on the lookout for it...

Andrew Wakefield is a fraudster who is barred from practicing medicine in the U.K. for his dishonesty and general lack of ethics.

Joseph Mercola is a quack who has been repeatedly criticized for his unfounded claims about his products' abilities to detect and cure disease.

""Indigo" baby? What's wrong with "gifted?""

Posted by: Sosij at April 27, 2013 11:25 AM

Sosji, the "indigo" label is applied by people who believe that some people are "spiritually gifted." It does not refer to "gifted" in the common/ Western sense usually applied to people who score high on Q. Tests, demonstrate artistic talent, etc.

I think PPen mentioned it in this case as an indication that the woman who described her child as "indigo" and as "autistic" was nutty.

Ilona makes me cry. Truly. The stupidity is just....astounding. I can't conceieve how we as a society will ever survive if people like her are the norm.

Honey, go look at the teeth of some 50 year old african tribesmen. Then report back on their condition. We'll wait.

I knew a mom once who thought that "cleanliness and healthy living" got rid of the eradicated and vaccinatable diseases. Like eating brocolli and washing your hands eradicated polio and small pox. What is truly interesting is the same people who believe this nonsense also believe that the world is chock full of toxins and everything is going to kill us. Which is it? Cleaner living saved us all, or we're swimming in toxins?

Years ago I was deeply involved in the Darwin Awards. You never realize how shallow the gene pool is until you see the number of stories that come out of it.

"The guy who did the study admitted he wanted to make money from lawsuits against vaccine companies. To make the money he then created the results."

Ilona, what is so hard to understand here?