What are your thoughts on the debate of vaccines and autism?

Question

I'm undecided. I have a 3 1/2 year old, and we vaccinated her according to the pediatrician's schedule. We never gave it a second thought, but now that we're expecting again, I want to make sure the decision we make about vaccines is the right one.

Answer 1

Get the vaccines. If your child had Autism they would already be showing symptoms of it. I for one believe it's a load of garbage that vaccines cause Autism. I think it starts to develp from the moment of conception. It has nothing to do with a doctor putting a needle in a child's arm. Also keep in mind the study is a corelation study for the one's trying to prove that vaccines cause Autism well the problem with a correlational study is that it does not show causation. Meaning it can not scientifically prove that the vaccine did cause the Autism.

Answer 2

If I had to do it over, Id do an alternate/elongated single dosing vaccine schedule.

Answer 3

There is no link, there use to be mercury in the MMR vaccine but that was removed years ago.  Autism is a gentic disorder and they believe they located the gene in the brain and that some enviromental factors trigger it, it is also something a baby is born with.  With the outbreak of Measles right now and it being lethal it is to me worth the risk to vaccinate than to risk my childs life with measles.  Noone in my family has developed autism from shots and believe me i have a large family.

Answer 4

there is no link.

I did delay my kids vaccinations.  And I also spread them out (2 at a time, instead of 4).  But, that was just for my own comfort, not a scare of Autism.

Answer 5

There are so many things about vaccines nowadays.

Weigh up the pros and cons.

But please, remember that measles still kills kids. An 8 year old recently died in london.

It can have serious side effects.

The vaccines have no proof linking them to autism, however there is plenty of proof that measles, mumps, reubella, whooping cough, diptheria etc can kill your baby.

I live in the UK, and doctor's don't get paid by drug companies over here. The docs aren't 'brought out' by drug companies to make us have the meds.

My FIL is a doc, and my daughter is having all of her vaccinations, just spread out a little.

They don't give them injections for the fun of it.

Read about the diseases, read about what could happen.

Autism is hard to deal with, but it isn't proven.

Blindness, cessation of brain development, lung problems, coma's. These are proven complications.

Answer 6

This problem has been plaguing me since my son was born 6 months ago.

I have thus far refused all vaccinations for him for several reasons. First, I don't think a two month old needs to be shot full of anything, even if it is for his own good. And second, I am a stay at home mom, he has no siblings, and hes fairly isolated so his exposure level as a newborn was pretty much nil.

It's really a matter of weighing the risk/benefit ratio.

For example, pertussis (aka, whooping cough) can be deadly to infants under six months. However after that it generally isn't. And someone mentioned measles - measles is actually MOST dangerous to teen agers. Young children (under two years) rarely die from it.

There is a lot of information out there, and usually there is an agenda associated with it. Physicians and the AMA (in the states) WANT people to be vaccinated so of course they will use scare tactics and mortality statistics to convince readers they should vaccinate. And on the flip side, anti-vaccine campaigns will use increasingly high autism statistics and horror stories of vaccine side effects to convince people not to vaccinate their children.

The other issue being of course that you cannot get certain vaccines alone - such as pertussis. The ONLY way to get this vaccine is to have it along side the Diphtheria and Tetanus (in the DTaP).

It seems like, in my opinion, the medical community is unwilling to change their ways in order to appease the fears of the public - instead they are criminalizing people who don't elect to vaccinate and attempting to bully everyone who is on the fence into doing so by convincing them they are putting their children's lives at risk by refusing.

Personally, I will probably continue to refuse vaccines until my son is older. By three years, he will have passed the age that autism presents (usually 18-24 months) and his brain will have gone through its largest developmental phase (typically it slows at 3 years and certain things are concrete). However, there is no way to KNOW this is the right decision.

No one wants their child to get ill, especially with something scary like the measles (although really, my mom and everyone of her generation HAD the measles...), and no one wants their child to be MADE ill by something supposed to help them. I think it should really be a personal decision, and I can only advise you to really become informed before choosing.

Talk to your pediatrician, read about side effects both of the diseases and vaccines, and look at your lifestyle to see how much at risk your new baby might be.

Good luck :)